Thoughts
Today is once again grey, but clearing, kind of the way my head feels. I've been struggling with allergies this past week and so today is the first day I'll get to swim. I used to swim a lot in the way back when, but I swam so much I burned myself out. The longest I've ever swam in a straight shot is 3000 meters, and I'm trying to work myself up to that again. Right now my warm up is between 1000 - 1500 in a go, and then I do sprints and drills.

My wife is getting pretty busy with teaching at the high school here in Minakuchi, but it is a kind of busy she's starting to enjoy. The kids are starting to trust her and talk to her. She was telling me that she had a boy who has never said anything in English in all her classes, and actively refuses to participate, approached her after school and asked her about Spanish lessons. After that they talked until about 6:00 pm and it turns out he wants to move to Spain. So my wife was really pleased that the kids are finally starting to trust her.

Since we are both fairly busy in the evenings, we don't have much time to be naughty. Well, naughty in this case is staying up to almost midnight at Joyful just talking about things we enjoy, which includes the other kind of naughty, you dirty minded people. My dear friend Aku Ender forwarded me a link about the feminization of culture, which I read, but cannot for the life of me remember the link, so bug him about it. It made an interesting point about how the idea of emotional maturity, which previously resided in the strong, stoic male has been shifting to a person that is able to share their emotions, confide, and cry. I will get to this point in a minute. They used some anecdotal evidence citing how the number of men who are insecure about themselves physically and are concerned about appearance has increased since the introduction of men's magazines such as Men's Heath,Men's Fitness, etc. And my wife made an excellent point; she said that the production of such magazines doesn't indicate a shift to a more feminized man, but it does indicate that Men and Women are affected by the same insecurities when they are fed by the media. If you are made aware of what you don't have (a good body, great sex, a nice car), you become insecure about what you do have.

This moved us into the topics of gender roles in general and we discussed how with the changes in gender role perceptions it falls, very much, on the individual to try to define themselves, which can be very difficult, especially where very traditional stereotypes exist. I wouldn't call myself a great example of masculinity, sure, I am pretty quiet about my emotions, but mostly it is because I'm trying to understand myself. I spend a lot of time mulling. When I drink I bend my wrist and I have a very hippy walk, I've cross dressed on several occasions, and since I've been in high school I've been asked if I was a homosexual because I just wasn't very interested in girls; I had better things to do, like homemade Terminator spoofs. Also, I've been told since high school I'd make a very pretty girl; I don't know entirely what that is supposed to mean, but let's just say, while I'm not a great example of masculinity, I'm pretty certain I'm a heterosexual male. Which bares the questions, is the way you act determine your gender roles; is it what you wear?

I would consider my sister to be pretty "male." Perhaps more "male," than me in many cases. She plays lacrosse and wishes she could play on a men's team because the girls are wussy, as she says. When she played basketball she was told, "You have five fouls, use them." She then broke the centers nose. She was ejected from a powderpuff football game for unnecessary roughness. She's a pretty butch girl, but I would still consider her a female. I don't question that.

This brings me to sexuality, which I'm not going to comment on because I'm still thinking about how it fits into traditional ideas of gender and "feminization" of culture.

Okay, and now for Aku Ender, a link on another article which I was going to comment on because it fits very nicely into this diatribe, I would say discussion but no one else can comment so it isn't really a discussion. This will hopefully change shortly. The story can be found here. It is about the acceptance of porn in society, specifically in terms of men. It is a very interesting read. Hopefully I'll have something so you can leave comments by the time anyone reads this.

Rising Darkness
The plucky adventurers are on their way back to the White Deer clan after a hearty breakfast and an offer by One-legged Kamil to hone their skills. They take a slow pace, knowing that it isn't far from Kamil's stead to their destination. After leaving the Darkening Woods they see the spread of tents arrayed outside the wood walled village and begin hurrying to see what is happening. Their fears are realized as they see the black and red sickle moon flags of the lunar army above the tents.