This week is going to be a little bit different. I’ve been trying to stick with games that are easily available, and for a reasonable price. This week, I’m going to mention three games that have had availability issues for a while. All of them are excellent games, and well worth trying.
Game 1) Colonizing the Empire (or Britannia, or Hispania, or …) – Concordia (2-5 players)
This is a great game that is unfortunately almost always underprinted. There was a recent print run in order to support the expansion being reprinted, but it appears to be out of stock at Amazon. Your local store may have a copy, or you can play this online at BoiteAJeux.net. Every player starts with an identical hand of cards, two colonists in the starting city, some cash, and some resources. Each card in the game also has a god’s name on it, which will be used at end game scoring. The scoring options are:
Vesta – 1 point for every 10 money you have at the end of the game. Every player gets one of these, and there are no more available for purchase through the game.
Jupiter – Each house you have in a non-brick city is worth 1 point.
Saturnus – Each province you have a house in is worth 1 point.
Mercurius – For each of the 5 different goods you can produce, you earn 2 points.
Mars – For each colonist you have on the board (you start with 6), you earn 2 points.
Minerva – There are 5 different cards here, each for a different kind of good. They grant you points for being in the cities that produce the goods, ranging between 3-5 points a city.
The rules for this game are very, very simple. On your turn, you play a card, and do what it says. This can have you produce goods, earn money, move colonists (and build houses), place colonists on the board, trade goods, or buy new cards. Any of the new cards you buy will have a god on them (and the distribution is printed on the board), which will also score you points at the end of the game. So players are given an incentive to focus on specific gods and scoring methods to get the best score at the end of the game. The end game is triggered once a player either places his last house or the last card is purchased. The player who triggered the end game gets a card worth a bonus 7 points, and everyone else gets one final turn. The only randomness in the game is the order in which cards come out (they are sorted into stacks that are in numeric order based on the number of players), and what cities produce what goods (each is assigned a letter so there’s a set of A cities, B cities, etc.).This game is a mid-weight game that has very little direct player interaction, but lots of indirect player interaction.
Game 2) Exploitation in the age of sails – Endeavor (3-5 players)
This game has been out of print for a while, with a reprint on Kickstarter now (my only connection here is as a backer). The game takes place over seven turns with the following phases:
Build Phase – Players can build a new building
Growth Phase – Players gain Population Markers (workers)
Salary Phase – Workers you pay can be used again (which frees up buildings to be used again)
Action Phase – Players take actions to earn resources, occupy cities, attack other players, draw cards, work towards opening up new area, or pay workers to use them again
Each player has a board which tracks their statuses in four different tracks: the Industry track, which indicates what level of buildings the player can build; the Culture track, which indicates how many workers they gain each turn; the Finance track, which indicates how many payment actions you can take; and the Politics track, which determines how many cards you may hold after passing. The player boards can be audited any time by checking icons on buildings cards, and claimed tokens.
Each region has a network of cities with tokens on them. As you take actions, you can occupy these cities and claim the tokens on them. These will be worth points at the end of the game, as will certain connections between the cities (indicated on the board clearly), and also with their own token you can claim if you control both endpoints. As you ship, you open up new territories and can claim governor cards (which also grant points on the different tracks). As the new territories are opened up, players can then expand into them as well. There are also slavery cards, which can grant large bonuses, but will cause problems if abolition happens in the course of the game.
As the board fills up, eventually players will need to use cannons to remove pieces from cities, so that you can move in. The reprint is coming with a double sided board for different player counts. This will help keep the board tight, and decisions difficult in lower player count games.
At the end of the seven turns, the players add up their scores (from cards, cities, connecting paths, buildings, and your level on the various tracks).
Game 3) Area control while avoiding the king – El Grande
This is an area control game that relies heavily on bluffing and reading the other players. The base game has been out of print for a while, and it is currently available only in a Big Box format (with a lot of unnecessary expansions). One of the interesting aspects of this game is managing your pieces (called Caballeros throughout the rules, they’re blocks or meeples depending on the version of the game). You start with only so many pieces that you have available, and must move them from an inactive supply (called the Province) and an active supply (called the Court).
The base game plays over 9 rounds, during which the following phases happen:
Reveal Action cards – There are four stacks of cards, and the top card on each stack is revealed. These (as well as the King’s Card) are the available actions for the round.
Play Power Cards – The starting player plays a power card from their hand faceup in front of them. Then in clockwise order, each player does the same. However, no player can play a card that matches the value of a card that was played before them in the round. The power cards determine turn order, as well as how many pieces you get to move into your useable area.
Take your turn – Each player takes a turn, which has the following phases:
Move pieces into the active supply.
Select an action card – Each action card has a special action, as well as a listing of how many pieces you may move from your active supply to the board.
End of Round – As Action cards are used, they are placed at the bottom of the deck. The player who played the lowest action card takes the first player marker, and the round marker is moved down 1 space.
Scoring Round – This happens after the 3rd, 6th, and 9th round of the game. I’ll detail the specifics below for this.
