Bessie’s Bits | Jack Bessie's Duct Tape for the Soul

These are all snide, snippy, sometimes satirical looks at all the things in life that can drive you crazy! Enjoy!

Buying A New Car Sept. 1, 2014

Well, well. You’d like to buy a new car, wouldn’t you? Oh sure, having that brand new, spotlessly clean car, all reeking with that new car smell is pretty exciting. Of course, to have that experience, to enjoy that, you have to actually go and buy one. That’s where all the pain and suffering occurs.

Now at first, you just want to go look. You need to see some different makes and models, trying to get a feel for what you’d like. Lots of luck. The new car dealers all have some sort of psychic radar on their lots. You drive in and park, salesmen descend on you like a plague of locusts in Egypt. Hungry sharks, slowly circling is another good analogy. If you want to just look, you’ve got to arm wrestle someone and beat them bad enough to gain some respect.

Now the good sales men aren’t pushy. Oh no. They’re just too helpful. I swear, they’d go wipe your butt for you if you gave the least indication that you’d appreciate it. They’ll follow you around, calculate a hundred possible deals, bring you water, popcorn; it’s embarrassing. You can always tell when cars aren’t selling well; the salesmen all have smudges on their knees from begging for someone’s business. Honestly, I don’t consider them serious in negotiating until someone offers me one of their children or is willing to send their wife over to my house for a month. No, I don’t consider myself a heartless buyer, just a savvy one.

Oh sure, I wouldn’t be such a prick if I didn’t know they were lying to me about everything. I really hate it when they say they’ll sell me a car at cost or for a hundred dollars less than factory invoice. I know they pay thousands less that factory invoice, so dream on; the guy that owns the dealership has a Bentley for God’s sake, and he didn’t buy that cheap either!

Of course, if you do decide to buy a car, having decided you like the car or just think the salesman’s son will make a fine domestic servant, you have to deal with the business manager. He’s the guy who has the Devil’s personal phone number on speed dial. Watch him; he can’t tell you the truth, the Devil has his soul and lying is part of his deal.

Now I’ve enjoyed a certain advantage in buying new cars; my oldest son was a car salesman. The boy never told the truth once growing up and he found his calling with a car dealership! The good news is that he accidently told me all the dirt about how dealers work. Comes in handy, trust me.

So, eventually, you get through all the paperwork, get screwed thoroughly and you can leave in your nifty new car. No more pain, no more suffering, just pure driving pleasure. That is, until the first monthly statement comes in the mail. Have a nice drive!

Computers Aug 1, 2014

I hate computers. Well, not exactly, I like what I can accomplish with one. If it doesn’t crash. If it doesn’t freeze up. If it doesn’t eat my file or document. If it doesn’t get infected by some wicked virus. If it doesn’t crap up my formatting and suddenly start displaying my writing in Chinese.

Actually, I do hate computers! I hate the fact that the !#%&##! operating system was sold without any of its flaws and bugs being fixed. The next system will be different, but just as crappy, coming with new problems and flaws, even if they did manage to fix any of the old system’s flaws.

And I hate the techie nerds who build this junk. You know they all think they’re smarter than God, and that we’re all idiots. If they were really smart, they’d build a computer that actually works, and that we idiots could actually use without ever talking to anyone in “tech support!”

Now if I was God, I’d make all the sinners spend eternity on the phone talking to tech support about computer problems. Forget that burning lake of fire stuff; talking to someone in Pakistan, who has an incomprehensible accent, about computer problems for eternity is going to make the worst human beg for forgiveness! And ever hour, when they were about to break, I’d have them put on hold for an hour, listening to a repeating recording of “how much you mean to us!” Makes the idea of eternal damnation seem a lot more unpleasant, doesn’t it?

Of course, if the computer companies were at all honest, and just admitted the truth, we’d feel a lot less hacked off. Just once, I’d like old Bill Gates to come out at a news conference, and say something like this:

“Hi, I’m Bill Gates, and I’m rich because I was evil enough to con all the computer manufacturers into putting my crappy operating system in their machines. We know what a piece-of-you-know-what all of the versions have been, and we don’t even want you to have the least illusion that we care. But honestly, all our competitors make crappy software too, so we’re no more wicked than all the rest! Our next version will likely suck as bad as the current one, and the only reason we’ll even issue it is so I can have more money to squander pretending I’m a philanthropist. You’re all a bunch a monkeys and you’re so screwed!”

