It’s no secret that I can get pretty tempered. Several of my posts early on and recently have been angry screeds against my ex and others. This is something new, as before I started Sympathy for the Devil and HarmonicaFTW 2.0, I had done my best to control my anger in front of co-workers, my family and my partners. My last post here at In Mala Fide got a less than warm reception because of its advocacy of anger. The vagueness and lack of history behind it, as well as its point, probably brought on the negativity, but I welcome it. Several commenters made a very good point for all men, including my gaming brothers. You can’t run on anger. I wrote that anger was the fuel of masculinity. Reading my post over again with a clearer mind, I can see that that was pretty stupid to say.

BACKSTORY

To explain the back story to the first part, my ex-wife turned on a dime from happily married to freakishly aggravating and aggressive in about 24 hours. Which, of course, means it was a set -up. While we were having problems, like all couples, they were minor. I had started to read Roissy, Roosh, Married Man Sex Life and follow the rest of the manosphere, including IMF, to expand my brain because it was obvious my placating and falling over backwards wasn’t working. I was still a beginner when she sprung the trap, insinuating I was oppressing her, making her feel unwanted and attacking my character. As you read, I didn’t react well.

When she wanted to come out to California to live with me and my roommate, she wanted to get away from her home in the South. She didn’t have the money. I was love-drunk and I sent her $800 to help. She said it wasn’t about me. She said she wanted to date around. I said fine, I’ll wait. She came out. She fucked me the first night. She kept on fucking me. She never even looked around. She was happy. When I took the credit for helping her out of her Southern shithole, she yelled at me for taking her away from her friends that never talked to her. From drugs, constant backstabbing and hate.

When she wanted a better job, she was given the chance to get a city job, much better than the box store wage-slave gig she had at the time. She didn’t want to do it, but I convinced her it would be a great chance to do some good. She applied, she was hired and loved the job. When I took credit for helping her, she dismissed it and called me chauvinistic.

When she was still trying to make up her mind about her career, I had a goal. I wanted to become a cop, one of the reason I had left California and my TV job for Utah. But since I had a Canadian degree (though it turned out that it didn’t transfer to American schools) and she didn’t have one, so we decided it was fair she go to school first. She wanted to wait a while after choosing medical studies, but I convinced her to do it sooner, as it would help her at her city job. She fought, then relented, then relished being able to put her book smarts to use. Though many, many times, she skipped classes and ended up stressing out to the point of crying. We used my Canadian credit to pay off her first year’s tuition and books when the loans didn’t arrive in time. When I took credit for helping her through it, she dismissed it and said it was all her work. I’m still in debt for that act of kindness.

She said she wanted to be the old-style wife, to be submissive and enjoy a dominant man. I complied. I started to enjoy the power and the lifestyle. She screamed for me and her body could not fake what it release. She now calls herself a feminist and continues to call me misogynistic to whomever will listen. She holds up the guy she swore she was just friends with as the ideal man now. Everything I read at Roissy and the other blogs were right on the money.

I spent five years with that woman, guiding her from obesity, anxiety and poverty into a healthy, happy and modest life. I was repaid with nothing, not even closure. The last time I saw her, she said, “I love you. See you soon.” She then got on a plane to visit her friends, to return in a week. She never came back.

Some things, no matter the time, breed irrational anger.

I hope that clears up any fog that surrounded why I wrote the first part.

CONCLUSION

I tend to look for good role models in shows. Not Zac Efron giving flowers, one of the Glee gays standing up for homosexual rights or Wilson doing the right thing on House. I look for men who are men. Men that, while keeping in mind that its entertainment, give lessons.

Today’s teacher: Mr. Ari Gold.

Piven’s portrayal of Gold is best known for the well-written, superbly acted outbursts of the entertainment super agent. Everything from sly one-liners to monologues that would make Shakespeare both blush and clap. He is in control, especially when he’s out of control. He has ruled kingdoms and lost them only to return better than ever from the biggest of failings. And he has done this by not only being ruthless, angry and unforgiving, but also compassionate, stoic and driven. He’s risked his job to save his family and friends on more than one occasion. He never cheated. And when betrayed by others, he does forgive…some.

But to be a king of a home, a business or whatever, you can’t stand stoically like David staring off into blissful contemplation hoping the answer will come logically or supernaturally. That’s just fucking stupid. You, as my previous article said, can’t be run over by attacks on your character or your honor. Honor being your reputation. Your word. Your livelihood. Family. Friends. Your good name. Words can bring people to their knees and not in the way we want them to. The false rape accusations flying from the mouths of women are the same lies and slander as a disgruntled woman or man making sure your promotion doesn’t go through, or that your friends turn on you, or that the staff at your favorite bar suddenly think you roofie girls to get laid. I have lost friends, good friends, to the rumors of others. And while people say, like cheating, its not the fault of the lover but the cheater, what good is it to let the enemy go scott free because the ally had a moment of weakness?

