October 17, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Mary, Betty and Cathy were in their seventies and met at a high-school reunion, the first one they happened to attend since they had graduated.

“So, Mary,” said Betty, “you were the one we had figured would be the very first of us to get married.  How did you make out?”  To which Mary replied, “Well, no.  I never did get married.  How about you, Betty?”

Betty told her friends that she had married, but that her husband had passed on, “However,” she said “I still love him dearly, visit his grave on a daily basis, weed it, make sure it always has fresh flowers, and I even had a bench installed, so that I can sit, contemplate and say a little prayer when I am there.  That has become an important part of my life.”

Mary said, “That is nice.  What about you, Cathy, did you manage to find yourself a husband?”  Cathy responded, “I had three, and they all passed away already, one after the other.”  To which Mary remarked that it surely must take a major part of her waking hours to visit three graves and to look after them properly.

“No, no,” said Cathy, “There is nothing like that in my case.  I had them cremated.  If I want to contemplate my life with them, I just look at the urns with their ashes that I keep in the living room.”

“Now look at that,” said Mary, “Here I have been trying to find the right fella all my life, had no success and became a spinster, while you had husbands to burn.”

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October 15, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

A young lady came home from a date, rather sad. She told her mother, “Jeff proposed to me an hour ago.”

“Then why are you so sad?” her mother asked.

“Because he also told me he was an atheist. Mom, he doesn’t even believe there’s a hell.”

Her mother replied, “Marry him anyway. Between the two of us, we’ll show him how wrong he is about there being no hell.”

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October 3, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

The following story is one of many my Aunt Thekla, oldest sister of my Dad, told when I was old enough to appreciate some of her experiences as co-owner of the vintner-supply business she ran with her husband in the Ahr Valley, in Ahrweiler, Germany, a region known for producing good red wines.

The old vintner, Henry, had finally come to the end of his days.  He had grown his vines, tended to them, growing and harvesting the grapes, squeezing every single one of them, so not a drop of must would be wasted.

Henry had quite literally worked his heart out, producing some of the best wines any connoisseur could have hoped to taste, while his faithful wife of most of his years, Mary, had stood by his side and squeezed every nickel, so as to make sure it would not be spent frivolously.

Between the two of them, they had done well.

Now Henry lay on his death bed.  The village priest had just left, after performing the last rites.  Now there was nothing left to do but wait, wait for the grim reaper.

“Henry,” said Mary, “is there anything I can do to make you a bit more comfortable before you meet your maker?”

Henry responded, “Yes, Mary. Do you remember that award-winning “‘37″ of which you always saved those nine bottles for a special occasion?  Do you think you could go to the cellar, fetch one of those bottles and let me have just one glass of it? I sure would enjoy that.  It would be a great way to go.”

Reluctantly, Mary went to the cellar and got one of those treasured bottles of the ‘37 vintage, skilfully extracted the cork and lovingly poured a glass for Henry.  She carefully helped him to sit, so that he could drink all of it in comfort and without having to worry about spilling even a single drop of the precious liquid.

Then she helped him to lay back and sat back herself.  Silence settled for a few minutes, with the clock ticking away the time in the quiet room.

Mary spoke up, “Henry, is there anything else I can do for you?”

Henry asked for another glass of the ‘37 vintage.  Mary poured one for him and carefully helped him, so not a drop of it would be spilled.

Henry settled down again and said, “Ah, that was good.  It sure was worth the hard work producing it.  No wonder it won first prize.”

Then, after a long silence and more waiting, Mary asked, “Henry, is there anything more I can do for you?”  Henry replied, “You saved that wine for a special occasion for all those years.  I am glad you did.  Surely this is one of those occasions.  Let me have another glass of that wonderful wine.”

Mary said, “Okay, Henry, I’ll pour another glass of that wine for you, but then it is time to die.”

Posted in Humour, Men and Women Work, Health | Print | 2 Comments »

September 29, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

If you do not want to read all of this entry, then nevertheless do yourself the favour of getting a good belly-laugh by watching comedian Alan King’s Survived by his wife (thanks to Allan Chinnery for that link).

Last Saturday Ruth and I went to the celebration of her aunt Jenny’s 100th birthday.  Aunt Jenny survived her husband by 33 years.  He had passed away in 1977, at age 71.

All of that anecdotal evidence would not stand up in a court of law, but the following excerpt from the website of Fathers for Life shows that the anecdotal evidence of women’s longer lives is well supported by objective data from official sources.

