Astrid was trying to set me up with some girl she works with. Some cunt. I mean, maybe she’s not a cunt but she didn’t want to be set up with me, so, she’s a cunt. She’d been telling Astrid she likes “built” guys, and Astrid showed her a picture of me with my shirt off. And she said:

“Yeah, but he looks like he works out on purpose. I want a guy who’s just burly like he’s been chopping wood.”

Let me tell you something. Nobody looks what is now called “good” through normal activities. You have to work at it, for the sole purpose of vanity, like it’s a second fucking job. I was listening to an Opie and Anthony bit with Louis CK, which I now can’t find. They were talking about how every hot male movie star from the past would get laughed the fuck off the screen today if they took their shirt off. Charlton Heston. Steve McQueen. These men who had the “hot” body of their time would be flabby schlumps today. The standards of the male body have gone fucking nuts.

And I know, women have it tough too. Magazines, etc. Except none of you actually seem to give a shit about meeting these society-imposed standards. You just stay fat and then complain that you saw a picture of a thin person. And men fuck you anyway. Men, actual men in the real world, are out there grinding away their hip joints till it’s bone on bone, till their pelvises creak like old ships; they are squatting, dead lifting, bench pressing, crushing the breath out of their chests, walking around the next day like they took a pipe to the knee, cutting carbs, choking down big mugs full of lumpy powder shakes that make you feel like you’re shitting out a coffee can worth of drywall screws. They are contemplating steroids, broiling themselves in radioactive tanning beds, doing horrendous calorie calculus to burn down to a fatless wick while these huge muscles they’re building are screaming for food.

And all this gets you to “acceptable.” These are not guys who want to look like the mutant space gorillas we have for bodybuilders these days. These are guys who want to look within 15 per cent of Patrick Bateman. Ryan Reynolds in any movie. Ryan Gosling being told churlishly by Emma Stone that he looks photoshopped. Her character was telling him he’s a douchebag for looking that way, while every real woman who saw that trailer thought: god damn. I just saw American Psycho with an audience. The girls all screamed when he flexed at himself while sodomizing a hooker. One of the points of that movie is he’s a douchebag for being so vain; then the girls all wet their panties at his steroid-laden overtanned seven per cent body fat physique. Here’s what we want, and what an asshole you are for trying to give it to us.

Women’s burden, meanwhile, is to be told they are too fat by society, and then complain about it while eating. Actually, no; I’m being a dick. Losing weight is motherfucking hard, and you guys have a set of hormones where looking at a doughnut makes you feel like I feel driving by the all girls Catholic high school on a windy day. I get it.

But how about, just, some motherfucking appreciation for the work we’re all doing to bring you this better beefcake. Because, again: nobody looks good from “chopping wood.” Those “chopping wood” guys are at the gym in the heat, strapped in to some huge canvas belt with a chain around it like the overgrown pitbull has around its neck at the junkyard, some medieval prison technology to keep his spine from snapping as he deadlifts the weight of half a car, hauls up all that rusty iron mass right through his aging kneecaps, eyes bulging out of his head like he got kicked out of the dome in fucking Total Recall. But he doesn’t shave his chest or tan so he’s natural, he must just be that way. Surely he’s not killing his liver with pills and scraping his 15,000th scorched boneless skinless chicken breast out of the skillet because no fats while cutting means no teaspoon of olive oil to keep it from sticking. He’s just natural. You fucking idiot. Burly from chopping wood. Because I’m sure a fucking woodcutter in 1700’s Bavaria has a physique that would please you. You whore.

Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is: fuck this one person for thinking I’m ugly.