v-day Tribute
So valentine's day quickly approaches. For men in relationships, the approaching "holiday" can make us feel like we're tied to train tracks with a steaming locomotive just around the bend. After all, valentine's day is in fact, not a holiday. It doesn't commemorate anything. Nothing happened on February 14th. Ever.
So what's the point? Pretty clearly, it's money. There's an easy way to make men pay $20 for a box of chocolates, or $100 for a dozen roses: Tell their women they have to. Or even worse: Tell their women that they should. We're inundated with advertising that tells us men that if we don't get our ladies something special, then we don't think they're special. Do we buy into this? Of course not. Problem is though, women do. And I'm not blaming them. If I started seeing commercials talking about how June 8th was "Head Day" and the only way for women to show men that they really cared was giving them head on that special day, we'd be all for it. (Until about June 9th, when we all realized we weren't getting head again for a full year, and that women had successfully lobbied to turn blowjobs into a - gulp - annual event. And think about it, do our ladies get heart shaped boxes of chocolates any other days of the year? No, they don't. The moral is, say no to Head Day)
I usually head into valentine's day a little bullish and refusing to even acknowledge it. However, I know full well that if my wife indicates that this behavoir will not be well received, then I'm off to the florist to have my money and testicles removed. Thankfully, we were watching TV the other night and saw an add for some bullshit candy company that was "interviewing" women about what it's like to get chocolates on valentine's day. One "Interviewee" said the following about getting the same heart shaped box every year: "It shows they care. It means love."
Does it? Does it really? Does the fact that your husband walked into a fucking Hallmark store on his way home from work (or his girlfriend's place) and bought the first package of chocolates he saw really mean love? Seems to me that she has pretty low expectations for her husband and in her relationship in general. A heartshaped box of chocolates does not say "love," it says "I realized today was a bullshit holiday, but that I might get sex tonight if I got you something. And since I don't know what kind of candy you actually like, or what clothes you might wear and I have no interest in taking you to dinner or a movie, here are some chocolates I got from 7/11 that I hope I can parlay into crotch locking." Very sweet. Thankfully, my wife agreed, and we (re: she) decided we should do nothing for valentine's day.
With that in mind, I am offering up a tribute to my lovely wife of just over 3 years by listing -
9. She's Very Competitive
Anybody who knows her will be shocked at this understatement. Whether playing nerf baseball, indoor soccer, volleyball, Scrabble or even MarioKart, there's no halfway. Once she's in, she's in all the way. She hates to lose at anything. I've even heard her grunt with delight over an unexpected second Yahtzee. But perhaps the best example of her hyper competitiveness was during a game of beach volleyball in college. She and a friend of ours started to wrestle. He pushed her to the ground and while falling she reached out, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it into his eyes. Remember, I didn't say she plays fair, I just said she plays hard.
One of our mutual friends said something really funny once about our competitiveness. He now knows that when we ask a seemingly innocuous question, his answer to the question will undoubtedly support one of us and the other will definitely hold a grudge. He has taken to more or less ignoring us.
8. She Can Fix the Computer
This has come in very handy, as I myself cannot. We took a video of our dog playing with the neighbor's dog (I know, I know) and I gave her the camera, asked her to put it on YouTube (I know) and went to bed. When I woke up, she was done. She's hooked up a wireless internet adapter and taught me how to burn CD's. Most embarassingly, when a friend of mine was trying to show me how to use bit torrents to download free porn, she had to step in do it for me saying "Not only do I have to have sex with you, now I have to help you masturbate, too?"
I was on the phone with my internet savvy and pigment deprived friend who was trying to talk me through the process, and I was relaying his instructions to my wife. My friend likened this situation to having 2 physics professors trying to discuss a problem, but the only way they can communicate is by having a monkey translate.
7. She Likes Strip Clubs
I don't think you truly know love until you've seen your drunk wife groping the breasts of a stripper, and then afterwards attempt to drunkenly cross her legs, only to clear off a knee-high table of drinks in one smooth motion, and still have to presence of mind to blame someone else.
6. She Loves Dogs
For me, this one's a requirement. She can watch Field of Dreams, Steel Magnolias, Forrest Gump and Terms of Endearment back to back dry-eyed, but if our dog so much as picks up a tick on her fur, she's virtually inconsolable. She also avoids like the plague, the following movies which she believes to be too sad:
Charlotte's Webb
Eight Below
My Dog Skip
Down Periscope (Not for dogs, but because of Kelsey Grammer as a fucking Naval Submarine Commander? Seriously.)
5. She's Funny
Mostly when mocking my increasingly homo-erotic relationships, receeding hair, ineffective genitals, poor personality and general defectiveness. And those same qualities in our friends. She's also managed to convince our neighbors that I'm gay.
