Au contraire!

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It happens. Actually it happens often. My thinking might be called dogmatic. I have built a foundation, defenses, work-arounds to exceptions, designated outlets where only faith will sustain the beliefs, and generally I keep to this. However, while inspecting the psychic fortresses I have built, I do not merely look at the scenery and enjoy the power of my constructions. I have seen the enemy. Hell, I AM the enemy. I know what happens during failures. I know what happens to losers. I know what I do when I cause or capture such. To put it colloquially, it ain't pretty. So, while inspecting my defenses, from men and ideas which I use to defend and go on the offensive to the virtual ramparts, walls, pits, and machinery, I test harshly. I look for my own weaknesses better than any enemy can, or so it is hoped.

Tonight is a light version of some minor results. I am not going to tell you about my follies and foibles which are serious. I, simply put, do not think outlets such as the New York Times, the network news outlets, the Democratic party (considering those are supposed to be American institutions) should be emulated, or possibly even legally permitted to stand, if that is a different issue. No, my contrarian notions are of a lighter sort.

The first regards sports. Football, basketball, baseball, wrestling, gymnastics... I am not prejudiced, I truly hate them all. Well, maybe I like gymnastics like a cat enjoys watching goldfish. I have played football and basketball. I have run track and competed in field events. I did that more from peer pressure and civic duty as I saw it, then out of any love for the sports. But that does not mean I did not play hard, I did not play well, or I did not succeed given my circumstances in those competitions. I did very well indeed. And, yet, I despise the games.

My sense of loathing has little to do with who than what. The whole notion of pushing and shoving through a group of men to put pig skinned compressed air into an area of soil covered by grass for no real purpose... disgusts me. It is both a waste of energy, a waste of time, and an economic drain. It does not produce better men, a stronger economy, or, really, anything. The same can be said for any sport. I will admit, professional sports has become a micro, or would that be macro, economy. Of course, if my ideas are correct, this micro (or macro) economy competes with real economic growth and the production of goods and so it is a bad thing. Not that this notion matters, the whole notion of economy is an afterthought in any event. This is my dogma.

While watching what I do enjoy, that is cooking and really high end cooking one will see watching Iron Chef type shows, I punched through some weakness in my defenses. I thrilled at the competition. The show I was watching pitted 9 top chefs in an ongoing competition to eventually see who would be the next Iron Chef. The cooking was interesting. Seeing people forced out of their elements, required to use surprise, difficult, or both, ingredients, with a time limit and strict judging was fantastic. Albeit probably just to a few of us foodie types.

I cannot cook at that level, in that time, under the stress. Probably. I can whip up a meal to feed an army in short order, under tight constraints, with what is on hand, and it will satisfy most (picky eaters, like hecklers, need not apply). I can, given time and a trip to various markets, make a meal that might bring marriage proposals... from guys (I think I am going to be sick). But I cannot bring that all together and I am hit and miss, mostly since I experiment a lot. There is much I do not know. Though and again, I see mistakes made by chefs which I would not have made (in theory, at least I recognize the mistakes) if too I see chefs make mistakes I would very much have made.

The thing is, I garnered more than a few culinary ideas from the viewing. I felt the call to compete. And I sensed my incapacity to compete. Bluntly, I enjoyed vicarious competition. I enjoyed the highs and lows. Even if I can still pick out what a penalty is for in football, and my coach usually asked me what a call was if he did not see it, knowledge is not enough in football. I sometimes wonder if my problem with football was playing against and with inferior athletes. I caused 2 to 3 fumbles a game and 4 to 7 turnovers, but played with a team that never won a game and really could not have won. Though that does not really explain it as in basketball my team made it to the play-offs every year, handily, if we blew it at that point every time. I was average, give or take, on that team. Good team, bad team, superior or average skills, plenty of knowledge, no interest. At least now I see why sports are enjoyed, if my understanding is skewed and in it's own way, so as to be itself vicarious somehow.

The other notion which came to me tonight is the ongoing warfare of the sexes. There are, of course, some more and some less dogmatic elements on both sides of the issue. I am a moderate man side type. I am not fully in the woman hater's camp nor am I at all interested in even the soppy pseudo feminist camp that begs for room to be equal but different. Men, as I see it, are the crafters of the world (of flesh, and as we know it), the makers of the world, the developers of science, the masters of religion and philosophy, and the leaders, princes, and kings of all. If I were to set this in the ways of war, I would call men warriors and women civilians. Both have a place, there might be some overlap by needs, but the majority of warriors can and are both actors while civilians are limited to just being that. Few are the civilians who can stand against even a weak warrior in the domain of war and fewer still are the ones who survive unscathed from the effort. Fine fine. And, no, that did not change tonight. But a component of that did.

Women always seem to attempt to 'gain their freedom', go against the machine, fight, debate, rankle, and disagree. The notion came to me when I was fussing with Sassy. Go figure. When I wanted to hold her and cuddle, she wanted to leave and check out something 'over there'. When I wanted to be alone, she wanted to play or cuddle. When I wanted to pet, she wanted to fight. This is the way of it. I realized she could not be intentionally contrarian all of the time. So, what was the problem? Simple, she simply is controlled by a set of parameters, time tables, interests, buttons, tabs, switches, and hormones which I simply cannot fathom. As the leader, it is incumbent upon me to either find a way to get her on my wave lenght, adjust my wave length to fit her's, or to simply leave things well alone. Simply, she does not have the capacity to self adjust easily or happily. More and more, I guess, I am seeing that women are our responsibility more than our enemy, at least most of them. Feminists might not even be to blame, fully, logically, as one might a man. Their estrogen levels are often out of balance with their testosterone, making them a bit odd to deal with in a normal sense. Nearly male by hormones, yet completely female by anatomy... tricky dicky... less. Ha!

That may not go over well with the ladies, but it is as close as I get to altering my dogma there. My beliefs stand. That we live in a world where life is viewed as dispensable, chastity is seen as farcical, propriety is seen as a thing of the past, and everyone is seen as equal, it is no wonder that women have ended up where they are, that men are refusing to go there, and where law and equality in their attempts to merge have only proven the futility of such an action by completely ignoring the fact that the only way to create equality is to suspend justice, meaning that neither exists at this point.

I still hate pink men's shirts, and yellow. I still think mustaches are teh gey. I still think women are far too interesting for my own good. And I still like beef in large supplies, merely flame or heat touched enough to add a sense that something might have been cooked while the inside begs to differ in the same manner a boot to the head might cause pain. So, I can live with my little alterations. Well, back to the main keep to sooth the pain of the possibility I might have been a little wrong. I am not a baby. I am a great big wonking baby. Just setting the record straight.