Every Other Thursday » Sex

5 Things Not to Give Your Wife on Valentine’s Day

David Binkowski — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 14:30:34 +0000

Fellow Dads, next Monday is Valentine’s Day, which means that countless men across the country will be in the dog house for screwing up this Hallmark holiday. Here’s a cheat sheet so you end up sleeping in the same bed as your spouse next week.

Gift #1: Anything featured on a jewelry store TV ad

Unless your wife likes corny, cheap crap don’t waste your time here. Between the cheesy Open Heart collection (which, btw, looks like two butts more than it does two hearts), diamond pendants and other cupid-inspired junk you’re be at the mall returning it faster than she can finish telling you to “Take it back to Jared”.

Gift #2: A baby

It sound soooo romantic and sweet. “Honey, let’s try for another”. Don’t think with the wrong head this V-Day, man. Think about it: More sleepless nights, more thrilling 2-1, three-hour OT, final score pee wee basketball games, less sex because she’s tired and another college tuition payment hanging over your head. We’re all for having sex, but just remember Rodney Dangerfield’s classic line from “Back to School“: “The best thing about kids – is making ‘em.”

Gift #3: Handmade Card

While it might seem sentimental to make a card for your wife, it’s a bad idea all around. You probably don’t have a great printer at home so it’ll look like something out of Print Shop. And definitely don’t try and hand-write it — years of typing have reduced your penmanship to that of a 2nd grader. Save the amateur crap for your kids. Remember, it’s cute when they do it — and sad when it’s an adult.

Gift #4: No Card

Dude, I totally agree: It’s a made up holiday, so why should I have to drop $6 on a corny piece of badly written tripe? Here’s why: Every other Dad in the neighborhood, at work, at the gym and everywhere else is doing it. Yes, I’m telling you to cave to peer pressure because no one’s wife wants to be That Woman who has to lie to her friends and co-workers because you were too cheap to drop a few dollars. Here’s a tip: Buy a card that has a tasteful image on the outside, black and white pictures are preferred, and is blank on the inside. That way you’re not bound to delivering her a rhyming soliloquy of goofiness that won’t get you laid.

Gift #5: Nude photo

Let’s face it, Dad: You’re not in the same shape you were when you got married. Beer gut, back hair, man boobs – the list goes on and on. There’s a reason they only promote holiday cards with family pictures on them : you’re dressed in a shirt, sweater, possibly a ski mask and maybe even a snowmobile suit to hide your hideous appearance. Stick with what works: take her to dinner, get her drunk, reciprocate in bed and she won’t care that you’re wearing yesterday’s mustard-stained briefs.

Bonus: Exercise equipment

Not sure this one needs a lot of explanation but needless to say that if you’re implying she’s fat and needs to lose weight then you’ll probably be spending next Valentine’s Day paying alimony, sleeping at a Super 8.

There you have it: 5 tips for staying out of the dog house this year. Anything else I missed?

Keep The Sexism Out of Kids Ears

Curtis Silver — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 13:15:59 +0000

I’m not gonna lie – I like titties. Unless they are on ugly fat chicks. The point is, I like the female form. I can’t help but check it out, objectify it and make sexist comments around my friends about said women. I’m a tit man, I’m an ass man, I’m a leg, hair & eyes man. I like it all. The total package. There are so many ways to find a woman physically attractive it’s like being stoned and walking into a fucking Baskin Robbins. Without fat chicks.

Being a man, and for the above reasons I often comment on a hot woman’s appearance to whatever guys I happen to be around. If I’m not around any, then I make the comment in my head. But there are rules to such behavior, rules that many men don’t observe.

First, you never comment on another man’s girl, provided you know the other man and he happens to be around you. Once one of your boys is in a relationship, his woman is no longer a sex object. The best way to avoid picturing your friends wife or girlfriend naked is to pretend she’s a fat chick, or at least has the personality of one. I’m talking about the mean fat chicks, not the cute pudgy chicks. The exception to this rule is that you can comment on the woman when her significant other is not around, then it’s okay.

Second, never admire another woman verbally while with your significant other. That’s just stupid. Not even the hand of Zeus can keep you from looking, but be discreet. My own personal method is looking at everyone, regardless of hotness. That way, I’m just looking at everyone and if one of them happens to be a hot chick, then that’s a bonus. It’s worth it for all the scraggly old people and fatties.

Third, never check out women at the gym. It’s creepy. Stop it. The only time I blatantly do it is when I’m in the service box on the Racquetball court. The back of the court is Plexiglas, and it looks like I’m just looking at my opponent. The guys who stand around oogling chicks are probably the same ones who will try to date rape them later.

Fourth, and this is the most important one – never objectify women around children. Never. Unless those children are deaf and can’t read lips, then it shouldn’t be a problem. Oh, and it’s still okay to make fun of fat people as a whole, just don’t single out fat chicks.

To expand on this, One has to be careful when making sexist comments around the children, especially if those children are boys. You have to think, do I want my kids growing up as sexist and biased as I am? Sadly, there are many fathers that don’t think like this and their kids turn out just like them. Ass slapping disrespectful clods that still manage to bag all the broken and downtrodden women.