Now, the board is split up into regions, each region has an indicator on it as to how many points can be earned in each region. They can indicate a first, second, and third place for each region. In the case of a tie, tied players get the next lowest position (so if you have two players tied for first place, they both get second place points). There will also be a region on the board that has the king in it. If you control the region with the king (ties are not allowed here), you earn 2 additional points; however, the king’s region is also not allowed to be the target of any action cards or piece assignments. There is one other special region on the board called the Castillo. It’s a small cardboard castle that you may assign pieces to during your turn. The rules state you must clearly announce how many pieces you’re assigning to it, and other players are supposed to keep track (some players prefer to play this as open information, but that’s another column). There is also a special piece that starts on the board for each player referred to as their Grande (it’s a larger piece). The Grande is the home region for each player, and works to provide 2 additional points if a player controls their home region (no ties).
Everyone still with me here? I know the game sounds complicated, with lots of moving parts. It really is an elegant design, and quite simple to follow the rules after a couple of rounds. The key points so far is that you want the most pieces in high scoring regions, with your Grande, and with the king. Now onto the scoring round, this happens through several phases:
Chose a secret region – Each player has a dial that allows them to select a region secretly. Each player does this, and it will come into play in the third phase here.
Score the Castillo – This is the first region scored, as the pieces in the Castillo get revealed here
Move the pieces from the Castillo – Remember that secret region? Now you move all of your pieces you had in the Castillo to the region you selected (unless you chose the region the king is in – that region can’t be targeted by anything)
Score the Regions – The board has a helpful guide to walk you through each region to make sure you don’t miss any
Bonuses – Assign the bonus points for the king’s region and the home regions.
At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.
I’ll be out of pocket for a bit at a convention in Southern Ohio. I’m hoping to be able to get a write up of the convention to show you that while it may be just geeks playing these games, there’s a lot of us.
A couple days ago, you may have noticed certain people had a black cross tattooed across their foreheads. You may have chuckled a bit at such foolishness, but not at me. Because I didn’t go to the mass? No. I happened to grow up in a part of Phoenix where a large number of kids at school were going to ask me what’s with the cross on the forehead? Between the popped collar crowd and, well–(((them))), it was a conversation that got old fast.
While I went to mass, I decided I didn’t need the whole world to know I did. I had the good sense to wash it off when I got to work. If I’m going to burn in Hell, let’s be real, it’s not going to be for that.
This is my review of The Bosteels Brasserie Tripel Farmelier.
Here, I will explain what I preferred not to explain before. Ash Wednesday is the start of Lent. Lent is not supposed to be be some form of medieval self punishment. Unless you want it to be, in which case I leave you here with this guy.
For everyone else, it’s simply a time for prayer and fasting. The word itself is derived from the Middle English word Lenten, which means springtime. The days after all, are lengthening this time of year–get it? Its origin as a time for spiritual renewal was brought about by the tradition of baptizing Catechumens on the Saturday before Easter. Now you know why I never go to Easter Saturday mass, because its three hours long and. It. Takes. Forever…..to watch these people get dunked.
The fasting part was something that developed during the 4th century AD (…or CE) and was typically observed by monks. It might seem like a convenient time to go without eating anything given the abbey was probably running out of food by the end of the winter, but the time of year the fast begins has been as early as January. This time in history is also when it became linked with the traditional 40 days. No one is really certain how Ash Wednesday became recognized as the start of Lent, but for our purposes it is when it is observed. The fast part is now observed by Catholics “giving up” something. There are some theological origins to this, such as the story found in Luke 4:1 to 4:13, but the fast is now more or less observed by going without something. Whether that be something trivial like chocolate, or something more of a challenge like bread, eggs, or milk, its up to the individual. After all, even the monks did not starve themselves. They stayed alive by drinking beer.
By the way, in the interest of full disclosure, this is all relevant because I give up beer for lent. Every year. That and meat, because you’re not supposed to eat meat on Friday and quite frankly I screw that up at breakfast so I just make everyday Friday.
The beer we now associate with these monks originates around the 11th century AD (…fine, CE) with the Order of Cistercian Monks.
The Order of Cistercians was founded in 1098 when monks from the Benedictine abbey of Molesme left to form their own monastery in nearby Citeaux, France (Cistercium in Latin), feeling that things were too lax in Molesme. They wished to return to a more strict adherence of the teachings of St. Benedict.
That sounds familiar. Apparently, the Benedictines of Molesme at the time were the Nick Gillespie of Benedictine Monks.
Word got around of these monks who valued the fruits of hard labor and austerity. The nobility at the time began to offer the Cistercians undeveloped tracts of land, knowing they were capable of turning the wild into hubs of social and economic activity. 200 years later, at the peak of their influence, there were over 300 Cistercian sects across Europe. Benedict XII was a Cistercian. It is during this time, the Trappist Ale became associated with Catholic monks.
It is also during this time the naming convention for Belgian Ales were coined. The Cistercians did not discover it, but by then it was well known that by “washing” the wort a number of times they were able to create multiple ales of varying strength from a single batch of wort.
This was first discovered (documented) by the Jesuit brewers who offered a 5% to travelers and used the 2.5% second run beer for themselves. The next big step came when they realized that people would pay a lot more for a stronger beer, more than the cost of the extra grain. This allowed even bigger beers with more runnings. The first runoff would be the richest and brew the best beer. The second would be next best, and the final running would be the weakest. Again, the first would go to the guests and be sold to help maintain the abbey. The second would be for the monk’s use. The last runnings would be for the poor. This is also the likely origin for terms “single,” “double,” “triple,” and “quadruple.”
