One of my first posts was fashion-related, but since Masculine Style came out, I haven’t talked much about that scene. I don’t like swerving in other guy’s lanes. But his and VK’s recent post as Nexxxt Level Up reminded me of some money-saving tips.

1. Find a Good Second Hand Shop.

“What,” I can hear you exclaim, “I ain’t no piker, shopping at Good Will and shit!” Second hand stores have come a long way from the days of the Salvation Army.

Find a place like Jeremy’s in San Francisco (where I got that fatigue jacket).

2. Find a Nordstrom Rack or Loehmann’s. Nordstrom Rack (and similar stores) sells the same quality stuff you’d find at a more-expensive department store. They are able to sell at lower prices because of lower overhead. Instead of paying rent at a shopping mall, Rack-style stores are near a Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, i.e., in more “industrial” areas.

Sometimes the clothes are last season, but come on. Men’s fashion doesn’t change year-over-year. Most of what you buy should be in style for 5-10 years.

3. Shop every week. Don’t buy something every week. Just look around. Window shopping is a pretty relaxing activity and also a great way to meet girls.

Often that girl shopping in the men’s department is looking for something to buy her brother. Don’t assume women aren’t receptive to being opened. Instead you should be asking her opinion on clothing items. It’s a nice indirect approach that can be very successful.

4. Show some restraint. I wanted a fatigue jacket for over a year. I would never pay $350 for a fatigue jacket. I have self-control.

This is a swag jacket. It’s Eden or some other Nordstrom brand and retailed for $350. I know that’s what the price was because the tag was in one of the pockets when I purchased it for $40 at a consignment shop.

You are a man. Do not grab every shiny object you see. Have some dignity. Be patient.

5. Find your brand. If you’ve got got muscular thighs and wear a 32″ waist, good luck finding jeans that fit.

One day I broke down. I spent 2 hours (yes, hours) in a jeans store trying on several dozens of pairs of jeans.  It was a great fashion decision.

6. Get on mailing lists. Joe’s Jeans ended up being one of the best-fitting jeans for me. I got on Joe’s mailing list. Occasionally they would send me 25% off coupons.

Most of your favorite brands have a Facebook page. Many companies offer exclusive money-saving offers through their Facebook pages. If so, “like” their pages.

7. Know when the big sales are. Lucky Jeans also fit me extremely well. Lucky has a semi-annual 50% off sale.

8. Have cash to make big moves. Although I might “shop” every week, I usually only buy stuff twice a year. But I have lots of cash to make big moves. For example, I was able to buy 5 pairs of Luck Jeans during it’s 50% off sale.

9. Shop at H&M and Cotton On. Sure, the fabric isn’t as great as you’d find at Nordstrom. The clothing is nevertheless soft and it cut for a fit, athletic man. I usually pay around $30 for a well-fitting, soft shirt.

10. Shop off-season. Buy your winter clothing in the Summer and your Summer clothing in the winter.

Feel free to add your own tips in the comments, and of course, check out Masculine Style.

The Hodge Twins are a pair of identical twins with a popular bodybuilding YouTube channel. Their training advice is sound, but I’ve found their relationship advice channel to be hilarious.

Here they are telling a guy how to get over an ex-girlfriend:

What should a guy do when his girlfriend doesn’t love him anymore?

Return of Kings links to a profile of an 84-old blacksmith, noting, “This is a man.” The post offers us a good chance to think about something. What is a man?

Unlike so many other philosophical questions seem, the answer to that will have an impact on your life.

To answer the question you must first accept something as true: All animals have an inherent nature.

Some men claim that humans are not like other animals. Next time you wipe you ass or pick your boogers, ask yourself if man is more beast or god.

When you observe free and enslaved men, a man’s true nature if revealed.

Men are designed for hierarchical status regimes. It is not in a man’s nature to seek or respect egalitarian systems. Men struggle in environments where responsibility is not clearly delineated. Men need to know who is in charge. Men are OK with systems that are “harsh but fair.”

Men are designed for combat. As men respect and are more comfortable with hierarchy  it follows that men enjoy conflict. Any place where men congregate, men will argue.

