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27 Ways to Be a Modern Man
[NYTIMES] ... or the definition of the problem in 27 steps...
1. When the modern man buys shoes for his spouse, he doesn’t have to ask her sister for the size. And he knows which brands run big or small.
The old-fashioned man doesn't buy shoes for his spouse. He has an approximate idea of the size, but she knows what she wants a lot better than he does. He may accompany her to the mall, but being an old-fashioned wife she sends him off to look at power tools or to ride the escalator a few times.
2. The modern man never lets other people know when his confidence has sunk. He acts as if everything is going swimmingly until it is.
That way he'll look appropriately foolish when the ground falls out from under him. Normal men have their ups and downs and try to react appropriately. Old-fashioned men act like normal men.
3. The modern man is considerate. At the movie theater, he won’t munch down a mouthful of popcorn during a quiet moment. He waits for some ruckus.
The old-fashioned man doesn't chew loud enough to disrupt a movie. His mother taught him better manners than that.
4. The modern man doesn’t cut the fatty or charred bits off his fillet. Every bite of steak is a privilege, and it all goes down the hatch.
The old-fashioned man eats what's edible and doesn't regard steak as a privilege, even though the price of beef is getting ridiculous. A bit of fat and a bit of char taste pretty good and he never wastes food.
5. The modern man won’t blow 10 minutes of his life looking for the best parking spot. He finds a reasonable one and puts his car between the lines.
Old fashioned men have just as much if not more common sense. Time being money, don't park too far away. Time being money, don't waste a hell of a lot of time driving around looking for a place.
6. Before the modern man heads off to bed, he makes sure his spouse’s phone and his kids’ electronic devices are charging for the night.
The old-fashioned man lets the wife and kids check their own daggone chargers because they've run off with all his USB cords and never brought them back, causing him to spend big money over the course of a year to keep the supply replinished.
7. The modern man buys only regular colas, like Coke or Dr Pepper. If you walk into his house looking for a Mountain Dew, he’ll show you the door.
The old-fashioned man drinks what he pleases and has a liking for beer. Yuengling Black and Tan is somewhere between nectar and ambrosia. If he's in Canada he drinks Herrmann's Dark. In Germany he looks for Thurn und Taxis.
8. The modern man uses the proper names for things. For example, he’ll say “helicopter,” not “chopper” like some gauche simpleton.
The old-fashioned man never uses stoopid terminology like "surgical strike." He also watches his language around ladies, which he thinks is more important than being finicky about what to call a heli.
9. Having a daughter makes the modern man more of a complete person. He learns new stuff every day.
Having a daughter always makes a decent man's heart go pitty-pat. So do sons, but the pitty-pat feels different. Once you reach the grandparent stage the pitty-pats can make you have to sit down and catch your breath. So what's so "modern" about that?
10. The modern man makes sure the dishes on the rack have dried completely before putting them away.
The old-fashioned man sometimes remembers to do the dishes. He also realizes he's not as good a housekeeper as his wife and accepts her critiques with patience and good humor. Usually.
11. The modern man has never “pinned” a tweet, and he never will.
The old-fashioned man doesn't even know what "pinning a tweet" is. He did once catch a sensitive part of himself in a zipper, so he's pretty careful that way.
12. The modern man checks the status of his Irish Spring bar before jumping in for a wash. Too small, it gets swapped out.
The old-fashioned man, having gone through a few hard times, uses the new bar of whatever was on sale at the Dollar Store, then squeezes the old sliver to the new bar, making them one when they dry out.
13. The modern man listens to Wu-Tang at least once a week.
The old-fashioned man can't recall ever having heard Wu Tang, though he did once have a book of poems by Wang Wei. His tastes in music are catholic, ranging from 30s jazz through ballet to bluegrass to doo-wop.
14. The modern man still jots down his grocery list on a piece of scratch paper. The market is no place for his face to be buried in the phone.
The old-fashioned man tries not to go to the grocery store hungry and tries to keep a running total of what he's buying in his head.
