Holy smokes – talk about a bad week to set foot on an airplane!

Folks, I don’t know if you’ve been keeping score there at home, but I have and according to my charts, we’re running out of airlines that are still worth flying faster than the crab legs on All You Can Eat Night at the buffet down the street from my house!  Believe me, that’s one place you don’t want to go on a Tuesday night, much like the following airlines are folks who you don’t want to fly with at this point pretty much on any night…

Their respective crimes?  Well, here’s the tally thus far, as I see it:

• Southwest harasses fat people.
• US Airways splits apart families with small children.
• United breaks guitars.
• AirTran once made me sit in front of an extraordinarily obnoxious lady and her yappy, little fart of a dog, neither of whom would shut the hell up for the entire duration of the flight.

It’s certainly no secret that flying the “friendly skies” has been reduced to a truly miserable experience, arguably akin to having one’s own kidneys removed and then subsequently being required to sell them yourself on the black market to cover the surgery bills.  The service is absolutely deplorable, as if herding customers like cattle and treating them slightly worse can somehow be regarded as “service,” anyways.  They seem to have no qualms about cramming as many people as physically possible into their flying tin cans, rushing us at increasingly tiny windows in the name of efficiency and security, only to finally reach the runway where we sit for hours and are expected to remain fully calm and complacent about the experience.  And of course, that’s the ultimate kicker because you don’t dare raise your voice or show any inkling of ire to anyone even in the vicinity of an airport unless you have a desire to spend the night in handcuffs…

…and no, not even in the good way, either!

If the events of this week and even those cringing memories past have taught us anything, it should be that, well, you don’t treat people like that. If someone is willing to pay you money for a service that you’re in the business to provide, it’s kind of common sense that you should go ahead and do that, preferably without being a gigantic dick in the process.  Clearly this is a concept that has been lost on a good number of our airlines today, but fear not, for I’m here today to tell you that I’ve come up with a solution, and not for nothing, but I think it’s a pretty good one, too!

So here’s what we’re going to do:

We’re going to start our own airline.

We’re going to get Wil Wheaton to endorse it, specifically so that we can call it Don’t Be a Dick Airlines.

On Don’t Be a Dick Airlines, we’re going to live by the three C’s of flying – courtesy, common sense, and candy … that’s right, free candy for everyone who behaves themselves and acts like calm, collected, and perfectly rational human beings while they’re flying with us.  See, being civil can have its rewards!

As you would expect, it’s going to take an elite team of highly trained employees to run this world-class, no-nonsense airline:

• We’re going to need people to fly the plane.
• We’re going to need people to help people get on the plane.
• We’re going to need people to assign seats so that parties are kept together and no one makes anyone else feel uncomfortable while flying with us.
• We’re going to need people to double-check shit to make sure that your luggage doesn’t end up in Albuquerque when clearly your destination isn’t Albuquerque.
• We’re going to need people to push those little drink carts up and down the aisles serving refreshments. We’re going to try to teach them how to not slam the carts into your knees and elbows when you’re least expecting it, but hey, nobody’s perfect.
• We’re going to need people to smile at you, thank you for flying, and actually mean it. Seriously, when was the last time that happened?!

I know, I know – it sounds like a tall, seemingly impossible order … one that no person in his right mind would possibly undertake, and that’s exactly why it’s going to work.  For far too long, the airline industry has been filled with businesses that are run by policies, not by people, and sometimes what it really takes is just completely abandoning all of that stiff-suited, lawyer-speak laden, cover-your-ass corporate bullshit to refocus on your original goal – in this case, that being to fly people from point A to point B with a spring in your step, a song in your heart, and a smile on your friendly face.

Don’t Be a Dick Airlines … it kind of has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

Holy crap, you’re never going to believe what just happened to me!

