Loading ...history
Erector Set Plane
December 11, 2011 | 
Author 
Saturday night, instead of going to a birthday party with friends, I stayed home sick and built an Erector set. I’d never built one before, but received one as a gift last Christmas & didn’t crack it open until last night. It was fun and not terribly difficult to build.
Invented 100 years ago, Erector sets use nuts, bolts, pulleys, and gears and I had the option of building 4 or 5 different things (that’s why I had extra parts left over). I’ve seen some cool antique Erector sets at antique shops & almost picked one up once. I may do it yet.
For a long time I’d wanted to build one like the legions of children through the years. It’s cool to think of this old cultural bit of playtime that included inventive and industrial components. At least when I built mine, I was away from the tv and internet for a bit, so I do have some degree of self-control and completion. Even though it looks like Frankenstein’s airplane, it’s swell and I’ll have to build another set soon.
Posted in 
Antique Stained-Glass Window For the Bachelor Pad
Touring The Coba Mayan Ruins In Mexico
Grandma Gottschall’s Dutch Apple Cake
Weirdly, breakfast is the one meal where you eat dessert as a main course. Think about it: Froot Loops and Lucky Charms, pancakes and waffles with syrup, crepes and blintzes, coffee cake and danishes, Pop Tarts and doughnuts. It’s insane! (I had some chocolate this morning to ‘test’ things.) And Dutch Apple Cake. I’m not sure what makes it a breakfast food. Often, my Grandma Gottschall’s Dutch Apple Cake is served warm in a bowl with milk poured over it, so maybe that does it. Mom and grandma made Dutch Apple Cake for those fancier breakfasts (foodfight-free fests) when we‘d all chow down together in a meaningful way. This happened at least once yearly. Read the rest of this entry »
30 Million Chinese Bachelors and The Matrix Solution
by Jonathan B Perry
Future Army of Chinese Bachelors (great band name)
I have good news and I have bad news. First, the bad news: Guys of 2020, there will be a surplus of competitive males as there never has been before at any time in history. 30 million extra men to be approximate. In just 10 years there’s going to be such a glut of guys of marriageable age it’ll seem like one endless frat party where there are maybe 2 women in the back. Granted, these extra men are in China where the population is about 1.5 billion (and where 30 million is relatively small, though not really), but still they’re not all going to stay in China and there will likely be some domino effect flopping around the globe, so you’ll need to work extra hard to trick women into hanging out excessively. Drat.
Now the good news: Ladies of 2020, there will be a surplus of competitive males of marriageable age, so the dude options will be greater and more desperate than ever before. The scarcity of women makes each of you even more valuable (think higher pedestals) and you can be choosier and make guys grovel more. Many of you look forward to this. If you hold out just a little longer, say 10 years, some of you current bachelorettes might have better luck snagging younger, awesomer studs.
Of course this imbalance all stems from China’s one child per household policy that often saw families choosing to have boys as their only child and to abort the female fetuses as a practice of population control which retained males who would theoretically provide better for their families. It’s been called gendercide. Now aware of its severe gender imbalance, the Chinese government is making a strong push to the public to look more favorably on girls, hoping to stem the tide of aborted females. So far it’s only been slightly effective (there are banners saying stuff like “Girls are swell”), and it will still take generations for things to even out.
This sort of situation hasn’t really been an issue in previous civilizations. You could draw some similarities with the imbalances after the world wars, when there was a surplus of women when many Johnnys didn’t come marching home again. It’s believed the feminist movement even gained traction from the higher number of single professional women of the 1920s and 1930s. I just thought I’d point that out.
Keanu Reeves waking up in Jello
Concerns have been voiced that this excess of single men, unable to mate, may create many more societal issues in the years to come: wars to cull the surplus males, a rise in crime (particularly rape), an increase in prostitution, a rise in homosexuality, and many more sloppy apartments.
Since it will take many decades to correct the situation in China, what other solutions might there be to help the problem? I’ve come up with a few ideas and only one of them uses bachelors as human batteries a la The Matrix.