(It took me a while to decide to assign this article to the category “Humour”.  Still it is funny, and humour is the more funny the more it relates to the truth.  There is a lot of truth in this story, so you may as well read the rest of the truth relating to this.  Maybe you, too, will find it to be at least somewhat funny that men die so much sooner than women, yet women are considered to be victims in need of protection.  That is worth having a laugh over, isn’t it?)

Differences in the life expectancies of the sexes in various countries in the world

This page contains statistics on the life expectancies of the sexes in various countries in the world.  The statistics shown on this page are a bit dated, from the late 1990s, if I remember right, but I am getting a little tired and will not update them with more recent data.  You can perform that little exercise by yourself and will find that the gender-gap in the life-expectancies of the sexes has widened a little more since that time.

Certainly, life expectancies since then increased for both men and women, but more so for women.  So what is the problem with that? There is not much of a problem, at least not one that men complain about.  After all, who can argue with the truth?  The truth will set us free, as the saying goes, but when the truth is inconvenient, it could become a problem, such as when the shorter average life-expectancies of men in the majority of the nations in the world must be presented in such a way as to show that men’s earlier deaths are a serious inconvenience to women’s quality of life when women reach the end of their days.

That is a truth, too, that from that perspective must be presented as a serious impediment to women’s happiness, such as in Women: Victims of Men’s Shorter Life Span (off-site).  Of course, rather than to look at this from such a biased but politically-correct perspective, one could look at the gender-gap in the life-expectancies of the sexes in a more objective fashion and simply state that the gender-gap exists, and that it favours women.  As comedian Alan King showed in 1987, in Survived by his wife, the truth about the gender-gap in life-expectancies can be made to look very funny, even hilarious (what could be a better reason for making a joke than to make fun of death?).  Still, as Alan King illustrated in his presentation, telling the truth and nothing but the truth about such matters is likely to have the consequence that an elected official calls the truth-teller a male, chauvinist pig.  That is a good thing, too, as thereby any possible complaints by men about having to die so much sooner than women can be nipped in the bud.

With the exception of seven countries (Nepal, Bangladesh, Malawi, Niger, Namibia, Bhutan and Afghanistan), in all other countries listed in Table B women live longer than do men, in some countries by a considerable margin.

________________________
Life Expectancy is not the only measure of quality of life.   The UN has since 1990 annually published a Human Development Index that ranks countries’ quality of life by a combination of indicators, such as life expectancy, availability of schooling (but not the quality of schooling), the GDP, availability of health care (but not the quality of health care) and more. The UN Human Development Index has shortcomings that have been addressed by the Fraser Institute in a more realistic alternative to the UN Human Development Index.

An additional indicator that should be used by the UN as well as by the Fraser Institute to measure the quality of life in a given nation is a measure of how happy people in a nation are with the quality of lives.  Suicide rates are a very good indicator that can be be used for that.  It surely can be no accident that the rankings of nations according to life-expectancies very closely matches that according to suicide rates.

By both of these measures, life expectancies as well as suicide rates, men’s lives are almost exclusively in all nations far worse than those of women’s.

The average of the differences in life expectancies for the sexes in the countries listed in Table B is 5.09 years (by which the life expectancy of men is less than that of the women in a given country).  Turkey is the country in which the difference in the life expectancies of the sexes is closest to the average of all countries.

Russia leads the list with the greatest difference in the life expectancies of the sexes (12.89 years less for men), followed almost exclusively by formerly communist countries — countries in which affirmative action for women made the largest advances for the longest intervals.

Afghanistan is the country that has the largest difference in favour of the average life expectancy of men over women (one year).

Almost all of the developed nations have differences in the average life expectancies that are on average slightly above the average for all countries.  See Table A for details….(See all of the web page)

Posted in Civil Rights, Humour, Suicides, Health, Men's Issues, Propaganda Exposed | Print | 2 Comments »

August 6, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Today someone sent me some sort of statement (I received it a number of times already) falsely alleged to have been composed by Andy Rooney.

I wrote to her:

Claire,

No, anyone searching his memory for a 60-minutes program in which he did say that will search in vain.  It was not Andy Rooney who said or wrote it.

Here is the truth about that one: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/rooney2.asp  [You can find the whole piece she sent at that link.]

As you can see at his website, the true originator of it, Frank Kaiser, did not say the gross parts of it either.  Which proves that one does not have to be gross to be clever, because clever he most certainly is, even though he is a feminist who is smart enough not to mention the female version of Western Chivalry.  Still, perhaps now there isn’t a female version of that anymore, especially not to be found amongst the young women of North America today, although in some nations and cultures it still exists.  I believe, if memory serves me right, that it was called femininity.

