What to Know about PUBLIC BATHROOMS

Men. While almost all manly posts on this butch blog come from magazines, there are rare exceptions.  This post is one of those exceptions.  There is a hilarious and entertaining book by Thomas Fink entitled “The Man’s Book: The Essential Guide for the Modern Man” that I will be posting about over the course of the next few weeks.  Not only is the information funny, it is stuff that most people don’t write about.  For example, today’s post is that of the public bathroom: rules, etiquette and general information:

THE PUBLIC BATHROOM

There is an unstated code of conduct in men’s bathrooms that, while more instinctive than prescriptive, remains surprisingly universal.

1. Rules of Conduct:

No Pairing. Unlike women, men visit the lavatory for entirely practical reasons, and it is suspect to immediately follow a friend to the bathroom.

No Talking. Terse conversation in the bathroom can take place either before or after, but not during, use of the urinals.

No Looking. Eyes should be aimed straight ahead or down in concentration; glances toward your neighbor are very suggestive.

No Touching. Hands should be in front of you.  A bump of the elbows can be deflated by a sober apology, but without turning the head.

2. Optimal Strategy

When faced with an array of urinals to choose from, which one should you take?  The basic idea is that the distance between users should be maximized, at the same time minimizing a newcomer’s chance of getting too close. The latter makes the end-most urinals highly desirable. Never go between two men if it can be avoided.

3. Loo Man

The symbol for a man’s public bathroom is a stylized profile of a man standing with his arms down. Unlike the Mars symbol for a man (A arrow emanating from a circle and pointing northeast; believed to represent a sword and a spear) it is a pictogram: its meaning can be deduced from its shape. The male bathroom symbol differs from the female one in having broader shoulders and straight legs as opposed to a flared dress. Do not mix them up.

Esquire Rules of the Day: 1-6

Esquire has compiled a fantastic book called “The Rules: a Man’s Guide to Life.” complete with the tagline “revised and updated – because being a man has gotten much harder. The book is phenomenal…they could actually be tweets (get on that, Esquire!) because they all seem to be under 140 characters.  Some are serious how-to-behave rules and others are just comedic.  My plan is to release one page worth of rules every day, and today are rules 1-6.  I hope you enjoy this recurring segment on manliness!

Rule No. 1: When Aliens talk, they never use contractions.

Rule No. 2: Old people always have exact change.

Rule No. 3: Do not trust a man who calls the Men’s Room “the little boys’ room.”

Rule No. 4: When someone says he is “pumped” about something, it really means he is about to do something stupid.

Rule no. 5: Women who sound sexy on the radio weight 377 pounds.

Rule No. 6: For every Tom Hanks, there is a Peter Scolari.

 

And there you have it!  I hope you enjoyed the first post on the random and humorous RULES by Esquire.  Check back every day to learn and laugh with each new rule.

Science Fiction Books – Not Just for Nerds

In the November 2009 issue of Details Magazine, with a fab-tastic Glambert on the cover, the “Words” section caught my eye.  The spotlight is on Brandon Sanderson, an up-and-coming author specializing in science-fiction.  Here is the excerpt:

“If the epic-fantasy genre seems suited only to people who play Magic: The Gathering and own Star Wars bedding, consider this: Robert Jordan’s unfinished Wheel of Time series has sold more than 44 million copies. That’s a lot of readers who were left on the edge of their seats when the author died in 2007—including Brandon Sanderson, the 33-year-old writer who was chosen by Jordan’s widow to complete the series using the notes her husband left behind. Today, Sanderson is releasing the first of the three concluding volumes, A Memory of Light: The Gathering Storm (Tor, $30), and is facing expectations from fans who make a tween girl’s passion for the Jonas brothers look like what it is: child’s play.”

Below are 4 additional sci-fi selections that are worth reading.  Choose to do so…if you dare.

1. Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer [Little, Brown, $26] – “The literary wonderkind you love to hate puts a pomo finish on Michael Pollan in this polemic about carnivorism and food production.  Foer’s usual stylistic trickery (e.g. a Swiftian endorsement of eating dogs) doesn’t make reading about castrated piglets much more enjoyable, but maybe a subject like this shouldn’t be fun.”

2. Evening’s Empire by Zachary Lazar [Little, Brown, $25] – “In 1975, when the author was 6, the father he barely knew was shot in the head in a parking garage.  More than 30 years later, Lazar tells the haunting story of this outwardly conventional accountant’s secret life – while painting an indelible portrait of the Space-Age suburbs and an American dream built on fraud.”

3. Changing My Mind by Zadie Smith [Penguin Press, $26] – “Analyzing her father’s comedy obsession, 50 Cent’s film Get Rich or Die Tryin’, and E.M. Forster in her first collection of essays, the novelist effortlessly shifts her tone from academically stiff to whimsical.  Bits like the piece about having multiple linguistic personalities offer insight into the author and will appeal to super-fans hoping to better understand Archie Jones of White Teeth.

4. Invisible by Paul Auster [Henry Holt, $25] – “In this novel with multiple (possibly unreliable) narrators, a young poet is sucked into the orbit of an older French couple in 1967 New York, until a shocking violent act derails their association. As usual with Auster, things are more complicated than they appear, and a Russian doll-like series of tales within tales unfolds – all in the author’s crystal clear prose.”

Blame it on the Books

Here we go again, saving you time and money.  Aren’t you thankful for IaMW? Anyway, the September issue of GQ magazine (with the creepy yet lovable picture of Michael Jackson on the cover) had several books reviewed in its book section (fitting title). After reading all of the reviews, we will tell you which book sounds most promising to us. It is a book called Blame by Michelle Huneven.  This is her third book (all of which have gotten good reviews) and it is what GQ calls “The Great Fall Read.”  The magazine says that the book is “smart, deep, addictive” and “a fast read.”  While the rest of the review was interesting, that is enough to make me give it a shot.  Enjoy, and let us know what you think!