Monday, February 10, 2014

Cock o' the North (Portland)...

Driving out of the 'hood today (finally) I caught a reminder that, yes, I do live in a college town:


Kinda makes the ordinary snowman and his little carrot look like brine shrimp, no?

Seems like a thousand years ago I would have taken the time and effort to construct this sort of magnificent snow-herm. But I would have, sadly, because college guys do shit like this.

Today the thaw has begun. In drips and runnels, the mighty Shaft of Snow melts away like every other symbol of male pride, beaten down by time and the hard light of day. Tomorrow the Pride - or is it the Shame - of North Portland will be just another wet spot.

7 comments:

Lisa said...

Splendid!

You have motivated me to write something today on my perception of "male pride, beaten down by time and the hard light of day."

That's glass through which I see the recent "aberrant" public shootings.

Leon said...

The willy used to be quite prominent in some ancient societies. The Greeks (or at least Athenians) had these at various crossroads:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ed/0007MAN-Herma.jpg

But then again the men liked staring at the flesh torpedo. In retrospect, I'm shocked we don't have more stop signs shaped like the female bajingo.

FDChief said...

I dunno, Lisa. Most of these nutter shootings are YOUNG men. Any guy will tell you that when wer'e that age most of us are walking erections - which is probably why some of the loonier of us end up shooting people, because when the dick is hard the Big Head isn't working so good and usually something is gonna get fucked. Or fucked up.

By the time we get beaten down we have usually learned some sense, or at least some notion of self-preservation. As the dick gets limper the anger often dissapates.

And I thought of those old crossroads-herms and all the other various waggling dinguses (dingi?) so common in various parts of the ancient world, Leon.

Leon said...

Chief, you were correct the first time, dinguses is plural of dingus.

You must be thinking of the plural of tallywackus (tallywacki).

Lisa said...

Chief,

Again, you have a sense of the thing:

By the time we get beaten down we have usually learned some sense, or at least some notion of self-preservation. As the dick gets limper the anger often dissipates.

I believe the self-preservation remains, the anger may increase. I am thinking of the "Falling Down" scenario in FLA recently with the 72-y-o police Captain shooter in the bijou.

His sense of superannuation fueled his fury, I s'pect. Young or old, as Rodney Dangerfield say, you don't get no respect.

As Susan Faludi wrote, you've been "Stiffed", and that's a pity, and we're seeing it play out, IMHO, in all manner of dysfunction.

FDChief said...

Leon: Or possibly "johnsoni", the pubic form of plural "johnson" (to distinguish it from the Johnsons who live down the street...)

Lisa: Well...yeah. There IS a subset of older white guys who respond to any sort of perceived threat with murderous violence. The degree to which this group is influenced by their perception of and rage at their growing impotence as age steals their manly vigor as opposed to they degree to which they simply overlap the subgroup defined by the term "violent assholes" is difficult to parse out.

I think that the critical factor is not nearly so much the reduced angle of the dangle brought on by age and wear as the degree to which you originally thought your pecker should have been worshipped.

The simple demographic is that the older white guy - me, us - is becoming a niche species where we used to bestride the narrow world like colossi. Well, WE didn't, but the rich and powerful and respected and adored WERE other white guys and, as such, we were, even the smallest and poorest of us, the top of the bottom of the heap.

And there are some old white guys who are REALLY pissed off about that (Victor Davis Hanson first comes to mind, but there's pantsloads of them out there...).

I'm not, frankly, because I never thought that being Caucasian and having a penis entitled me to a damn thing.

But that's just me...

Lisa said...

Chief,

Understood re. "bestriding the known world", but I do think there's more here, meaning societal changes beyond racial demographics.

What we are seeing transcends race (and age). The fantastic events indicate other stresses in micro.