Mozart once wrote something to his sister about the power of women, and that one, I think, is truly clever.

…a free translation of a poem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (the poem was part of a letter he wrote in Vienna, August 18, 1784, to congratulate his sister on her impending marriage):

You’ll experience much in matrimony
that was half a riddle to you;
soon you’ll know from experience,
how Eve once had to deal with
giving birth to Cain.

However, sister, those matrimonial duties
you’ll do gladly with all your heart,
because, believe me, they aren’t hard.
But every matter has two sides:
although matrimony brings much joy,
it’ll bring you grief as well.

Therefore, when your husband offers,
what you feel you don’t deserve,
dark demeanor in his bad mood,
then think, that is male whim,
and say: Lord, Thy will be done
by day and mine at night!

A little later, in the beginning of the 19th century, Alexander Pushkin told us about the travails of Eugene Onegin and his views about the power that women exercised over their husbands.  (The husband may think he rules the roost, but who rules the rooster?  Right!)

XXXI She was like him and always sported the latest fashions of the town; but, without asking, they transported her to the altar and the crown. The better to dispel her sorrow her clever husband on the morrow took her to his estate, where she, at first, with God knows whom to see, in tears and violent tossing vented her grief, and nearly ran away. Then, plunged in the housekeeper’s day, she grew accustomed, and contented. In stead of happiness, say I, custom’s bestowed us from on high. XXXI For it was custom that consoled her in grief that nothing else could mend; soon a great truth came to enfold her and give her comfort to the end: she found, in labours and in leisure, the secret of her husband’s measure, and ruled him like an autocrat - so all went smoothly after that. Mushrooms in brine, for winter eating, fieldwork directed from the path, accounts, shaved forelocks,4 Sunday bath—, meantime she’d give the maids a beating if her cross mood was at its worst — but never asked her husband first. – Alexander Pushkin, “Eugene Onegin,” (begun in 1824) Chapter Two, (Translated by Charles Johnston)

[From the translator’s notes]: 4. Serfs chosen for the army had their forelocks cut off. [Note, as always during the history of mankind, it was the men, not the women, who were chosen for the army and to die on the battlefield, but that, like so many other things that men do (anyone can see the evidence all around), is something many women readily forget about. —WHS]

Aside from the bit from Snopes, all of that is — except for a couple of very small edits — from the web page at http://fathersforlife.org/hist/gerst.htm, which presents the translation of a somewhat longer poem about a prison pastor who had his very own patriarchal ways of looking at and dealing with dissidence in marital relations in the late 1840s.

Here is another side of the story.  It is more about the things that your story alluded to, “The ‘evil’ that men did.”

Enjoy,

Walter

Posted in Men and Women Work, Humour, Men's Issues, Feminism, Propaganda Exposed, Women's Violence | Print | No Comments »

July 2, 2010 by Walter Schneider.

Why is changing a light bulb always a guy’s job? Because women have more important things to do - like making men feel useful and important by giving them things to do, like changing light bulbs.

How many divorced men does it take to change a light bulb? None. They never get the house anyway.

— Edmonton Journal,
2007 08 28, p. B2, Venting
(more at edmontonjournal.com Online Extras - Venting)

It will take quite some time yet, however, before a majority of society gets Warren Farrell’s message expressed in the following.

One of the fascinating parts about men is our tendency to subject ourselves to war, physical abuse, and psychological abuse and call it “power.” The ability to be totally out of control while continuing to view ourselves as the ones with the power can have certain advantages to a woman. As expressed in this poem:

One-Night Stand

He bought me drinks all evening
in response to just a wink
Then accepted my invitation to
repair my kitchen sink
Then I brought him into beddy-bye
to get a little sex
Then couldn’t help but smile
when he called it conquest!

WHY MEN ARE THE WAY THEY ARE, By Warren Farrell, p. 289

That story, translated into a joke that is far more ironic than it is funny, goes like this:

An Irishman, an Englishman and a Scotsman were sitting in a bar in Sydney. The view was fantastic, the beer excellent, and the food exceptional. “But” said the Scotsman. “I still prefer the pubs back home. Why in Glasgow there’s a little bar called McTavish’s. Now the landlord there goes out of his way for the locals so much that when you buy 4 drinks he will buy the 5th drink for you.”

“Well.” said the Englishman “At my local, the Red Lion, the barman there will buy you your third drink after you buy the first two.”

“Ahhh, that’s nothin’” said the Irishman “Back home in Dublin there’s Ryan’s Bar. Now the moment you set foot in the place they’ll buy you a drink, then another, all the drinks you like. Then when you’ve had enough drink they’ll take you upstairs and see that you get laid. All on the house.”