Chinese Bachelor Solution #1: Promote religions, like Buddhism or Catholicism, where bachelors become monks or priests. You might have to lure them in with church bingo at first, but do whatever works. This would require a moderate change in the government’s stance toward religion (I’m not pushing either religion. Baptist or Methodist monasteries could be developed, just to mess with things.).
Solution # 2: Chinese mail order grooms- When one thinks of arranging spouses to order, mail order brides from places like Eastern Europe spring to mind. Now with many young Chinese men potentially unable to find mates nearby, they’ll need to cast wider worldwide nets and this may include making themselves available for marriage by mail order. Bigger boxes. More air holes.
Solution # 3: Human batteries a la The Matrix- In the movie The Matrix people lived in watery pods and existed in a dream state, while powering the evil machines. Never mind that you could put caviar on iv and call it a spa weekend. Forget that Beijing and Shanghai could be powered cleanly and cheaply from now until Chinese New Year. No, I suppose it’s not an option (or even a good human rights thing), unless you just do Gilligan-style power-maker with the coconut bicycle making electricity (come to think of it, gyms around the world could do this bit and harness the power to run their tv’s). I’m sure there’d be some way to do it, though it doesn’t really fix the mating thing, does it? Hmm. Forget this one.
Solution # 4: Men dating outside their age groups- I realize guys throughout history have been dating outside their own age group, but it’s usually been scary old rich guys dating younger helpless and/or money-grubbing women (the dudes have more cows for dowries). The Future Army of Chinese Bachelors (cool band name!) may need to consider the limited options and be more open to dating older women, widows and retirees even. And if China can find way to pump out extra females (without aborting males), say through in vitro fertilization or some genetic magic, then the extra dudes could date younger without skewing things too much for the younger guys.
Solution # 5: Cryonics? I’m just putting it out there.
Solution # 6: Find female alien life. I think there have been B-movies about this.
Solution # 7: Import women- Let’s face it, China may do well to find incentives to import women to China. It might be useful to pay women to move to China and marry Chinese men. I can see it now, in 10 years time there will be specials on 20/20 and Oprah about how China has an army of bachelors just waiting for all available women to come for marriage and money. Perhaps special women-only schools could be set up to draw female students from around the world. Maybe it could be something like marketing the acrobat schools to Bollywood dancers (that’s the group I’d aim for).
So, China has a big problem, but there are often viable solutions to difficult problems. Hopefully something can be done to improve the potential for millions of Chinese, while avoiding a catastrophic future involving millions of filthy bachelor pads.
When I re-edit, I’ll find a way to sneak in Bowie’s song “China Doll”.
The secret word is imbalance.
Vaguely Related Reading:
Logan’s Run and Population Control
Not Really Related, but Nifty Reads:
My Bucket List: 100 Things To Do Before I Die
Celebrity Crushes: The Girl Next Door
Celebrity Crushes: Is Elegance Elitist?
Sound Of Music DEATHMATCH!!! Liesl v Maria
Getting Colder:
Which Is Your Type? A Pseudo-Cosmo Quiz
The Prophecy Of The Tornado And the Trailer
How NOT To Decorate The Bachelor Pad
Bachelor Step #1: THE BACHELOR PAD
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
A Bachelor President For Presidents’ Day
Valentine Reading: Valentine’s Day Shame
Related Reading:
Bachelor Profiles: Mad King Ludwig
Bachelor Profiles: Vincent Van Gogh
Bachelor Profiles: Sherlock Holmes
Famous Historical Bachelors-A List
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
BACHELOR PROFILES: Vincent Van Gogh
by Jonathan Belgian Waffle Perry
So, Vincent Van Gogh was a bachelor. Had a few girlfriends. Painted some pictures. Dated his models. Hung out with Monet and Gauguin. Lived with a hooker. Spent time as a missionary. Went a little crazy. Cut off his earlobe. Painted some more. Killed himself. Was one of those tortured artist types. Poor bachelor artist.
