Mutton Hash and Turnip Tops

For Rollo at The Rational Male, a man who isn’t his wife's Kind of Alpha is more or less condemned to a lifetime of sexual frustration and thick contempt under a thin layer of civility-in-public. Without Alpha a woman in a relationship is an uncontrollable shrew, who will jump into the arms of the first passing biker with enough of her favourite drug. OK. I’m exaggerating his views only slightly. It doesn’t have to be a biker.

So there’s something Rollo doesn’t understand, and it’s an oversight common to good-looking men. For the majority of the population, who are not physically attractive, sex is a hygiene factor and its mere provision is enough. They don’t need to eat steak and salmon, as Somerset Maugham noticed:

The keenest pleasure to which the body is susceptible is that of sexual congress. I have known men who gave up their whole lives to this; they are grown old now, but I have noticed, not without surprise, that they look upon them as well spent. It has been my misfortune that a native fastidiousness has prevented me from indulging as much in this particular delight as I might have. I have exercised moderation because I was hard to please. When from time to time I have seen the person with whom the great lovers satisfied their desires I have been more astonished by the robustness of their appetites than envious of their successes. It is obvious that you need not often go hungry if you are willing to dine off mutton hash and turnip tops.

A woman with an honest view of her status will settle for the provisioning of sex by an ordinary man. It’s a hygiene factor for both of them, and they are both better off with it. The majority of the human race lives like this.

The nonsense starts when women have delusions about their desirability, or profess self-serving rubbish to mask the fact that they have married a man they don’t find sexually attractive, but do find a useful payer of bills. Hypergamy says that all women have ideas above their station, which isn’t true. What is true is that, given the chance on a plate all women would have a night with their favourite male hottie. That’s not hypergamy, at least any more than my willingness to own a Ferrari given one for free plus lifetime insurance and maintenance is a sign of my consumerism. Consumerism is when I sacrifice the quality of my life to get the Ferrari: hypergamy is when she refuses men of her value in the vain hope of landing one way above her value.

So let’s deal with the Alpha thing. Both Rollo and Roissy define in it terms of women. For Rollo, Alpha is a relational concept: X is an Alpha male for Y at time T if there exists a female Y who wants to have unconditional sex with X at time T. So today Rollo can be Alpha for Alice, but not for Barbie, and tomorrow he doesn’t even make the cut for Alice. For Roissy, Alpha is measured by weighted notch count, where the weighting is the SMV of the woman. So Roissy can be Alpha even if Alice and Barbie don’t want to fuck him, because he’s got the notch count to prove it.

As defined by either of them, Alpha is completely independent of a man’s moral character, economic productivity, intellectual and cultural creativity, self-discipline, and even his preference for dressing from Jermyn Street. So if being a douchebag or a drug-dealer is what it takes to get with the 10’s, then maybe a decent man stays away from the 10’s. If some Four with delusions of Eight gives him the brush-off, maybe he should count himself lucky. Self-respect matters, or should matter, more than getting laid and having a woman around the place.

However, a guy gotta get laid now and again, and that’s why English men and women drink so much: so they can take the sharp edges off their judgement and give themselves the chance of some physical intimacy. Game can turn the whole thing into, well, a game, but only if he accepts that he’s not going to be meeting any potential long-term relationships that way, and he’s willing to accept that it does not say anything about a woman’s moral character that she will fall for Game, anymore than it says anything about a cat’s ability as a mouser that it goes crazy for catnip.

So is Alpha something a man should aim for, as he should aim for a 200lb bench-press and deadlift? No. A man lives his life for the approval of himself and his few peers, not for the opinions of women, employers and other people with a vested interest in exploiting him.

But he should bear in mind that women (who aren’t co-dependent or looking for weak men to bully) need attention, excitement, to see that he has a purpose, and that he has thought about what they are doing the next time they meet, and before or after they have sex. (This is the ‘Alpha’ of which I was speaking in a previous post.)