This allowed the monks to engage in the abbey’s other function: hospitality. Because grapes are not easily grown in Belgium and a law in the early 20th century that outlawed liquor, strong beer became commonplace. The monasteries were no longer the only ones producing Trappist ales. So if it matters to you, if the bottle bears this mark, it was made in a monastery:
Which is good to know, because after a thousand years the patent runs out. This one, made in Canada however, was just as good.
The Trappist Ale is a wheat based variety, but has more of a sour, citrus like taste. There is substantial body to this type of beer, which in a way is quite satisfying, if this is the only sustenance you had that day. Neither of these bear the mark, which is why I mentioned Chimay a short time ago–which does.
I had the Rouge, which was the last for me until Good Friday. Until then, everything I write has been in a sense, pregamed. Enjoy. The Bosteels Brasserie Tripel Farmelier 4.0/5.
Finally another week from Hell (also known as “my job”) comes dwindling to an end. And I may even be undisturbed this weekend, since my usual sources of weekend angst are busy celebrating their New Year. That means day-drinking, and that means craft beer, and THAT means a run down to Swiss’s preferred beer purveyor where we can swap ribald stories over some high octane brews. Unlike Mexican Sharpshooter, we are not exactly experts and the beers served at this venue tend not to have wide distribution, so we won’t impinge on his reviewing territory. However, it’s at least warmed up enough here that letting out the beer does not involve an act analogous to trying to piss through a button.
While Swiss and I get a load on, you delightful reprobates can comment on today’s news. Here’s a few examples of things that randomly caught my attention.
As has been discussed extensively, the Department of Futile Gestures has brought charges against people they can’t touch for engaging in political speech. Never mind that the First Amendment doesn’t specify “citizens,” or that, yet again, our Fifth Estate doesn’t know the difference between a “campaign” and an “election.” Of course, the logical continuation would be the indictment of the Obama State Department folks for funding OneVoice to meddle in the Israeli elections campaigns to favor the leftist opponents of Netanyahu.
It is important for the all-wise government to step in and regulate home schools to ensure that they do just as poor a job of education and just as effective a job of indoctrination as public schools, or so writes Diane Moon Glampers.
And although California requires private school employees receive a background check, parents who work with their kids are actually exempted from being checked to see if they have past criminal records…
I… don’t even know where to begin with that one.
If you ever want to see a pitch-perfect example of outright lying with statistics, this excellent article does a wonderful analysis and take-down of a typical bit of bullshit that’s been heavily passed around to gin up FUD. While I’m at it, here’s another splash of cold water dose of reality.
Music time, of the Old Guy variety. High on my list of Concerts I Wish I Had Attended was the Carnegie Hall reunion of a crew of ex-Mingus band members. This extended jam is insane fun, and the best part is Roland Kirk following George Adams’s outside solo. Kirk starts conventionally, then suddenly… well listen and hear. I don’t know if Adams was ever the same after that musical spanking. This is some stunning playing by a group of the finest musicians to ever appear together on a single stage.
The Tiddy Bear Comfort Strap was invented by two women, one of whom is a breast cancer survivor who experienced uncomfortable pressure from her seat belt.
SEA SMITH HAVE NICE VISIT WITH COUSIN STEVE SMITH. WE HANG OUT AT BEACH. BY HANG OUT AT BEACH, MEAN RAPE BEACHGOERS. HE TELL SEA SMITH HOW MUCH FUN HE HAVE DOING LINKS FOR YOU. SO SEA SMITH ASK IF HIM CAN DO TONIGHT’S. COUSIN STEVE SMITH SAY OK, HIM HAVE TO GO RINSE SAND AND SALT OUT.
HERE ARE SEA SMITH LINKS!
SEA SMITH THINK THIS COUNT AS GIANT MIDDLE FINGER UP TO WORLD.
SEA SMITH READ LETTERS – HIM SUPPORT ANYTHING THAT PUT PEOPLE ON OCEAN. IF YOU KNOW WHAT SEA SMITH MEAN, AND HE THINK YOU DO.
I am bored. Today, I am filled with boredom. And I care not enough to do anything about it. But I suppose it would be expected to have Afternoon Links. So I have managed to convince Brett to go cook meth or catch pythons, fight gators or drive a fanboat….whatever catches a Florida Man’s fancy this afternoon. I will try to shake the ennui by doing Links.
Oh look, a Euro politician yapping for more American money to be given to others. *Yawn* Boring…
Speaking of boring…this fellow and politics fit the bill.
Oh look, another charity/celebrity/whatever sex scandal.
How unique… a gator walking around someplace in Florida, of all places. *snores*
Not really a link – which Glib said the following – “Daytime TV is like having a fine mist of hooker diarrhea sprayed in your eyes.” You all should be able to get this in one.
…
It didn’t work
*wanders off, aimlessly*
*Stirs, comes back briefly*
IT WAS SUGARFREE. (I will forgive the HM guess…this time)
Hello GlibFitters, apologies for the crap article today! My laptop decided to corrupt the OS randomly, and I haven’t had time to fix it. This week, I’m phoning it in!
This week is the week of suck for those of you that have been dutifully improving your fitness since the start of the challenge. Week 2 is the low point of the whole process. Week 3 sucks less, and you should be over the hump by week 4.
