Guys, no joke I still haven’t gotten gifts for everyone on my list so I need to make this intro quick so I can go do some last-minute shopping, okay? So cut me some slack and enjoy the best of The Week That Was while I fight the holiday morass with all the other slackers.
For tears: Cardi B is making me sad this week — sounds like she’s really missing that dick. But no joke, the exploding upward trend of commercial sailors committing suicide has mental-health experts extremely worried about life at sea.
For lols: There’s getting addicted to drugs… and then there’s getting addicted to fantasy football. And if you can’t laugh at these jabronis who refuse to watch hetero porn because “dicks are gay,” then I can’t help you.
For help: Rescue your dying Christmas tree before the in-laws come over. Learn to use the correct stove-top burner for different dishes. Use a Bird scooter for the first time without breaking an ankle, getting hit by a moving vehicle or otherwise dying.
Must Reads
“A Gentleman’s Guide on How Not to @ Her”
To state that guys couldn’t benefit from a finishing school of sorts when it comes to our real-life interactions with the opposite sex is an understatement. And online, it’s only worse — way worse. If all of the internet is a toilet, a woman’s cyber landscape is an Ipanema loo after Carnaval. Lucky for us, though, Kathryn Way has put together a short guide on how to interact with women online without making them uncomfortable. READ MORE
“The Cult of ‘Semen Retention’”
In his 20s, Chris Bale became concerned with how “internally confused and feminized” cosmopolitan masculinity had become. Part of the cause, in his estimation, was our semen — how we devalue and disrespect it, and how we refuse to treat it as a crucial part of our maleness. Our vitality and metaphysical power, you see, is in our seed. We need to build it up instead of ejaculating it away in order to reach a higher plane of existence. Bale calls this practice “semen retention,” and now, he’s teaching it to men who want to cultivate their sexual energy and innate masculinity. READ MORE
“The Men Who Hate Christmas so Much They Want to Destroy It”
Christmas is ? the most, ? wonderful time, ? of the year. At least for most of us. For others, it’s less than wonderful, and for an even smaller amount of people, it’s so awful they resort to taking their hate for the holidays out on everyone around them. These folks, you see, are the Grinches and Scrooges of our time. And their legacy of being Yuletide buzzkills goes back to the 17th century. READ MORE
“This Eccentric Academic Thinks the Zodiac Killer Is a Hoax”
Everybody knows the Zodiac killed five people in the Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. Community college professor Thomas Henry Horan, however, isn’t like everybody else. He, in fact, thinks that the murders weren’t the evil-doing of one killer with a thing for riddles, but a combination of hoaxes, drug deals gone wrong and copycats. It’s an opinion that’s made Horan the arch-nemesis of Zodiac sleuthers hellbent on solving America’s most famous cold case. READ MORE
Five Things We Learned This Week
- Trouble sleeping? Put a hand down your pants. I don’t mean beat your bishop — though, that helps, too — I mean literally. A hand down your pants will help you get to sleep, a sleep science coach told us, because doing so can make you feel warm, comfortable and protected. Here’s why.
- Santa’s obese, and the shortbread cookies you’re leaving out for him aren’t making him any thinner. Shortbread is the least healthy type of Christmas cookie there is because it’s extremely high in butter and sugar, and not much else. Frankly, the healthiest cookie is tastier, anyway.
- The scents that get us the hottest are drawn from semen, sweat, blood, feces and sperm whale ass blubber. No shit — we’re turned on by things that remind us of our own indecency, a well-known perfumer told us.
- The reason why Bumblebee is good isn’t because talented director Travis Knight took the reins — it’s because Michael Bay didn’t. At least, that’s what you might think as you read reviews of the highly-rated Transformers spin-off. And you know what? They might be right.
- The police and the government are surprisingly disinterested in coming to the aid of cyberstalking victims. Even, it seems, when one of those victims is the president’s daughter. Art curator Lenora Claire shared a dangerous stalker with Ivanka Trump, but when it became apparent help wasn’t on its way, she started working on a pair of anti-stalking proposals aimed at creating protections for victims that would actually work.
The Week in Quotes
Some fantasies can be hard to pull of in real life. Shame, a less-than-willing partner or the lack of a Lego cityscape for smashing might prevent you from living out your dream of being a sexual Godzilla, for example. But even in cases such as these, not all hope is lost. Isabelle Kohn spoke to a hypnotist whose job it is to help people experience the deepest breadth of their fantasies through the power of consensual mind control.
Ian Lecklitner, a man who is heavily-tattooed himself, spoke to three middle-aged people with tattoos about why anyone who’s never been tatted immediately assumes people with ink will regret their body art when they get older.
What is it like being one of the only male Doms in a country where very few straight guys work in professional BDSM? Fun as shit, if you ask Mr. Shaw. Shaw explains how he went from a Rush Limbaugh-worshipping, 300-pound conservative Christian in a mutually virginal marriage to the only guy in a BDSM dungeon staffed exclusively by women.
The Weekend Binge
Hey Aquaman, you’re not the first guy to take to the water and make a movie out of all that swimming. In fact, if you count Entourage and Vincent Chase, you’re not even the first movie Aquaman. (For the record: He’s also in The LEGO Batman Movie and Teen Titans Go! To the Movies, and that’s just recent history.) In fact, there have been a ton of waterlogged movies — including, of course, Waterworld, which was waterlogged on every level (dramatically, critically and financially). And so, our latest episode of The Weekend Binge — movies that take place on, in or under water.
Take a dip with us, won’t you?
Jeff Gross
Jeff Gross is MEL’s senior editor for social media and content marketing. His daily ICYMI column, which chronicles all things meta on the site, is the quickest way to catch up on MEL, and the funniest thing you’ll read all day. Follow him on Twitter.