There I was – driving down the road, minding my own business, when out of nowhere came the biggest bird you’ve ever seen! Well, aside from the one and only Big Bird, mind you – this was suburban Tampa, not Sesame Street. But still, in relation to other birds that have scared the living daylights out of me suddenly and without prejudice, this feathered, little bugger was definitely one of the bigger ones. According to my Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (2008 edition), technically these birds would be considered Sandhill Cranes, but just between you and me, I just took them more to be gigantic jerks.

You see, here in Florida, these cranes are like freaking squirrels, walking around like they own the place, roughing up people’s kids and stealing their lunch money, only to later blow it all on mixed nuts and berries to hoard for the winter. The first time a person sees one of these behemoths down here, it’s usually a breathtaking experience to see nature that up close and personal … that is, unless you happen to be driving and there’s a group of them loitering in the middle of the street with little to no regard for the actual intent of said street. Then it’s more like, “Get the %$^@# out of the road, you stupid birds!!! WTF?!” I swear, they’re like the deer I used to encounter up in Michigan, except that there’s not nearly enough meat on these things to make them worth just plowing through as an early birthday present for Uncle Barry. Stupid freaking birds…

So anyways, I’m driving and all of a sudden I hear the loudest squawking I’ve ever heard – sounding like it was right behind the back of my head. And keep in mind that I drive a convertible, so while the top was technically up, that still only left a thin piece of canvas between me and whatever the hell was squawking in my ear! I didn’t even have to see the thing because I knew the sound from previously watching these bastards harass other folks and trees and even their own reflections in the windows of office buildings or strip malls (I said they were jerks – not rocket scientists…). It all happened so fast that honestly I’m not even entirely sure exactly what happened, but whether he was hanging out on the side of the road and lunged at me at the last minute or even just all out landed on my car, I think it’s safe to say for the purposes of this humor column that I was attacked by a giant bird.

Now as I’ve previously hinted time and time again, I always enjoyed Big Bird growing up, so I’m not really sure what all of the hate is about. Heck, up until this column I’ve never even ranted about them online, so even if this bird or one of his buddies was an avid fan of my writing there’s nothing I can think of that I might’ve done to aggravate the beasts and send them into their frenzy of feathery rage. I mean, fortunately I was already moving along at quite the clip, so the entire experience itself was relatively short-lived, but had I been sitting in a parking lot instead of actively driving down the road? Giant bird bait – that’s all I would’ve been.

And let me tell you, when you’re cruising down the road and a giant bird’s beak comes within stabbing distance of your head, there’s only one thing on your mind – who can I blame for this particular situation? I mean, sure, it’s technically the crane’s fault for being a gigantic jerk and all, but at the same time, had I been driving a car with a top made out of metal, said potential stabbing would’ve simply resulted in the bird’s beak getting all bent up in frustration rather than my head getting turned into a sis kabob. Similar to its stance with regards to alien invasions, your average convertible top doesn’t do much to protect the car’s passengers from the sword-like beaks of giant birds, either – something that sales people at the dealership tend to stay tight-lipped about to this day…

While I don’t entirely blame the salesperson that sold us this otherwise fine automobile nearly two years ago for this near-death altercation, mind you, I must admit that it does seem a little suspect to me that not once in his two-hour sales pitch to send us off into the sunset with the car of our dreams did that guy even hint at the potential for being assailed by giant birds when cruising around town without a care in the world. Unfortunately, by now said dealer has actually gone out of business and thus was unavailable for comment on this matter, but for all I know these guys could’ve been in cahoots with the giant bird industry all along, sending kind-hearted folks such as myself out into the world in shiny, new convertibles, completely unaware of the real dangers that giant birds can present here in Central Florida.

Ultimately, as you would imagine, I’m still a bit jittery about the whole situation, but if any good can come from my experience, I’d like you to do this for me – the next time you see one of these humongous avians standing tall and acting like a hotshot, think of me as you walk up and punch that gigantic jerk right in the face. The Fish and Wildlife Federation will probably tell you that this is wrong and possibly even punishable by fines and jail time and stuff, but in reality Sandhill Cranes don’t usually have very good legal representation and at the end of the day, sometimes it’s just necessary for us to take the law into our own hands … at least when it comes to mean and scary birds like these.