Just remember that all this hard work will pay off in the near future, and the suck will subside.
Worst case, give yourself a break for ten minutes and grab a hamburger.
As for me, this has been an up and down week. I’ve had catered lunches to account for and Valentine’s day was a complete fitness failure, but I’m maintaining weight and have hopped right back on the horse. A bad meal or a bad day aren’t enough to kill my momentum anymore.
“I don’t know the question, but sex is definitely the answer.”
-Woody Allen
“In a perfect world, you could fuck people without giving them a piece of your heart. [But] every glittering kiss and every touch of flesh is another shard of heart you’ll never see again.”
-Neil Gaiman
“Sex without love is as hollow and ridiculous as love without sex.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
“The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.”
-George Carlin
I place blame for this piece squarely on the shoulders of the commentariat. Discussions that began with the absurdity of #metoo quickly went down the rabbit hole of analyses of the sexual marketplace, human mating strategy and unending (indeed, unendable) sexual conflict between men and women. This forced me to think about things, which forced me to want to record and share them, which further forced me to embarrass myself and torture you all once again by inflicting my writing upon you. You have no one to blame but yourselves.
The Backstory
Let me begin with a disclaimer: I am not a biologist nor an expert on evolution or human sexuality. There are likely droves of people in the commentariat that are infinitely more knowledgable about these things than I am. To them, I apologize and please throw rotten vegetables in the comment section. To everyone else that doesn’t know any better, I am a 100% super-knowledgable expert on everything, so take every single word I say as gospel.
“Cave woman seeks cave man, must be at least 5’8″ to ride.”
Good, now that we’ve got that figured out, let’s start with a little story. You are Ug, an archaic male human, newly evolved to self-awareness and roaming the Savannah. You are 16, right in the prime of life, but rapidly approaching middle age. You are ruled by three overwhelming urges that dictate the terms of your existence; thirst, hunger and horniness. Fortunately for you, you have access to watering holes and you’re pretty handy with a spear so the first two are generally taken care of. One day, you come across Oog, an archaic female human with beautiful eyes and hairy pits just the way you like them. Because you are a human, you have no idea if she’s ovulating, all you know is that you need to get little Ug wet immediately. You show your best PUA skills, and 3 minutes later you have scratched that itch that has been bothering you for months. Nine months later, Oog has given birth to a beautiful baby girl Aag. You still have awkward encounters with Oog and see her about the Savannah, but when you see her with Aag you’re not really sure what to make of it. You don’t quite understand that your amorous activities 9 months ago could have caused this; you’re not really sure about anything. Oog could have had sex with 20 different guys and any one of them could be the father, but you don’t know that. Your knowledge of the situation is almost completely opaque. However, what you do know is that she has a baby with her now that needs nonstop attention and resources. Something inside you, another thing you don’t quite understand, is driving you to try and help her take care of this thing. So, against your better judgement, you start sharing your food and water with her and the baby and life goes on, a vision of domestic bliss, complete with a white picket fence around the cave.
The catch is that, Ug may not realize it, but he cannot possibly be sure that he is, in fact, the father of Aag. This is one of the two reasons that he doesn’t pull an alpha lion and kill Aag; the other one being “love” aka: a cascade of hormones (vasopressin, oxytocin, estradiol among others) that create a pair bond and make him want to take care of Oog and Aag and make more babies. So, rather than running back out on the Savannah and chasing some hot new strange, he embraces monogamy, otherwise known as making the best out of a bad situation.
Big Dicks and Horny Chicks
Our bodies and behaviors are museums dedicated to the millennia of evolution that have shaped the human race. Some adaptations are legacies from the larger course of mammalian evolution, internal fertilization, placental fetal nourishment and the eponymous mammary glands providing nourishment post-birth. There are, however, a number of adaptations that are unique (or nearly unique) to humans that must have evolved relatively quickly and can only be explained by sexual selection (physiologic changes brought about by mate preference pressure rather than environmental pressure). Human males have unusually large penises for primates, both as a percentage of body size and in absolute terms. They also lack an os penis or penis bone. The vast majority of mammals have a bone that will actually move into the penis during arousal to create an erection. Human males rely on hydraulic pressure from blood to get the job done. This also means that human penises are a bit more pliable during sex, getting to those hard to reach places. It’s an open question why these adaptations to the human penis happened, but it’s a safe bet that women chose men with these characteristics and had more babies with them. More pleasure? Consequence of bipedal locomotion? Not sure.
For the ladies there are two big ones. The first is my personal favorite; permanently engorged breasts. Biologists are reasonably certain that these are a consequence of humans’ preference for face-to-face sex and evolved as a visual stimulus analogous to the buttock that most male mammals would see while getting their freak on. Preference for large ones could be an indicator of age as bigguns tend to droop as a woman ages. The other adaptation is really important; concealed ovulation combined with year-round sexual availability. This means that humans have no mating season and women are DTF any time. It also means that a lack of being “in heat” ensures that neither partner knows if a particular copulation likely resulted in offspring being produced. This element of paternal uncertainty is essential to the way human relationships developed over time.
Whycome No Pics?
