{"id":128,"date":"2011-10-05T11:07:24","date_gmt":"2011-10-05T15:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godscomic\/?p=128"},"modified":"2011-10-05T11:07:24","modified_gmt":"2011-10-05T15:07:24","slug":"for-men-only","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2011\/10\/for-men-only.html","title":{"rendered":"For MEN only"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>My son is fifteen years old. For those of you that haven\u2019t had the pleasure of raising a boy from infancy it\u2019s really quite simple. You \u2018re only role for the most part is to keep him from killing himself. Meanwhile he\u2019ll be climbing anything he can find and searching for creative ways to break stuff. It\u2019s also important to realize he\u2019s fully convinced that he\u2019s invincible which is the name of the game while being a boy who is becoming a young man.<br \/>\nBeing a former boy myself none of this bothers me nor do I fret over it. My job as a dad is to guide my kids first through example and then through experience. I do this knowing full well that most of what I teach my child actually belongs more in the category of prophet than teacher. It basically works like this \u201c What I\u2019m going to teach you is true, and it\u2019s going to happen to you, but it isn\u2019t going to be appreciated and accepted until after you do it yourself.\u201d<br \/>\nWe grow more from pain than pleasure and that\u2019s just the deal. It\u2019s almost like the only reason the parent is even there is for the satisfaction of being able to say I told you so. Trust me it\u2019s a lot of fun because it makes me look like a genius when it comes to life lessons while the truth of the matter is I only know this stuff because I got to screw up first.<br \/>\nAnother upside to being a dad to a boy\/young man is it allows you to remember the unique male stuff that helped mold and create the one of a kind persona that is a man. This is stuff women cannot understand about us and quite frankly aren\u2019t supposed to. God allows for gender specific attributes to remind boys to be sure they spend time with each other basking in the glow of knowledge that some sweet truths are only for us.<br \/>\nThis brings up the topic I wanted to get to all along. It is something I have never seen written about a woman and thus makes it uniquely male. As a matter of fact if you are a woman reading this you need to stop now! I am about to enter a topic domain that is not for you and trust me, you are incapable of understanding without ridicule. The topic is of course, the fart. To a twelve year old boy on a sleep-over nothing is more salacious and culturally taboo then not only speaking of farts as often as possible but preferably working up a good ripe one to descend and overwhelm his buddies as proof of his superiority and masculinity.<br \/>\nWhat is uniquely common among the male species is that even though we laugh and mock any guy delivering a dreaded fart in our direction and we make sure he knows how putrid the smell is and how we despise it, when it emerges from our own nether regions it takes on somehow a sweet savor, an aromatic bouquet that only the connoisseur can truly appreciate. Kind of like a fine wine.<br \/>\nFarts for the most part smell the same. Boys know that for some reason though the smell emanating from someone else is horrid and putrid whereas the same substance coming with the same ferocity of fragrance is somehow not nearly as abhorrent when it\u2019s our own. It\u2019s kind of like sin I guess. I once heard the late Ed Cole make this interesting observation, \u201cWe tend to judge others by what they do, we judge ourselves by our intentions\u201d.<br \/>\nThat being said I\u2019m here to tell you that I would recommend getting yourself a son at all costs. If you\u2019re a mom I must forewarn you though it will come with a lot of angst, confusion and smells, which you will by no means understand. Then again you\u2019re a woman, you\u2019re not supposed to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My son is fifteen years old. For those of you that haven\u2019t had the pleasure of raising a boy from infancy it\u2019s really quite simple. You \u2018re only role for the most part is to keep him from killing himself. Meanwhile he\u2019ll be climbing anything he can find and searching for creative ways to break&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":223,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[33],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comedy","tag-flatulence-decorum-social-etiquette-boys-crude"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>For MEN only - God&#039;s Comic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/2011\/10\/for-men-only.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For MEN only - God&#039;s Comic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My son is fifteen years old. For those of you that haven\u2019t had the pleasure of raising a boy from infancy it\u2019s really quite simple. You \u2018re only role for the most part is to keep him from killing himself. 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For those of you that haven\u2019t had the pleasure of raising a boy from infancy it\u2019s really quite simple. You \u2018re only role for the most part is to keep him from killing himself. 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From his Nashville stronghold, Stine is mounting his crusade against these hypocrisies, all of which are explored in his highly anticipated 4th album\/DVD, aptly titled \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcWUSSIFICATION!' \"You know what offends me?... Offended people,\" says Stine. A staunch supporter of first amendment rights and foe of political correctness, Stine asserts that rights should be universally applied. \"In a country with guaranteed rights to freedom of religion, its citizens are constantly trying to make faith in public spheres illegal, I am offended by that contradiction and want to talk about it as a comic.\" The strength of his conviction about our freedoms can be found in many places on WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c from \"Merry Christmas Too!\" (the right to celebrate religion) to \"At Least We're Not France!\" (the responsibility to take action as a country) to \"Spank\" (the ability to discipline our children the way we see fit). What would cause the wussification of Brad Stine? \"I hope that nothing ever wussifies me to deny my own personal beliefs,\" he says. \"Brainwashed wussies have been taught that standing up for yourself and defending your personal point of view makes you a close-minded hate monger.\" Stine stops short of defending his point of view as the ONLY one, adding \"...one must also be respectful of dissenting belief while supporting their own.\" He is, after all, an inclusive figure who trains his comedy to attack ideas, not the people who embrace them. Stine's faith forces him to acknowledge the respect and dignity of all\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 even the wussies with whom he disagrees! Stine models his approach to comedy after legendary practitioners that he has known and loved over the years. Despite George Carlin's disdain for theistic beliefs, he has been a big influence on Stine. \"I always enjoyed Carlin for turning the tables on culture. He is an excellent writer that has endured for decades.\" More current comedic touchstones are Brian Reagan, Paula Poundstone, Jim Gaffigan and Monty Python, among others. Fear not, true believers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c with his brand new album, Brad Stine is here to save the world from WUSSIFICATION \u00e2\u20ac\u201c one politically-correct, offended person at a time!\"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/author\/bstine"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/223"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godscomic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}