Protecting The Sanctity Of Marriage
My wife likes me. It sounds sort of self-evident, but I know enough people who cannot so glibly or blithely say this about their spouse/partner that I feel a weird mix of relief and paranoia when I'm able to so easily say such things out loud. Or in text form, which is sort of like "out loud", except not actually spoken. But in this case able to carry to many more people than could be done if I were to actually say it (or anything else) literally out loud right now. In fact, the only audience I would have right now would be my dog, the only hearing thing (that I am aware of... shout out to the mouse in my house if you're reading this... oh, and PS: feel free to fuck right off, disgusting rodent) both conscious and in ear-shot at the moment. But frankly I'm positive she takes everything I say as a command sit up and look dolefully at me until I pat her on the head, so I think the gist of the sentiment would be lost on her.

I know my wife likes me. I'm not sure why, but I don't think questioning her reasoning is a particularly healthy way to spend my scant few moments of free time. Plus I'd be afraid that I'd be able to boil it down to some complicated algebraic involving (laundry done + meals cooked + kids shuttled around) X (physical restraint when angry + minimal drunkeness) all divided by (time served X the square root of social inertia). Then I'd be able to analyze my every action with mathematical precision so as to gauge the effect in terms of her affection toward me. Honestly, I don't have time for other things to paralyze me into inaction out of fear. That's what I have laziness and a generally indecisive nature for. My central nervous system just couldn't absorb another first-class neurosis like that.

I know my wife likes me because every once in a while she will do things for me that remind me that she thinks of me outside of my occupational role as Emasculated Man-Servant and Minivan Pilot.*

And no, I'm not talking about anything sexual, you pervs. Although...

No no, that's neither here nor there. Actually once it was right there, but after a few weeks of sitting on the inflatable donut, I was all healed up and ready to go again.

As a non-disgusting example, one year she bought me a laptop for my birthday. For most people this is a sign of upwardly-mobile upper-middle-class yuppie extravagance. For us it was that too, but what it also was was a sign that she was supporting my effort to make myself into a real world-class Failed Writer. She knew it was my dream--one I am still in the process of fulfilling, with your help--and had heard me bitch and bitch about creatively stifling it was to sit in the same spot every day and try to write and boy, if only I could stroll off to a library or a park, then man-o-man, would I write me something.

So because she either she clearly likes me or (and this is not to be discounted out of hand) has the sickest sense of perversely sadistic humor in the history of people, several years ago for my birthday she surprised me with a laptop. What I choose to believe is that she knew if I was to become the Failed Writer she knew I could be, I was going to have to be able to do it all the way, with no excuses about location or equipment. It wasn't enough for her to see me become a Failed Writer with so easy and so lame a cop-out; she recognized that the best chance for me to realize my dream was to be sure I became a Failed Writer who failed because of his own personal inadequacies without question and without access to an easy, unimaginative excuse like Uninspirational Workspace.

It is for these very reasons that I hate and resent my laptop. I look at it and it says work. It's also almost impossible to play a decent game of Minesweeper with that touch-sensitive finger-pad thingy instead of a proper two-button mouse (with scroll-wheel), which makes it very nearly 100% useless to me.

When my video card on my desktop died (again) and I was without its services for nearly two weeks, I was forced onto the laptop. Yes, the laptop-option is what kept the world hip-deep in fresh Bucket and thus averted several potential global crises, but for the most part I was still a very unhappy Pops. But now my desktop computer is back in action and I am broadcasting this message to you from its happy, tap-tappy, 3D-game-playing keyboard.

So Bucketeers, look forward to a week full of posts about sunshine and lollipops and rose-petals and the bloody, painful death of my enemies and other things that make me smile. Welcome to the theme of this week's Bucket; welcome to Happy Pops Land.

Hide the children.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 10.0


Pops


*= Least impressive business card ever, by the way. It's got a unicorn on it.
- posted by Pops @ 10:01 PM