In case you need examples of how this all works (we’re all socially maladjusted failures around here, so it’s entirely possible), I have a pop-up book I can lend you. Before we completely lose the script here, I want to say that the previous story and examples of biological oddity that we humans have are simply to demonstrate that competing sexual strategy has always existed between men and women. This is expressed in our biology and it is certainly expressed in our behavior (what this tome will eventually come around to focusing on). Every animal has such an imbalance to some extent; it’s unavoidable.
Speaking strictly for humans, the cost of reproduction for women always has been higher. She is the one who is saddled with 9 months of pregnancy, followed by the necessity to care for an utterly helpless infant for years. This task, while not impossible to do alone, is light-years easier with Dad involved to procure resources and provide protection. Therefore, it’s in her best interest to be more restrictive when selecting a mate. Compounding her need to be choosy is the fact that she has a limited number of eggs and therefore a limited reproductive lifetime. She doesn’t want to waste scarce and precious resource on the wrong guy. Men, on the other hand, produce zillions of sperm from puberty until death and they’re all raring to be deposited in the nearest vagina, the more the better. Men, intrinsically, have a very low cost of reproduction. No pregnancy, an endless supply of sperm, why not go nuts? That is certainly one strategy that evolved (the “cad”). Fuck as many women as possible, banking on the fact that at least a few of the babies will survive after you love ‘em and leave ‘em. The other strategy (the “dad”), will stick around and help care for the baby, giving it a better chance of survival. The rub with this strategy is that dad only has an incentive to stick around if he’s reasonably certain that the baby carries his genetic material. Otherwise, he’s squandering his time, resources and opportunity cost taking care of someone else’s kid. On the flip side, mom is putting all her eggs (so to speak) in this guy’s basket, so she wants a guy with as many resources as possible. Resources often come along with strength and status, so women want those qualities.
From these few simple rules evolved basically all the pomp and circumstance surrounding human mating behavior. You see, the rules of the game are hardwired into us from thousands of generations. Despite progs’ desire to create the New Soviet Man, you can’t handwave away these realities and any changes to them will necessarily have to happen over a long period of time. Social engineering is a miserable failure when it comes to sex (and, well, pretty much everything else too, but that’s another article).
Modern Sex Pre-1960
Now we reach the crux of this piece, a survey of modern human sexual behavior as a consequence of these biological realities. Before people start throwing autistic fits, I’m fully aware that there are a multitude of other arrangements, lifestyles and aberrations to these rules (see: Sade, Marquis de); however, I’m working in averages here and looking at the most prevalent mating styles. I’m also not going to touch ancient societies with things like sacred prostitution, matriarchal societies (which, BTW, have never really been conclusively proven to have existed), “walking marriages” etc. Basically, I’m going to deal with post-Enlightenment, Western sexual relationships because that happens to be the world we inhabit.
Everyone had so many kids…
Humans are often cited as being unusual in the mammalian world for our penchant for monogamy. Many social critics claim that this is an oppressive social norm forced on women (always specifically women) by the patriarchy to enslave them into becoming breeding cattle. I argue that this is utterly wrong and human monogamy is a direct consequence of concealed ovulation, paternal uncertainty and the complete uselessness of human children for the first 5 years (at least) of life. All of these factors put humans at the extreme end of the K-side in r/K selection (go look it up, I don’t have the energy to go down that rabbit hole). Yes, it doesn’t change the fact that men still have those zillions of sperm raring to be ejaculated in new and interesting places; it also doesn’t change the fact that women want a man with as much wealth, status and resources as possible, but as I said before, monogamy is a compromise on the part of both parties making the best out of a bad situation. Many men still would occasionally satisfy their deep-seated biological urges with low-risk third parties (like prostitutes) in which the chances of yet another woman making demands on his scant resources were minimal. Likewise, women tolerated this because it was a low probability of him leaving her holding the bag. For their part, women would encourage (read: nag) men to improve themselves and their social station to try and make more money or gain more influence. The perfect picture of domestic bliss.
Monogamy is an odd institution because it’s simultaneously natural and unnatural. As I’ve said in previous essays, humans are like onions; we have layers of conflicting desires built one on top of another from the various parts of our ancient evolutionary brains. Our reptilian, mammalian, neo-cortical and spiritual sides are all locked in a battle royale. On one hand, it’s natural for a man to want to stick it in every hole he can find, but on the flip side, it’s natural to want to care for your offspring to ensure their chances of survival. For women, on one hand, it’s natural to want to find the man with the most possible resources (the king or chief), but in that case, you’re most likely going to be competing with several different women for his attention. Therefore, it’s also natural to want to find a decent guy with decent resources who won’t run away and you have all to yourself.
The major rub here is that sex, love and reproduction were all inextricably linked. It was very, very unlikely that you have one without the others coming along for the ride. Our very hormones themselves alter after the birth of a child (for men and women) making it much more likely that mom and dad will stick around and care for that helpless little blob. These are things that are hard-wired into us. You’re not going to change it, at least not with current technology. However, that playbook; the one that got us from the Savannah all the way to airplanes, interchangeable parts, the polio vaccine and indoor plumbing got completely torched with one invention.
The Pill
Those of you who read my previous piece will already know that I consider this to be the most Earth-shattering, life altering invention ever in human history. First approved by the FDA in 1960, this little pack of hormones made possible things that humanity never before dreamed of. Sex, love and reproduction, arguably the most formative phenomena of human evolution, were no longer linked. The world envisioned in Stranger in a Strange Land (published one year after the Pill was approved) was not speculative; it really was possible for people to live in group marriages and sex communes without the messiness of children entering the picture.
