Tag Archives: humor

May
18
2012
Basic Needs of a Wife

Recently I wrote a post on what I learned from the Duggars about the basic needs of a husband. The source of this knowledge, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, sells the “Seven Basic Needs of a Husband” eight-page pamphlet for two bucks.

But what of a wife’s needs? Well, they have that covered too! Only wives must be a little more high maintenance, because the “Seven Basic Needs of a Wife” take 80 pages to explain and cost $12.99 to receive.

But hey, I’m a wife and I know a little something about my needs. Let me share some of them with you now. I need a husband who will:

1.) Check his damn pockets before throwing shit in the laundry. On the plus side, our guitar picks and loose change (and cell phones) are impeccably clean around here.

I'm keeping everything I find in the dryer. I'm hoping he'll run out of guitar picks.

2.) Not leave peanut butter on the side of the jar. And/or fix the ant problem. I’d be happy with either really. The peanut butter is unfortunately not pictured, because I wiped it off in a huff before remembering this photo project. And even though I haven’t made a peep to Dave about documenting his failure to meet my needs, he’s miraculously stopped leaving peanut butter on the jar. I do have a photo of an ant that got stuck inside our frigging salt shaker last year, if anyone’s interested in that.

3.) Run agreed-to errands in my lifetime. We’ve been paying the fee for this brand new, yet faulty DVR for months. I even placed it near the front door for easier recall. No dice.

4.) Wait for me to actually finish what I’m saying before absent-mindedly asking, “what?” Here’s a charming story: Dave received a pair of ear plugs from our friend JohnBoy at his bachelor party along with the advice, “Sometimes Tracy is going to want to talk to you and sometimes you aren’t going to want to listen.”

5.) Close things he’s opened. The regularly open dishwasher door is a shin-busting accident waiting to happen. I probably should have done a video for this one because there’s no way to capture the majesty of how many doors and drawers Dave can leave open at a time in one picture.

Also, we could never have glass-front cabinets.

6.) Sit on the furniture without deforming it. Seriously, the power of Dave’s ass is beyond my understanding. I have no idea how he makes the cushions do that.

7.) Learn how to distinguish times when I might be receptive to him grabbing my boobs. Or at least won’t try to turn every dish washing experience into a Cialis moment.

Well, that’s seven. So I won’t mention “allowing me to be financially dependent” again. There you go, I’ve just saved you guys $12.99.

Did I miss anything?

Mar
26
2012
Basic Needs of a Husband

I will spare you my rationalizations about why I watch the Duggars’ reality show,  “19 Kids and Counting,” and simply say: I am repulsed yet strangely fascinated. Also, I have always enjoyed learning about foreign cultures.

I didn’t think their beliefs could shock me anymore, but the season premiere proved me wrong. The camera scanned ever so briefly across one of Michelle’s public speaking handouts and the title, “Seven Basic Needs of a Husband,” jumped off the page. 

I paused the DVR so I could study up on my husband’s needs.  And so I could take a picture of the screen. Here you go.

Squirming with discomfort, I read about the ways in which I am destroying my husband’s (apparently ridiculously weak) manliness.

For example: wives, did you know that we destroy our husbands’ manliness when we “resist his decisions in our spirit.” That’s interesting, because I don’t stop with resisting in spirit. I say that shit out loud.

Most entertaining were the handout’s practical tips. For example, instead of “resisting his decisions,” you should “learn to wisely appeal to your husband.” Even fundamentalists understand the need to be realistic about who really makes the decisions. Fear not, wives! We need not accept our husband’s decisions, we just need to learn how to be more subtle in our resistance.

These “needs” were so over-the-top ridiculous it was hard to be as pissed as maybe I should have been. When I noticed the “love is killed by self-sufficiency” line, I dissolved into giggles.

But wait a minute…

If you’ve been reading here awhile, you may be aware of my early retirement fantasy. 

Why is it just a fantasy? A.) our mortgage, 2.) I imagine replacing the time currently spent working and commuting with things I want to do, not what I’d actually be doing (learning to cook, cleaning the house, doing Dave’s laundry, etc…), and c.) as grumpy and depleted as work makes me, my self-worth is largely tied up in how well I perform there and in my ability to earn a living. It would make me (not to mention Dave) uncomfortable to expect Dave to earn all our income.

But the Duggars (actually the “Institute in Basic Life Principles”) were telling me that God wants me to be financially dependent on Dave. My self-sufficiency is killing our love. That doesn’t sound good.

Could Dave really need me to quit my job? Could this really be so simple and easy? I thought I’d consult an actual husband about the accuracy of these needs.

“Dave, I need to show you something. Can you come in here for a minute?”

I played the scene in slow motion so he could peruse his basic needs.

