I was watching the telly the other night and I was reminded (via flashback) to a class I took at UCFV. Invertebrate physiology. Very exciting course, in some respects, though the actual course material was infinitely complex and difficult. The lab portion of the course made up for the lecture though. Just think, learning all of this stuff, suffering through horrible midterms and lab exams, getting an “A”, and the damn thing didn’t even transfer to SFU. All of this is beside the point though. My flashback was while watching a show called “Sex on the reef”. Now, this sounds more exciting than a course in invertebrate physiology doesn’t’ it? Well, actually no. This is not the sort of material that you probably think it is. This is simply a nature show where the virtues of some sort of animal kind of behaviour is presented with a bad soundtrack and many unnecessary dramatics. Perhaps I am not expressing my point correctly, you probably still have the wrong idea. This video has nothing to do with pornography, unless you are a bivalve, or some kind of starfish. However, I do laugh when these nature shows totally over dramatises the day in the life of an ant or something similar with really bad music and hushed commentary. What this all reminded me of was when our Biology 301 (the aforementioned Invertebrate physiology …) class watched “Sex on the Reef”, the most hilarious nature video/show that I have ever seen. The epitome of bad video music. Thought I would share that.

Whats the deal with those HOV lanes on the freeway before the Port Mann bridge? I really wonder how much this will really speed up the commute back from Vancouver for those poor souls who have to traverse such distances to go to work. The bridge is still only two lanes either way right? So what we have now is 4 lanes going down to two, with people merging in from United Blvd or whatever the hell it is. Is this really going to help? And only two people per car constitutes car pool? Don’t even get me started!

To continue my thing on speeding down the SFU hill. I hope the the RCMP keeps up their speed traps going down the mountain. I hope to see long lines of a-holes backed up waiting to receive their speeding tickets. I’ll sail by and laugh.

So I went to Lighthouse park (in West Vancouver on Saturday). Pretty good day, considering we live on the WET (I think we should just officially drop the ‘s’ in west) coast and Saturday was rather sunny. This is only the second time I have ever (in memories short reaches) been to Lighthouse Park, and this time was considerably better than the last! Saw all kinds of interesting things in the tidal pools, most of which I know far more about than I would like to admit. I think that I am forever brainwashed into the biology thing – I cannot look at a hermit crab or something without thinking that I should not have forgotten the scientific name. I used to know these things. What I did see, that I could name, included a number of sea grasses, snails (Nucella emarginata, Littorina sitkana – but, alas, no Littorina scutulata!!! ), isopods (Idothea wosnozenskii – strangely named after someone called Wosnozenski!!!!!), blue mussels ( Mytilus edulis, and lots of other stuff of which I won’t bore you with the names of. I could have gone on about these things with the people that I was there with, but I decided to keep my yap shut, at least some of the time. I still want to know why ALL of the dungeness crabs (Cancer magister) were DEAD!!! It could have been a coincidence but, I think that that part of the ocean is probably just FUCKED from all of the runoff and toxins ( Im taking toxicology II this semester) from those swanky west van housing developments. When was the last time you heard swanky in a sentence?

I was good to be there on a good day. The tide was lower than last time (you can then see more of the stuff in the intertidal zone…), it wasn’t raining, no one was complaining (even ME!), and there was no makeup running down someones rain poncho (truth really IS stranger than fiction – and is also a long story). Actually last time was about two years ago, and since I have gone to west vancouver a lot lately, I’ll probably end up at LP a lot more now that I really know what is there. Last time was actually quite funny – everybody got completely soaked. This in itself was not exceptional, even for a January in Vancouver, however the aftermath seemed typical of the period. I wore these gigantic hiking boots, jeans, and stuff. As I mentioned I got completely soaked, muddy to the knees, etc. So what do we do later? Everybody seems to have a change of clothes (not me….) and we go out to dinner in Vancouver!! So I walk into this restaurant in downtown on Robson and something or other, with soaked jeans and muddy hicking boots with these two who look more like they should be going out to eat. Oh well. It was fun – and my feet dried out sometime in March I think.

I think it interesting that we might be the only species on this planet that can show empathy for other species around us (on more than an individual scale). There are no other species that actively attempt to help or save those species that are dying out, or having problems in some critical facet of their existence. We are the only ones who do this. Isn’t it ironic then, that we are the only ones with the power to destroy entire species through our sole action? We could wipe out everything if we really wanted. I think that it is partially out of guilt that some of us act to save other species. There people and organizations, whose politics I may or may not always agree with, that attempt to help other species and the environment in general. It seems likely that they feel guilt from what others are doing. More likely though, they understand, or have a greater understanding, of how the health of all the species on this planet are also indicators of the health of the environmental conditions upon which we rely upon as well. This all spawns from a commercial I saw which, in part, stated something like “we are the only species who can have compassion about others….”. Particularly interesting when we are the only ones who can completely destroy.