Because it works both ways, the daughters who see their fathers treat their mothers with disrespect grow up thinking that’s how women are supposed to be treated, like objects to be groped and gawked at. Again, this kind of behavior starts and stops with the parents, and is more prevalent in poorer communities. Either with blacks or with whites, the more 40oz of Natural Light consumed in a household, the worse off they probably are when it comes to the treatment of women.

So you are sitting there in your chair, porn open in one window, your wife in the kitchen cooking dinner and the kids in bed, wondering, “how can we change this objectification of women?” We can’t. Titties rule. Just don’t objectify them around the kids and respect them when they are in front of you. When you are alone or with your homies, objectify away. Be sexist, tell them what you’d “do to her” and so on. That’s what guys do. So women, if you happen to walk in on that kind of behavior, just know that we respect and cherish you, we just like titties.

Plus, it’s not like you women aren’t gathering around in your little tea circles talking about cock.

How About More Math & Science and Less Sex Ed in Schools?

Scott Gulbransen — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 14:46:09 +0000

At a time when American children continue to fall behind the rest of the industrialized world in math and science, the dim bulbs at the Helena School Board in Helena, Mont., rather discuss having kindergartners learn about the differences between the penis and vagina and have first graders learn about gay sex.

If it wasn’t true, it would be a skit on a comedy show.

The Helena school trustees were shouted down this week when they held a hearing to get input from parents about the proposed health and nutrition education program. The proposed 62-page document includes other more traditional and benign health education proposals, but the absurd suggestion that these young kids learn sex education has rightfully drawn the ire of parents.

Parents are most up in arms over the parts of the plan that propose teaching first-graders about same-sex relationships, fifth-graders that sexual intercourse can include “vaginal, oral or anal penetration,” and high school kids about erotic art forms. The much-maligned curriculum also proposes teaching kindergartners – most of whom are five or six years old – anatomical terms such as penis, vagina, breast, nipples, testicles, scrotum and uterus. You know, things that every five or six year old needs to talk about.

We truly live in a time when schools – ie the government institutions in our society – believe they can do a better job of raising our kids. Forget that the material is not appropriate for the younger children for a minute. The fight over who is the best judge of what kids should learn is waging and finally parents are waking up.

The fact that any educator, or school board official, could look a parent in the eye and say a six or seven year old should learn about same-sex – heck even heterosexual – relationships should scare every parent.

Those in favor of the curriculum used the argument we have to do this because some parents refuse to teach their kids about sex in the home. One woman even linked some parents’ lack of involvement in volunteering at the school as a reason why they must forge ahead. Her logic, if you want to call it that, is like comparing a penis to a tomato. It’s useless.

Perhaps she could consider many homes have two work parents. Perhaps she could consider we’re in an economic downturn of near-depression-like proportions. But, these people don’t deal in facts or reality. They’re all as nuts as Baby Ruth bar.

Don’t let ignoramuses like that Mom take your eyes of the real issue here. Parents have the responsibility to teach younger kids age-appropriate information about the birds and the bees. When Johnny can’t ready why does he need to learn about anal sex?

Public education in the United States needs to focus its attention on teaching the kids the fundamentals they need to succeed in a changing world. They need to learn computer science, physics, biology, English and geography.

Leave parenting to the parents.

Follow Scott on Twitter @sdgully or email him at sgulbransen@gmail.com. His personal blog, where he writes about leadership and social media, is www.scottgulbransen.com. Scott also a contributor on Technorati, to the Shamable Blog, The Friarhood, and is the Sr. Director of Global Public Relations for Sony Online Entertainment.

Article first published as Forget Sex Ed, Teach Math and Science to Kids in Montana on Technorati.

A Dad’s Thoughts On Pornography

David Binkowski — Thu, 27 May 2010 13:30:18 +0000

I’m not quite sure where a man’s boy’s fascination with naked women starts but thanks to our forefathers (Larry Flynt, The Hef) there’s a certain rite of passage we all go went through in obtaining the right to view the beauty that is a naked woman. This tale of woe (which beats the woe of tail) is one that pays a unique tribute to a thirty-something’s journey down this road.

Life before the Brazilian

I recall my first experience viewing naked ladies in the mid to late 1980’s via my Dad’s stash of 1970’s Playboys. A collection of fine women, cartoons I was too immature to understand and ads that are reminiscent of the Most Interesting Man in the World campaign; cognac, cigars, boats, leather nail head trimmed chairs in a proper home library and of course – women – were the feature of these ads. And oh, what women they were. Women who’d undoubtedly burned their bras a decade prior and were now baring all on the pages of a “dirty magazine”. The women looked different then than they did today: natural, in every sense of the word. Their bodies were photographed in their God-given state, long before the days of plastic surgery, waxing and liposuction. It was an era of innocence and the notion of appreciating human form was alive and well, even if it was from a magazine dated nearly tens years prior to its viewing. Oh, how things change.