4. She Hates the Yankees
God help me, I don't think I could truly love a woman who didn't think that Derek Jeter is the most over-hyped, overrated and frankly luckiest athlete of the last 50 years. She also likes to openly root for the Red Sox in crowded bars and talk shit to people she doesn't know (while drunk) assuming that if they get pissed enough at her, they'll kick my ass.
(Somebody once asked me if I had to choose between three girls who looked the same, and one of them was a chain smoker, one was bulemic and the other was a die-hard jersey wearing Yankee fan, which would I date. The answer was easy. Very easy. The bulemic. You can always get chewing gum and some porcelain veneers. But if had to listen to a girl say "I don't care what all the statistics say, I think Jeter is a good fielder because I see his highlights on ESPN," our relationship would end poorly.)
3. She Actually Trusts Me
To further explain, if I want to go out to a bar with some friends on a night when she doesn't feel like it, and I then stumble home at 4am, she doesn't care. Probably because she prefers reading a book to talking to me. And that time I left her home sick and went to a party on New Year's Eve, she wasn't even mad. From what I was told at the party, that takes a special person.
2. She Plays Fantasy Baseball
She doesn't just play. As I said, she's competitive, so all through February and March when my loser friends and I are discussing keepers and draft strategies she openly mocks us, only to then hunker down a week before draft day and fine tune a strategy. In the 5 year existence of our College League, she's never finished lower than 4th (and she only did that her first year) and she won the league once. Her success in the league at one time even led one of our fellow players to threaten to "kick her in the teeth." She can also define and calculate the following acronyms: WHIP, K/BB, K/9, OBP, SLUG, OPS, VORP. This has lead to at one time or another yell the following phrases:
1. She Married Me
No faster way to improve oneself socially. No faster way to achieve "coolness." Some would call it a "mistake" or a "death sentence." She looked passed all those naysayers and signed on for a lifetime of baseball statistics, David Fincher movies, dog hair on everything and a refusal to spend $50 on flowers.
You put all of those together you get one of two things. A guy. Or a girl that can make even the craziest asshole happy. Luckily, I got the girl...
So what's the point? Pretty clearly, it's money. There's an easy way to make men pay $20 for a box of chocolates, or $100 for a dozen roses: Tell their women they have to. Or even worse: Tell their women that they should. We're inundated with advertising that tells us men that if we don't get our ladies something special, then we don't think they're special. Do we buy into this? Of course not. Problem is though, women do. And I'm not blaming them. If I started seeing commercials talking about how June 8th was "Head Day" and the only way for women to show men that they really cared was giving them head on that special day, we'd be all for it. (Until about June 9th, when we all realized we weren't getting head again for a full year, and that women had successfully lobbied to turn blowjobs into a - gulp - annual event. And think about it, do our ladies get heart shaped boxes of chocolates any other days of the year? No, they don't. The moral is, say no to Head Day)
I usually head into valentine's day a little bullish and refusing to even acknowledge it. However, I know full well that if my wife indicates that this behavoir will not be well received, then I'm off to the florist to have my money and testicles removed. Thankfully, we were watching TV the other night and saw an add for some bullshit candy company that was "interviewing" women about what it's like to get chocolates on valentine's day. One "Interviewee" said the following about getting the same heart shaped box every year: "It shows they care. It means love."
Does it? Does it really? Does the fact that your husband walked into a fucking Hallmark store on his way home from work (or his girlfriend's place) and bought the first package of chocolates he saw really mean love? Seems to me that she has pretty low expectations for her husband and in her relationship in general. A heartshaped box of chocolates does not say "love," it says "I realized today was a bullshit holiday, but that I might get sex tonight if I got you something. And since I don't know what kind of candy you actually like, or what clothes you might wear and I have no interest in taking you to dinner or a movie, here are some chocolates I got from 7/11 that I hope I can parlay into crotch locking." Very sweet. Thankfully, my wife agreed, and we (re: she) decided we should do nothing for valentine's day.
With that in mind, I am offering up a tribute to my lovely wife of just over 3 years by listing -
The 10 Coolest Things About My Wife
10. She Hates Being Late
I am so glad I don't have one of those girls who takes hours to do anything. You know you have those friends who you're supposed to meet at 9 and show up at 10:30 saying that "my hair was crazy" or saying nothing about it at all but you can see that guy rolling his eyes? Those people suck. My wife hates those people. And Jews. You have to be somewhere at a certain time? Fucking get there. Being late is irritating. And those of us who aren't late, hate you people that are (Erin, Larissa). And Jews.