Men are meant to be guided, mentored, and often ruled by more competent men. Every one of us has had a man-crush on another men. We have all likely worked for someone we admired. Even those of us with huge egos have no trouble recognizing that some men are superior in some ways to us. I have no trouble following orders from someone who is my legitimate better.

Men are not meant to be controlled by inferior men – or any woman. Just as working for or with a superior man is a buzz, having an inferior man breathing down our necks is soul-sucking.

When is the last time a man happily took his wife’s orders? Men do not seek nagging; they succumb to it. Men submit to women only after their spirits have been crushed.

Men are supposed exercise their will. Men fight hard to rise through the ranks of companies. But even dejected men try “leveling-up” in video games. A man with a horrible job might still try building his body at the gym. No many simply wants to rot.

Men are not designed for long-term romantic love. “I miss my dog,” my commanding officer said while we were in the field. He and the other married men laughed. They all could relate, although I was too young to understand. None of them missed their wives but they all missed their dogs.

A dog may live to be 10 or 15 years of age and yet a man loves the old dog as much as he loved the puppy. How many men still love their wives after 10 or 15 years?

It is not that men are incapable of loving a woman. Men simply lose interest after a few years. Long-term relationships are not in our DNA.

Once you recognize the essential nature of man, you begin thinking through the implications and reaching proper conclusions about work and women.

If you are unhappy, it’s because you’ve ignored your essential nature as a man. If you work at a job where women or inferior men give you orders before going home to sit around watching TV, you are of course miserable. You are no different from a dog who is locked up in a small apartment.

Becoming happy in a feminized world requires a rejection of the lifestyle you were brainwashed all of your lives to lead.

A perennial question on places where mean concrete is the age-gap issue. Namely, “What do I say when she asks me how old I am?”

Well isn’t it funny that guys keep asking that question. Think about it. Why are you asking that question in the first place.

You’re asking that question because girls are suddenly interested in you. A man’s peak years to meet women are his late 20s to early 30s, and he can extend his time horizons through good nutrition, physical fitness, and hormone replacement therapy.

She’s asking you about your age because you look older and more mature. and that’s a good thing.

So first stop being so god-damned insecure about your age. In every other society younger women prefer older men.  Only in this god-forsaken culture are we taught that it’s “creepy” for an older man to date a younger woman.

Second, if she asks, always answer, “How old do you think I am?” She will guess. Younger women are horrible at judging age. Until a  woman develops crows feet and fine lines, she doesn’t know what signs of aging to look for in a man.

You say, “You’re a good guesser,” and grin. She will push. “Am I right?!” She wants to be told that she made the right guess, not so much because age is a deal breaker, but because women love to be right.

Play around with it for a little while before saying, “You were off by a year.” Then move on.

Third, some women are bitches. One woman said to me, “Oh, really, we’re going to play that game?” It’s no surprise that she was 31.  I turned away from her because I don’t talk to bitches.

Fourth, if a woman says your age is an issue, counter with, “Yeah, I know we won’t make it in the long run. I prefer dating sophisticated women.”

A girl will be on her back with her feet in the air to prove how wrong you are about her lack of sophistication and worldliness.

Guys regularly complain that American women aren’t feminine. Yet if you want a feminine woman should you not first be masculine?

Proving that wisdom is often found in unusually sources, Planned Parenthood provides some decent guidelines for masculinity. PP claims these trains are “socially constructed,” which is silly. Masculinity is a biological construct.

Nevertheless the list is quite good. A quick review of this list shows that most American men are not prepared to handle feminine women.

WORDS COMMONLY USED TO DESCRIBE MASCULINITY

1. Independent. Are you always crying about politics, saying that life will be good for everyone is “your man” is elected? Do you complain that the government has not done enough to boost the economy? Then you are dependent upon the government for your economic success. You are also a latent homosexual, since you are spending way too much time mentally jacking off over Romney/Obama.

2. Non-emotional. Do you cry when people say things that hurt your feelings? Have you ever reported an online message board post to a moderator because it was “mean”? When your boss is being an ass do you become a sad little panda.

