Disappointed Prog

(more here)    It may be real. It may be a troll. Take it as presented, if you want to.

Vincent’s first act as a newly minted male was to join a quintessential bastion of camaraderie — a men’s bowling team in a working-class Pennsylvania neighborhood. The only problem: She’s a terrible bowler.

But the men didn’t boot her off the team. “It’s an amazing thing, because I think that shows you the generosity that they had,” she said.

Her experience with these men turned some of her long-held perceptions about men being harsh and rejecting and women being warm and welcoming upside down.

“I mean, it was just the most wonderful rush to get these guys’ handshakes, and I felt comfortable, I mean as comfortable as I could feel, right away. They just took me in … no questions asked,” she said.

The team bowled together for nine months and gradually Vincent gained entrance to their inner sanctum. She found that all the cussing and good-natured ribbing is just how men often show affection for one another.

Vincent came into the experiment with some misconceptions about men. “I think she expected to find like a bunch of guys just talking about women’s private parts and a bunch of racists and, you know. I think, kind of, that’s what she came into this thinking,” Jim said.

Vincent agreed. “They really showed me up as being the one who was really judgmental, because they were the ones who took me in, not knowing anything about me. They were the ones who made me their friend … no judgments attached,” Vincent said.

To gain an understanding of what some might consider the quintessential male experience, Vincent went to several strip clubs with a male friend. She describes the experience as hellish — demeaning for the strippers and even worse for the men.

“I saw the men there. I saw the looks on their faces. This is not about appreciation of women, of course. It’s not about appreciation of their own sexuality. It’s about an urge and … that’s not always that pleasurable, really,” she said.

Vincent said strip joints are about pure sex drive — completely empty of any meaningful interaction, even when a woman is gyrating on your lap.

Even though Vincent is attracted to women, she said she was never aroused during her visits to the clubs. “I really ran smack up against the difference between male and female sexuality. It’s that female sexuality is mental. … For a man, it’s an urge,” she said.

“At its core, it’s a bodily function. It’s a necessity. It’s such a powerful drive and I think because we [women] don’t have testosterone in our systems, we don’t understand how hard it is,” she said.

Vincent even dabbled in the art of picking up women. She was quickly reminded that in this arena, it’s women who have the power, she said.

“In fact, we sit there and we just with one word, ‘no,’ will crush someone,” she said. “We don’t have to do the part where you cross the room and you go up to a stranger that you’ve never met in the middle of a room full of people and say the first words. And those first words are so hard to say without sounding like a cheeseball or sounding like a jerk.”

Vincent encountered some pretty cold shoulders in her attempts at the bar, but she did manage to go on about 30 dates with women as “Ned,” mostly arranging them on the Internet.

Vincent said the dates were rarely fun and that the pressure of “Ned” having to prove himself was grueling. She was surprised that many women had no interest in a soft, vulnerable man.

“My prejudice was that the ideal man is a woman in a man’s body. And I learned, no, that’s really not. There are a lot of women out there who really want a manly man, and they want his stoicism,” she said.

“The pressure of being someone that you’re not and … the fear of discovery and the deceit that it involves piles up and piles up. So, by the time I got around to doing this men’s group, it was really reaching critical mass,” she said.

“I was out in the woods with a bunch of guys who had rage issues about women and I was in drag … and I thought, oh, God, you know, what am I doing,” she added.

She continued her emotional descent, and a week later, checked in to a hospital with severe depression. Identity, she concluded, was not something to play around with.

“When you mess around with that, you really mess around with something that you need that helps you to function. And I found out that gender lives in your brain and is something much more than costume. And I really learned that the hard way,” she said.

Vincent says she’s healed now and glad to be rid of Ned. But her views about men have changed forever.

“Men are suffering. They have different problems than women have, but they don’t have it better,” she said. “They need our sympathy. They need our love, and maybe they need each other more than anything else. They need to be together.”

Ironically, Vincent said, it took experiencing life as a man for her to appreciate being a woman. “I really like being a woman. … I like it more now because I think it’s more of a privilege.”

 

How Dumb is her Mama?

 

Identify the Mystery Aircraft

If you guessed “Tigershark” – no cigar.

 

Wardroom and Gunroom

Those of you who spent time in the Navy, in officer’s country, will likely have experienced the wardroom on a regular basis. The size of the wardroom is directionally proportional to the size of the ship. This is the history of this naval institution.