Born in 1853 in Holland, Vincent Van Gogh, the son of a pastor, was raised in a cultured and religious household. Throughout his life he was a bit unstable and lacked self-confidence. He held positions as a bookstore clerk, an art salesman, and a missionary in Belgium, a position from which he was forced to resign due to over-zealousness. He stayed in Belgium to study art. The most famous work of his early Dutch period is the somber-toned painting The Potato Eaters.
Starry Night
As often happens with those weird free-wheeling artist types, not to mention pastors’ kids gone bad, Van Gogh became involved with one of his models, Clasina Maria Hoomik, known as ‘Sien‘, a former prostitute. She and her 2 children moved in with Vincent for a time, until Vincent’s brother Theo pressured Vincent to break off the relationship. Not long after, Margot Begemann fell in love with Vincent, but after opposition from both families, she attempted suicide, leaving Vincent very distraught. To further matters, Van Gogh was shortly accused of fathering the child of one of his models. He was shunned by the town and moved.
The Potato Eaters
In 1886 he moved back to Paris where he studied painting with Cormon and met Pisarro, Monet, and Gauguin (what a namedropper). It was at this point he began painting in lighter tones, using a more Impressionistic style, as he wormed his way into becoming a pioneer of Expressionism.
In Arles, France he’d hoped to meet with his friends and start an art school, cuz art schools are cool. Eventually Gauguin joined him there, but they didn’t get along and during an epileptic fit, Vincent came at Gauguin with a razor, but instead cut off part of his own earlobe. Another account says Van Gogh left the scene and cut off his entire ear flush with his head. A further account says Vincent cut off the earlobe, wrapped it in newspaper and gave it to a prostitute named Rachel, asking her to “keep this object carefully”. (Happy Valentine’s Day.) Vincent’s fits of madness worsened and he was sent to the asylum in Saint-Remy for treatment. It was during his stay at the asylum that he painted The Starry Night, often considered his magnum opus.
In 1890, after showing improvement, he was released from the asylum and went to live in Auvers-sur-Oise. Within a few weeks, he shot himself to death “for the good of all.” He was 37. During his short life he produced over 2000 paintings and drawings, but sold only one.
Chalk another one up for creative type goes nuts, fails at relationships, and kills himself.
7 Things You Should Know About Vincent Van Gogh
1. He’s considered a pioneer of the Expressionist Movement
2. His most famous painting, Starry Night, was painted while he was in an insane asylum
3. He cut off at least part of his ear
4. Served as a missionary for a time in a coal-mining district of Belgium
5. He had a close relationship with his brother Theo, who supported Vincent financially for many years
6. He walked into a field and shot himself in the chest. He died 2 days later.
7. He was a heavy absinthe drinker
Check out other Bachelor Profiles of woe and related reads:
Bachelor Profiles: Sherlock Holmes
Bachelor Profiles: Mad King Ludwig
Bachelor Profiles: The Bachelor President
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
Bachelors In History
by Jonathan B. Perry
While being a bachelor often means spending lots of quality time alone with Ramen Noodles in your underwear in front of the TV (the noodles shouldn’t be in your underwear), in one sense the bachelor is never alone. Where there’s one bachelor there are several bachelors, much like rodent infestations in your neighbor’s house. I don’t mean to say that the bachelors have been cloned or that they flock together in communal groups reveling in their singleness (though monks and frat guys do), nor do I mean to point out the bachelorhood of non-straight men gathered on Fire Island for high festival (some aren‘t bachelors anyway), but rather that there are legions of bachelors today, as there have been throughout the ages and ever will be.
The ancient Egyptian royals fared well because those lucky bachelor pharaohs always had the option of marrying a sister or mother or both, and anyway it helped keep the bloodlines pure, sometimes even providing extra toes for better statues (European royalty had their cousins instead). Outside of some lurid Greek wrestlemania action, you don’t hear or read much about bachelors in ancient history. Take the Bible, for example. Much of the biographical information lists such things as “Bob begat Fred.” and “Fred begat Steve, then Fred died.“. Because of the specialness of lineage, the non-begatters are rarely seen.
