Posts by JackElder
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Oh, and a question: is that price on Laphroaig online only, or do they have it instore? Might be worth me popping out to Porirua tomorrow if they've got it on the shelves.
-
I can't be the only person to get all happy at the smell of a fresh inner tube. I buy them in bulk, 10 at a time, and when you first open that plastic wrapper and the smell of rubber hits you... it's like the smell of fun.
Laphroaig's a bit more peaty, though.
-
I shot the prick
Worst Bob Marley cover ever.
-
We got a slow cooker because my wife wanted one and I figured hey, it was on special. It's easily paid for itself several times over. Great for stews, great for dhal.
neither grow nor clean potatoes
But what will you do when teh ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE comes? You'll wish you'd scrubbed some potatoes then, let me tell you.
-
*hopes I haven't just derailed this into a discussion about arts vs crafts*
-
that you shouldn't necessarily be dependent on someone else to get stuff done for you.
And why should that not apply equally to women?
Indeed. I think it'd have been better phrased as "stuff you should be able to do", but then they wouldn't have been able to bring the masculinity lure in.
Personally, I'm just astonished that basic cooking isn't on the list. I mean, how often do you actually bleed your brakes, versus how often you eat dinner? Surely the ability to cook dinner is more useful day-to-day than the ability to cackhandedly perform a mechanical repair with serious safety consequences?
As someone said much earlier the Traditional Man skills are about "doing things", which I put at the opposite end of the spectrum to "creating things".
I'm going out on a limb here, and I'm going to say that cooking bacon and eggs is much more about "doing" than "creating". Cooking can, and should, be creative, but it can also be about robotically following a recipe in order to achieve an edible result. You don't have to be creative to be a good cook; you just have to have a particular skill set associated with the preparation of food.
But that's back into quibbling about items, and as mentioned above, I don't think that's the point. It's more about the spirit of the list, man. The spirit. Yeah.
-
And I should mention that using a torque wrench is stupidly easy. It's is as simple as checking the torque for the part you're installing (they're very useful for carbon fibre bicycle parts, where torque ratings are very specific), and setting the wrench to that. Then just attach your socket driver and away you go - once you get over the torque setting, the wrench starts to slip, so you can't overtighten it.
Simple as breakfast.
-
I agree with the earlier comment(s) that these sorts of lists often descend into "I can do this, and you can't, so I am a SUPERIOR ELITE you PLEBS"-ness. And, indeed, I find a lot of the actual items on the Popular Mechanics list annoying - the baseline assumption that to be a man, you must be a driver, for instance. But let's not quibble about the individual points: what they're basically getting at is the idea that you should be able to do stuff for yourself if you have to - that you shouldn't necessarily be dependent on someone else to get stuff done for you.
Note that this doesn't mean that you would necessarily always do stuff yourself: it makes sense for me to get a painter in to repaint the house, because although I can quite happily do it it's actually more cost effective for me to pay someone to do it in two days rather than have me take a week off.
But I think what they're stabbing at is that, in your own environment, you should be able to do stuff for yourself if you need to. And even for the most dedicated urban dandy, there are going to be times that you need to jury-rig something until you can get the professionals in.
Of course, three things are always manly:
1) Beards
2) Scars
3) Tattoos -
Blimey. That certainly puts all my road-rage related stories to shame. On the plus side, they got his number, and with a bit of luck he did some damage to the SUV's paintwork (since no-one on either side seems to be seriously hurt).
-
A coworker once described me as looking "like Christine Keeler crossed with an orang-outan."
Shouldn't we be _counterpointing_ the surrealism of the underlying metaphor?
And hands up who here celebrated Towel Day?