Don’t let yourself become a victim like me – take charge and punch a crane, while mankind still has the upper hand…

Why do I do it?!

I haven’t been getting as much sleep as I should lately, to the point where it’s not even cutting into my “beauty sleep” portion as much as it’s cutting into my “ability to function as an active member of society” portion. Of course, the rule of thumb is that the average adult needs a good eight hours of sleep each night to awaken the next day fully rested, however I’ve got to say that I’m increasingly finding faults in the fuzzy math behind these calculations because from all that I’ve been able to deduce, these numbers don’t in any way account for the sheer volume of hypnotic, late-night television that a guy like myself may encounter on any given night…

That’s right – while I’d love to be able to blame global warming or the rising costs of gas or even simply good, old standby, President Bush, for my inability to embrace a decent night’s slumber, but at the end of the night (typically around 3:30am as of late…), I can no more blame ill thought-out foreign policy for my effective bedtime than I can blame the man in the moon or the makers of my pajamas. In reality, all of that blame can be focused on one single, solitary appliance in my home, even though I’ve come to love it very much over my years. And that particular appliance is … the microwave!

No, no – just kidding. Of course, it’s the TV, although one might make a crude joke or two that I appear to be particularly fond of the microwave also…jerks. But even above food that is horribly bad for me, the TV is certainly to blame in this case for keeping me up night after night with its delicious blend of alternative programming that nobody in their right mind watches – at least not before midnight, anyways. And I don’t necessarily even find myself getting lured into the endless infomercials for kits on how to make millions selling real estate or how to turn my cordless drill into a really crappy weed wacker like most would assume, although I must admit that I certainly had my share of RonCo nights just like everyone else back in the day. My problem these days, on the other hand, lies not so much in old TV shows and infomercials as much as it does in really, really bad movies – you know, typically the ones that you vowed never to watch again when you saw them the first time, and yet somehow now you can count on instantaneously kissing away an easy two hours of your time when you come across them on cable at one o’clock in the morning.

And mind you, I think it’s important to clarify that I’m not talking about any of those good movies that you watch time and time again whenever they come on, no no! (Die Hard 3, Uncle Buck, and Ocean’s Eleven all fall into this bucket for me…) Nope, here I’m talking about those horrible, if not absolutely abysmal flicks that if Hollywood had any sense would’ve never actually been made in the first place, but somehow by the grace of late-night TV are still floating around out there so somebody can make a profit off of the commercials that we’ll endure during these 2am adventures. Am I the only person who has this problem?! For some reason, I’m thinking a big, fat, emphatic “No!” because otherwise, would stuff like this really still be making it to the airwaves???

Scott’s “Current Rotation” of Really Bad, Yet Irresistible Late-Night Movies…

· Deep Blue Sea – there’s just something about genetically-altered, killer sharks chasing after Samuel L. Jackson & LL Cool J that always keeps me on the edge of my couch!

· The Punisher – this one actually almost makes my list of decent comic book movies, basically because it was being shot right here in Tampa about the time I moved here, but at the same time, it’s still at the bottom for a reason!

· Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle – I haven’t really been much of a fan of stoner flicks since, oh, I graduated from high school, and yet I still think that Doogie Houser’s appearance in this film makes it worth watching over and over and over…

· Fast Food Nation – this one I really don’t understand because I think the slaughterhouse close-ups are just disgusting, and yet every single time it comes on, there I am watching Fez and Avril and Greg Kinnear do…stuff.

· My Super Ex-Girlfriend – we’ve all had crazy ex-girlfriends, but how many of us have ever had one of them throw a shark at us when they found out about the new girl?! Suddenly having the stuff that you left at her house strewn across the lawn really doesn’t sound so bad…

· Lake Placid – Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda go hunting for a giant, man-eating crocodile that’s been terrorizing a small lake in Maine. Did I mention the giant, man-eating crocodile?!

