Vehemently Vitriolic

I have become single (again) while my wife is away fighting space zombies and mortgage lenders in a sub-prime post apocalyptic meltdown, also known as field geology.

As the time passes, I realise that me becoming a completely sloven git is not my own doing. No, like everyone in the US who refuses to take responsibility for their actions, I proudly pronounce:

I have a syndrome!

Its called Rational Female Brain Syndrome® or RFBS as the name on my inevitable patent and Nobel Prize statue will say. It follows the ideal of “behind every great man is an even greater woman”, though this phrase was shortened from “behind every half-assed male is a brilliant, and exceedingly patient, female making the man half-assed as opposed to some infintesmely small fraction-assed male if left on his own”.

What is RFBS you ask? Do females even have a rational part of the brain you may question? How does a geologist battle space zombies, and did you only use the words “sub-prime” to garner more hits from search engines? All good questions.

RFBS® is an affliction suffered by many men, especially when left alone or in unattended groups (yes, the pre-schooler/daycare metaphor you are thinking right now is aprospos). The posit for my theory came from a friend of mine who related the following story about himself and his lover:

Our TV died the other day. We had had it for a number of years, and it owed us nothing. It was small 14-inch TV, but for the hour or two per week we watched it, it was fine.

We decided to go down to [a store that rhymes with Mature Glop] and buy a new one. Once we got to the store, we began looking and realised that 14-inch TV’s were long gone. The helpful salesman mentioned we could possibly get a 15-inch, but that they were out of stock.

Not to be given in by such an easy sales pitch to up-sell us, we were content to leave the store until some more 15-inch TV’s came in stock. The salesman then said that the 17-inch TV’s were actually cheaper than the 15’s because the 15’s were becoming hard to find and no one made them anymore. Point of fact, then, we would save money by buying a larger TV.

Their original plan was to simply replace the TV with the same size they had and move on, spending as little as possible. But clearly this was impossible

We decided that if this was the way the world of TVs was going, then we would simply buy a comparable model, and get on with it. The salesman then began to show us the 17-inch televisions. I saw the lowest priced one, and thought that it would be fine. My husband, however, was not so sure. He began to wander into the 19-inch section and looking there. He then said we should upgrade to a 19-inch, simply becuase it was so little more money.
And then, it started.
I said “Well, if we go for the 19-inch, then why not a 21-inch?”
To which he retorted “Well fine, they why not a 27-inch?”
Not to be outdone by this clearly beta-male, I came back quickly with “Then there’s no point in NOT going for the 32-inch”

And so it went between the two males, hungry to not be outdone by another male, until they walked out of the store with a 52-inch plasma television and a Bose surround-sound home theatre package, coming to about $20K all said and done. And that they now had this gigantic thing which is so big they can “tan together” while watching the news every night.

My friend related to me that this was the absolute downfall of being a gay male, that neither partner posseses the rational female brain, which would have interceded at a very early point in the conversation.

For, any married man knows that the above conversation would NEVER have happened with a female. It would have gone from “Well, we can’t buy the 14-inch, so lets buy the 17-inch” to “How about the 27-inch then?” to “Oh, you can have a locksmith to the house in THAT short of a time?” and they would have left with the 17-inch TV in less than 5-minutes.

Such is the power of RFBS. I have felt it first-hand:

• When in the shower, wash the face and THEN the ass. The order is quite important there.
• When buying dinner, you do not have to buy the largest pizza they have, becuase you know damn well you’ll eat the whole thing and have heartburn at 4am
• You don’t have to eat all but 2-slices of the gigantic pizza in 15-minutes
• You do not have to drink all but 2-of the beers you bought at the same time “just to keep leftovers to a nice even number”
• That jar of spaghetti sauce is not “lonely” in the fridge
• For god sake you idiot, don’t EAT the spaghetti sauce. It looks lonely becuase its more than a month old
• Food can be thrown out
• 911 does not consider “pasta sauce food poisoning” a legitimate call to them
• The Underwear Fairy and Clean Towel Fairy do not exist. You have to use these large white machines, one that spits water and what that spits heat.

I feel for the men with RFBS, and I hope to develop a drug in the near future. It will likely involve some form of spaghetti-sauce penicillin. Solidarity my brothers, solidarity.