Archive for January, 2008

I decided to stick with the relationship theme for a while.

I have narrowed down all relationship problems into two issues. All strife in a heterosexual relationship stems from some combination of these two facts.

1: Women are insane.

2: Men are stupid.

Usually it’s both at once.

Women frequently ask questions that they do not really want to know the answers to. Such as “Is that girl pretty? Does this dress make my ass look big? You’d wrestle a shark for me wouldn’t you?” (I once worked with a man who actually got asked the shark one.) Now then, as anyone can point out, asking questions when you know that the answer will make you upset, is crazy.

And men prove their stupidity by actually answering these questions. There are two options when answering these questions. You can tell the truth which case the lady gets angry and the guy is in trouble. Or, we can lie. And they will know that we lied. And then we get in just as much trouble.

I have tried, on these occasions, to plead the fifth. It turns out that you can be forced to incriminate yourself against your wife. Also, torture bans do not so much apply to you.

The only real viable solution seems to be to be some sort of distraction, and then escape. I recommend those smoke capsules that ninjas carry around.

If you are fortunate enough to hang out with another couple, you can adapt a video game technique to get yourself out of these messes. It’s called “Training aggro”.

What you do is wait for your spouse to ask one of those loaded questions. Then, no matter what the question is, point at the other guy and say “Weren’t you just telling me about that?” Then when the women are busy ripping him apart you escape. You’d think that my male friends would be expecting this, but as I’ve pointed out, men are stupid.

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Judging from the reaction to the announcement of a new list some people were actually pretty excited to see it.

Which makes me feel mildly bad about teasing you folks with it, drugs when I was just using it to make one joke. (But in my defense, order it was funny, at least to me.) But it looks like I might actually have to write the thing now, so that will be coming some time soon I guess.

Since I have been thinking about marriage and relationship stuff lately I decided to discuss something that I think just about every guy has experienced. The inconsistent standards that the women in our lives like to apply to us.

For example: Presents.

Every woman I have ever been involved with has claimed to like it if we surprise them with a present. But there are rules about what surprises are okay.

Rules for husbands:
Living things that use photosynthesis, such as houseplants or flowers, are considered good surprises.

Living things that need to eat and poop, such as baby ferrets or Thai hookers, are bad surprises.

Rules for wives:
But conversely, if a woman decides to surprise a man with something that needs to eat and poop, such as “Surprise honey, I’m going to have a baby!” she generally considers that a good surprise. And if the husband knows what’s good for him he will play along. In yet another example of the double standard, it’s considered a very bad surprise for the husband to tell his wife “Surprise honey, I’m going to have a baby!”

If I have a point I guess it’s this: wives pretty much never surprise their husband with a Thai hooker.

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And here it is.

The official list of things I am not allowed to do now that I am married.

Number 1:

I am not allowed to write this list. There is nothing funny about our relationship. Everything is fine, anabolics and you will not tell people that I told you to write this.

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That’s what my new list is going to be.  Things I can’t do now that I’m married.

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I’m not adding more to my original list. (I am no longer in the Army and thus receive no new orders)

I am making a new list entirely, dedicated to a new subject.

And no, it is not about the video game industry.

I might start adding to the friends list again. I recently had a computer meltdown and lost all the old emails with suggestions that I had saved up. So if you have something you think is funny go ahead and send it in.

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Today I learned about a new kind of person.

Flexitarians.

A flexitarian is a vegetarian who eats meat.

Take a few seconds for that one to sink in.

So it’s someone who eats both meat and vegetables.

In other words, prescription it’s a person with normal eating habits. It’s the dietary equivalent of white suburban teenagers dressing in $500 G-Unit threads and declaring how “Gangsta” they are, anabolics while sitting at the mall waiting for their mothers to pick them up. If that’s how they choose to live, that’s their business. But I reserve the right to laugh at them.

Now before anybody gets into a snit over this. I have no problem with eating vegetables. I have no problem with not eating meat. I have a mild problem with people who try to act like their dietary choice makes them a superior being. But only mild problem because I’m a smartass and I love an easy target. Veggie-vangelicals are awesome people to pick on because they are both pretentious and very unlikely to be able to beat you up for it.