See? We’d all feel better, or at least vindicated if he’d do that. Pretty sad, isn’t it? I know, dream on!

Now when I look back on the old junker computers I once had to use, it is sort of amazing. I honestly have no idea what possessed anyone to buy one. Slow. Difficult to use. Prone to breaking down, or screwing up, even worse than the current ones, if you can believe that. They have come a long ways, especially when you consider that my current desktop machine would whip the old mainframe one that powered the university when I was a student!

But, look, with all that power, all that memory and speed, why can’t they give us one that actually works! I don’t have an external hard drive and an off site backup service because the damn thing is reliable, now do I?!

Oh, and get this! Now the techie nerds are trying to convince people that my desktop computer is obsolete. Tablets are the new rage. Oh, really? I’m going to type a million keystrokes on a tiny screen, instead of a keyboard? What this is apparently, is just another way to get us to buy more devices that don’t work properly. Sorry, I’ve already got two expensive computers that make me angry at least once a day…I don’t think my arteries can take more “tech innovation!”

I also don’t need any more ways to screw up. Just the other day, I was sending my mistress a sexy note, and hit reply all. That was embarrassing. I suppose I should be thankful for some tech innovations though, like Wi-fi. I can still stay connected even while sleeping in my car.

Annoying Neighbors

We’ve all suffered with them. You can be living in the most perfect and tranquil of places, a neighborhood that hasn’t got a single person who doesn’t aspire to emulate Mother Theresa, and one of “Them” will inevitably move in to replace some nice family.

Now you don’t have to wait for the swat team to show up to know just how annoying these folks are. They usually declare themselves to be persona non-gratia long before the inevitable crisis. What makes these people so annoying? Allow me to count the ways.

If they have stupid, mouthy kids, who run through your flowers and throw rocks thru your windows just for fun, they’re annoying. If they have some jacked up car or truck with no muffler, that they rev up at all hours of the day or night, they’re annoying. If they steal anything that isn’t bolted down, and have the local biker gang over for meetings and parties, they’re annoying. If they have one or more dogs that bark constantly and crap in everyone’s yard, they’re annoying.

If they’re always trying to borrow food, tools, your furniture, they’re annoying. Ditto for mooching money and super ditto if they call you anytime for bail money, they’re annoying. Having large gatherings of drunken family and friends over more than once a year, yep, that’s annoying. If they let their trash blow all over the neighborhood, or just throw it in the street, you guessed it, they’re annoying.

Now if they try to pick up your teenage daughter for sex they’re annoying. If they’re actually having sex with your wife, one of your kids or your beloved family pet, they’re worse than annoying! Of course, if they’re keeping a cow or other large livestock in the back yard…well, you get my point!

I’ve often wondered where these bone heads come from. Every city has a pack of them, moving around, being human herpes, causing much pain and suffering. You manage to run one bunch out, another group sneaks in. Where do they come from? Are these the kids nobody could stand, who grew up peeing on some old lady’s flowers and torturing animals for fun? Apparently they manage to reach adulthood alive and continue to plague society, whenever they’re not in prison.

The amazing thing is that none of these people think that they are in any way annoying, which is really annoying, when you think about it. They don’t even possess the humanity or civilization necessary to understand why we hate them, let alone have a single shred of embarrassment about being such weasels. If they could prove they had some mental condition, maybe like a compulsion, that caused them to be so stupid and obnoxious, we could muster a dab of sympathy for them. No, they all deny that there’s anything wrong with them. I suspect that they know the truth, but just enjoy lying to us, which is another thing that makes them annoying!

Personally, I suspect we need to gather all of these people up and put them in some part of the country that we wouldn’t mind seeing turned into a giant landfill. They’d certainly not mind, considering how they trash up any good neighborhood. I know the rest of us would be a lot happier, and frankly that’s all I care about, even if it makes me sound annoying.