15. The modern man has hardwood flooring. His children can detect his mood from the stamp of his Kenneth Cole oxfords.
The old-fashioned man has hardwood flooring, too. Carpet gets filthy with age. He has no idea what brand of shoe he is wearing, and he's probably owned them for years.
16. The modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off, so that his wife has a chance to get away.
The old-fashioned man often locks the front door before going to sleep. Since he has a dog or two he's warned if any intruders break in, and he has fanged help to fight them off.
17. Does the modern man have a melon baller? What do you think? How else would the cantaloupe, watermelon and honeydew he serves be so uniformly shaped?
The old-fashioned man has a nephew whose wife might own a melon baller, he thinks. He can't stand seedless watermelon or bruised cantaloupe.
18. The modern man has thought seriously about buying a shoehorn.
The old-fashioned man has owned his shoes for so long they fall off his feet sometimes. There's a shoehorn in his shoeshine box. It came with the kit thirty years ago.
19. The modern man buys fresh flowers more to surprise his wife than to say he is sorry.
The old-fashioned man seldom admits he's wrong and his wife sometimes calls him a grouch. He doesn't buy her flowers as often as he should, but he is trying.
20. On occasion, the modern man is the little spoon. Some nights, when he is feeling down or vulnerable, he needs an emotional and physical shield.
The old-fashioned man isn't sure what the hell the modern man is talking about.
21. The modern man doesn’t scold his daughter when she sneezes while eating an apple doughnut, even if the pieces fly everywhere.
The old-fashioned man once whacked his daughter's butt, then put his hand over her mouth when she went to holler so she'd blow the stone out of her nose. He doesn't know why she put it there, but it did come out.
22. The modern man still ambles half-naked down his driveway each morning to scoop up a crisp newspaper.
The old-fashioned man tries not to go out of the house naked by any fraction so as not to frighten people. He doesn't read a paper newspaper anymore and owns no more than a dozen paper books. He keeps several hundred digital books on Dropbox. That actually makes him feel more modern than the modern man.
23. The modern man has all of Michael Mann’s films on Blu-ray (or whatever the highest quality thing is at the time).
The old-fashioned man has no idea who Michael Mann is, and seldom has time to watch movies anymore.
24. The modern man doesn’t get hung up on his phone’s battery percentage. If it needs to run flat, so be it.
The old-fashioned man says a bad word when his phone dies but doesn't worry about it because no one ever calls him anyway.
25. The modern man has no use for a gun. He doesn’t own one, and he never will.
The old-fashioned man has used guns, is a pretty good shot, and at the moment only owns one, a .22 that he hasn't shot in years. If he felt the urge to buy one for home defense he'd do so, .38 caliber or better. The old-fashioned man isn't afraid of guns. His granddaddy and his Dad taught him to shoot and to care for the things. Guns are neither a phobia nor a fetish with him.
26. The modern man cries. He cries often.
The old-fashioned man is descended from Ug the Caveman. Ug didn't cry, ever, though sometimes his allergies did act up. Ug was a nasty fellow who would sometimes holler at his wife and whack his children. His next door neighbor, Og, didn't like him. Og was a vegetarian who was nice to his wife and kids and would cry at the drop of a hat. One day a sabre toothed tiger came to Og's cave. Og burst into tears and the tiger ate him, leaving his pampered wife and kiddies widows and orphans. The next day the tiger came to Ug's cave. The tiger snarled, Ug snarled, and he thumped the tiger with his club. He skinned the tiger and used it for a rug. He and his family and Og's family ate the tiger. He adopted Og's wife and kiddies. He hollered at both his wives and he beat the kiddies whenever they needed it and sometimes because they might have needed it. When they grew up they were just as bad as he was, but none of them was eaten by a tiger.
27. People aren’t sure if the modern man is a good dancer or not. That is, until the D.J. plays his jam and he goes out there and puts on a clinic.
The old-fashioned man sometimes sings along with The Beer Barrel Polka. When he does his family pretends they're not with him.
Posted by: Fred 2015-10-02
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=431267