Notices by Human Ghostwriter (hg@beige.party)

@RamenCatholic

What kind of American barbecue? It's a big and fractious country.

You can tell a lot about someone by the kind of restaurant they would open if someone forced them to drop everything and open a restaurant.

I took the morning off work to watch my son graduate from his first ice skating class. He was great at standing, walking on skates, and falling (which is an important skill!). The best part was getting to see him learn: he was fully engaged and following instructions and paying attention. I've never gotten to watch him as a student among peers. He's incredible. I mean, not as an ice skater, but as a kid. I normally just get to have power struggles with him about brushing his teeth or eating his food, but this was amazing. He's a real person and a good kid.

What's the wildest unprovable thing that you absolutely believe? Mine is that, if I don't die at 40, I'll live to 92.

My wife has covid again (she's on day 5), and once more I have managed to get through without any noticeable or detectable infection.

I fight pretty hard against the "man with a cold" stereotype because my friends and family are pretty heartless about weakness (It's been four and a half years and people still make fun of me for almost fainting when my wife gave birth to our son - I got a fainting goat figurine for Christmas). And covid sucks and hits my wife really hard. But it's been hard to functionally single-parent two kids for the last five days. I feel like I'm disappointing everyone, and I'm getting very upset with myself for not doing more.

I hope my wife is OK. The first time she got the 'rona, she lost the ability to breath cold (40F or less) air, so now we basically spend half the year indoors. Clearly, she has the harder time of all of this, so I'm not complaining that she's sick. I'm just feeling lost and at loose ends, like I'm holding things together and feeling terrible for doing a substandard job.

I disappoint people all day and get screamed at all night. I worked the hardest I have ever worked in my life and I am not getting ahead. I'm sick all the time. I can't take leave because it will derail my career. I've canceled all my holiday leave and will be in the office even when the building is closed. I have asked my family to not get me anything for Christmas because I don't have time for recreation. My kids are always upset. My wife is always a little disappointed. My last friend is moving out of state. Things aren't supposed to feel like this.

@RickiTarr

I so wish I had gotten here sooner. I love my kids and I shower them with physical and emotional affection. I'm also completely ridiculous and, I am sure, very confusing to them. Also, being enormous and bearded with an all-caps voice is a strong headwind--they both seem to prefer mom by a wide margin.

There are so many things that feel like they don't map cleanly onto kindness. I put my son in time out when he slaps me because I want to protect him from being the kind of person who thinks hitting is OK [he's also strong, and him punching me in the mouth is no fun for me], but that also requires manhandling him into his room, and he super duper hates it. I generally don't lie to my kids, but I play games with my son where I'm all "I'M GONNA EAT A BIG BOWL OF POOP!", and he says "dad! That's not poop! It's chocolate ice cream!" and I ask him if he's sure and tell him that I'll check by eating a great, big scoop, and he thinks it's really gross and funny. There's an implied lie in there. Kids have to do lots of things that they don't want to do, and I struggle so much with that. I feel neglectful and substandard a lot of the time, and I just hope they feel genuinely loved even if by a flawed person.

Lrrr found out I got life insurance and he's been extra menacing all day. He's been threatening to "beat coins out of me like if Sonic the Hedgehog was a rented mule."

@TheBreadmonkey @adhdeanasl

Aww 🇧🇧 thanks Ben! I wish I had more thoughtful thoughts to share right now, but I am gonna listen to Salt-n-Peppa's "Whatta Man" and reflect on some good male role models.

@TheBreadmonkey @adhdeanasl

OK, I have an answer now. A couple of answers. Bear with me.

1. I refuse to accept that the manosphere ding dongs get to decide what masculinity is. I give them zero moral estimation. They are the worst people in the world.

2. I have always been fine with my he/him pronouns regardless of what the culturally received notion of masculinity is. Maybe I'm Kinzingering masculinity. I don't care. I don't need to shoot a machine gun off the back of my testicle truck and live on raw steak to be in the man club. That's idiotic.

3. Unsurprisingly, I don't believe in a one-size-fits-all version of masculinity. It's a big, porous, flexible thing that can be done in lots of right and wrong ways.

4. This is the long, heartfelt answer:

When I think of the admirable men in my life, I think of my dad; my best friend's dad; my friends Chase, Brennen, and Colin; and my brother-in-law. They're all stand-up guys and in different ways, but there are some unifying themes. They all identify with the idea that their role in the world is to support others, create stability, and make room for their friends and family to flourish. They all do this in different ways, and they don't let this orientation totally supplant their sense of self.