3. Aggressive. Are you afraid of approaching women? Do you take what is yours or complain that there is a lack of opportunity?

4. Tough-skinned. Does a rhinoceros know when a gnat is on its back? Do you stew and brew over real and perceived slights? See also number 2, above.

5. Competitive. Do you try making yourself better each day? Do you grind out extra reps, look for a side hustle, and constantly improve?

6. Strong, active, and self-confident. Are you in the gym and reading every day? Or do you walk with slouching shoulders and hold your head down like a slave before going home to play Xbox 360.

7. Hard. When life gets tough do you push through or do you quit? Are you afraid of drinking a green juice and instead look for your milk and cookies?

8. Sexually aggressive. Any loser can be horny. When you see a woman do you decide that you are going to take her?

Women want their opposite. Even a self-proclaimed “strong, independent woman” wants to be tamed. All of my feminist friends – including “ball-busting lawyers” – changed their last names when getting married.

America is full of feminine women, as femininity is a biological construct.  Women want to submit to a man. Or did you not notice that 50 Shades of Grey sold tens of millions of copies?

Women want to be bent over. The problem is that most American aren’t strong enough to break them.

It seems like every year there’s a new superfood. Superfood is more of a marketing term than anything else.

Consider açaí,which rose to prominence a few years ago. Açaí is amazing stuff and I throw it a packet or two into my superfood smoothies. Açaí has a high ORAC score. (ORAC standards for oxygen radical absorbance capacity; a high score means the food binds to a greater number of free radicals.)

But does açaí offer any health benefits that blueberries don’t offer?  Not really. Dollar-for-dollar, you’re better off using blueberries. Açaí is just another healthy food to eat rather than anything magical.

So you have to be careful when you see something called a superfood. Hide your wallet and all that.

But there are some foods that seem to offer health benefits not readily available from other sources.

Sea algae is one of those foods. Seal algae binds to mercury and aids in detoxification.  It also offers several other health benefits. I’ve started taking shots of E3 live, which has a ton of science behind it but is really expensive.

Chlorella is much more affordable and is also a legitimate superfood. You can go on PubMed and poke around. Here are a few proven benefits of chlorella:

• Beneficial immunostimulatory effect of short-term Chlorella supplementation: enhancement of Natural Killer cell activity and early inflammatory response (Randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial). Conclusion: These results may suggest a beneficial immunostimulatory effect of short-term Chlorella supplementation which enhances the NK cell activity and produces interferon-gamma and interleukin-12 as well as interleukin-1beta, the Th-1 cell-induced cytokines in healthy people
• Six-week supplementation with Chlorella has favorable impact on antioxidant status in Korean male smokers. Chlorella supplementation resulted in the conservation of plasma antioxidant nutrient status and improvement in erythrocyte antioxidant enzyme activities in subjects. Therefore, our results are supportive of an antioxidant role for Chlorella and indicate that Chlorella is an important whole-food supplement that should be included as a key component of a healthy diet.
• Chlorella vulgaris modulates hydrogen peroxide-induced DNA damage and telomere shortening of human fibroblasts derived from different aged individuals. Therefore, we concluded that Chlorella vulgaris exhibited bioprotective effects especially in cells obtained from young donor but were more bioremediative for cells obtained from old donor as indicated by DNA damage, telomere shortening and reduction in telomerase activity.
• Therapeutic potentials of unicellular green alga Chlorella in advanced glycation end product (AGE)-related disorders.

Unlike E3 live, chlorella is inexpensive. I throw a tablespoon into my Superfood Smoothies and enjoy the taste. But chlorella is very “green.” If you’re not into juicing vegetables, it might be a bit much.

Fortunately there are chlorella pills, which are what most of the studies used.

It’s pretty rare that a superfood meets the hype. Chlorella seems like a rare example.

The new address for Danger & Play is dangerandplay.com

Thank you for your continued support and readership.

Friday morning I woke up with dime-sized red mark on my lower arm. It appeared to be zit without a head. It wouldn’t pop, so I eagerly awaited taking care of it after a hot shower.

