Dear Mr. Man Points,
I’ve always been a finicky eater and have somewhat quirky tastes. My buddies are so quick to make their food orders. Plain burgers. Chocolate ice cream. But I’m always over-thinking my choices, mulling over the menu for several minutes to the point that my hungry buddies explode and say, “Order your meal already!” And then they roll their eyes when I make what seem like unmanly detailed add-ons, deletions, and exotic selections for my orders. In the case of burgers, for example: “Hold the ketchup, no pickles, extra guacamole and caramelized onions.” In the case of ice cream: “I’ll have extra fudge sauce, some of those pistachio and cashew pieces, sprinkles, and marshmallows.” In the case of beer, “I’ll have the Chocolate Rainbow stout on-tap.” It’s gotten to the point that my buddies won’t hang out with me any more and I fear my finicky ordering habits have lost me Man Points. Is there anything I can do?
Repeat after me: Plain is better, plain is better, plain is better. You must grasp this important principle. Otherwise you will have surrendered to the feminization of America, which has ruined real food for real guys. Gone are the days when a guy could simply order a “burger” or chocolate ice cream or down a stein of cold draft beer. Now he has to decide if he wants his bun to have sesame seeds or if he wants it toasted or if wants his burger to have chiptotle mayonnaise. Now there is no such thing as just a plain ice cream cone. He has to choose between waffle and chocolate-dipped. In the case of beer, he can’t walk into a brewery without a guidebook with over a thousand listings and descriptions. The emergence of the microbrewery has in fact spawned a new field of university study, Brewology, which, in spite of its boozy appeal, requires the vigorous study of chemistry and microbiology.
So where have all these choices left you? Have they made you happier? Are you more of man? Take a survey of men these days and you will see that in the face of all these new menu choices their satisfaction levels are actually lower. You give a man too many options and he ends up fearing that no matter what choice he’s made, no matter how well thought-out, he’s made the wrong decision. Men are happier when they base their choices on necessity. This principle is not just applicable to food but to all things in a man’s life: women, cars, hairstyles, clothes, careers. Man functions better when he does not have to waste his energy making choices but rather saves his energy improving “whatever cards have been dealt” to him. Give a man too many options and he’ll spend the rest of his live in misery, wasting all his wakeful moments second-guessing himself.
Therefore, in the Ultimate Man’s Restaurant, there is no menu. The restaurant serves just one food and it is prepared the same way and no one complains lest they be expelled and never allowed to return. In fact, these types of restaurants really do exist and they have long lines, of both men and women, stretching around the block at all hours. The success of these “no-choice” restaurants attests to the fact that having a dizzying array of options is ruinous to human happiness and is one of the main causes of modern man’s hopeless condition.
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