Anger, controlled anger, is a valuable tool. I stay adamant about that. There have been many situations, not just with my former marriage but in life in general, where my control left me bent over. For example, I was due up for a promotion in my cadet squadron many years ago. I had put two years of hard work and many other things into the program. I was on the rifle team. I studied. And while I wasn’t the best, I wasn’t a jerkoff like some others I knew. The rules of the cadet program stated that after one year of instruction and one camp (whatever course you chose), you’d be up for a promotion. The first year, I didn’t get one. Oh well. The second year, I didn’t get one, but the tiny little brother of one of the fat female Flight Sergeants did. Not a problem, except he had joined six months prior, had no camp experience and hadn’t even had a full year of instruction. He was promoted to corporal, meaning he was given a leadership role over me and my other friends who had done two years instruction and two camps. Objections were raised among my group, but since every commissioned officer signed off on it, we just shut up and watched the little runt jump from newbie to “Sir yes sir!” Instead of bringing it up to the officers or going over their heads, I just slowly slipped away. A few weeks later, I quietly walked in, gave in my uniform, meekly said I quit and walked away. A little indignation instead of cowardice might have allowed me to leave with some dignity, or even convinced me to stay and beat the little prick and his favorite hos at their own game, but I was scared. Scared isn’t good. Scared isn’t the right response when getting fucked over.

What’s the right response to getting fucked? That’s up to everyone, but for me, and I’m not exactly that special so I’m not the only one who thinks getting a bit pissed can do a lot of good. I know many think this kind of ego-tripping outrage is a bad thing for men. That it makes us women. Somehow anger grows pussies while Zen creates balls. I disagree. I’ve read the blogs of betas turning alpha. Alphas getting jacked by angry cockblockers. I’ve had my own share of punks in my face and chicks talking behind my back. When I read that a man walked away, as I did in the case of a stalker accusation, I cringe. I hate it. I think it’s pathetic. You don’t have to start a bar fight or slap a woman, but when I see a great comeback, I smile and give a mental fist pump to my buddy. The calmer commenter camp was right. Control it. But don’t let your control control you. That was my problem and it drove me to huge outbursts that broke me down. Its not healthy. Its not pragmatic.

In conclusion, sometimes you just walk away. Sometimes you say what’s what to put your attacker in their place. And sometimes you just gotta take it out of your ass and shove it up someone else’s.

“Do you want anything else?” I was going to the store for groceries. The frozen food we usually got.

The cute smile she wore often appeared. “Um, ice cream?” she said in a childish voice.

“Sure, baby,” I leaned down, awkwardly, to give her a kiss. A man should never feel awkward giving lip to his wife, but I did.

She kissed back. Her lips felt soft and wonderful as always. They felt even better wrapped around my cock. She could make any man happy with that mouth.

As I closed the door and walked into the chill Utah air, I watched her turn her head to the TV, her hands fiddling with the Xbox controller. Final Fantasy XIII.

The car was freezing. I turned it on, blasted the head and blew hot breath into my hands, steam rising from the small gaps between my fingers. Time to go.

The trip took no more than five minutes. West on 4700 South. Right on Redwood. Shazam! There. I blasted my music obsession of the month. Heaven Shall Burn. Matisyahu. Something I had come across during my hours on the internet listening to music new and old.

I pulled in the parking lot, still freezing, wallet in my left back pocket, keys in the right, phone in the left front, iPod in the right, headphones around my neck. All I needed was a basket, usually. Grown man carrying a nanny basket, putting in food for his family. My family was just her, despite trying. I couldn’t hear a damn thing except the music. That’s how I liked it. Oblivious.

Right to the frozen food section. Tyson chicken nuggets. Orela tater tots, crowns. That was food. She cooked often. Made me lunch for work, but half the time we used tinfoil to make our meals in 20 minutes or less, or went out. A lot of going out. Applebee’s. Dee’s. Chili’s. IHOP.

I came across the jalapeño poppers. My favorite snack. Cream cheese filled. Oh, wouldn’t it be bad to get these, I thought. Don’t need them, but I like them. I pulled them out and then got her ice cream. There, now it’s fair.

That was all I really needed, but I made my way to the drinks. Red Bull. Monster. I had become slightly addicted to them. The high. The good feeling before the crash. I had thoughts of how it made me powerful. A drink. A fucking drink. The ads work well with me.

I made it back home. She saw the extras. “More Red Bull?”

I came up with my usual excuse “I’m passing out at work,” It was true. Most of the time it was lethargy and fighting to stay awake.

“Mmhmm,” she said in a badly imitated black woman accent. “Thank you for the ice cream.”

“No problem, babe,”

___

“YOU TREAT ME LIKE SHIT!”