For instance, do you know much about your Great-Great-Great Uncle Franklin? Probably not. He was a festive single dude and, once a generation or two had passed, was pretty well forgotten except for maybe as a dead-end branch on your family tree. If you don’t maintain a family tree or if the people in your family are grunters, then it’s as if Uncle Franklin never existed. So it was in days of old. It’s very sad. Franklin might have been a dancing machine who lit up a room, played a mean fiddle, and built his own log cabin, but unless Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about him, he’s lost to history and memory. Poor Uncle Franklin.
I’m not suggesting going out and getting a family so you can be written about, not just because lots of familied people have been forgotten too, but also because being remembered isn’t an excuse to mate. Not a good one. But take heart. There have been plenty of bachelors through history that have wormed their way into history. Probably the most famous bachelor, Jesus, seems to have really left his mark and won’t soon be forgotten, not that his fame could be easily matched. It’s always useful to have dedicated biographers or to be God. As a side note I will subversively mention the speculation that Jesus and Mary Magdalene might have been married, potentially weakening the case for worthy bachelordom, though this marriage theory is partly from the highly questionable writings of the Apocrypha, and the theory that Jesus had children by Mary is more of a fun conspiracy theorist’s tale, most famously promulgated by The DaVinci Code.
One other Biblical bachelor of note is Paul, as in ’St. Paul’, though there have also been theories that he was perhaps struggling with his sexuality and only stayed single to avoid the issue, but I’m sure that’s just Hollywood gossip and bizarrely tantalizing scriptural/watercooler interpretation (see 1 Corinthians 7).
The secret fake word is familied.
Related Reading:
Famous Historical Bachelors-A List
Bachelor Profiles: Vincent Van Gogh
Bachelor Profiles: Sherlock Holmes
Bachelor Profiles: Mad King Ludwig
Bachelor Profiles: The Bachelor President
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
BACHELORS IN CATHOLICISM
Sean Connery & Christian Slater monk it up in 'The Name of the Rose'
by Jonathan B. Perry
My brother Jay thinks it was our slightly crazed college history professor, Dr. Schroeder, who once said that the Dark Ages were brought on, in part, by all the good thinkers dying out as non-reproductive monks. This actually makes some sense when you consider that monks filled medieval monasteries with the most educated minds of the time.
It seems they were all locked in the libraries where they got smart, recorded some chants, filmed “The Name of the Rose”, and died off with little instruction to procreators. Still, they managed to copy thousands of books by hand and probably had plenty of time to read a few tacky romance novels along the way before these non-pop-up books were shipped to places like the Alexandria library before they were accidentally destroyed in heavily regretted book burning accidents (the Alexandria library was probably destroyed long before monk-writing became all the rage, but whatever). 
If, like these medieval monks, you have lots of free time in isolation where you don’t necessarily have to farm to maintain a livelihood because the peasants are growing potatoes for you, then you could work through a few books a week or perhaps write a swell treatise on the nature of Christ and how he did alright as a single dude, at least until that whole crucifixion thing.
Catholicism has long been a solid bastion of support for bachelorism. Monasteries, abbeys, and, in fact, the entire church hierarchical structure all the way up to the papacy are designed with the bachelor’s interests at heart. Popes have historically been celibate bachelors. “Officially”. Thomas Aquinas became a monk and successfully avoided sex, even when his brothers did a frat hazing and tried to lure him with a prostitute. Despite the many bachelor successes, there are a couple notables who procured women (sounds like snagging weed) and followed up by changing to Protestantism. Martin Luther was still a bachelor monk when he posted his 95 Theses. 
Then he married a nun and they became Protestants, quickly populating Protestantism with six children.
English monarch Henry VIII liked women so much that he cast off the smothering confines of Catholicism and started his own church with himself as the head of it so he could divorce the queen and marry some chick with 12 fingers before he executed her and married a few others.
Despite the institutionalized singleness in Catholicism, it seems any loss of reproduction in the church hierarchy has been more than made up for by the lack of birth control for the non-single Catholic, so the plan does seem to be well balanced and thought out after all. Whether it was really planned that way is uncertain.
Oh, RABBIT RABBIT!!!