“So, what do you think? Do you need me to quit my job? Because I’m willing to make that sacrifice to support your manliness,” I looked at him hopefully.

Unfortunately, Dave fixated on a different basic need.

“No, but I agree you shouldn’t resist my physical affection.”

“Crap, I hadn’t even noticed that one. I brought you in here to discuss how my self-sufficiency is killing our love.”

“But God wants you to stop crushing my spirit.”

“I don’t think God understands how often you want to have sex. Look, if we worked on meeting your need to have a financially dependent wife first, I’d have so much more time to, uh, stroke your manliness in other ways as well.”

I think he’s starting to warm up to my early retirement. I think it will be more difficult to convince myself.

I joked that God didn’t understand how often men want to have sex, but apparently he does. The only practical tip the handout provides for wives to help them meet this need is: “learn the power of prayer.” Yep, that sounds about right.

——

If you wonder how I know the “Institute in Basic Life Principles” published this document, that’s because my perfectionism commitment to my blogging craft made me research the source. I may also have ordered my own copy. Hey, there are six more needs the show didn’t even cover, and I’m nothing if not thorough.

Mar
6
2012
Ignorance and Malt Liquor

They say laughter is the best medicine. So when I laugh at people, I’m just looking out for my health.

One of many reasons I’ll be in hell if it exists is laughing at an impassioned speaker during high school who said, “we will no longer take your condensation!” Expressing frustration with condescension but messing up the word…now that’s ironic, Alanis. To this day, when I want to feign indignation, I say:  “I will take your sublimation, I will suffer through your precipitation, but by God, I will no longer stand for your condensation.”

So I’m a pain in the ass. But lest ye think I have no embarrassing moments of stupidity, I’m here to invite you to laugh at me.

Most of my highlights are the result of being naive. I have lived a pretty sheltered life. Although I’ve always had a mouth like a sewer, that came from growing up around my older brother and his friends, not the result of experience. I was, and sometimes still am, an innocent Catholic school girl at heart.

Sophomore year of high school, I was startled at the change in appearance of one of our classmates. I turned to my friend and whispered, “Wow, she really got fat!” And my friend looked at me incredulously and said, “She’s pregnant!” I can’t remember if she added, “you moron,” but if not, I deserved it. I was still a little confused even after the explanation (uh, isn’t sex required to get pregnant?!?), but managed to hold it in.

My specialty is misinterpreting song lyrics.

Sometimes I take things too literally. I’m embarrassed to report it was only a few years ago I finally realized “Santa Claus” was actually Daddy dressed up as Santa Claus in the song “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus.” Before that, I had always just thought Mommy was a slut.

One of my favorite songs ever is “Mama Said Knock You Out,” by L.L. Cool J. It came out during my senior year of high school, when I was immersed in English literature (immersed as in having to memorize some of the prologue of The Canterbury Tales in Middle English). So when L.L. said, “Old English filled my mind, and I came up with a funky rhyme,” I was terribly impressed at such an allusion in a rap song.

Because clearly L.L. Cool J meant this Old English:

Of course, I learned later about an alternative “Olde English.” Perhaps this is the origin of the funky rhyme?

I still prefer to believe it’s a double entendre.

For all I know, the line might have been a triple entendre…

I could have swiped stock photos, but I am committed to my craft. Beowulf came from the library (buy it? bitch, please!), furniture polish from the grocery store, and the malt liquor…let’s say finding Olde English 800 in my neck of the woods was not as easy. We’d pretty much given up when we happened upon a little corner store with “wine and beer” in the title. On the way in, I had a premonition that our purchase of Olde English 800 would not go without comment. The guy behind us didn’t disappoint: “OE 800?!?! Kickin’ it old school like Dr. Dre!”

Nope, taking a picture of it for my blog. Dave’s excited to take it to his next band practice. He insisted I put it back in the fridge as soon I was finished taking photos so it wouldn’t be exposed to light. Something about degrading the quality…ahem. “Sweetie, I put the 40 of OE 800 next to your imported Belgian Trappist Ale.”

What’s your best moment of ignorance?

Nov
14
2011
The Bread Loaf of Time

Dealing with time is one of my biggest struggles. Dave once told me about an experiment that showed the passage of time is actually slower if moving than if not by comparing two atomic clocks. As someone used to obtaining a non-treated counterfactual through random assignment of fairly large numbers of units, taking a difference of two clocks didn’t work for me.

I spat out a string of questions about the design of the study. “How did they actually measure elapsed time?” “What is the normal accuracy of these clocks?” “Did they repeat this more than once?” “Why didn’t they use several clocks in each location?” Since Dave didn’t really know, I sort of won an argument about physics against a physicist, which was fun but left me without an understanding of time.