On a slightly lighter note, I GOT MY STUDENT LOAN TODAY! While naturally, this is a long weekend (anyone know why? – I haven’t been able to find out yet) and I cannot deposit it until Tuesday at least. I AM happy though, to finally have the papers in my own hands. While there are those I know personally who undoubtedly deserve such moneys more than myself, I am glad to not have to go and beg for food money from those connections I have that are considerably more wealthy than I. I hate owing money to anyone (even faceless corporations…) and even worse, I hate having to ask for more.

Why are there CD’s that I loathe, have listened to all but once, and still refuse to take out of the row on the shelf because a bunch of CD’s all in a row “look nice”?

Why does the a-hole giving the nice bank teller a very hard time glare at me when I tell him he should leave? I was having a bad day – but at least I took it out on someone who deserved it.

Nobody reads any of this do they?

I was going to write a long thing about how I would rather have the leader of my country have an affair with an intern than infringe upon the rights of my countries citizens by ordering the cessation of protestations in order to not embarrass a war criminal and blood stained dictator. I was going to rant about how Clinton is a better “leader” than our Prime Minister Tweedle dee, and how I don’t like BC Premier Glenocchio either. After much consideration, I have decided to do the smart thing and not mention the item at all.

There is rarely a point in time when a simple spin around the block to alleviate boredom will end up as a simple spin around the block. Usually such things will get me travelling to Vancouver. Such was the case on Saturday night. I left thinking that I would be just going up to the store for food, and ended up negotiating downtown. Any unplanned trip downtown with me will usually end up in frequent frustration, wrong turns, and creation of new words. This is only if there is a particular direction I wish to travel, or a destination to be reached. If my aim is to simply kill time, there are no such frustrations.

This is not to so, however, that there will never be frustrations if this is my objective. Take this past Saturday for example, I was driving around downtown, minding my own business, contemplating going bowling or wandering Waters street on foot. Such plans were not to be.

So I am turning left onto the road that goes directly in front of the Pan Pacific Hotel. Those intimately familiar with Vancouver will likely know which street this is. I do not, nor do I have the fortitude to at this time attempt to read a map. The street is not really that important. Just as I am about to get up to the stop sign, I stopped early, as to allow the bus turning left into the lane beside me more than ample room to complete the job. I think I ran into a rookie bus driver. He was driving one of those gigantic tour busses that are as about twice as high as they are long. This may be an exaggeration. So he get closer, and closer to my bumper. Pretty soon the side of his bus is scraping a long the front left corner of my bumper, leaving this long black streak on the side of the bus. I would love to have words with him, however, that would have to wait. The action I then took is where this story really starts. I look into my rear view mirror. Nobody there. I put it in reverse (after all, I don’t wish to have a bus run over the front of my car), and while still accelerating, run into the car behind me. I got distracted from the bus pretty quickly. Naturally, the car I hit was a brand new looking, fancy, Honda civic. I do not know if this guy was also going forward at the time I hit him, but I imagine most (if not all) of the error was on my part. I have never hit anything with my car before, and this was not a prospect that I had looked forward to. Oh well, there is yet another streak that I have broken.

Does that count as one or two accidents?

So after the usual exchanging of licence numbers etc, and inspection of the cars (NO DAMAGE, I am pleased to say) we leave each other. So much for my relaxing drive. Oh well, at least is was NOT boring. Anyway I then decided that the best course of action would be to make my way home.

So I am sitting at the light of the intersection of Robson and Thurlow. Bang! Some girl hits me from behind (this happened to me a few years ago too, at the very SAME intersection!). Once again, no damage, but I was starting to have enough of Vancouver for once. At least she seemed to care that she hit me, and apologized profusely. Strange she looked close enough to someone that I used to go out with that I had to look three or four times to realize that it was a different person. Weird experience. More license number exchanged.

I am still pissed at that bus.

On the way home, going through New Westminster, I go through one of those drinking and driving checkpoints. The bottle of root beer in my lap received extra scrutiny. The cop actually asked for it to smell it. Oh well, they didn’t pull me over to the side to flashlight the inside of my car this time anyway.