See something irresistible to you that I should be wasting my time with? Just want to ridicule me on my horrible, sleep-wrecking taste in movies?! E-mail me and let me know what keeps you up late at night … as long as we’re still talking television, anyways…

Warning: The following humor column depicts scenes of graphic violence that, while hopefully both amusing and quite understandable given the sheer ignorance of the situation, is still unfortunately and entirely hypothetical and thus, one should not attempt to recreate these fictional interactions in real life unless he or she has a strong, yet twisted desire to end up in the pokey themselves. The author cannot be held liable for any events that may result from the dropping of soap if the reader opts to ignore this warning and act on those impulses that we’ve all been fighting ever since one Model-T driver cut off another without using his turn signal back in 1908…

So anyways, you ever have one of those days when you just wanted to get out of your car and punch the driver behind you squarely in the face?

For some reason, I’m just taking a wild guess that I’m not the only guy who’s ever had a day like that because, well, there are just way too many brain-dead idiots out there behind the wheel for me to be the one having all of the fun all by myself! Maybe they cut you off while coming out of a driveway onto a busy highway without bothering to look first. Maybe they were of the belief that those big, red octagonal signs everywhere simply don’t apply to them. My own personal run-in with vehicular ignorance today was with the guy who opts to drive with one hand on the wheel and the other on his horn because wherever he has to go is by far more important than where I’m going! As I looked in the mirror at the aging baby boomer behind me, railing on the center of his steering wheel like a free sample of Rogain was going to pop out if he pressed hard enough, all I could think was “What if life were more like a video game…”

Specifically, Grand Theft Auto.

You know, sometimes when communication and reasoning simply won’t do, if there’s one thing that the entertainment industry has taught us over the years, it’s that sometimes violence is the answer and when confronted with the proposition to either be a better driver or get a baseball bat to the head before having your car jacked, well, let’s just say that people usually tend to see the error in their ways! At least the ones that don’t go trying to be heroes or anything, but they get what’s coming to them…

Of course, we all know that we’re not really allowed to drag people out of their cars and beat compliance into them … at least those of us who aren’t LA cops, anyways … but how else are the rest of us supposed to deal with those idiots out there who think that the pavement was created solely for their transportation needs?! Maybe traditional violence isn’t exactly the answer, but that’s not to say that a healthy tap on the noggin with a padded bat when one acts up behind the wheel wouldn’t do some good! Perhaps we could even take it a step further and take a cue from psychiatrists ’round the world by fitting our steering wheels with some sort of electroshock capabilities that would trigger when it has been detected that the driver is acting like a complete and utter moron. Or even better, two words – ejection seats!

Hey, it could happen…

In the meantime, the only real good way that this writer has to deal with road rage is, well, by not driving altogether, and while good, old Mother Nature might appreciate the exhaust break, I still need to get from A-to-B somehow and my options are somewhat limited. The farthest I’ve ever walked is seven miles and I damn near collapsed when that was over, I haven’t owned a bicycle in over ten years, and everyone always laughs at me when I wear those spandex shorts that I bought for rollerblading – what else is a guy to do?! Come to think of it, in Grand Theft Auto after a certain point you could actually find a tank and all those who made it that far will agree that the game got pretty freakin’ sweet when you could literally run over anybody in your way, so maybe there’s more to that idea than meets the eye!

Sure, the convertible is cool, but you can’t run entire cars over with it. If anybody needs me, I’ll be doing a little “research” on usedcars.com – keyword: tank. Let’s see anybody honk at me then…

Call it a slow news week. Call it an important medical issue that we’ve all been ignoring for far too long. Or simply call it my throwing in the towel too early, before an even more pressing issue to joke and haw about crosses my beloved news desk. Like it or not, you’re all here now and clearly although you’d probably like to think that you’ve got someplace better to be, you really don’t, so without further a due, let’s talk feet.