And that’s exactly what people did. With gusto. Like a college kid going on a bender at his 21st birthday, the drought was over. No longer would the chains of biology enslave us and repress us. No longer would we have to choose between plodding bourgeois monogamy and family or celibacy. No longer would women have to be so circumspect about who they took to bed. No longer would men have to think twice about having a one-night stand with that hot girl he doesn’t really like that much but has a great rack. As long as she’s on the Pill, all bets are off; no harm, no foul. Everyone gets their various rocks off, then walks away as if nothing ever happened. As easy as playing a game of Gin-Rummy but more fun.
“Intentional communities” (I really hate that term) like Sandstone (counting The Joy of Sex author Alex Comfort and Sammy Davis Jr. as members) and Kerista sprung up practically overnight. The Summer of Love and Woodstock firmly established that consequence-free casual sex and promiscuity were here to stay. The swinging 70s moved it from young free thinkers into the suburbs and the bourgeois community at large. Key parties and swinging became part of the cultural lexicon. Ordinary people began to question what radicals and academics had been questioning for decades; are the expectations of matrimony, nuclear family, monogamy and fidelity a scam? Why do we voluntarily subordinate our urges to outdated social structures? Why do we put a higher value on responsibility and commitment (which can certainly be a drag sometimes) than we do on pleasure, fulfillment and liberation? And the clarion call that still resonates to this day “IT’S NOT NATURAL!”
As stated above, this is true. It’s also not true. It’s also irrelevant. The human situation is one that is much more complex than any 60s sexual radical could conceive of. The millions of years of evolution leading us to this point has, again, created many contradictory urges within us. The onion-like human psyche is far more complicated than than a philosophy of “if it feels good, do it” can contain. But, easy pleasure is a siren song that is very hard to resist. One immediate social consequence of this revolution was a drastic increase in divorce. No doubt, this was a life saver to many people in lousy marriages, but to others it was the first inklings of the “broken homes” and “mixed families” that are ubiquitous today. The mainstreaming of so-called “alternative lifestyles” (another term I hate) would probably have continued apace except for one unfortunate complication.
AIDS
To middle and late Gen-Xers like myself, I have never known a sexual world that did not have the specter of these four letters hanging over it. Previously, STDs were a mild inconvenience. Picked up the clap at the sex party last weekend? Just go get your shot and you’re good for the party next weekend. Even permanent diseases like herpes were NBD; just rub some cream on it and wait for the acute outbreak to go away.
But what a way to go…
Now, however, there was a badass new kid on the block and he wasn’t taking shit from anyone. No vaccine. No cure. Bringing about a horrible, painful, slow and humiliating death. It definitely changed the landscape of relationships and sex toward the more conservative. It’s an interesting coincidence that it just happened to occur during the Reagan Revolution and the New Moral Majority. Since anal sex was and is a much easier way to contract the disease, and since, on average, gay men tend to have more lifetime sex partners than straights and lesbians, AIDS first exploded among male gays. This was not only devastating to the community at large, but adding insult to injury, Social Conservatives used it to take potshots at gays calling AIDS “gay cancer” and “divine retribution” for their “deviant lifestyle”.
People like myself who came of age at this time were relentlessly bombarded with PSAs about how sex will kill you and, if you decide to be an idiot and have sex in spite of our warnings, don’t even *think* about not using a condom; you might as well just give a .357 a blowjob. It’s telling about the overwhelming strength of uncontrolled human sexuality that it took the threat of death to reign it in. Monogamy, sexual restraint and conventional family, never completely abandoned in the first place, came screaming back to overturn the sexual revolution for one brief moment, because the perceived alternative was Russian Roulette. This image was not helped by the fact that many prominent individuals known for their promiscuity contracted and/or died of HIV (Magic Johnson, Eazy-E, Liberace, Freddy Mercury and, more recently, Charlie Sheen).
However, time marches on and human ingenuity is a wonderful thing. New drugs and treatments started cranking out and, while initially very expensive, have become more or less available to anyone that has contracted the disease. Magic Johnson has been living with the virus for decades and seems as healthy as ever. HIV/AIDS was no longer an automatic death sentence; if, in fact, it was ever as big of a threat as it was portrayed in the first place. Some conspiracy-minded libertines maintain that the AIDS scare was trumped up as worse than it actually was to try and purposely counteract the promiscuous tendencies of the previous two decades. Regardless, it had the intended effect until the mid-late 90s when all of a sudden it just didn’t seem like that big of a deal anymore. Sleep around, but use a condom; it would definitely suck to catch it, but if you did it’s not automatically the end. You take drugs for life and, in some cases, the virus won’t even be detectable in your blood. You can even have HIV-negative children using advanced reproductive technologies. The beast of human sexuality was not completely unshackled as it was in the 60s and 70s, but it was let out of the cage and given a long leash.
Tinder, Hook-Ups and #metoo
So here we sit. The sexual revolution mostly back in full swing, so-called “alternative lifestyles” are very much en vogue again. To be fair, people were swinging, making “arrangements” with their spouses and creating sexual sub-cultures all throughout the AIDS scare, but it was definitely more underground and seen as dangerous and shameful. Now, these choices are out in the open big time and sometimes portrayed by the intelligentsia as superior to plodding, bourgeois monogamy; a middle ground between the new ground rules of non-child-bearing recreational sex and the continuing desire for stability and family. Perhaps it’s true. I suppose time will tell.