So the moral of this story is… uhmmm. Well, at least, don’t just look in your rear view mirror – actually turn your head. At least I didn’t regret not doing that all that much, it could have been worse.

DAVE BARRY ON RELATIONSHIPS

CONTRARY to what many women believe, it’s fairly easy to develop a long-term, stable, intimate, and mutually fulfilling relationship with a guy. Of course this guy has to be a Labrador retriever. With human guys,it’s extremely difficult. This is because guys don’t really grasp what women mean by the term relationship.

Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: “Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?”

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want, or isn’t sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I’d have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward . . . I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking: . . . so that means it was . . . let’s see . . .February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means . . . lemme check the odometer . . . Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed — even before I sensed it — that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He’s afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It’s 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a goddamn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Elaine is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. God, I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can’t help the way I feel. I’m just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a 90-day warranty.That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the scumballs.

And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a goddamn warranty. I’ll take their warranty and stick it right up their *** and they will talk about this situ……………………………
September 23, 1998 Unpopular ideas – breakfast corn and PIZZA!

WOW. September 23! What happened? I think its should still be March. Perhaps it was all a dream?

I know that I have not updated this page in a long time, and that the whole title of The Daily Rant is a sham, but not much has happened since the Vancouver bumpercars incident.

So what I am going to share with you are some of the least popular ideas that I brought forth in my previous life at UCFV. These things are seemingly benign, but you would not believe the adamant beliefs that certain persons (UCFV personalities) hold on these subjects. An open mind is always a good thing, and a closed mouth gathers no feet.

I have previously been vilified and mocked for my beliefs about the phenomenon known as breakfast. Lets pretend for the moment that you have slept in. It is around 1:00 in the afternoon. You get up, go downstairs (or for me now, I go about two feet) and get something to eat. What is this meal called? Breakfast? Lunch? A snack?

I hold the vastly unpopular view that this in fact NOT breakfast. LOOK, you have missed the time when normal people eat breakfast. You are now eating lunch, and your next big meal (not snacks…. a meal) will be called dinner. On the occasion of THIS morning you did not have breakfast. Simply calling the first meal of the day : BREAKFAST is pandering to those who call it the “most important meal of the day”. You are all simply giving in to an age old information campaign. SHAME!!

Another unpopular idea that I unveiled one day was that corn will taste the same whether it is eaten on or off of the cob from which it came. I did not think that this was a wild and crazy idea, but it became immediately obvious that I was a revolutionary. A true trendsetter before my time. Even though I still posess ALL of my own teeth, I actually cut the corn off of the cob before I eat it. This has given rise to considerable quantity of mocking of unparalled dimentions, from my parents and my peers. Apparently, I am missing out on the whole EXPERIENCE of eating corn. I maintain that the corn one eats on the cob is much the same as the corn one eats off of it. So sue me.

I have probably gotten you all riled up about these positions on such delicate subject matter. I have had intense discussions about this, and have had very few people agree with my positions. I have even been persecuted for my beliefs by those who, at the time, had significant enough influence upon me to do so.

Now is probably not a good time to point out that I generally eat pizza with a fork.

“Excuse me, sir. I think your head just exploded!”

“What?”

“You have blood all over the side of your face.”

Such was my last trip to A&B Sound. I know what you are thinking. Actually, no I don’t, but I’ll bet its far more interesting than what I am about to say.

It is not often that a trip to browse a music store ends in the loss of precious bodily fluids. Well OK, but they aren’t usually MY bodily fluids. I first knew something was wrong when this rather attractive young lady (who was about 5 feet from me) looked at me. I looked at her. What spoiled this beautiful moment was that she recoiled in obvious horror and fled the scene. This would fit my normal status as a social pariah, but usually the scene fleeing is not as… agitated. Oh well. So I had gone to A&B Sound in order to look over CDs and equipment that I have no means to afford anyway. So I went during a sale, so at least my grand worth of $0 would at least be closer to the actual prices. Having had my fill, I attempted to exit the building.

So this store employee person (of whom I went to high school with, no less) walked up to me at the exit and said : “I think you have a problem!”. Now let me go deeper into the causes for my initial misinterpretation of this statement. I approached this girl once before, and said : “Hey, we went to D.W. Poppy together!!”. She threatened to call security because I was, and I quote: “like all the other a-holes who harass me at work”. Gee, just being friendly. She also demanded to know why I knew what high school she went to as well. Some people need to put their thinking caps on again.

