Ello Lads! Mouse `ere, checking in from Kent County during these extraordinary COVID-19 times. It’s been a bit topsy turvy here, though not as bad as London.
I’m not absolutely certain of my facts, but I believe Philip, The Boris, and Charles were under the weather for a spell. The chaps are getting on famously now, according to my neighbor, Nigel Paulsgrove.
For the last two fortnights, the benighted Coronavirus has taken hold of England, interrupting not only our glorious way of life, but the Queen’s birthday gun salute itself. No great loss, there.
So last Thursday, I discovered I was nearly out of Heinz Beanz and Warburtons crumpets. Emergency. As the noble Churchill said in 1943, “great challenges require great perseverance.” Thus, I set my heart to travel to Folkstone for a bit of shopping — some essential and some non-essential. Paulsgrove, with his very low regard for social distancing, insisted that his visiting nephew John, accompany me. I acquiesced, the strapping lad could come in handy carrying groceries and tossing large trees off the Southeastern train track, should there be any.
Traveling with John gave me a new appreciation for manliness. `Twas a sight, him ducking his head to clear the 2-meter doorway , always the gentleman, filling the room with his confident presence almost as easily as he filled the entire doorway. It gave me a satirical notion as we headed home on the Dover Priory. It is this.
As western culture becomes increasingly populated by millennials, hipsters, and metrosexuals, they have focused on one of their biggest problems: masculinity.
“It’s just toxic and causes nothing but problems,” said Josh Featherbottom, a fair-trade coffee activist at Andrews University and no threat whatsoever to broken engines or tight jar lids,
“I was sharing my concerns about masculinity with some non-binary Sissy Bounce men in the Starbucks corner, and we all agreed that if we ever encountered masculinity, we would do our best to get away from it.”
Manliness, or masculinity, is said to have—in the past—been the cause of such things as violence, war, defeating the bloody Nazis across the Channel, carving settlements out of untamed wilderness, and providing for and protecting wives and families. But now, masculinity is being driven out of society to make sure nothing like those ghastly things ever happens again. Women’s studies in our Universities, coupled with degrees in lesbian dance theory have been most generous in wiping out masculinity.
In fact, many blokes in the UK and America are doing a splendid job avoiding masculinity. However, there are reports that masculinity still lurks out there in Alaska, Scotland, Wyoming, among Amish/Mennonites and the Yankee Bible Belt, which is a source of anxiety to modern males and causes them to have upset tummies.
“I am just so worried that somewhere out there someone is still knowingly producing testosterone,” said Matthew Milksop, a Twitter warrior from south Tennessee who had never seen sawdust outside of a YouTube video. “Just thinking about it drives me to Facebook to plead for WO” he moaned. “And I can’t call it arguing, because conflict hurts my feelings.”
While some chaps are keeping a stiff upper lip and fighting the Coronavirus, others, like the whiffle-whaffle Brian Stelter are banging on his Twitter to the world,
“Last night, I hit a wall. Gutted by the death toll [36K]. Disturbed by the govt’s shortcomings. Dismayed by political rhetoric that bears no resemblance to reality. Worried about friends who are losing jobs; kids who are missing school; and senior citizens who are living in fear,” Stelter wrote on Twitter.
“I crawled in bed and cried for our pre-pandemic lives. Tears that had been waiting a month to escape. I wanted to share because it feels freeing to do so. Now is not a time for faux-invincibility.”
Dear Stelter. In Great Britain, (2018), there was a total of 160,597 casualties of all severities in road traffic crashes; globally, 1.25 mil people die in car accidents every year. 80,000 People died from seasonal flu in U.S. alone in 2018. In true Paris Lees fashion, Stelter says “I” three times, but never mentions the true warriors on the front lines in the battle against COVID-19 — health care workers, firemen and semi-truck drivers. They aren’t crawling into bed and weeping. They’re out there day after day fighting the good fight.
That’s just the spirit we need in the glorious Adventist Movement (1 Corinthians 16:13).
As we arrived home in Hougham, I turned to John, a fine example of traditional masculinity, and asked him about his feelings on the negative view of masculinity. He seemed puzzled by the question, “I’m not sure, Sir.” He then went home and split two cords of wood, because they might need it someday.
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“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13).
Cheerio,
ChurchMouse