He should also shun White Knighting, Beta supplication and orbiting, thinking that his goal in life is to provide for a wife and children, and also avoid TV and computer games, the use of social media for anything except Game, and thinking that he’s some kind of sad sack if he doesn’t have a woman in his life. What makes a man is purpose, self-respect, independence and permenant self-development. All of us flinch along the way, and all of us compromise some of it from time to time. The point is not to abandon it away for anything: money, fame, power, or women.

What’s Wrong Over At The Rational Male

let me unequivocally footnote here that women are absolutely capable of a learned empathy and sympathy for men. However those sympathies, like genuine desire, cannot be negotiated for. Whatever your misguided concept is about how Relational Equity should merit a woman’s sympathy or respect, those are only valid and genuine when a woman freely gives them to a man she perceives as Alpha, never as something he’s due.

That comment from this post made a rather large impression on me that it’s taken a while to understand. I feel the same way as the commentator who sniffed “seems a self-defeating statement to me”, but I still didn’t know why it got under my skin.

Then I re-read the Iron Laws of Tomassi and got it.

1. Frame is everything. Always be aware of the subconscious balance of who’s frame in which you are operating. Always control the Frame, but resist giving the impression that you are.
2. NEVER, under pain of death, honestly or dishonestly reveal the number of women you’ve slept with or explain any detail of your sexual experiences with them to a current lover.
3. Any woman who makes you wait for sex, or by her actions implies she is making you wait for sex; the sex is NEVER worth the wait.
4. NEVER under any circumstance live with a woman you aren’t married to or are not planning to marry in within 6 months.
5. NEVER allow a woman to be in control of the birth.
6. Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.
7. It is always time and effort better spent developing new, fresh, prospective women than it will ever be in attempting to reconstruct a failed relationship. Never root through the trash once the garbage has been dragged to the curb. You get messy, your neighbors see you do it, and what you thought was worth digging for is never as valuable as you thought it was.
8. Always let a woman figure out why she won’t fuck you, never do it for her.
9. Never Self-Deprecate under any circumstance.

Compare these to Roissy / Heartiste's Sixteen Commandments of Poon (edited text):

I. Never say ‘I Love You’ first. Women want to feel like they have to overcome obstacles to win a man’s heart.
II. Make her jealous.
III. You shall make your mission, not your woman, your priority
IV. Don’t play by her rules. If you allow a woman to make the rules she will resent you with a seething contempt even a rapist cannot inspire.
V. Adhere to the golden ratio: give your woman 2/3 of everything she gives you.
VI. Keep her guessing. True to their inscrutable natures, women ask questions they don’t really want direct answers to.
VII. Always keep two in the kitty. Never allow yourself to be a “kept man”.
VIII. Say you’re sorry only when absolutely necessary
IX. Connect with her emotions
X. Ignore her beauty: the man who trains his mind to subdue the reward centers of his brain when reflecting upon a beautiful female face will magically transform his interactions with women. His apprehension and self-consciousness will melt away, paving the path for more honest and self-possessed interactions with the objects of his desire.
XI. Be irrationally self-confident: no matter what your station in life, stride through the world without apology or excuse.
XII. Maximize your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.
XIII. Err on the side of too much boldness, rather than too little
XIV. Fuck her good
XV. Maintain your state control: you are an oak tree. You will not be manipulated by crying, yelling, lying, head games, sexual withdrawal, jealousy ploys, pity plays, shit tests, hot/cold/hot/cold, disappearing acts, or guilt trips. She will rain and thunder all around you and you will shelter her until her storm passes. She will not drag you into her chaos or uproot you. When you have mastery over yourself, you will have mastery over her.
XVI. Never be afraid to lose her: you must not fear. Fear is the love-killer.

Rollo is all about the warning. This is the advice of a man who has seen too many bad things happen, and doesn’t trust women, or the law. It’s all about avoiding the downside. And Iron Law 6 is just utterly bleak - unless it’s a point about men wanting something unrealistic from women. When we dig into the details, however, it isn’t. He really is saying that men love romantically, and women love opportunistically. Which is a fancy way of saying that the love a wife has for her husband is the same as the love a shepherd has for his sheepdog. Every now and then he has to issue a remark like the one at the start of this post. Which convinces exactly no-one.