The origin of the name, Wardroom, as with so many things, is debatable. Before about 1700, each officer lived and cooked in his own quarters, cramped as they were. The captain’s cabin, on the other hand, was known as the “Great Cabin”. Below it was the wardrobe, a locker that was often used to stow valuables taken from their prizes. When not in use for this purpose, officers hung their spare uniforms there. The first mention of it as a general officers’ mess dates from around 1745. At that time it was much larger than a locker and was renamed the wardroom. This was then where all commissioned and warrant officers were lodged except the standing officers.

In a ship-of-the-line

Ship of the Line

On a ship of the line, the wardroom was located under the admiral’s day cabin or, on a ship-of-the line with two decks, under the captain’s quarters, and was in the middle of two rows of what were normally 8 cabins in which the officers slept. The wardroom had gun ports, its own stern windows and, on older ships, a gallery. The cabins were not large, mostly 8ft. square (0,74 m²) and the best was that of the first lieutenant. This was aft, on the starboard side with part of the window to himself and access to his own quater gallery (toilet, with sea view).

The master’s quarters was just opposite him, he also had part of the window to himself and access to the port side quarter gallery, which he had to share with all the other wardroom officers. These two cabins were the only ones without guns and were permanent, the others could be removed thanks to light canvas or wooden bulkheads.

Even though the Carpenter equipped the cabins with furniture, many officers brought their own, like bedding, desks, chairs and much more if they could effort it. But they slept in hanging cots.

The gunroom (the name comes from the fact that the gunner kept the small arms there) was similar, it was one deck below, and were the place where the chaplain, the junior lieutenants and the marine lieutenants berthed. They only slept there, and ate in the wardroom. Until 1805 the Gunner ate here with the ship’s boys, the chaplains clerks and the captain servants (after 1794, the volunteers first class who hoped to become midshipmen soon).

Unlike the wardroom, there were only gun ports here, but the cabins were not permanent and consisted of canvas screens as in the wardroom. To separate this area from the rest of the deck, screens or curtains were used.

Midshipmen, mates and quarter boys aged fourteen and over would berth on the orlop, the lowest deck above the hold, in a damp space forward of the mizzenmast called the “cockpit”. The cockpit of a ship-of-the-line was about five hundred to eleven hundred square feet (46m²- 102m²) in size and housed between twenty and more than thirty midshipmen, mates, surgeons’ mates and other petty officers , who could eat, sleep and spend their leisure time there.

The situation was different on a frigate, there was no wardroom. Then the gunroom became what the wardroom was and only the wardroom officers were allowed to live and eat there. The it was called wardroom even they are actual in the gunroom.

But without the inconveniences of a star window or gunports and their own toilet. This is where the chamber pot came in. And if the seas were rough, the pot was useless. In contrast, the gunrooms were permanent cabins of a frigate, as there were no guns on this deck. Instead, it was very dark and small.

 

Saturn

Possibly the best picture of the great planet.

 

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31 COMMENTS

  1. Watched Master and Commander again last night. My wife who had seen it before , but not paid much attention, said “This is , you know, some serious guy sh1t “ Yeah , only one woman in it. Some honey colored honey ,eye balling Lucky Jack, somewhere in the South Pacific.

  2. Love the Saturn photo. It’s even better than the Chesley Bonestell art of a half century ago. Bonestell’s art was quite good for speculation, but this is the real thing.
    I do like the look of the early jets. I had to look up the above picture since I didn’t recognize the plane. I won’t give it away, but I will say the designation started XF.

  3. What goes in my personal life and what goes in my public and business life is different. In business, who got the job done was important. My only restriction, since we dealt with the public, was their personal appearance shouldn’t put people off. Their behavior, on the job, had to be professional. Find your romantic/sex partners off the premise because I wouldn’t tolerate anything that even gave the appearance of sexual harassment to include comments on another’s orientation or religion. Worked for me. My biggest problem was alcohol/drugs and bailing out my crew. Hard to “open the store” when your site manager and two-three salespeople are in the local klink.

    So, am I a hypocrite separating personal from business? Bite me!

    • I always worked hard keeping my professional life separate from my private life. It worked sorta. My girls still grew up around mercenaries, cops, spies and sailors. It gave them a perspective that most children don’t get.

      It’s important to keep them separated as much as you can. Bailing out your crew isn’t personal, it’s business.

      I miss parts of those years, WSF – but not all of it.