Specifically, my feet. I know, I know – most people think that us Internet celebrities are vastly too monumentally important to get intimate enough with their fans to the point where we might even consider sharing such vastly personal details about ourselves, but what the hey! I’m not like other writers on this here “Internet thing,” so let’s do it – let us boldly go where no other creative souls (or soles???) have dared to go before, albeit I do believe that they pretty much all opted out because of the smell. Well, their loss is our gain because I really do think that we’re all going to relate to one another even better after today’s little discussion…

…although you wouldn’t really think that there’s even much to be said about feet – they serve a very distinct purpose and except for a select few examples, they’re really not all that pretty to look at, so by this point there’s probably a few of you thinking, “What’s all of the fuss about?” Well, I’ll have you know exactly what the fuss was about – earlier this morning, I grated my feet. There – I said it, and now those few of you are probably feeling just a little bit sheepish about being such jerks, now aren’t you? I’m going to let it slide this time, in the name of continuity, but next time a little more civility in the name of my feet wouldn’t be too much to ask, I don’t think.

I’m not really even sure if grating my feet would be the correct term for it, but I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about, if not from actually doing it yourselves, but from having a significant other that’s always done it and raised a few eyebrows along the way. As some of you may be aware, apparently grating your feet is actually a very necessary practice to help remove dead skin cells that haven’t otherwise opted to leave the soles of your feet through the rigorous routines that feet find themselves going through on a daily basis. I guess it’s kind of like hair or dandruff, or when you get one of those really nasty sunburns that are normally only attributed to tourists and you end up looking like a freaking lobster for the next week – you know the kind, where it’s damn near impossible to sleep and such simple acts as breathing and blinking make you do everything shy of screaming out in pain. Granted, the stuff on your feet doesn’t really hurt, but it’s still pretty gross, if you ask me…

I think I first learned about foot grating from my mother, as I remember seeing one of those patented grating thingys (pictured above) in the medicine cabinet, but needless to say, I wasn’t about to ask and she was in no rush to tell! Many, many years later, I began to wonder for myself what the story was behind those brushes, and also why it was beginning to hurt less and less when I stepped on sharp rocks while I was walking around barefoot in the yard. Eventually I learned that it wasn’t necessarily a good thing for me to have such established padding and exactly what I could do to correct the matter. I bought one of them goofy-looking cheese grater-things for the bathroom myself, but I’d never dared to actually use it before today.

It was a simple enough discussion, and before you ask – no, I wasn’t forced to grate my feet in any way. I just briefly announced to my girlfriend, “I think I’m going to grate my feet today…” and that was that. Well, actually she technically replied with, “What???” which no surprise, I’m pretty much used to at this point, but after waving the brush to show what in the world I was actually talking about, she bid me a laughable “Oh – have fun!” and we were off!

Now, you wouldn’t think that something even called grating your feet would be anything short of painful beyond all recognition, but I suppose in considering that we’re really only dealing with already dead skin anyways, there’s not a whole lot of pain to be felt anyways. In fact, it was kind of enjoyable until I came to the stunning conclusion that my feet are gross and it’s going to take forever. It was then that I began putting a man’s spin on the approach to speed things up a bit – what if the brush had larger openings, or was simply on a motor of some sorts? Could I use a belt sander and really make Tim Allen proud, or would it just land me a weekend trip to the emergency room? Would it be worth the forty bucks to follow my girlfriend’s suggestion of going in for a pedicure and letting somebody else worry about all of that dirty work, or would doing so make me remotely gay?

…not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course…

Unfortunately, my deviating was cut short when my plans were trumped by the simple suggestion to just work on the task a little each day, and it was at that point that I’d realized that I had just spent the past twenty-five minutes genuinely thinking about the past and future welfare of my feet. It was, admittedly, a tad bit disturbing, but really it can’t be any worse than the realization you’re feeling right now as it occurs to you that you’ve just spent the last five minutes reading about my considering the past and future welfare of my feet! But I say if you’ve learned a thing or two about my feet, your own feet, or even just feet in general after reading my tale, then this column wasn’t written entirely in vain. For that, we’ll have to wait and see what next week will bring…

So just what exactly have we learned here today?