Roissy the player who loves the game. He thinks women need to be treated in a certain way (twenty-five words or less: “treat ‘em mean, keep ‘em keen”) and will respond with sex and affection for the men who do so. His post on the different types of game needed for women of different ages is a masterpiece in its analysis of white Anglo women-with-jobs-in-large-urban-areas, and the tone it adopts. There’s nothing about marriage, children, birth control or anything else here, because it’s quite clear that Roissy is just not in the long-term relationship business, and given that, certain things are just simple consequences.

Rollo is “you can’t trust them, and all your love is in vain”, while Roissy is “love them, but don’t commit”. For Rollo, being in a relationship is a constant fight against her attempts to diminish and control a man: for Roissy, being in a relationship is until she gets tiresome. Rollo’s women are scheming, opportunistic, contingent, calculating, relentless and inexhaustible in their campaign to reduce their men to sexless servants. Rossy’s women are confused, emotional, game-playing, sexual and contemptuous of men who lack confidence and purpose. Rollo’s is the world of the failed marriage, the unfaithful wives of serving soldiers, the gold-digger and the manipulative shrew. For Rollo, women are a burden to be borne: for Roissy they are a pleasure to be enjoyed while they last.

There is a miasma of distrust of women in The Rational Male. It’s never obvious, from the pages of that blog, why men would bother getting married or even have short-term relationships. It’s an endless recital of the thousands of ways that women can behave like assholes, ungrateful bitches, shrews, deceivers, liars and traitors. And that’s just ugly. However true all the examples may be.

And there’s not an element of resistance about it. It’s always about how the Feminine Imperative and hypergamy are protean and invincible, never about how to trick it, avoid it, or generally fight back. And I have to think that part of the reason for this is that Rollo is married, and married men are, unless they can afford the divorce (and from what he’s said about his job, Rollo would get reamed by the Family Court), pretty much hostage negotiators for life and limited to damage control. As a single man, Roissy can walk away. As can all the single men. It's why you will never hear an older lifetime bachelor regret his decision to stay single.

What got under my skin is that the quote is way too bleak, and way too inaccurate. It just doesn’t describe the situation of a lot of people. And that’s for the next post.

Day Boat Fish, The City

This may just about be the most pretentious thing I've ever seen in a restaurant, and I've had lunch at Le Negresco in Nice. Day Boat frigging Fish! Two hundred yards from Liverpool Street Station? Which Day Boat would that be? Old Jack's or Young Master Thomas'? Day-caught fish is what you get at the sea front at Aldeburgh. All of which further re-enforces my feeling that there's something not quite real about the City of London. Like it's a giant theme park made of second-hand ideas.

God and Mammon: St Botolphs + Heron Tower

One morning last week, around 07:45 I saw the top picture and got a few more. A couple of hours later, the sun went in.

I wake up at 05:30 and get back home at 19:00 at the earliest

It’s cold. I wake up at 05:30 and get back home at 19:00 at the earliest. I go to bed at 21:30 or a little later. I’m taking two magnesium pills after the gym to help with recovering afterwards. I’m benching 3x4x80 kgs (again), 3x6x70 the deadlift and (again) you do it at my age. I do not have a lot of energy spare at the end of any day, and Saturday is a day dedicated to recovering. Sunday I’m back in the gym and maybe a movie if there’s one worth watching.

So I don’t have anything much to say. I will do soon. I’m listening to Walter Rudin talking about how Set Theory emerged out of problems to do with the convergence of Fourier Series.


A couple of days ago I watched an old video of Jean Dieudonne talking about the history of algebraic geometry


You Tube is full of rubbish. Its existence is entirely justified by stuff like this.

Plus I read a really interesting post by Krauser on the train home this evening, because I was too tired to concentrate on Max Tegmark’s book.

Thus my life at the moment.