      • When I became a single custodial parent, I made my sons come to the lot after school and work as “lot snots”. I’m not sure having them spend impressionable teen years around car salesmen was the best environment. That said, they did see a window of the world none of their peers even dreamed of.

        • The Car Biz is a culture unto itself. I was fortunate that I got to see it from a much higher level than most people do, somewhat akin to how WSF saw it.

          The AC is a Lockheed XF-90. It lost the competition to what became the F-101 Voodoo.

          • I have daughter’s in-law types in the car biz – secondary markets/auction. I also have a brother-in-law who owned a couple of dealerships. I’d tell him what I wanted. He’d give me an unassailable price and I’d pick up the car at the dealership, washed, would sign once or twice, and drove off without ever having to go inside — ah, those were the days. That’s how I like to buy a car. No haggling. Just the price, if I want it. He owned a Toyota and a Nissan dealership.

  4. “Master and Commander” (h/t Keith for bringing it up)…on the list for an evening decompression movie this week. As LL outlines this was when men were men and life was considerably more difficult, especially on-board. “Would Vincent” survive his/her/Zee two days in that era before returning to her XX chromosome biology? Neither would most of Congress, including our Mask-Wearer in Chief:

    “Biden Signs Executive Order To Ban The Term ‘China Virus'”

    He’s a real heavy-hitter, that one…guess it’s handler payback time.
    When a foreign “concern” gives you large sums of money laundered through your loser kid, you owe them bigly. And it’s playing out in spades. According to the Dem’s, isn’t it treason to be an operative of a foreign leader, or is that only for people who love America First, like President Trump? MaaaaGaaaah! (Braveheart — but Red/White/Blue warrior face paint.)

    What’s next with this guy and his band of reprobates?

    • I’m sure that there are lot of words and phrases that will be “banned” under the Biden regime. However, banning doesn’t make them less true.

      • Didn’t he sign some idiotic alphabet soup pronoun protected class EO? In that case, I’ll be self-identifying as a Ukrainian who plants ransomeware…please send me your banking info.

  5. Regarding the woman… Well, my experience is us conservatives are the absolutely most judgemental of people. You either do what you say you will do, no matter if you’re male, female, in-between, confused, black, white, green, grey, whatever, or you don’t. It’s a binary judgement. Yes/No. Do what you say and you’re A-Okay. Don’t and you got some ‘splainin to do at best.

    Eh. My personal experience with bowlers? Males? Even the ‘gay’ ones, are there to have fun and just bowl. Some women are there for the same reason. Unfortunately, most women, from my experience, are there to socialize and do that thing that women do…

    I’ve seen it in bowling, fighting, business. Do your best and things will be all right. Slack and you’re part of the problem. Be management and not ever get your hands dirty, or have never got your hands dirty and you’re part of the problem.

    The pictures of our planets that have been released lately, from Jupiter to Mars to Saturn to even lowly Pluto, are just amazing. How anyone can be a scientist and not believe in a divine being after seeing these stellar jewels still boggles me.

    And, stumped on the plane. Totally stumped. My googlefu failed me more than my mindfu.

    • MrsC’s mom would say: “When the men playe golf, us woman would go shopping and have lunch, and nobody complained.”

      Beans, maybe your computer has the Covid, been known to happen…Gates creates Windows, yet can’t protect his s/w from a virus.

    • “Be management and not ever get your hands dirty, or have never got your hands dirty and you’re part of the problem”
      My bro-in-law dropped out of the Academy when he discovered on a cruise he wasn’t allowed to touch stuff. Went back to being a carpenter.

      • Not all officers have clean and un-chipped fingernails. It depends on what you’re doing. However on a ship, you wouldn’t want some butterbar fiddling with things that would break the ship.

  6. Weird, isn’t it, that most women want men and vice versa? Of course that’s bigoted, racist, misogynist oppression in our new rainbow utopia. I hope “Ned’s” under investigation for hate speech.

  7. There is only one naturally occurring hexagon I know about; when rapidly cooling basalt will develop radial cracks at 60 degrees. Mark me as curious about the phenomena visible at the northern pole of Saturn.

  8. I pretty much had the airplane right off but thought it was a YF and not an XF. I knew it was the ?F-90.

    “Vincent’s” story must be a troll as it does not fit the “narrative”. But, if it is true, it shows that the normative state is male(XY)/female(XX).

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