HOME REMODELING

Home remodeling is apparently something devised by God to punish us for all of the sins we either don’t know we’ve committed or have failed to properly atone for. You know the drill. You’d like to have a different or better house than the dive you are currently living in, but either your finances or your unwillingness to enslave yourself for a humongous new mortgage precludes this approach. What to do? Frankly, having “renovated” a dozen homes, I’d advise you to give your shifty brother-in-law two hundred dollars and have an “accidental” fire while you’re in Disney World! I know, you aren’t that smart. Instead, you’ll begin the first phase of this journey through purgatory with “design and planning.”

I’m personally envious of God; no designers, no architects, no zoning, code enforcement, etc. Of course, just deciding what you want to do is hard enough, especially when your spouse is addicted to HGTV. You can decide one day, “Let’s paint the living room.” Nine thousand paint swatches later, two wheel barrows full of carpet and hardwood floor samples, ten quotes for new windows and light fixtures, and you might be ready to paint. That’s assuming your fifty thousand dollar home equity loan got approved and that the city fathers have blessed your permit application. What a pain!

I added a sun room once. We got through all the initial planning with only three sessions at the marriage counselor’s office and one brief consultation with a divorce attorney. I ordered all my lumber from those great folks at Home Despot. The lumber all went on sale the week after I bought mine. The drywall all went on sale the week after I bought mine. Did I mention that the flooring went on sale the week after I bought mine? Are you seeing a pattern here? Now I’ve got some great friends and relatives, and a bunch of them were all fired up to do some work. The problem was, a couple of them came over with half a pickup load of cold beer, and violated the number one rule of construction; do the work, THEN drink the beer. I don’t know who gave Dave the idea to stick a screwdriver in the electrical outlet after he’d had ten beers, but I was in the john and missed it; worse, no one filmed it for Funniest Home Videos!

The contractor we hired to do part of the work had some really skilled guys. They were always polite and professional the one day each week they actually showed up to work on our project. I ended up doing more than I wanted to, just to move it along so I wouldn’t have to listen to you know who complain. The contractor wanted to charge me extra for doing all that work, but he changed his mind when I showed him my gun collection and my nifty loaded assault rifle. The one with the silencer.

The guy from the code enforcement office was real picky when he did the final inspection; nothing seemed to suit him. I jokingly offered to give him my wife if he’d just sign the papers and after I upped the offer with five hundred dollars, he finally signed off on the project. My new girlfriend really likes the new sunroom, but she doesn’t’ understand why I got rid of our cable service. She has no idea what HGTV is and I’m not taking any chances on her finding out! Who can blame me?

Cell Phones (May 1, 2014)

You just love your cell phone, don’t you? Couldn’t live without it? What a great invention! Finally, a way to call from anywhere to anywhere! Well, more or less. As long as you aren’t in a dead cell, or don’t have too much interference, or are in the right kind of building. You understand. You can be talking away, all of a sudden you’re talking to yourself. Or maybe you urgently need to make a quick call, pull out the phone and are greeted by that wonderful bit of frustration inducing verbiage; NO SERVICE. You just love that.

Now if this was the extent of your problems, you’d still be as happy as a pig at the landfill. It’s not. You’ve got the same old problem you had with your antiquated land line; wrong numbers! Now we all love having some idiot yelling at us because we answer our own phone, either because he can’t dial a number correctly or because his deadbeat friend didn’t pay his bill and the phone company gave you the number. Of course, maybe some girl at the bar just made up a number to get rid of some pathetic loser. Now if you have a limit on incoming calls, this can really get your blood pressure up. The cell phone companies don’t really care that the last person to have your new number was a child molester or the local crack dealer either. I had that problem once and they wanted to charge me to change my number!

The worst thing about your phone is the bill. They mail you twenty pounds of paper each month, and twenty Harvard business grads couldn’t figure it out. Eventually, you’ll gather that you’re being hosed. Guess what, you can’t even quit without getting screwed on the way out the door.!We should all have such a deal! I had a problem with Nexthell about that. Had the two year contract, and after almost five years, I decided to move to some other company. The weasels tried to stick me with the early termination fee, said they kindly extended my contract because they took a seventy dollar charge off my bill, that was wrong in the first place! I gave the problem to my attorney, and at last check, that four hundred dollars they were trying to screw me out of had cost them about eighty thousand dollars of his time. You have to love that.