I understand that some people have religious issues with meat. And I believe in respecting people’s religious decisions. But only so far as they don’t get obnoxious about it. If someone tells me that they chose not to eat meat (for whatever reason), I’ll say cool, and pass them a salad. But if they get pushy or preachy…well then they must be mocked.

There’s probably more I could say on the subject but I have to run upstairs to eat a plate of delicious dead cow.

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First update: The whole t-shirt thing?  Still happening…just taking longer than I expected.  I finally got to see a test batch, and those should be available soon.

Second Update: next week, I will be unveiling my new  “can’t do” list.

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This story comes courtesy of one of my co-workers, Dav. I know it looks like a name from Invader Zim, but it’s pronounced “Dave”.

One of the things that me and Dav have in common is our ethnicity. Both of us are non-practicing Jews. Being Jewish comes with some advantages that gentiles don’t understand. One is a to have practically a supernatural affinity for the entertainment industry and money management. Another is the built in camouflage/amusement factor.

Like any other minority in the country, there are people that don’t like Jews. But unlike many other minorities, Jews are not color coded. If someone starts insulting Blacks in front of a black man, he is starting a fight. But if someone starts insulting Jews in front of me, they probably don’t realize I’m Jewish and are about to be embarrassed. Which is, of course, highly amusing.

Dav got to meet his girlfriend’s extended family during a big Easter Dinner last year. His girlfriend came from a large family of Eastern European immigrants. He hit it off and was fairly pleased that he seemed to be making a good impression with them. The grandmother served them lamb, which she explained was the traditional Easter meal for people from Bulgaria.

“We always have lamb for Easter. It’s the only time we can afford it. It’s not like we’re Jews.”

Dav looked uncomfortable for a moment and his girlfriend quickly intervened.

“Grandma, Dav is Jewish.”

Grandma quickly tried to make amends.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I didn’t think to look at his nose!”

Now every time he sees her family he complains about how long the meetings with the Elders of Zion take and most of them seriously have no idea if he’s joking or not.

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http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2008/01/andy-olmsted.html?cid=95886692

Edit: By now my regular readers have all looked at this.  First of all, I’m sorry for the lack of warning.  I tried to write a some form of introduction for this and it just didn’t work.

I couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t just feel hollow against what Andy Olmstead wrote.  Plus I felt anything I said would just take away from it.  I’m still not sure that I feel qualified to comment on it at all other than to say that I think everyone who has anything resembling an opinion on this war should read it.

The military needs more leaders like him, and I’m sorry for what it took to bring his writing to my attention.

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Today someone I work with showed me a link saying, ed viagra “Some reserve PSYOP officer says that you made PSYOP look bad, allergist and that you are an urban myth.”

This was great news, as I had been wondering what I was going to write about for my weekly update. Perfect, I now have a target.

So I forwarded the link to my home account, and got all ready to mock him on the internet. I was gonna make up new unit heraldry for him. (The 11th Battalion Fightin’ Hillbillies, and I was even going to add the latin motto “Vos fuimus pulchellus oris, puer”.)

So I got all worked up and I get home and look at the site. It’s an explanation of how PSYOP works written by a man called PSYOP Cop, who’s had some experience doing it in Iraq. It’s a pretty decent one too. So if you’re curious about that sort of thing, look here. Actually the site it’s on, OPFOR is worth looking at if you are interested in military matters at all.

It turns out the negative parts were just in the comments section. One reader thought that I make PSYOP look bad. To him, I repeat the same thing I said to the last guy who accused me of that: the military jokes on my site do less to harm PSYOP’s reputation that the one’s who possess commissions. (But I’m doing it here because I’m too lazy to log in there to do it, and beside he wrote it around six months ago.)

Another poster responded to him think that I do not exist and that no one has ever met me. This was a huge shock to my friends, family, and co-workers, who now want to know who the hell they have been talking to for the past several years. I personally never claim someone doesn’t exist without doing a Google search on them, just in case, I dunno, they have a webpage or a blog or something.

So dammit, once again the world thwarts me in my quest to be a righteously indignant smart-ass.

Some people may point out that I still acted like one. To them I say shut-up, nobody likes a smart-ass. Except for when I do it.

I’m gonna sulk, and maybe be mean to some fan-fic writers.

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