Posted On: Wednesday - January 16th 2019 7:55PM MST
In Topics: Music The Dead Humor Political Correctness Feminism Healthcare Stupidity Poetic Stupidity
I shit you not, readers, that is a medical term, "John Henryism". Peak Stupidity came upon this term when reading a comment under a post about the latest feminist and/or PC business, "Toxic Masculinity" (no I don't have the heart for links here - I'm no John Henry).
More will be coming on this new piece of stupidity, in which everything masculine is now to be considered bad. (One can view the latest Michelle Malkin column for a taste of this via some Big-Biz Stupidity by Proctor & Gamble's Gillette razor brand.) I would hope the PC crowd would make just one exception to let men have just one piece of glory, you know, for making civilization to where we don't live in caves as hunter/gatherers anymore, as we would without this toxicity ... don't hate on me, ladies and P&G marketers ... don't mean nothin' by it ... just sayin' ... that this is no ordinary amount of stupidity that comes in 1 or 5 gallon buckets. No, not even those large mining-site dump trucks could haul this stupidity around. This is the type of stupidity that requires a unit train of hopper cars. (We'll get back to the railroads in a minute.)
Anyway, here is one of the goals, according to this tweet fresh off somebody's twitmitter:
START TWEETING..APA has issued its first-ever guidelines for practice with men and boys. They draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful and that socializing boys to suppress their emotions causes damage...STOP TWEETINGMmmmkaaay, so does that mean we want men pouring out their emotions like women? Should we be on similar 28-day cycles with this outpouring? Man, I really don't want to be around for that, knowing mine and most men's temper whenever it finally comes to the surface. I am all for the Serenity Now plan myself, maybe as implemented slightly differently than seen above in the video.
The John Henryism is a current-era term for this apparently un-healthy syndrome of keeping everything bottled up. Sure, you've got to fight for yourself, but letting it all out like a woman? I don't think it's quite befitting of a steel-driving man beating a steam-drill with his 12 lb hammer making holes for explosives to blast the mountains out of the way for the railroad.
John Henry was a little tiny baby,
sitting on his mama's knee,
he picked up a hammer and a little piece of steel,
saying, "hammer's going to be the death of me, Lord, Lord,
hammer's going to be the death of me."
John Henry was a man just six feet high,
nearly two feet and a half across his breast.
He'd hammer with a nine-pound hammer all day
and never get tired and want to rest, Lord, Lord,
and never get tired and want to rest.
John Henry went up on the mountain,
and he looked one eye straight up its side.
The mountain was so tall and John Henry was so small.
He laid down his hammer and he cried, "Lord, Lord,"
He laid down his hammer and he cried.
John Henry said to his captain,
"Captain, you go to town,
bring me back a TWELVE-pound hammer, please,
and I'll beat that steam drill down, Lord, Lord,
I'll beat that steam drill down."
The captain said to John Henry,
"I believe this mountain's sinking in",
but John Henry said, "Captain, just you stand aside--
it's nothing but my hammer catching wind, Lord, Lord,
it's nothing but my hammer catching wind."
John Henry said to his shaker,
"Shaker, boy, you better start to pray,
'Cause if my TWELVE-pound hammer miss that little piece of steel,
tomorrow'll be your burying day, Lord, Lord,
tomorrow'll be your burying day."
John Henry said to his captain,
"A man is nothing but a man,
but before I let your steam drill beat me down,
I'd die with a hammer in my hand, Lord, Lord,
I'd die with a hammer in my hand."
The man that invented the steam drill,
he figured he was mighty high and fine,
but John Henry sunk the steel down fourteen feet
while the steam drill only made nine, Lord, Lord.
The steam drill only made nine.
John Henry hammered on the right-hand side.
Steam drill kept driving on the left.
John Henry beat that steam drill down.
But he hammered his poor heart to death, Lord, Lord.
He hammered his poor heart to death.
Well, they carried John Henry down the tunnel,
and they laid his body in the sand.
Now every woman riding on a C and O train
Says, "There lies my steel-driving man, Lord, Lord.
There lies my steel-driving man."
According to the healthcare link above, John Henryism, working your ass off that is, leads to hypertension and cardiovascular problems. Yeah, well, we've all heard the ballad of John Henry, so tell us something we didn't know back in 1872! Per a wiki article on this folklore, if there was such a real contest at the beginning of the power-drill era, it was indeed on the Chesapeake & Ohio line, during the building of a tunnel at the big bend of the Greenbrier River near Talcott, West Virginia. We don't know exactly what type of cardiac infarction resulted, as, you know, people just dropped dead back then. Still, watch yourselves when you're hammering holes into the sides of a mountains with 12 lb hammers. Be safe out there, people!
Since Peak Stupidity is getting into the wonderful folklore of the railroads here, I believe another man should be mentioned, one Casey Jones. Mr. Jones was no steel-driver, but an Engineer, who perhaps due to worries about that very John Henryism under discussion here, self-medicated himself to avoid such a fate, as explained in the Workingman's Dead:
Drivin' that train, high on cocaine,
Casey Jones, you better watch your speed.
Trouble ahead, trouble behind,
and you know that notion just crossed my mind.
From a post about tragedy impending, we're gonna link swiftly back to a post about tragedy narrowly averted. It's another in The Dead's long list of tragedy songs, but that one's about tragedy narrowly averted.
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