Sexuality among adolescents and young adults went through a secondary revolution of its own. It’s completely ridiculous to think that teenagers and students weren’t constantly having sex for centuries before the current era. However, many times these unions would involve quite a bit of emotional seriousness due to the looming specter of pregnancy. People married young and typically stayed married. The new rules of sex, intersecting with technology, made having sex more similar to ordering a pizza than a complicated dance of courtship and emotions. In many ways, the sexual revolution had reached its ultimate goal; totally unfettered, (mostly) consequence-free sex on demand. Just swipe right and you’re off to the races. For large swaths of young people, intercourse had become akin to a handshake.
As stated, and the theme of this plodding piece of mental excrement, is that human nature is never so simple and it’s not easily altered. You see, going along with the Savannah Principle (the idea that our brains haven’t changed much since the days of Oog and Ug), doubts, fears and general despair and dysphoria began to creep in to this arrangement. In spite of what the sexual revolutionaries had been saying for decades, intercourse is *not* a handshake, and even barring the physical consequences of pregnancy and disease there are emotional consequences of sex.
Recapping from earlier, on the Savannah, Oog and Ug have intrinsically competitive sexual strategies. This can be traced back to the fact that Oog has to carry the baby, then birth it and take care of it. This all comes at the a huge economic and physical cost; all to produce one lousy human. Ug, while his urges to impregnate as many women as possible are very strong, he also must protect his genetic legacy. Human babies are so useless for such a long time that there is a much higher probability that they will survive if they have two parents looking after them. Compound this with the fact that women have a much higher reproductive economic value; finite number of eggs and only able to carry one baby at a time vs. men’s zillions of sperm and ability to impregnate a theoretically arbitrary number of women; and further compound it with concealed ovulation and parental uncertainty, we have quite a complex social situation. Nature has concocted a cocktail of wonderful things to overcome this complexity; female orgasm, penis size, oxytocin, vasopressin, sexual jealousy among other things combine to bond mates together with strong emotions.
As if things weren’t already complicated enough, men and women are both hypergamous; ie: they want to “marry up”. This means very different things to men and women. Women’s reproductive value is derived from beauty and youth, so men want to find young, beautiful women with whom to mate. Men’s reproductive value is derived from strength and capability at procuring resources for mom and baby, so, in the old cliche, women prefer a big wallet to a big dick. I don’t pretend to have all the answers to these complexities. There are entire philosophies inquiring on the nature of love. Love, lust and sex have probably motivated the creation of more art than anything else in history (with the possible exception of religion). In drastic understatement, human familial relationships are very complicated. It’s no wonder there would eventually be a backlash against the often simple-minded form that they take today.
#MeToo
At first started by women coming out to claim that they had been victims of rape/assault and were too ashamed to say anything until now, it has now morphed into a sinister condemnation of male sexuality. Acting like a tactless boor is enough to get you #metoo’ed and potentially put your family and livelihood in jeopardy. Again, at the risk of over-simplifying, this can all be traced back to women giving up their leverage in the sexual marketplace. The ingrained biological behaviors from the Savannah cannot be forgotten or dismissed so easily. To put it bluntly, pussy used to be scarce and expensive, now it’s plentiful and cheap. The supply and demand have been drastically altered from the way things were for essentially all of human history up until 50 years ago (less than the blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things). Men behave like boors and expect easy sex because those are the new rules of the game. Men have always wanted easy sex, but the possibility/likelihood of pregnancy incentivized women to keep pussy scarce and expensive; after all, they had a much higher cost associated with sex. This was their leverage, and it was the most powerful leverage known to humanity. Women have always had the upper hand in sexual relationships because of this, in spite of what pop culture and half-baked feminist theories argue. Women certainly got a raw deal when it came to political freedom and, in some cases, arranged marriage. I do not trivialize the treatment women sometimes got as second-class citizens. These were strategies concocted by male-dominated institutions to try and wrestle some control back from the omnipotent vagina. But, it is always in vain because pussy is the ultimate trump card. Men want it. Women have it. And women ultimately decide who gets it, in spite of social constructs designed to contravene that power.
#Metoo, in my opinion, is a reaction by women who find they don’t especially like the results of the revolution. They feel cheated that they no longer have that leverage, even though their Savannah brain is telling them they should. They feel used and cheap and, in many cases, through no fault of their own, they are. To try and win back some of the control they lost through biology, they now are, consciously or unconsciously, using the apparatus of the State and public shaming to try and reel in male sexual fervor. I’ve always thought it self-evident that male and female sexuality are different, but complementary. Men are the engine and women are the transmission. Men are filled with drive and energy and power; a walking hard-on looking for a hole. Women channel that energy from unfocused sexual excess into a sublimation of productivity, art, engineering, etc. Thus things have been since G-d said, “Let there be light”. Now, the transmission has lost its ability to direct the power of the engine; running out of control, the engine tears apart millennia of tradition, family structure and personal motivation. Both sexes perhaps should be more careful what they wish for.