The Fabric of the Cosmos: The Illusion of Time

Given my desire to understand time, I didn’t beg for the remote when I found Dave watching an episode of PBS’ NOVA called “The Illusion of Time.” This was part of a four-hour series based on a book by physicist Brian Greene, or as I like to call him, annoying string theory guy.

Annoying string theory guy has become a bit of a celebrity; he’s even been on Letterman. So he’s pleased with himself, is what I’m saying. He wears a leather jacket and a swagger during this show, but he wasn’t fooling me. If you are going to be a geek turned famous scientist, at least be lovable like Carl Sagan, who sounded like Kermit the Frog and seemed credible. When annoying string theory guy speaks, I feel like he’s trying to sell me a stolen car.

Five minutes into the show, one of the scientists interviewed, Max Tegmark, had this to say: “There’s basically no aspect of time which I feel we really fully understand.”

Great! Can’t wait to hear about it for an hour then.

Throughout the hour, I got the distinct impression physicists just make things up. I freely admit I don’t understand physics. Physics was an elective and I elected not to study it. I definitely think physicists are smarter than I am. But I also suspect they don’t really understand this stuff either, they are just smart enough to fake it.

Einstein = Genius

It was cute to see the man crushes these physicists have for Einstein. The first half of the program explained how Einstein overthrew “the common-sense idea that time ticks the same for everyone.” According to David Kaiser: “It’s mind-blowing that you and I will not agree on measurements of time…Why should my measurement of time depend on how I am moving, or how you’re moving? That, that doesn’t make any sense.” So far we agree, that doesn’t make any sense!

Apparently, there’s a link between space and time. Annoying string theory guy explained the clock experiment. The 1971 experiment compared elapsed time for an atomic clock flown around the world with the elapsed time of a clock on the ground. At the end of the experiment, the two clocks differed “by a few hundred billionths of a second.” I couldn’t believe measurement error was smaller than that difference, but Dave insisted there are atomic clocks accurate enough to detect an effect that small.

“In 1971?!?”

“Yep.”

I’m supposed to believe we had technology that accurate forty years ago, but today I have to wait 20 minutes for PDF files to spool to my work printer? Can’t Microsoft hire these clock people?

Einstein’s genius didn’t extend to creative names. Annoying string theory guy explained that Einstein fused together space and time “in what came to be called…” …wait for it… “spacetime.” You don’t say? Even though the show contained no point more clear, they needed a second scientist to explain it. Max Tegmark explained it again, only even more slowly and with arm motions and an earnest look, just to be sure we were all clear.

SPACE + TIME = (say it with me) SPACETIME

Annoying string theory guy turned a visual of “spacetime” into a loaf of bread to illustrate. I found this both condescending and, grudgingly, helpful as I’m not a theoretical learner. He showed how slices of “now” can angle toward the past or to the future depending on the movement of aliens 10-billion light years away. So just as all of space exists, all of time exists as well, or so Einstein said and Einstein can’t be wrong.

Or as Sean Carroll said: “If you believe the laws of physics, there’s just as much reality to the future and the past as there is to the present moment.”

I don’t believe in physics, I just believe in me. Yoko and me.

The Arrow of Time

So 30 minutes in, I got it. Past, present, and future are an illusion. I didn’t see any practical application to care much about, as the aliens who can see our future are too far away to tell us about it before we’ve experienced it too, but I got it. Then the only woman in this telecast, Janna Levin, said: “Our entire experience of time is constantly in the present. And all we ever grasp is that instant moment.” Then I got confused again because I remember the past, how about you?

They spent the next few minutes discussing time travel, because otherwise most people will stop being interested in a show about science. Then the last 20 minutes painstakingly tore down all of the limited understanding I built during the first 30.

The last part tried to reconcile why time appears to move only forward when the laws of physics don’t require time to have directionality. Annoying string theory guy implied entropy might help explain this “arrow of time.” I fell in love with the entropy guy, both because he has a cool bust of himself on his gravestone and because his work shows my inability to stay organized isn’t a character flaw, it’s a law of physics.

But no! Entropy can’t explain the arrow of time because the laws of physics say disorder should increase both toward the future and toward the past. Annoying string theory guy then said: “And that makes no sense.” As if everything said before that point had made sense.

Since they were having trouble reconciling Einstein’s theory of relativity with the arrow of time, they decided to blame the discrepancy on the Big Bang. Annoying string theory guy: “So our best understanding is that the Big Bang set the arrow of time on its path…the universe has been unwinding since the Big Bang, becoming ever more disordered.”

So basically, really intelligent physicists can’t explain time either. In the next episode, I look forward to not understanding, and also possibly debunking, quantum mechanics. 

Check out this uncomfortable yet endearing video which increased the strength of my crush on Max Tegmark. Hopefully a future episode of NOVA will explain the power physics geeks have over me.