• Not just Scott’s feet, but in fact most feet are pretty gross when you really get all up into their space, and as important as it might be for you to take good care of them yourself, if you’ve got the money to pay somebody else to take care of them for you, it’s worth being considered even just a little remotely gay to not have to undertake such tasks yourself.
• If you do decide to tackle such immense burdens on your own, be sure to consult the owner’s manual on your foot grater to ensure that no damage is done by overzealous grating, if you will. Also, don’t use a cheese grater, even if you think it might go a little faster…
• Don’t think that grating your feet is something that you can do in public, even if you’re one of those types who thinks it’s ok to cut your fingernails while the rest of us are all sitting around watching TV or trying to carry on good conversation. All personal grooming, and grating your feet certainly fits into this category, should be done in the privacy of your own bathroom and nowhere else!
• And finally, no matter how much you’re looking to make a given point, don’t wave your freshly used foot grater around like a magic wand, pointing it suggestively at a spouse or loved one. If you were wondering during the act just exactly where the dead skin goes while you’re grating, a good portion of it goes inside the brush and will likewise exit the brush if it is jostled like so. Just trust me on this one, folks – nothing says, “You are so sleeping on the couch!” like spraying dead skin cells from ones feet all over your newly-washed bed sheets and/or loved ones. Again, sorry about that one, honey…

I hope you’ve found this weeks adventure to be both enlightening and beneficial to you and your feet, and with any luck, perhaps you’ll be able to turn those unsightly paws into something a little more tolerable before your next trip down to the pool as well! But of course, I’m no miracle worker, for I’m just a man with a single foot grater and arguably some of the nicest footsies this side of Tampa Bay. The rest, my friends, is up to you…

Sometimes I wonder why us good guys even bother…

Take any situation and just look around you – rarely, if ever, will you see a truly equal relationship, and by that I mean one where the man and woman genuinely deserve each other. When was the last time you saw the sweet, attractive girl walking around with the nurturing, sensitive (and gorgeously handsome) man? Unless she just happened to be there collecting her child support, I’d guess not too many! Nope, instead this beautiful doll of a woman is roaming around with the scum from the bottom of the bucket – a guy who never listens to her, maybe even knocks her around every once in a while, and basically treats her like garbage…but she hangs around anyways.

If there were any justice in the world, he’d have ended up with the woman who rarely comes home before dawn more than three days a week, drinks herself to sleep those nights that she is home, and couldn’t hold a steady job to save her life, but no, no – guess who ends up with that one?! That’s right, while the good girl is off mopping up beer and chips after her boyfriend’s rowdy poker game, the good guy sits at home watching Leno, wondering which bars his girlfriend is hitting up tonight with her own drinking buddies. Two individuals whom anyone with half a brain would think were made for one another, yet they both chose their respective paths themselves – one probably out of sheer desperation and the other, well, we don’t actually know why the other chose her path, but damn it – that’s what we’re here to try to figure out in the first place!

So that’s the question at hand – Why do perfectly decent women choose to be with jerks? I’m sure that better men have psychoanalyzed this very same question, although maybe not after as many drinks as I’ve had, so just hear me out for the next few minutes. Unfortunately, this Buddhist-like question, very similar to “Why is the Earth round?” or “Why do hotdogs come in packages of ten, while hotdog buns come in packages of eight???” simply doesn’t have one definite answer, so I’ve taken the liberty of dividing my time amongst the following three theories, each just a little bit zanier than the one before…

1. Women are Idiots

Now don’t get me wrong, men are most certainly idiots, too (Wiener-Mobile, anyone?), but for the purposes of this theory, let’s just forget everything we already know about the ignorance of the human population as a whole and focus on the fairer sex for just a moment. How does that old saying go again? “Never trust anything that shops for three days and doesn’t die…” or something like that!