Now cell phones are getting really out of hand. These new ones are plain crazy, how many things they can do. Of course, it’s only a matter of time until someone sues because they’ve gone blind, squinting at that little screen. Worse, they’ve now decided to make them bigger and bigger. Eventually, you have people getting hernias from lugging something the size of an old phone booth around! The cell phone people are always tossing new things at you, wanting to get you to say yes, add something so they can extend your contract another thirty years. I had someone call me just last week wanting me to sign up for a bunch of new apps. I told the person I was fine, just used the phone for calls. The person asked, “What’s a call?” Not a good sign. Y

ou saw what putting cameras in cell phones did for us, didn’t you? There isn’t a college girl left in America that doesn’t have at least one naked picture of herself either drunk, on the potty or having sex, somewhere on the internet. I can’t wait to see how that plays out, down the road. “Say mom, that looks like either you or grandma when you were young… is it?” Enjoy that moment of parent-child bonding! You know that commercial, where the dorky guy yells, “Can you hear me now?” How many of you would like to get in line, bend him over and put your phone where the sun don’t shine? We could all yell, “Can YOU hear me now?” after we do that. It’s just a suggestion.

Will She Pick Up My Dry Cleaning? (Ap 6, 2014)

Women have all sorts of thoughts and ideas about men, some dead on and some way out in outer space. They instinctively understand that we’re prone to sleeping with any other woman who acts even remotely interested, no matter whether we’re seriously dating, engaged or married. They know we’ll most likely disappoint them, time and time again, forgetting birthdays, anniversaries, or to pick up a gallon of milk, for God’s sake. We are at least consistent!

Now in spite of understanding these sorts of things, they still insist on believing (hoping?) that we’ll act in certain ways. They have an enormous list of things they expect us to do, say or ways of behaving. They also believe that if we violate any of these, they are automatically entitled to have a gianormous fit about it, on the spot! There’s no point in even suggesting that this might be irrational or foolish, as neither of these words exist in the female dictionary. It also doesn’t matter what she did first, to make us respond as we did. She has emotional diplomatic immunity, as near as I can ascertain, so we’re just stuck. Unfair? You must be a man, to even ask that!

To the woman’s senses, the universe was simply created for things to be her way. Honestly, son, where have you been? She has expectations, and by God, you’d better meet them, or else! Now I can just hear some dimwit making noises in the back. You think men have expectations about women too? Man…where are you performing…at the Funny Bone? Oh sure, you’ll argue that men expect sex, right? So tell me, Don Jaun, how’s that workin’ in your life? You just make a wish, and your woman’s panties fall to the floor? Sit down and be quiet! Naturally, in exchange for doing all the crazy, humiliating, back breaking things that women expect a man to do, he’d really like to get laid in turn…it seems like a small gesture, doesn’t it? But I know better.

One of the things that women don’t accept is to feel obligated for sex. Sex is supposed to spring forth naturally, like a picture of some hippie girl running barefoot through a field, scattering flowers in the breeze. You feeling that? My, are you slow! In truth, most of the time, men end up begging for it, or feeling like a slave, forced to labor endlessly in the hope that his woman might be kind and give him a few crumbs. Of course, this isn’t because women don’t like sex, they’re as crazy about it as any guy, but they understand that they control the spigot, so to speak. A woman’s you-know-what has value, and taking it by force is a crime most places, and she knows it! She’s got power, and so you beg. And she smiles.

Now you still want to argue with me, don’t you? Can’t men act all demanding too? When was the last time you tried that? Did she beat you with something hard that caused your obvious mental slowness? I hate to tell you this, but we’re living in the twenty first century, not the seventeen hundreds. Now you beg, or do errands. Oh sure, men wonder what a woman might do for them. Like, will she do the laundry, or pick up the dry cleaning? You’re willing to be her complete love slave if she’d do even that much for you wouldn’t you? I hate to tell you this, but you might as well beg…most women don’t do laundry anymore.

