Top 12 Rules For Our Man Cave That Were Too Laxly Enforced In 2020

Our brother-in-law moved in after a nasty divorce and failed custody battle. Anyways, he’s “in recovery” so apparently that means no one in the freaking house is allowed to crack open a cold one because it’s not “supportive.”

No Shoes: Sorry, this is our wife’s rule for the whole house.

Junk Food Only: After the doctor found a three inch tapeworm in our small intestine, we had to revert to a diet that included fruits and leafy greens.

Fortune Telling Is Illegal: To be totally honest, this is a pretty antiquated statute from old times when there was a lot of anti-divination hysteria going around the man cave.

A real man can admit when he’s wrong, and we’re man enough to admit those deaths could have been prevented.

No Women: We’ve never had to enforce this rule but it still stands!

Our oak shelf filled with first editions of most of the seminal writer Baldwin’s oeuvre, including Giovanni’s Room, If Beale Street Could Talk, and our rare No Name In The Street, is one of our man cave’s most treasured possessions. We thought we were crystal clear that there was no rough play allowed anywhere near the vicinity of the mint-condition Notes Of A Native Son. However, this year our wayward son, Rufus, high-energy child that he is, played ball too close to the shelves. We were remiss in repeating our warnings, believing that the stated rule was enough, and roughhouse young Rufus did, causing a small unsightly tear on the cover of The Fire Next Time.

This has been a foundational principle of our man cave since 2006. Then we find out Mark’s brother-in-law Eric is actually Erach or some shit and his family is from Iran. Even though he’s apparently not practicing that’s the last time we make that mistake.

We try to be open minded, but we’ve humored Doug’s nonsense about Tadao Ando being the most influential architect of the 20th century for too long. His austere simplicity may have been impactful, and he’s rightfully celebrated, but Corbusier’s reach was far greater, no matter how controversial his urbanist ideas may have been.

Our man cave adheres to all international laws regarding the manufacture, distribution, and deployment of chemical weapons—no ifs, ands, or buts. You drop even a single vial of white phosphorus in the man cave, and we’re gonna ask you to leave. Only this year, we were having such a good time at Brock’s Free At Last party that things got out of hand, and Wally busted out some sarin gas, and we didn’t say anything since we didn’t want to crush the mood. But since then, mustard gas and bromobenzyl cyanide have become all too common among the man cave’s regular guests, and we don’t want anyone to get hurt, or have to face the International Criminal Court in the Hague. So in 2021, we’re going back to our strict policy against chemical weapons.

Sometimes we all lose our bearings during this one crazy life. The Man Cave originated as a space for us guys to kick back, pop a brew, and share our divine masculine energy with one another, to indulge our loftiest aspirations without fear of judgment. We need to guide and support one another better moving forward. We need to fly.

This may seem like a small infraction, but the fine line of law and order is a fickle thing, a frayed tightrope over the yawning maw of sheer chaos and humanity’s most heinous instincts. Because we failed to muster the vigilance needed to hold back the tides of lawlessness, the edifice of order collapsed before our eyes, leaving us to comb through the ashes of a major fire that destroyed our man cave, leaving thousands of dollars of property damage and three close buds dead.