So this is why “I think you have a problem!” was perhaps misconstrued upon initial assessment. What she was actually referring to was the rather profuse amount of blood running down the side of my head. So I fled the store, as it became immediately obvious that this was the case.

Upon further investigation using the mirrors in my car, in seemed that in fact, I WAS bleeding from the head. This is not an experience that I recommend.

Ever cut yourself and not noticed for a long period of time. Then when you do (notice), you can’t imagine why you didn’t notice in the first place. I believe this is rule number 50 (see rule number 129 -which I believe is in my humor section), which is included with why you always bang your leg in the EXACT spot where your deep bone bruise is.

So I cleaned myself up using a paper towel pilfered from the back compartment of my car. It seemed obvious that I had this on my face the entire time I was in the store, as it was rather congealed. This also cleared up the mystery as to why my cheek was so damn itchy in the store. Of course, this only served to allow me to smear the blood around my face. I was a real mess.

I also noticed that there was blood on my hand (from when I had scratched). I then recalled that I had picked up a large number of CDs to look at them. Just imagine… how many other people who’s head had exploded had been there before me? I just hope I didn’t leave a trail of RBC’s all through the store!

BTW – all these shenanigans were from a prior medical condition that was already in treatment. All I can say is that side effect SUCK!!!.

I guess that I am obligated to write rule number 50 now, right?

So, if you have struggled through this story all this way, I leave you today with a bonus, which does not include RBC’s running amok.

Rules, statements and silliness

Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.

One nice thing about egotists: They don’t talk about other people.

To be intoxicated is to feel sophisticated but not be able to say it.

Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups (remember the Oregon Highway Patrol and the whale disposal?).

Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. – I have paid the ultimate price, I have age, but not maturity.

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

Women like silent men, they think they’re listening. – I’ve tried this. This is NOT what they think.

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day. — this in NOT a metaphor.

A fool and his money are soon partying.

Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to? Which reminds me, what was sliced bread the greatest thing since?

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do the rest have to drown too?

“Relationships are hard. It’s like a full-time job, and we should treat it like one. If your boyfriend or girl friend wants to leave you, they should give you two weeks notice. There should be severance pay, and before they leave you, they should have to find you a temp.”– Bob Ettinger

“A study in the Washington Post says that women have better verbal skills than men. I just want to say to the authors of that study: Duh.”– Conan O’Brien

“In elementary school, in case of fire you have to line up quietly in a single file line from smallest to tallest. What is the logic? Do tall people burn slower?”– Warren Hutcherson

“The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they are okay, then it’s you.” — Rita Mae Brown

“If your parents never had children, chances are you won’t either.” — Dick Cavett

“Why does Sea World have a seafood restaurant? I’m halfway through my fishburger and I realize, Oh my God….I could be eating a slow learner ..”– Lynda Montgomery

“I have six locks on my door all in a row. When I go out, I lock every other one. I figure no matter how long somebody stands there picking the locks, they are always locking three.” — Elayne Boosler

IF MICROSOFT BUILT CARS

Bill Gates wanted to look good and impress everyone with his success. He decided to measure the accomplishments of Microsoft against General Motors. His comparison went like this: If automotive technology had kept pace with computer technology over the past few decades, you would now be driving a V-32 instead of a V-8, and it would have a top speed of 10,000 miles per hour, or you could have an economy car that weighs 30 pounds and gets a thousand miles to the gallon. In either case, the sticker price of the new car would be under $50.

In response to all this goading, GM responded: “Yes, but would you really want to drive a car that exhibits the following tendencies?”

1. Every time they repainted the lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car. 2. Occasionally, your car would die on the freeway for no apparent reason, and you would have to restart it. For some strange reason, you would just accept this and drive on. 3. Occasionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you would have to reinstall the engine. For some strange reason, you would just accept this, too. 4. Your car could only have one passenger at a time, unless you bought a “CAR 95” or a “Car NT”. But then you’d have to buy more seats. 5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was twice as fast and twice as easy to drive–but it would run on only five percent of the roads. 6. The Macintosh car owners would get expensive Microsoft upgrades to their cars, which would make their cars run much more slowly. 7. The oil, engine, gas and alternator warning lights on the Microsoft car would be replaced by a single, “general car fault” warning light. 8. New seats would force everyone to have the same sized butt. 9. The air bag system would say, “Are you sure?” before deploying in an emergency. 10. If you were involved in a crash, you would have no idea what happened.

I WAS going to entitle this instalment as “Flame-Proofing Your Cat. After further consideration and intense deep thought, I decided against it. Not for a minute am I suggesting that flame-proofing your cat would not be a good idea, but

1) I do not have a cat.