DONUTS (Mar. 10, 2014)

If someone asked me to name one thing that was most likely the invention of the Adversary, the Devil himself, I wouldn’t hesitate to name the donut as the wicked item. You know I’m right! How could something that does so much utter wickedness to our svelte bodies be so completely irresistible and yummy? God would never create something that insidious, that down right temptingly awful! Only the master of temptation himself could be its father!

Now I’m not lacking in moral fiber. I can resist sexy, cute, slutty young women while more or less standing on my head. Ditto cheating at cards and on my taxes. More or less. But I’ll climb over concertina wire and broken glass to get a donut, especially a gooey, cream filled one. Or a long john. Jelly filled. Crullers. Even a plain old glazed one! You understand where I’m coming from…don’t you? How many times have you gone to toss out the donut box, and found one ancient, week old, hard donut. Did you throw it away? Of course not! You went looking for something to dunk that petrified hunk of sugar and fat in! You ate that puppy…don’t you lie to yourself!

Now, when I die, I intend to have a chat with God about the donut. Oh sure, I understand why we have to face temptation and all that…we’d all be wussies if we didn’t get a moral workout on occasion. But Dear God! We aren’t strong enough to resist such an infernal thing as this! I’d at least like to understand how we came to be afflicted by such an awful device. Now consider this evil fact; you’ve had bad spaghetti, bad lasagna, bad meatloaf, bad cake. You name it, and you’ve had a bad helping of it. But have you ever had a bad donut? The wicked person baking them could pour latex house paint into the donut batter and the accursed things would still be yummy! It’s sinister! Even my ex-wife could make a good donut, and she was the devils own daughter. She couldn’t boil water either, but she could make donuts!

Now I’ve had a glimpse of hell, and brother, you aren’t going to like it. You’ll spend all of eternity, cooking donuts, and not being allowed to eat a single one! Well, at least you won’t gain any weight from the damned things! That has to count for something. You know how addicted to the accursed things cops are. I ever decide to rob a bank, I’m filling the getaway car with boxes of donuts, to toss out to waylay the police chasing me! I’m betting it will work, too! Of course cops aren’t the only addicts. Go stand in a donut shop some morning, and watch the people in line waiting to buy. Half the people look ready to wet themselves, desperate to get that donut fix! You know how that feels, don’t you? Even if you’re buying a huge box for the office, you’ll eat one before starting the car! Donut junkie!

Now don’t tell anyone, but I’m working on a secret project. I got the wickedly brilliant idea a while back to try and find a way to take that hippie health food, stuff like tofu and broccoli, and process it so it tastes like donuts. It’s been really hard. The first attempt, we got something that tasted a bit sweeter than dirty gym socks, but I’m still at it. If I succeed, you’ll all be my slaves, and don’t think I don’t know it! A healthy, yummy tasting donut? Prepare to kneel!

Doctors (Mar. 3, 2014)

Before I pick on doctors, I should confess something. I went to college intending to be a surgeon. So what went wrong, you ask? Let’s just say it involves wine, women and song and let it go at that! I’m not complaining, mind you, a bunch of my old college friends are doctors, veterinarians, dentists, and they by and large all hate their careers. Be careful what you wish for and all that!

Anyway, there are many things about doctors that we all find annoying. It’s hard enough to get in to see the doctor, especially on short notice; like when you’re actually SICK! If you can get an appointment, you know you’ll be sitting a while, waiting. And waiting. Now once you get back to the exam room, you get to wait some more, usually with an even poorer selection of magazines than you had in the waiting room. Now you’ve all asked yourself, why do they make you wait so long in the waiting room? Simple. You have more time to give your illness to others and to pick up something that will make you come back in a week! That’s pretty sharp business, when you think about it.