9. She's Very Competitive
Anybody who knows her will be shocked at this understatement. Whether playing nerf baseball, indoor soccer, volleyball, Scrabble or even MarioKart, there's no halfway. Once she's in, she's in all the way. She hates to lose at anything. I've even heard her grunt with delight over an unexpected second Yahtzee. But perhaps the best example of her hyper competitiveness was during a game of beach volleyball in college. She and a friend of ours started to wrestle. He pushed her to the ground and while falling she reached out, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it into his eyes. Remember, I didn't say she plays fair, I just said she plays hard.
One of our mutual friends said something really funny once about our competitiveness. He now knows that when we ask a seemingly innocuous question, his answer to the question will undoubtedly support one of us and the other will definitely hold a grudge. He has taken to more or less ignoring us.
8. She Can Fix the Computer
This has come in very handy, as I myself cannot. We took a video of our dog playing with the neighbor's dog (I know, I know) and I gave her the camera, asked her to put it on YouTube (I know) and went to bed. When I woke up, she was done. She's hooked up a wireless internet adapter and taught me how to burn CD's. Most embarassingly, when a friend of mine was trying to show me how to use bit torrents to download free porn, she had to step in do it for me saying "Not only do I have to have sex with you, now I have to help you masturbate, too?"
I was on the phone with my internet savvy and pigment deprived friend who was trying to talk me through the process, and I was relaying his instructions to my wife. My friend likened this situation to having 2 physics professors trying to discuss a problem, but the only way they can communicate is by having a monkey translate.
7. She Likes Strip Clubs
I don't think you truly know love until you've seen your drunk wife groping the breasts of a stripper, and then afterwards attempt to drunkenly cross her legs, only to clear off a knee-high table of drinks in one smooth motion, and still have to presence of mind to blame someone else.
6. She Loves Dogs
For me, this one's a requirement. She can watch Field of Dreams, Steel Magnolias, Forrest Gump and Terms of Endearment back to back dry-eyed, but if our dog so much as picks up a tick on her fur, she's virtually inconsolable. She also avoids like the plague, the following movies which she believes to be too sad:
Charlotte's Webb
Eight Below
My Dog Skip
Down Periscope (Not for dogs, but because of Kelsey Grammer as a fucking Naval Submarine Commander? Seriously.)
5. She's Funny
Mostly when mocking my increasingly homo-erotic relationships, receeding hair, ineffective genitals, poor personality and general defectiveness. And those same qualities in our friends. She's also managed to convince our neighbors that I'm gay.
4. She Hates the Yankees
God help me, I don't think I could truly love a woman who didn't think that Derek Jeter is the most over-hyped, overrated and frankly luckiest athlete of the last 50 years. She also likes to openly root for the Red Sox in crowded bars and talk shit to people she doesn't know (while drunk) assuming that if they get pissed enough at her, they'll kick my ass.
(Somebody once asked me if I had to choose between three girls who looked the same, and one of them was a chain smoker, one was bulemic and the other was a die-hard jersey wearing Yankee fan, which would I date. The answer was easy. Very easy. The bulemic. You can always get chewing gum and some porcelain veneers. But if had to listen to a girl say "I don't care what all the statistics say, I think Jeter is a good fielder because I see his highlights on ESPN," our relationship would end poorly.)
3. She Actually Trusts Me
To further explain, if I want to go out to a bar with some friends on a night when she doesn't feel like it, and I then stumble home at 4am, she doesn't care. Probably because she prefers reading a book to talking to me. And that time I left her home sick and went to a party on New Year's Eve, she wasn't even mad. From what I was told at the party, that takes a special person.
2. She Plays Fantasy Baseball
She doesn't just play. As I said, she's competitive, so all through February and March when my loser friends and I are discussing keepers and draft strategies she openly mocks us, only to then hunker down a week before draft day and fine tune a strategy. In the 5 year existence of our College League, she's never finished lower than 4th (and she only did that her first year) and she won the league once. Her success in the league at one time even led one of our fellow players to threaten to "kick her in the teeth." She can also define and calculate the following acronyms: WHIP, K/BB, K/9, OBP, SLUG, OPS, VORP. This has lead to at one time or another yell the following phrases:
- "Fucking Bartolo Colon!"
- "I wish Chris Berman would die."
- "My pitching staff can suck my dick."
- "They'd better rule that an error."
- "My WHIP blows this week."
- "Remember when I beat you in the playoffs? How did that feel?"
- "Matt Holliday is a faggot."
1. She Married Me
No faster way to improve oneself socially. No faster way to achieve "coolness." Some would call it a "mistake" or a "death sentence." She looked passed all those naysayers and signed on for a lifetime of baseball statistics, David Fincher movies, dog hair on everything and a refusal to spend $50 on flowers.
You put all of those together you get one of two things. A guy. Or a girl that can make even the craziest asshole happy. Luckily, I got the girl...
posted by Tent Time at 8:11 PM
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