The second of what I’ll call monumental experiences came a short two years later. An unnamed “friend” with a penchant, and dare I say obsession, for naked women would leave his stash unattended for hours while we pillaged through the stacks – yes, actual stacks – of carefully dated, organized by volume and, we would later find out, cataloged, magazines. There was every variety of magazine available, from softer images to foreign magazines to what I’ll call fetish magazines, such as Juggs. We used to sneak a peek at these magazines under the guise of playing pool in the rec room, which was adjacent to the veritable pornucopia of mags. One noticeable difference in some of the more raunchy magazines was the graphic portrayal of sex acts, which also had become more aggressive in nature. I contend that it was during these years in the 80’s that the industry would change forever to become less about the appreciation of a woman’s body and more about control and dominance.

The third memorable experience was during high school when, at the end of the school year, some friends and I decided it would be a great idea to watch a video together. In retrospect this is quite possibly the worst way to have experienced this, but I digress. Actually, I lied. I’m going to elaborate because, well, if I’m scarred you should be too.

For the women reading this, I’m going to break Man Code and tell you an inside secret your hubby or boyfriend won’t tell you: Dudes watch porn together when they’re younger. Yeah, I know — that’s pretty strange. But wait, it gets worse. They also will do a “Boner check” to try and embarrass their friends by telling everyone to stand up mid-way through a sex scene to see who’s got wood in front of other dudes. Ok, now I digress.

They WERE America's Team, after all

Thanks to the aforementioned porn freak I know, access to videos evolved as the medium gained acceptance. BetaMax gave way to VHS, and the porn industry celebrated a huge victory over Sony, only to be trumped in the 2000s by the widespread adoption of Sony’s Blu-Ray (see? Who said you don’t learn anything on blogs?). And with this adoption of the VHS cassettes came the ability to high-speed dub porn. The freak I know had a large selection of videos that, somehow or another, made their way to my house just in time for the end of my sophomore year of high school. Some of my friends could drive, and while I couldn’t, I did have a house that was empty until 5 PM as both of my parents were working. Thus, the opportunity to host a raunchy screening party ensued.

I’ll spare you the details of the actual video, because quite honestly it was less than 20 minutes in that my friends and I heard the garage door open. Ok I lied again. I’m going to tell you one detail that is crucial to this experience: I witnessed my first BJ scene. It was odd looking at another man’s junk, and dare I say stomach-turning. I thought to myself “This isn’t right. I’m looking at another man’s JUNK?!? This is supposed to be enjoyable???”.

Back to reality, which in this case was Mom and Dad deciding to make a surprise trip home for lunch. I scrambled to get to the VCR, eject the tape and hide it. Surely Dad would notice that the video he “borrowed” was missing! With a dash across the house I put it back without rewinding and sat uncomfortably with my crew.

“David, why is everyone here?”, my mom asked.

“Hello, boys,” my Dad greeted.

“Uh. Hi Binkowskis, Mrs. Binkowski, Mr. Binkowski” came from the peanut gallery.

My friends stared at me with a look best described as “Whatthehelldudewecameheretowatchpornandyourparentsjustfuckingshowedup????”. Yeah, something like that.

We all made small talk after having witnessed — at least some of us — their first porno. It was about 10 minutes of awkward, tense, nervous and for some, semi-erect, before my Mom’s beckoning call for lunch came.

Lunch, anyone?

“Dave! Hot dogs!”

And again my stomach turned, except this time instead of lunch being a Ballpark frank it was the porn guy’s penis in a hotdug bun. I nearly dry heaved before telling mom I wasn’t hungry.

Experience number four was much different and several years later, but with a similar outcome. This wasn’t the kind of video you’d be proud of talking about, but because we’re close, personal friends I’m going to share it with you. I used to work at a court and as such, worked with professionals who’d seen things the average white boy from the ‘burbs hadn’t seen: Violence. Death. Rape. Crazy Ass Porn. Burglaries. Theft.

Say it ain't so, Fido

Yes, you read that right: Thanks to a diverse population and income range, I grew up in a town where everything happened. And in one case, the trafficking and collection of bizzare porn was on the docket. Again cutting to the chase, I got ahold of a video tape that the best way to describe is “HOLYOMFGBALLZNOWAYTHATJUSTHAPPENED”. Goats, dogs, little people, poop, a pig, a chicken and an eel – this tape had it all. The capper was that the girl-on-dog scene was dubbed over with Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”. From there it only got worse, divulging into stuff that can’t possibly be legal and would make a daughter’s father wonder where the hell he went wrong.

This tape became amusement for some friends, who decided to take it to their friends bachelor parties and “share the love” of dry heaving (and in some cases actual vomiting) with their buddies.

Anyone who’s done casual browsing online can attest to one simple fact: People can’t just get off the way they used to. Sex has become some perverse activity where demeaning, insulting and flat out derogatory behavior dominates the covers and has become the “norm”. As a father of three boys it’s troubling that society has pushed what was a simple pleasure of looking at a naked woman so far to the extremism it’s become.

So what are your thoughts/experiences? Has it gone too far?