I recently came across an interview with Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke about how the Catholic Church's focus (or obsession) on women has neglected the important role of masculinity. Keeping in mind the irony of noting the words of a cardinal to help describe the problems that men face today, here's what Burke had to say: All children need fathers A child's relationship with their father is key to a child's self‑identification, which takes places when we are growing up. We need that very close and affirming relationship with the mother, but at the same time, it is the relationship with the father, Read More

When I was a kid, “Mad Magazine” was the magazine you brought home from the drugstore if you wanted to annoy mom. It was just off-color enough, just gross enough, just funny enough, that a twelve-to-fourteen-year-old would find it irresistable. My favorite part of the magazine was always the margin doodles by Sergio Aragonés, whose tiny illustrations were somehow more satisfying that full-sized comic strips. And then there was “Cracked.” “Cracked” was the also-was, a publication that tried so hard to ape the style and format of “Mad” that it even poached various “Mad” staffers over the years. “Cracked” was never as Read More

In my most recent adventure I ran into “Keith.” Keith was a 44-year-old man, but was in better shape than most 23-year-olds. Riped, handsome, and a participant of jiujitsu, I felt it was more of an honor I met him than he met me. But after much conversation and realizing he and I both made some of the same disastrous mistakes men our age did, he said something common, but profound that I really didn't appreciate until now: “Had I known today what I know now when I was 19 the world would be ….blabbity blah blah blah.” I had heard that refrain Read More

Yet another remembered-rape story appeared in the Washington Post on Dec 18th. Headlined “It Should Never Be Too Late to Tell Your Story of Rape,” it was written by Abigail Hauslohner, one of the paper's own reporters. Hauslohner claimed that almost a decade and a half ago, as a teen, she was raped by a young man she'd considered a close friend: I went to visit my friend — I'll call him “X” — at his college campus. I saw X as a goofy but caring, older-brother type; we'd overlapped in high school and had a platonic and confiding sort of friendship. Read More

As I get older and more experienced in game, I realize that I've been developing a strong character like you would writing a script for a movie. Nowadays, because there's such a lack of character in pop culture, guys might not really understand what “character” means. I remember one of the screen writing classes I took in film school that taught me the difference between a dynamic character and a static one. I must say that I never forgot what I learned in that course, and still use it to measure my character development in game. 1. Static Character Static characters are the Read More