From the perspective of a nice, wholesome guy looking in, the entire scenario just doesn’t make any sense:

Woman wakes up and proceeds to spend countless hours primping and preparing for another night on the town.

Woman arrives at bar where she is immediately considered as prey by ever drunk and horny man within 6.2 miles.

Man approaches woman, buys her several drinks, “dances” with her and ends up taking her home at the end of the night.

Man has sex with woman…twice!

Woman, realizing that man is a complete and total scumbag, hails a cab home and cries herself to sleep that night.

Woman wakes up and proceeds to spend countless hours primping and preparing for another night on the town…

So basically the only take on this that I can manage to figure out is that in order to find a woman, one must reduce his own level down to that of a pedophilistic, drunken tree slug, and since the majority of guys that are already at this level, the ladies aren’t bright enough to keep looking until they find something a little higher up the evolutionary ladder and simply default to sleeping with whatever slithers her way. You might say that it’s not the woman’s fault if the guy’s a jerk, but if he’s a jerk, then why does she sleep with him in the first place?! I suppose it could be any combination of denial, sexual deprivation, or ever-thriving hope that there might really be an angel somewhere underneath the cutoffs and tattoos, but frankly I ain’t buying it. When all is said and done, if you can’t tell the difference between a sadistic coke-head looking for a quick screw and the man you slept with last night, you’re an idiot.

They say that ignorance is bliss? Touche.

2. The Gripes of Wrath

I think that if I had to do the math, I could honestly say that out of all of the women whom I have ever known, probably all but three have taken some sort of personal joy out of complaining…bitching and moaning…playing the role as the belligerent shrew-beast…feel free to choose whichever terms strike your fancy the most. (…wait, make that four – there was that one girl back in ’98…but I somehow managed to lose her phone number…idiot!) I used to simply blame it on PMS, but after still leaving the other twenty-eight days unaccountable, I knew that there had to be another explanation…

I have yet to actually find this explanation, but nevertheless it does help to lead us towards a solution for the task at hand – if a woman were to simply date a decent guy that’s right for her, she wouldn’t have anything to complain about! Yeah, I’m sure the occasional dishes or garbage or drop-dead gorgeous secretary with the dynamite ass that’s everything she’ll never be would come up, but those alone couldn’t possibly be enough to fill her daily quota so instead of risking the need to outsource the leftover reticule, it’s just easier for her to date a man whose bound to give her plenty to complain about! I know, it sounds a bit odd, but I never said that this was going to make any sense, now did I?

3. Fuck It – Who Wants Pie?

There are some mysteries of the universe that we’re just better off not knowing the answers to and as much as I hate to admit it, my friends, I think that this may very well be one of them! Sure, I could rack my brains day and night in search of the solution to eternal happiness; I could even establish monthly focus groups, gathering hundreds and hundreds of people in hopes of collectively uncovering the truth…and you thought that the Million Man March looked impressive! Nevertheless, when it’s all over we’ll still no doubt come up a day late or a dollar short, so maybe we’re simply better off skipping the small talk and jumping straight to dessert.

It would be safe to say that we could probably file this one away with the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, the secret ingredient in that cheesy-garlic bread at Red Lobster, and how The Anna Nicole Show ever made it on the air in the first place as yet another perpetually-unsolved mystery of modern society. I guess the only advice I can truly give to my fellow men on this Valentine’s Day would be that if somehow you have managed to find a woman who completely contradicts everything I’ve just covered, for God’s sake hold on to her and don’t let her out of your sight! Seriously, use ropes or chains if you have to because I’ll guarantee you that there’s a line of decent guys waiting a mile long to take advantage of the first time you drop the ball…

I know this because I’m one of them and I’m getting damn close to the front of the line by now! Just something to keep in mind…Happy Valentine’s Day!!!