The Englishman and Scotsman immediately poured scorn on the Irishman’s claims. He swore every word was true.

“Well,” said the Englishman “did this actually happen to you?”

“Not to me personally, no,” said the Irishman, “but it did happen to my sister.”

found at angryharry.com

(More)

__________
Excerpt from The apprehension of children – boys – in antiquity, by Walter Schneider, Fathers for Life

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December 24, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

What if the first Christmas would have happened now and not two-thousand years ago?

Newborn child found in barn - Police and Youth Welfare Office investigate

A Nazareth carpenter and an under-aged mother in temporary custody

[Original source and author unknown *]

[WPA] BETHLEHEM, Palestine: In the early morning hours, a concerned citizen alarmed officials. He had discovered a young family that were squatters in a barn. When they arrived on the scene, Social Services workers, supported by police officers, found a newborn infant whom his barely 14-year-old mother, a certain Mary H., from Nazareth, Israel, had swaddled in strips of cloth and put to sleep in an animal feeder.

When mother and child where apprehended, a man (later identified as Joseph H., a carpenter, also from Nazareth), interfered with the social workers’ intentions.  Joseph, supported by a few shepherds as well as three foreigners of unidentified origin, wanted to prevent the apprehension of the child and his mother, but the police officers restrained him and prevented Joseph and his supporters from interfering with the social workers’ actions.

The three foreigners, who identified themselves as “wise men” of an eastern country, were also apprehended. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well officers of Customs and Excise are searching for evidence of the origin of these three men who apparently are illegal immigrants in Palestine. A speaker of the police informed WPA [World Press Agency] that the men carried absolutely no identification, but that they had been in possession of a quantity of gold as well as some possibly prohibited substances. The three men resisted being arrested, while claiming that God had ordered them to return home without delay and to avoid any contact with government officials. The chemical substances that were in their possession were sent to the crime lab for further investigation.

The whereabouts of the newborn child will not be disclosed until further notice. It appears to be very doubtful that speedy and satisfactory explanations for all of the circumstances surrounding the arrival of this newborn child will be possible any time soon.  When WPA inquired with the Youth Welfare Office, a spokesperson explained that she was permitted to disclose only that, “The father is in his mid-forties, and the mother is definitely not yet of the age of majority. We presently are communicating with officials in Nazareth to determine the nature of the relationship between father and mother.”

Mary was moved to the Bethlehem Municipal District Hospital, where she will undergo medical and psychiatric examinations. She can expect an indictment. Because she claims that she is still a virgin and that God fathered her child, her mental condition will come into the focus of attention. An official announcement by the head of the Department of Psychiatry of the Bethlehem Municipal District Hospital states: “I am not in a position to tell anyone what they should believe, but when that belief leads to, as in this case, the endangerment of a newborn child, then such people must be categorized as being a danger to society. The fact that drugs, suspected to have been distributed by the foreigners who were present, were found at the scene of the birth does not evoke confidence. Nevertheless, I am convinced that, with the necessary treatment, within a few years all of the participants will become again normal members of our society.”

Lastly, WPA just now received the following update: The shepherds who were present at the scene of the birth are firmly united in their assertion that they had received orders by a large man in a nightshirt and with wings on his back to visit the barn, there to celebrate the birth of the child.

A speaker of the Drug-Crime Investigation team mentioned in that connection: “That is just about the dumbest excuse by all-out junkies that I ever came across.”
____________
* Found on the Internet (at http://listserv.shuttle.de/mailman/listinfo/papa-info ) and translated from the original German into English

It is still possible, so far, to have one in the privacy of one’s home, therefore,

Have a Merry Christmas,

Walter Schneider

Posted in Humour, Civil Rights, Health, Family, The New World Order | Print | 1 Comment »

June 29, 2008 by Walter Schneider.

rense.com
‘Bad Dog! -
A Political Satire
By Henry Makow PhD
6-24-8

A new session of the Seventeenth District Human Rights Tribunal of the Feminist Soviet of Canada is set to begin. Ms. Rutherford-Armstrong is the Prosecutor. The Judge is Madam Chegundi Tsunami, a woman of color. The Defendant is Henry Makow of Winnipeg, white male….(Full Story)

Posted in Education, Humour, Men's Issues, Feminist Jurisprudence, Propaganda Exposed, The New World Order | Print | No Comments »

December 3, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

The Three Stages of a Man’s Life
PG-Rated

Pictures requiring no words.

Posted in Humour, Divorce, Men's Issues | Print | No Comments »