You really get all excited when the doctor walks in, glances at your chart. What hacks you off is the fact that you’ll only get about twenty one point three seconds to name and describe your symptoms, before the doctor’s stopped listening. I know they’ve got overhead to pay, but come on! Usually, while you’re enumerating your problem, the doc’s jotting notes and nodding. When he suddenly stops nodding, you’re in trouble; it means he hasn’t got a clue what ails you! If he asks, “What do you think it is?” you’re really hosed; he’s hoping you’ve watched enough medical shows that you can self diagnose, because he was hung over and slept through the lecture in med school that covered your symptoms.

I’ve had the same doctor for twenty years, and when I see his eyebrows go up, and he pulls on his tie, I know he’s about to guess and send me to the lab for a hundred tests! You really hate the doctor who’s all condescending. “Oh, that’s just a rash,” or, “You only have a minor virus!” Makes you feel unimportant, doesn’t it? Next time, I’ll just let the coroner diagnose my ailment! It’s hard to trust your doctor when all of his staff is wearing clothing with a pharmaceutical company’s name all over it, or if the walls are covered with signs that say, “Ask me about a prescription for___________”. Apparently, we aren’t the only ones paying the doctor.

Now the current crop of physicians was the lucky one, in spite of how much they’ve cried about insurance paperwork. The new ones coming out of med school will either end up working for twenty dollars an hour for some insurance company, or they’ll be owned by the government system and won’t get paid at all. One of my doctor friends helped her niece get in med school, and told her, “Don’t go expecting to make any money, go so you can learn to heal people.” Holy God! When did that old time idea get back into circulation?! There might be hope for humanity after all.

Some doctors do have a sense of humor, in case you haven’t noticed. My doctor is also the county coroner. I asked him once if that wasn’t a conflict of interest, especially if one of his patients died. He just grinned, said, “I’m not sure, but it‘s certainly handy!” Well, I think he was joking.

©Jack Bessie

Dirt Floors, Anyone? (Feb. 17, 2014)

There normally isn’t much about flooring to inspire uber deep contemplation on the average day. You walk on it, have to rake the crud up every so often but other wise, who cares? Am I right? Oh, sure, you’d hate for anyone to be so offended and grossed out by it that they run out the door screaming, but really, when was the last time that happened to you? See. Nobody gives a crap about it! Well, allow me to correct myself; the wife cares about it! She who has expectations and isn’t afraid to clarify them for any and all wants her floors to be nice. Very nice. Actually, she wants them to be museum grade or maybe White House or Taj Mahal grade nice! Guess who that impacts?

Now it’s not that I’m anti-nice flooring, or insensitive to the aspirations of my wife’s heart and soul. I hate stepping on crud, or cutting my toes on chipped, splintered, or otherwise damaged or dirty flooring as bad as anyone. I do confess that after raising eleven kids, I’m not positive what a clean and undamaged floor even looks like! Maybe that’s the problem? God knows, when the kids were little, it would have been less work to clean the barn than the floors of our house. When we moved into a new house, we always took pictures of the floors, so we could be reminded what a clean floor once looked like; the kids could turn new carpet into something that looked like it had been recovered from an Aztec ruins in less than an hour! I was once naive enough to hope they’d make fewer messes when they became teens. Let’s just say that was proven to be utter folly, and not rehash it. Dear God! (It’s sad when the barn looks cleaner than your dining room!).

Naturally, you eventually get disgusted enough with your old floors, that you simply have to do something. Since beating your children is so frowned in this country these days, you’re stuck replacing the old ruined flooring with something new, that you hope might last longer than ten minutes. But what? If you’ve got kids, forget carpet. I actually inquired once to see if anyone was bright enough to make a pattern and color called filth, as that would have allowed us to clean a lot less. (Oh, no, mom, that’s not dirt, it’s just the pattern of the carpet! Hee, hee.). No luck, so no carpet. We actually bought one new house with beautiful new carpet, but we ripped it out and sold it before moving in. We replaced all of it with hard things that could stand being scrubbed with a fire hose and floor sander.

Now everyone loves to leap out of bed onto soft, warm carpet, so we gave all the kids a nice small rug. They get about six months out of one, before it started sticking to their bare feet. I’d have felt better, germ wise if I could have burned them, but after the kids, and especially after the teens were done with one, it wouldn’t ignite if you droped a nuke on it! We had loads of cats and dogs too, which did less harm to the flooring than the kids, all in all. Watching the cats try to run on ceramic tile or hardwood was better than most of what was on TV, so I’d recommend either on that alone.