2) I know nothing about flame proofing a cat.

Intelligent readers of this page will note that I frequently will ramble on and on about things that I know nothing about. However, I suggest that I am especially ill equipped to handle the grandiose task of instruction upon this topic.

So lets move on to the ACTUAL topic of todays discourse: The Healing Power of Licking. Yes, thats right. Licking. I read an article about surgery on dogs (this all seems to have a sort of animal theme doesn’t it?) that said that dogs tend to lick themselves after surgery. Naturally, as you MUST be thinking, this is in the shaved area where the surgery took place, not in any… uhm … other area. The article said that the hair on this shaved (and licked) portion of the dog grows much faster than the rate normal for dog hair.

So lets follow this to its inevitable conclusion. Would this not make a good baldness cure? So buy a dog – and gain a friend in the process. Imagine how many people would have no baldness if they just had to have a dog lick their head? This is obviously a much better solution than Rogaine or Propecia, which in the latter case will cause birth defect in the babies of pregnant women if they even get within 250 yards of the stuff. Will dogs cause this? NO.

So do yourself a favour. If you are bald – buy a dog. Sure maybe some people don’t like dogs, and maybe they are “cat-people”. If you MUST own a cat, be sure to flame-proof it. 8 out of 10 veterinarians recommend flame-proofing your cat. The other 2 vets think that these 8 are wrong.

The seemingly limitless range of human stupidity never ceases to amaze me. Perhaps stupidity is not the right way to say this. The phrase “dumb as a post” comes to mind. I have both heard this phrase (or variations thereof) used to describe both individuals or the human species in general. Take Americans for example… no, Id better not say that. However, Americans seem to solve their problems using either firearms, or some momentous explosion of pyrotechnics. They like their solutions loud and noisy. I realize I am generalizing here.

But this is not the sort of discussion I had hoped for (my fingers have a mind of their own. Don’t go there. The real things that get on my nerves are the amount of people who don’t really seem to understand how things really work. I must remind you (as if I really need to SAY this…) that I am not pretending to know how things work. However, I would like to believe that I would have a more common sense approach to removing a dead whale than the Oregon State Highway Division. WHAT ?? A dead whale? I can hear you saying this now. Also, perhaps a better approach than that taken by the Vancouver Aquarium. Remember the whale Hyak? A fan favourite at the Aquarium for years. When he died, they towed his carcass out to sea. The next week it washed up on shore. So they cut up the publics beloved whale into little bits, and flushed those out to sea. Sure to be a public relations disaster eh?

At least this did not happen in the United States. Oh… but it did. While this was not an aquarium whale, it was a whale nonetheless. I think that the entire situation was best summed up by Dave Barry in the following article which brout my attention to this world stopping matter in the first place:

In my current state of non-inebriated writers block, I am having trouble cranking out the kind of creative, humorous, and morally reprehensible daily updates that I am famous for. So what does one do when confronted by a lack of ideas? While I always have a lack of GOOD ideas, usually other sort of ideas are in abundant supply. You need only scroll down or click on links at the side to really understand this. The idea that I once came up with, concerning writers block was to write about it. Yeah, to actually write about writers block. So this is what I am doing now. I had hoped to leave this card up my sleeve for many many more weeks, but alas, it is flowing out now. I shudder to think about what I might come up with when I have a lack of ideas in the future. I could write about the exciting time I fixed my toilet by making replacement parts out of speaker wire and massacred coat hangers (this really happened, but for ONCE, I will spare the details). So as you see, I tend to ramble on, until and idea (ANY sort of idea) pops into my head, or out my fingers. This will be all to painfully apparent to those who have had verbal conversations with me. NOT only do I have extreme symptoms of writers block (and usually spelling block), but in conversations I have speakers block. This means, like I am doing now with written words, that I talk about anything. Just keep talking Mike, you’ll stumble upon a good idea eventually. This is why such persons as Fiona and Jason have had to suffer through innumerable stories about wild an wacky interac transactions, and other bank card follies that are all to common in life. And finally, my only other option is to pilfer good ideas from someone else. And that, my friends, is what I have ultimately chosen to do today.

So without further adieu – an article by Dave Barry :

Ms. Schuler is concerned about the issue of How Guys Do Laundry. She relates the following anecdote:

“My husband announced one morning that he had discovered the previous night, on the eve of a two-day business trip, that he was out of underwear. Why he told me, I do not know. I never tell HIM when I’M out of underwear. Anyway, he decided to remedy the situation in true guy fashion, by washing exactly three sets of underwear, thus disregarding the bulging hamper full of the rest of his underwear, which, presumably, would wash itself during his absence.”