“SHIT? I GO OUT FOR YOU ALL THE TIME!”

“Oh, is that it? That makes up for everything else?”

“What else? Do I hit you? Do I call you names?”

“Abuse isn’t just that!”

“I encouraged you to go to school. I was the one that pushed you into the job you love.”

“No, I did that myself. You helped, but all the work was mine.”

It was going nowhere. Round and round and round. It was like no matter what I had done, it wasn’t enough. In fact, it was detrimental to her. The money we spent on her tuition on my credit card. The book fees. The hours I spent waiting for her in the SLCPD parking lot per week. Helping her through hard times due to office politics, school, everything. I was the good husband. I was the Hallmark card.

I put a hole in the wall. She got scared.

I could’ve choked the bitch out. I could’ve killed her, wrapped her up in a tarp, taken her to one of the dozens of places I knew in the Utah back country and hid her like Susan Powell. I would have been caught probably. Taking out a member of the police force, even just a dispatcher, would have all the eyes on me instantly. I had thought about it after she went after my character. My honor.

No one crosses that line with me.

Many years ago, while my sister and I were still pretty damn immature, I’d tease her constantly. She’d say something absolutely stupid and I’d smack her lightly on the head or something of that sort. Yeah, she’s a girl, but she had no filter for her mouth. After having two daughters after me, my parents became very adamant about no hitting. I always got in trouble. Another light smack and my dad went into a rage. Long work days and other stresses must’ve broke him. He told me I was an abuser. That I’d hurt her bad. Things he has never said. I was beyond control when he said that.

I know the truth about me, the good and the bad, and that wasn’t even close. It attacked me on a false level. I exploded back. “Fuck you, dad.” I had never said that to him, ever. I went off, accusing him of lying. I was ready to sock him and nearly did, but held my arm back. First time I’d ever gotten close to. First time I’d ever wanted to without doubt.

I’ll fucking kill you. It was the only thought in my head.

The cunt attacked my character. I wanted her dead.

But I never hit her. I never raised a hand that didn’t land on a table or a couch. I only said words. I only fought and lost each time. It was a lost cause. Like a serf, my labor was taken from me and I was told to like it.

I dread to think of how many others go through this. I dread to think of the number of murders, the number of suicides and destroyed families. All because of feminism. All because of generations of unwilling to protect their honor, their reputations and their homes because they can’t handle a woman’s irrational nature. Luckily, I only lost money.

She now calls me a chauvinist, refusing to tell the stories of our marriage before she turned on me. She now is a feminist when only three years ago, she was smiling, making food, naked, ready to get on her knees before we ate. She’s a lying slag. Most of them are.

You can’t be scared to take them on. To threaten them into submission. To bring out the very best in us, which is our honor. Our character. Good or evil. Lawful or not. The code is the code. The word is the word. Bond is bond. Break it, and you suffer greatly.

I hold myself to that code of honor, now. I refuse to take shit. It’s never been in my nature to. Feminism, liberalism, peace studies; they all taught me to lay down and take it. It broke me. It could’ve broken her. It’s unhealthy, unnatural, a sin against man.

Anger is the fuel of masculinity. Don’t suppress it. Embrace it. Own it and use it. Take on your enemies. Take on the world. Never be afraid to get into a fight. Because fighting is all we have left when the world is against our very nature.

Twenty years ago, Nirvana debuted the song that would, according to music historians, define a generation. This generation, the children of the hippies, were said to be lost and confused. In a world of plenty with no place to go. Drugs, heartbreak and bleak outlook. Gen X had its voice in the blond haired prophet.

My parents, like myself, were born on the tail end of or early beginning, of these simplistic generational terms. My dad was the last of the Boomers while my mother was at the start of Gen X. I am considered Generation Y, or Millennial, or Echo Boomer, depending on who you’re talking to. So-called experts have a really hard time defining us. The gap between the early ones like myself (1980-1990) and the later ones (1990-2001) is not small.

When I was a fifteen, cell phones were smaller, but still bulky. The display screen graphics was of the same quality of a Sega Genesis. Texts were charged per message. You could had to pull the antennae out to get better reception. The camera took up half the phone and took blurry, worthless shots. To compare this to the later Gen Y, my fifteen year old cousin has a brand new Blackberry, taking quality pictures, surfing the web at great speeds and she updates her Facebook status more than she does anything else. While Gen Yers are technologically literate, my faction was raised on pre-Pentium computers, Segas and PlayStation Ones. My cousin’s faction was born with smart phones, 5Ghz processors and Xboxs in their crib.

With the explosion of pop culture choice, no one has really tried to define a song for Generation Y. Tastes range from Top 40 pop, pop punk, punk, metal, nu metal, death metal, rap, hip hop, R and B, gangsta rap, dirty south rap, and so on. It goes on forever. Choice is everywhere. Choice is freedom, but choice, as Dalrock has so saintly put it, is an addiction.