Curators + Extremists = Win-Win PR

Towards the end of January this happened

An artwork depicting high-heeled shoes on Islamic prayer mats has been removed from an exhibition after a Muslim group warned of possible violence in the wake of the Paris attacks. The French-Algerian artist, Zoulikha Bouabdellah, withdrew the work from an exhibition in a northern Paris suburb with a large Muslim population after an Islamic group told local authorities it could provoke “uncontrollable, irresponsible incidents”.

A few days ago, a film called 50 Shades of Grey opened and this happened 

As stars Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson walked the red carpet in London’s Leicester Square with director Sam Taylor-Johnson and author El James, who wrote the original novel, protestors made it clear they would not be among the four and a half million cinemagoers who have already bought tickets to view the movie this weekend across the globe. The group, which calls itself 50 Shades is Domestic Abuse, said it was determined the film should not arrive in the UK unchallenged.

A few years ago, Tate Modern included Richard Prince’s notorious painting of a naked 10 year old Brooke Shields in its Pop Life show, and this happened

Tate Modern has bowed to pressure from London's Metropolitan police and permanently removed a controversial photograph of film star Brooke Shields from public view. The image, which depicts the 10-year-old actor nude and heavily made up, was originally taken in the 1970s for a Playboy publication, then reproduced by artist Richard Prince in a 1983 work entitled Spiritual America. It had been a key part of Tate's Modern's Pop Life show, which also contains works by Warhol, Jeff Koons and Cosey Fanni Tutti, but the room containing it was sealed off following a visit by officers from the Met's obscene publications unit two weeks ago.

Even the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid got in on the act last year, with a tiny piece of work about burning churches by a group you will never hear of again.

I am not going to go on a rant about freedom of speech and artistic creativity. Someone did that in the case of the Tate, and they missed every relevant point while discussing a bunch of meaningless art theory twaddle. This isn't about freedom of speech and political correctness.

 It’s the PR coverage, stupid.

Many curators now look for at least one piece that one or more single-interest activist groups (aka “extremists”) might take exception to, maybe by some kind of public demonstration, or threatening communication that the PR department can pass on to the Press. If the Press does its job properly, everyone wins: the artist gets their name out there, as does the gallery, and as do the extremists. Everyone gets a sound-bite in favour of their cause (the extremists) or of some highfalutin’ principle (the gallery, the artist).

But most of all, everyone gets to feel, for a brief moment, as if they matter a sparrow’s tweet.

There is little that matters less in this world than modern art, except the views of a single-issue group. (I like art, even modern art, but I don’t think it matters.) A junior product manager putting together a "compelling" Powerpoint slide to persuade the product team to persuade the marketing team to alter the wording on a brochure has more impact on the world than a modern artist or a single-issue-extremist. And if there is one group of people haunted by the sense of the pointlessness and utter insignificance of their jobs, it’s junior product managers. So the artists and gallerists and curators get in on the politics game, because that makes their daubs significant. This creates an over-heated world in whch it matters if Dasha Zukova sits on a couch that looks like a black woman . Everyone got props on that one, especially Claire Sulmers, editor of FashionBombDaily.com, a fashion blog of which you will never hear again in your life.

The curators do it deliberately (I don’t think the Zhukova chair incident was deliberate: Russians just don’t get the American way of moral posturing). In fact, I would be utterly unsurprised to learn that the PR departments of the galleries and museums, uh, prompt some of the groups who subsequently object.

Capitalism turns everything to its advantage. Absolutely everything.

Should you think I’m being a trifle conspiratorial, well, way back in 1997 Charles Saatchi put the infamous Myra Hindley children’s handcasts painting in his Sensation show at the Royal Academy. Someone threw eggs and ink at it. Other people cried. The painting was taken down and cleaned, but not put up again. The queues were round the block.  This journalist got the point.

Will Anyone Actually Buy This Book?

Here's the book...

Which looks interesting. Then I turned it over to look at the price...

£163.99? One hundred freaking sixty fracking how much?

Statistics books are peculiarly over-priced compared with mathematics texts, which are still cheaper than physics or engineering texts. Maybe maths books are cheaper than regular academic books. But along with food technology texts, statistics books do seem to be pricey. 

I don't know if it contains £163.99's worth of useful techniques and insight, but if it does, it's an exception.