Take my dad: he was a union HVAC repair guy for 35 years. He spent twelve years of his life with almost unsurvivably awful cluster headaches. I don't think he ever missed a day of work to them. I am certain that our wacky little family is the reason he lived long enough to get better. He did it for us. And yes, he was a mountaineer and a killer party host and an avid broomball player--it wasn't all toil and drudgery. He had an impish sense of humor and a literary bent the whole time. But for the most part, he was a steady, stable, stabilizing force for my stochastic whirlwind of a mom and my sister and me. He seemed to most relish observing us do our thing, whatever that was. I only ever saw him threaten someone once, and it was one of those backward threats that you never feel bad about making: when our weirdo fundy neighbor who beat his wife chased her to our house; my dad asked him: "Just how much of a fool do you want to make of yourself between now and when the cops get here?" Which is a pretty cool flex for a pacifist.

My best friend's dad has that "I don't sleep" gene. He raised six kids of his own and took in all of the local riffraff (myself included) while working totally superhuman hours as a tax lawyer. He's why I'm a tax lawyer. Fair but demanding, funny, charming, completely committed to doing the right thing. Charitable, contemptuous of status and station, wicked smart. Also kind of a prick because that's what never sleeping and going 120 miles an hour all the time does to a person. His answer to almost every problem was to work smarter and harder. I can think of at least a dozen people (myself included) who are better humans and better off because this guy created time for productive leisure and creative problem solving, and space to be a big dumb teenager.

My meatspace buddies are also really excellent specimens of healthy manhood. Chase quit running a bakery to become a software engineer because he wanted to be a good dad and couldn't imagine doing both things right at the same time; he says he gave up one dream for a better dream. Brennen is a poison pen who tends bar, laughs constantly, and raises his kids as a single dad; he's who I normally want to make laugh when I write as Lrrr. My buddy Colin is an irrepressibly silly goose, a soldier-turned-pilot, and exactly the kind of person you'd trust to rescue your family from a disaster--he is basically an action hero dreamboat who is as comfortable at war as he is showing his kid to ride a bicycle. My BIL is punk as fuck, hardworking to a fault, brave, and maybe the most emotionally intelligent person I know; he has cared for and supported more people and animals than I can count, and even though he probably thinks these people are big babies, he knows to shut the hell up about it and not make it their problem.

I guess I don't need to go into all this detail on people you don't know. My point is, humility, hard work, a sense of obligation and community, and a willingness to support people who have more limitations are core characteristics of everyone I know who practices the good kind of masculinity. I see it in my own life: my wife struggles with anemia, depression, executive dysfunction, long COVID, and arthritis. She is much smarter and more thoughtful than I am. And she cannot open a jar on her own or look after our kids without support. Things that are easy for me are hard or impossible for her. I get frustrated, sure. But I support my wife because that's how I show people I love them. That, and constantly cracking wise (which is less charming in person) and literally saying "I love you" a lot. I see myself as someone who supports others. Sometimes, that's by moving heavy things or being honest about emotions. Other times, it's by working hard to keep my clients happy, my coworkers busy, and my kids pudgy and insulated. It means being tolerably well informed and trying to do good, well.

Tl;dr: good masculinity and good citizenship are, for me, pretty close to the same thing.

End gigantic fucking rant to end all rants. Fuck. Shit. #InternationalMensDay

OK, fuck. We're doing this. #introduction

I am @LRRRonEarth's Human Ghostwriter. He and I agreed that I was abusing my out-of-character posting privileges, so I set up this account.

I'm a 30-something married father of two, cishet white guy who lives in Anchorage, Alaska. I like most of things Lrrr likes, except for conquest, eating people, violence, interstellar travel, and being a loud jerk.

I'm into all things related to tax and estate law (I'm awesome at parties), comedy, food, outdoor activities, abusing myself on my exercise bike, dad stuff, and music. I try not to be a music snob, but I'm very particular about it. I'm gonna post a lot about what I'm listening to, why I like it, and other bands it reminds me of. I'll also have dumb jokes that Lrrr wouldn't make.

I'll try to bring that weird blend of sincerity and bile that has made Lrrr so much fun to work with during his residency on Earth, but he's still gonna be my primary account.