Related Reading:
Famous Historical Bachelors-A List
Bachelor Profiles: Vincent Van Gogh
Bachelor Profiles: Sherlock Holmes
Bachelor Profiles: Mad King Ludwig
Bachelor Profiles: The Bachelor President
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it! It’s free and stuff.
ORAL HISTORY FIXATION COOKING
Last night I was poking around online for some simple bachelor dishes to try and/or share and was delighted to find this. Not only does this Great Depression Cooking video meet my need to find a simple recipe (though I probably won’t make it), but it also gives me my oral history fix (which is different from my oral fixation). 91 year-old Clara cooks a simple pasta and pea dish while telling about food during the Great Depression and gives a tale of Prohibition-era bootleggers making whiskey next door (sort of making her a Girl Next Door). Clara is one bitchin’ babe for 91. There are a total of 10 videos on the YouTube channel, so you can stock up on cheap recipes and stories in time for the next Great Depression.
What are some easy recipes you like that are bachelor doable?
The Domesticated Bachelor has reached 35,000 hits!! Thanks for reading.
Related Post:
Becoming A Domesticated Bachelor: Step #4. Learn To Cook
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below!
Related Blogs
- #004 — Technolust @ Short Cummings Audio presents Happily Domesticated
- Great Cars at Low Prices: Seized Car Auctions
- Sonnd › <a href="http://www.mondaynote.com/2010/05/02/balkanizing …
- Deewana (Full Song) By Param D [HQ]
- Series C:Half Height Door Kit | Home Computer Desk Furniture …
- Cialis brand name « Erectile Dysfunction
- Solid-hoofed herbivorous quadruped domesticated since prehistoric …
- Buy Cheap Midwest Life Stages Double-Door Folding Metal Dog Crate …
- eBooks & the Downfall of Literature: The Great Debate – Round III …
- What is the difference between HREF and SRC links? « TagFocus.com
- Value Stream Mapping (VSM) – All about economics on the web
- Varying Your Value Bets
- NO To a Value Added Tax | RedState
- What to do about ZodiacFacts and #zf on Twitter? | PapayaSoft
- What are the main causes of depression and anxiety among women …
- STUDY OF DEPRESSION IN LATER LIFE OFFERS IMPORTANT CLUE IN SEARCH …
- Param D Deewana
- balakrishna param veer chakra opening photos DasariNarayanaRao …
- A great family | Kiwiblog
- Expired Domain Name Traffic | Host Rage
Presidents’ Day Special! The Bachelor President
by Jonathan B Perry
It seems, historically, that marriage has been an unspoken requirement for American presidents, except, of course, for President #15, James Buchanan (1791-1868), whose raw bachelor sex appeal helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War (maybe not bachelor-induced, but his inability to stop southern succession wasn’t helpful). Buchanan was the Democrat president right before Lincoln and is often considered by historians to be one of the worst. And of all the presidents, he was the only one who never married.
It’s not that he didn’t try to debachelorize. At about age 28 he actually fell in love with and even proposed to Ann Coleman, daughter of a wealthy iron-mill owner. Sadly, Ann’s folks didn’t think old JB was up to snuff. Shortly after Buchanan’s proposal was denied, the poor girl died under mysterious circumstances, a rumored suicide, and it seems that JB never tried again, swearing off marriage. He was even barred from the funeral. Keeping her letters always, he requested they be burned at his death. Even so, it was suspected by many, including Andrew Jackson, that Buchanan may have maintained a homosexual relationship with Alabama Senator William Rufus King, with whom he lived for 15 years. Aaron V Brown referred to the two as “Buchanan and his wife”. It’s hard to know. Times were different then, though it is interesting to note that the nieces of both men later burned the men’s letters of correspondence. Lots of letter burning. How will they burn our blogs or emails when we’re gone? Didn’t hear this stuff much in history class.
Anyway, Happy Presidents’ Day!
Related Reading:
Bachelor Profiles: Mad King Ludwig
Bachelor Profiles: Sherlock Holmes
Famous Historical Bachelors-A List
Subscribe to the Domesticated Bachelor through RSS or link to one of the buttons below! Do it!