Ms. Schuler’s letter serves to remind us of the importance of not engaging in sexist stereotyping. We must never make blanket gender-based statements such as: “Men always hog the blanket.” Just because Ms. Schuler’s husband doesn’t do the laundry, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t millions upon millions of males who DO do the laundry, then hang it out to dry under the three suns of the Planet Xoomar, where they live. Most males here on Earth, however, do not do any more laundry than they absolutely have to. A single-sock load would not be out of the question, for a guy. A guy might well choose to wash ONLY THE REALLY DIRTY PART OF THE SOCK.

At first glance, this behaviour might seem to be reprehensible, but in fact there’s a simple, logical explanation for it: Men are worthless scum.

No, seriously, the explanation is that many men are AFRAID to do laundry, especially laundry belonging to people of other genders, because they (the males) might get into Big Trouble. I know I would. In our household we have a lot of sensitive garments with laundering- instruction tags full of strict instructions. I’m intimidated by these instructions. I developed my laundering skills in college, where I used what laundry scientists call the Pile System, wherein you put your dirty undershorts on the floor until they form a waist-high pile, thus subjecting the bottom shorts to intense heat and pressure that causes them to become, over several months, clean enough to wear if you’re desperate and spray them with Right Guard brand deodorant.

As a married person, I use the Hamper System, which is similar to the Pile System except that the clothes really do get clean, thanks to magical hamper rays.

No, I of course realize that hamperized clothes are cleaned by a person such as my wife, Beth, or Alison Schuler of Albuquerque, N.M. But I also know that Beth follows a complex procedure involving sorting and pre-soaking and 27 different combinations of water temperatures and chemical compounds such as fabric softener, stain remover, fabric hardener, cream rinse, plutonium, etc. Beth wouldn’t LET me do her laundry unless I underwent years of training, because she assumes I’d screw it up and cause our garments to shrink down to cute little Tinkerbell clothes, or transmaterialize in the dryer, similar to what happened to that unfortunate man in the movie “The Fly,” so we’d wind up with, for example, a brassiere that had pant legs.

Beth’s reluctance to let me near the laundry is typical of the vast majority of American women, according to a nationwide survey of several other women I know. A typical reaction came from my research department, Judi Smith, who gave the following statement regarding her husband, Tim, a Ph.D. college professor:

“I don’t trust him to do my laundry at ALL, unless I’ve sorted it first and given him strict instructions before each and every load, because otherwise everything we own would be mauve or gray. … He puts his clothes away damp. He can’t put away anyone else’s clothes, because he can’t fold. I mean, the man can’t fold a TOWEL for God’s sake. Somehow, he can’t get the corners to match up. A HAND towel, even.”

I repeated Judi’s statement to Beth, who emitted the bitter humourless laugh of a woman who has more than once watched her husband turn a basic shirt into a prizewinning origami project.

I’m not defending men here. I’m just saying that a lot of us view ourselves as laundry-impaired, and we’ll probably continue to do so as long as women roll their eyes and shove us away from the washing machine when we’re about to, for example, wash our delicate silks in the same load as our boat cover. So I’m saying to women: Teach us to launder. We are willing to learn, really, just as soon as the playoffs are over. Give us a chance to show what we are capable of. And definitely buy stock in whatever company makes Right Guard.

Hello, its Mike again. Forgive me, I’ll try and withhold my cut and paste mood today. Do we agree with this? Are men complete idiots when doing laundry. I don’t know any singe men who I have ever seen with laundry mangled clothing, or things which were supposed to be white, but somehow made a colour transformation by dark colors having sudsy laundry sex with the light colors, producing hybrids that reek of incompetence. Of course, I don’t know any singe guys either. All I can say is, that I have never personally screwed up clothing in the laundry. I DO, however, have stories of female friends of mine screwing up laundry. Of course, they would never do anything as cliche as to put that one dark red sock in with all those white T-shirts, but there are mishap that Do happen. For example, take a load of all black laundry, consisted of all types of clothing. Add a couple of Kleenexes and Voila – you’ve got some mayhem happening. The fact that I saw this person do this TWICE was even more amusing. Of course, I would never show such amusement visible, for fear of violent repercussions I have seen even worse happenings in the laundry room, but I probably should not discuss them here. The repercussions of that persons vibrant transgression are still, sadly, walking the streets to this this day.