Let me endeavor here to suggest five songs that could define Generation Y, though I doubt they come even close. They range from pop rock to punk to metal, as is my tastes. Feel free to suggest your own.

5. “Sleep Now in the Fire“, by Rage Against the Machine
4. “One Step Closer“, by Linkin Park
3. “Lullaby for the New World Order“, by Matthew Good
2. “Jesus of Suburbia” by Green Day
1. “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World

This is your life on materialism.

During my two and a half year marriage, I ended up with a lot of stuff. I mean, a lot. Hundreds of movies, gadgets, books and other things. We bought food that went to waste. We went out to eat with food at home. Games. Systems. Hell, even sheets we were too lazy to put on the bed. They’re still wrapped up in the gray cube packaging.

As I talked about in my post about existentialism, objects are things. They are. No meaning, no value, no essence. We give them meaning. We put value on them. One of the greatest things about the subjective theory of value, the theory that our economy runs on most of the time, is it shows what people truly value over what they say they value. Clothing made for a few dollars can be sold at ten or one hundred times that much. Electronics, cars, homes, government… all these things, these meaningless objects, are sold for what people pay for them.

In two and a half years of marriage, what I have to show for myself is a collection of movies, games and books, most of which I’ll sell because they are useless or meaningless to me.

We must beware the reality of our consumer culture. We must know what it is and what is isn’t. What is isn’t is free market. Its not the best thing to happen to America. Its not male-oriented. Its not even good for men. What it is is the modern female mind made into an economic plan. Its the world according to your wife or girlfriend, everywhere, everyday.

Its material hypergamy.

I used to be a libertarian conservative. For years, I supported the trickle-downers, the supply-siders, the push for people to buy, buy, buy! Its what made our countrty great, right? Freedom of choice in everything, even our dishwashers and video games! When my wife wanted a movie or a game with the money we had left over from bills, I said, “Great!” and we went to Best Buy or Walmart to find something. But, ho!, if she was getting something I had to. It was only fair. I needed to get the game, movie or something to distract me.

To distract me! From what? From my marriage? No, according to me that was great. From life? Naw, that was great, too. Work? Yeah, probably, but I had things to distract me there as well. Why did I want it? Because. Yes, just because. An impulse in the back of my head told me to pick up a new game, a new movie or the next book in the series. It told me that it was okay. It told me that it was no big deal. Next time, we’ll put money into savings. Next time, we’ll aim for the washer and dryer instead of having to lug it all down to the complex’s facilities.

Never happened.

I’m relatively young at 25. I grew up during the end of the Cold War and came of age during the War on Terror. I lived my entire life in a world of constant movement, improvement and luxury. Even in a old, rented house which had a “1/2” in the address, my dad had a Apple II computer and a CD player when those things were costing out the ass. Though, knowing my partial-Arab father, he probably got them for a really good price. I grew up with things as a child. And as an adult I wanted things.

I don’t want these things anymore.

At first, deep inside, it never felt right to keep buying these things. To be encouraged to buy all these things, but I did it. Impulse said so. The wife was okay with it. The closer it got to the unspoken end of my marriage, the more it felt wrong. The more we’d spend, the more she’d spend, the less I was okay with it. But, I said little to nothing. I got my things to play with. I was distracted enough for it to not matter. Now, that I’m going to be on my own soon, it matters beyond the stars.

Four years on my own, working hard, living and I’m coming back home with pretty much the same shit I left with because I didn’t save a dime. I have credit to pay off. I have things to close out that I never needed. Four years pass, and I am the only thing that’s changed.

This isn’t a warning against capitalism or free markets or malls. Freedom means economic freedom, too. I know I still want a nice car, even in spite of everything I’ve said above. We’re men, there are somethings we just want.

No, this isn’t a Luddite rant. This is a warning against one of the lesser talked about plagues of the Western male: material obsession. We dig ourselves into a debt hole to grasp at the lives of the kings above us. We try to be them, because we think they are better than us. We need the big house, the two car garage, the perfect lawn or the Italian silk bedsheets. We do not nest. We do not crow about the look of a kitchen. It is not in our DNA to “shop”. Leave that to the birds.

If you don’t control the money, look to your woman and snatch the checkbook away. If you control the money and you’re buying duvets, new dinner chairs or other fineries… shock your testicles with a taser. Just to make sure they’re still there. After writhing on the ground for a moment, remember these words:

YOU. DON’T. NEED. THOSE. THINGS.

We are in debt up to our face holes because of this shit. We have lost our instincts because of this shit. We have lost our country and our souls because of this shit.

If you’re a man and you’re looking around your house noticing that there’s not one object in view that is only yours… then you, sir, have a problem.

Fix it.

Your balls depend on it.