The ultimate purpose of this tome is not to answer any questions, provide predictions or suggest how things can be “fixed”. There *is* nothing to fix. Things are what they are now. The toothpaste is not going back in the tube. Who knows what the future holds? Perhaps some new, even more badass STD will (likely temporarily) push people back to their old ways of sexual restraint. Perhaps the swingers and polyamorists are right that monogamy no longer has a purpose and will be phased out, paving the way for group marriages or some other such arrangement. Due to the hard wiring in our brains, I doubt this is something that would happen on a large scale anytime soon, however. More likely, we’re going to continue escalating the sex war to some kind of breaking point. What comes after that is anyone’s guess. We are indeed cursed to live in interesting times.
Thank God this week is almost over. I’m as tired as Lili von Shtupp. Today is my son’s 18th birthday. I feel especially old now that he’s an adult. But I also got to change a piss-filled diaper from Baby Justice, so I was at least reminded that I have a whole other generation of them to raise to adulthood.
THE SUMMER OLYMPICS ARE BETTER BECAUSE THIS
Hey, what ever happened to athletes and actors just entertaining us and leaving their political messages at the door? Was it ever that way, I wonder? Sure, there were a lot of athletes that left the sport to sign up when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, but there was literally no controversy in their opinion. Today its a bunch of athletes who have security protecting them while at work decrying my ownership of guns because some stupid asshole punk decided to go on a killing spree. I’m happy you have an opinion about it dick, but don’t expect me to pay to see you play when you’re telling me I should give up my rights (or have them forcibly taken away) just to make you feel good about yourself while you have the luxury of having an armed security force at your workplace.
Sorry about that rant, but half the ESPN stories this morning were about who all is speaking out for gun control. And I don’t have the patience to suffer a network with a political mission of disarmament, ramming their opinion down our throat when their stated mission is to be the worldwide leader in sports. Of course, these are the same progressive dumbshits that fawned over Obama and his basketball picks every year but left politics out of it, meanwhile they completely changed their stated policy on mixing politics and sports when Trump was inaugurated because “athletes and sportscasters have voices too and should be heard in these divisive times.” Nevermind that the guy in office before him did more to stir up racial and political animosity than any predecessor in the history of our nation.
No, not a bu-, a bomb.
No scores today. That’s my sports update. Thanks, ESPN, for taking away one of my daily diversions. And now come…the links!
Maybe the FBI are starting to take seriously leads on people who are obviously bent on destruction. I wonder if the teacher will get put on paid leave. Just kidding, he quit before he was arrested. Although the door is open to a pension related to the stress of teaching while running a bomb factory. Hell, if a NYPD cop can get a heftier pension because he allowed himself to become a fat fuck, this guy might have a chance too.
LOL, sorry bitches! You got trolled. I like the cut of this guy’s jib. I mean, he simply doesn’t give a fuck what anybody wants from him. And he’s probably gonna parlay that into a bigger payday.
OK, I have a question: why is the FBI doing investigations that include domestic violence in the first place? Look, DV is awful. Anybody that would initiate violence on a spouse, partner or stranger for that matter is an asshole. But when the hell did it become the province of the FBI? Perhaps those resources could have been better spent following up on actual threats of violence against schools full of kids instead of this shit.
How do you manage to fuck this up to the tune of a $4Bn loss?
Better enjoy Uber while you can. Because they’re apparently run like shit. Seriously, how do you lose that much money when your entire means of revenue are off of commissions you only pay if your drivers are making money? Sure, there’s some more overhead, but it can’t be that much. Here’s a tip: move out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco and set up shop somewhere you can pay your employees and your facilities cost a hell of a lot less.
A series of good deeds is once again rewarded. This dude is just a cool guy. I hope he can finally have a couple injury-free seasons, but even if he ends up never playing another down, he will be regarded as a fine football player and an even better human being.
I got my hair did today. So I got that going for me. Had a decent dinner in a weird restaurant last night. Maybe it was the blue lighting in the bar. Maybe it was that we were the youngest couple on our side of the restaurant by at least 10 years. Maybe it was the fact that our server looked like he got dragged off a bar stool at the shuffleboard court. Anyhow, lovely dinner with my wife until the fucker brought me the wrong wine — on purpose. I still tipped him, but I was hot. Bring me. What the fuck. I ordered. Don’t save me $2 on a glass of wine. So he got the minimum I give for holiday nights.
From the “Trump is not our ally” files. A sales tax? Sure, just repeal the 16th Amendment first.
Well, there’s at least one clear hero in the school shooting yesterday. Rest well, Coach Fies, you done good.
Nothing to see here, just move along, sure, its a hole in the theory, but we will get it explained if you just increase our research funding! (Just how much of the Earth does weather have to affect before it becomes climate?)
I’m digging this riff today. Even if the vocal loop is a little weird.
And that’s exactly what people did. With gusto. Like a college kid going on a bender at his 21st birthday, the drought was over. No longer would the chains of biology enslave us and repress us. No longer would we have to choose between plodding bourgeois monogamy and family or celibacy. No longer would women have to be so circumspect about who they took to bed. No longer would men have to think twice about having a one-night stand with that hot girl he doesn’t really like that much but has a great rack. As long as she’s on the Pill, all bets are off; no harm, no foul. Everyone gets their various rocks off, then walks away as if nothing ever happened. As easy as playing a game of Gin-Rummy but more fun.