A few hours later the zit looked like a large spider bite. When I squeezed it, a jolt of hot pain spread up my arm.

I watched this spider bite grow for a couple of hours. Once my arm started feeling hot, I went to the Emergency Room.

Anyone who has grappled or worked in medicine know why I went to the ER rather than waiting to see my doctor the following Monday. An aggressive form of Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – or flesh-eating bacteria – had begun colonizing my arm. By Monday I would have run the risk of losing part of my arm. (Some aggressive antibiotics killed those encroaching bastards.)

You might be wondering what a story about a bacteria infection have to do with anything.

Although we like to talk about game and evolutionary psychology by relying on primates, in truth we are nothing more than bacteria.

That bacteria could have been happy to occupy a small piece of real estate in my arm. But the bacteria’s selfish genes compelled it to expand into greater territory. That bacteria wasn’t happy with a piece of flesh; it wanted my entire arm.

It might not make sense to us to talk about a bacteria’s happiness, but consider how we are no different from that MRSA colony. We expect more, more, more each year and we won’t stop until we get more, more, more.

Yet behaving like bacteria doesn’t make us any happier:

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.

Have you ever looked at a Social Security wage statement? I earned $13,848 during my senior year in college. I had everything that I could possibly want.

During a self-audit of my spending with Mint.com, I bristled at the thought of downsizing my living space. I need to be in a nice place near the ocean, fancy coffee shops, and good restaurants. My very happiness depends upon it!

But I lived without such luxuries years ago. Why can’t I chill out? Why does my standard of living have to go up each year?

Why do you need a new car, bigger house, bigger paycheck, and more, more, more each year?

We demand more from tomorrow than we have from today because we are no different from bacteria. And we are unhappier for it.

I know guys who are broke that can’t live with roommates. That’d be impossible. So those guys will stress about money because it’s impossible to do something they actually did years ago.

I know guys who can’t pick up women who have large car payments. You guys would laugh if you saw my car. My car payment is zero.

Why throw money into a car that could go into your body? Guys who “can’t afford” to juice or join a gym probably drive better cars than I do.

Why work harder at a job you hate so that you can buy more stuff that won’t make you happy?

The bacteria says, “Bigger living space, nicer car, work harder, longer hours, bigger paycheck.”

If expanding into deeper territory truly makes you happy, who am I to tell you otherwise?

In my experience, however, behaving like bacteria actually eats away our happiness. Acquiring more rarely makes us happy and so we should seek to kill the happiness-eating bacteria that has colonized our minds.

In 2013 this blog will be stepping up its game. I’m talking to a guy about doing an entire site redesign. The new site will look better and have more content and features.

The blog will have game posts and there will be separate sections called, “The Locker Room,” “The Juice Bar,” and “The Wallet.”

There will be separate sections to discuss lifting, juicing, and personal finance. We may even be able to figure out a way to post training logs.

All of this will cost money. There are two easy ways that you can support the site upgrade.

First, buy your supplements at iHerb. Use coupon code EKO606 (at checkout there will be a box to enter coupon codes) to save $10 on your first order over $40 and $5 off smaller orders. Everyone saves 5% on orders over $60 and most orders receive free shipping. iHerb is great for international customers, too.

Hell, I even buy my xylitol chewing gum, toothpaste, and shampoo from iHerb.

If you are a first-time customer, please shop in October. iHerb is running a contest. If I win the contest (buy having the most first-time customers), then my prize money will pay for almost the entire site redesign.

Second, click on this Amazon.com link before you make any purchases. You can purchase anything from Amazon after clicking this link and I will get a commission from Amazon.

My only rule of blogging is that I write about what I actually do. I personally buy my supplements from iHerb and Amazon and shopped at both places long before enrolling in any rewards programs. So I wouldn’t recommend these sites if they weren’t legit.

Thanks much, guys.

UPDATE: I’ve been persuaded to accept contributions towards the redesign. Your donations aren’t really donations, as I’m going to put the money directly into the site for upgrades. So you are building the site to make it better for yourselves rather than giving me free money.