Honestly though, I’d suggest you just live on a nice dirt floor, like the natives in Africa do. You clean it with a rake and broom, and dirt doesn’t show, well, dirt as bad. You’ll never worry about friends marking it with their shoes either. And if the dog or one of the kids takes a leak in the corner, just shovel out the wet stuff and toss a new shovel full back in. Job done! You can get a big load of nice clean soil cheap too, at least a lot cheaper than all that fancy, easy to damage flooring stuff at Home Despot. Trust me, it’s a great idea. The wife wasn’t sure, but when she discovered you could paint designs on it, she quite complaining. Well, at least she complained less, and that’s a victory to me!

Conscientious Objector in the War Between the Sexes (Feb. 3,2014)

I hate fighting with the wife. Of course, I hated fighting with the ex-wife too, when we were married, but I did so anyway. That was just necessary, as a matter of survival! We fought even more after we were divorced. I’d like to suggest that since she’s fought with at least six husbands, and six ex’s all told, along with a thousand boyfriends, that she might be the reason for the fighting, but some feminist whacko would accuse me of being mean.

Now I don’t fight all that much with my current wife, thank God, mostly because I don’t give a crap about all that many issues these days. When I was younger, I got a lot more worked up over things, which led to arguments, and, you guessed it, fights. When a guy fights with another guy, he can just kick the crap out of him, and then they can go have a beer; no permanent harm. You go beatin’ on the wife or girlfriend these days, you’re going to jail. Even if you don’t have the police called, winning the fight means no sex for a year or so, at least with her. Getting physical with a woman isn’t much fun either. You’ve seen how they fight…scratching, hair pulling, and the occasional kick to your family jewels, when you’re busy laughing at how cute they look all flushed and mad. Occasionally, one gets mad enough to grab a knife or your gun, and that never ends well!

Naturally, most people aren’t angry trailer trash, and they don’t actually get physical. They use words, to beat and cut on each other. Discussions start out reasonable, until the first person says something snarky, then its all down hill from there. Either one of you says something about how much better your lover is in bed, that’s the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima. There’s lots of nasty ways to be wicked and hurt the other party, when you’re fighting. Saying anything about a woman’s body, especially her boobs, butt, belly, brain, fashion sense, makeup, hair, mother, friends, faith or job is an automatic trip to the dog house. Women should avoid criticizing a man’s male organ, his beer belly, bald head, hairy anything, job, truck or car, and buddies. No, it won’t cause him to refuse to have sex with her, nothing will do that, but if it’s wicked enough, he’ll likely also have sex with one of her friends or maybe her sister! (Women aren’t alone in spitefulness.)

People could be nice, and argue reasonably, being polite and actually listening to the other party, but no one does. It’s apparently more fun to yell and scream, to say all the wicked, nasty things you’ve ever thought, but didn’t want to just blurt out at other times. A good fight takes hours, sometimes days, after all, and if you do a half assed job, it can dribble on for days or weeks. That means no make up sex, or likely any sex for an even longer period! Not wise. It’s bad enough that we don’t have a clue about the opposite sex under normal terms, but you get two people angry, and we make even less sense. And it isn’t just the male/female thing that screws us over either. I’ve got some same sex friends that yell and scream like me and the old lady used to, and all their parts are identical, more or less.

I’ve been married to the same woman over thirty three years, and you’d think I’d know something about her by now. Nope. Not a clue. She gets mad, and starts having a hissy fit, she might as well be talking Chinese. The more she explains, the less I have a clue as to what she’s upset about, and I’ve come to understand that she feels the same way about me. That’s why I just gave up on fighting. Most of the crap we fought about wasn’t worth doodly squat anyway, at least not all the bother a decent fight entailed! These days, she wants to fight, I just put my underware on a stick, and surrender, so I can go back to my drinking. Or talking to my mistress. I sure hope she doesn’t decide to argue about anything!