Chicken Soup with America's astronomical divorce rate...

I recently celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary and contrary to statistical expectations, we still like each other and enjoy each other's company. My children have told me many times that most of their friends' and classmates' parents are either divorced or clearly should be. The contrast between my own success and the failure of so many others has given me an opportunity to think about all the reasons so many marriages fail. I've put together a short list of some of the more obvious reasons. Feel free to add to it.

1) Men marry women they don't particularly like and don't even find physically attractive in order to avoid being the only guy in the neighborhood who doesn't have a sex life. In America, celibacy isn't just physically uncomfortable. Men who've reached their 20's and are still virgins or suspected of being virgins are treated in an increasingly unpleasant manner by their peers. If you've ever wondered how women who look like Honey Boo-Boo's mother manage to get pregnant, here's your answer. Men who fear being outcasts will screw anything...just to avoid being teased, ostracized, or otherwise punished for not screwing something.

2) Men marry very attractive women they have no respect for, don't like, and frequently abuse for the same reason rich guys buy expensive sports cars. Nyah! Nyah! See what I have? You wish you had one of these don't you. You're not man enough to get one of these. Nyah! Nyah! What could possibly cause such a relationship of equals to fall apart? Yes...that was sarcasm.

3) Oops! I'm pregnant. Shotgun weddings are like leaking fuel tanks. It's gonna blow sooner or later.

4) Believe it or not there are still a lot of women around who won't have intercourse with their boyfriends before they get married. This used to be the normal way to do things. Today it's almost as much of a disaster waiting to happen as a shotgun wedding.

There's my short list. Feel free to add to it.

Chicken Soup asks, "Whatever happened to David Salmon?"

Whatever happened to Franklin, Massachusetts gridiron hero and all around sociopath David Salmon? To no one's surprise, I received no response to this...not that I expected anyone to take it seriously.

When I do an internet search the latest articles are from May of last year. A few months ago I e-mailed several of the reporters who covered the story, asking for a follow up. No one responded. I even called a newspaper that is headquartered in a town very close to Franklin, Massachusetts and asked for information. I was transferred three times to the reporter "who has been assigned to cover the story." I started feeling like I was asking which of the nuns in Catholic school would be teaching sex education.

Is David Salmon an ambassador's son? What gives?

The reason I'm trying to follow up on His Majesty should be obvious to regular readers. Every present and future bully and most of the assholes who raise bullies were probably aware of David Salmon's criminal behavior. What did they learn from it? Was His Majesty locked up in prison for a few years? Was anything at all done that might convince a bully raising parent to clean up their act?

The fact that no one is covering the story almost certainly means that David Salmon walked with little more than a finger wagging and a slap on the wrist.

Once again...Americans worship violent males, praise their amazing manliness, shower them with female attention, and then whine incessantly about violence. I listened to a report on National Public Radio this morning about the recent massacre in a naval facility in Washington, D.C. It was mentioned that this was the 20th mass shooting in America during Obama's Presidency. There was some loose talk about gun control, but no one mentioned the fact that violent males are treated like gods in America.

Perhaps it's time for Americans to pull their heads out of their collective asses and treat violent males as the cancer they are. Once again...what ever happened to David Salmon?

Chicken Soup offers a little advice for victims of bullying...

In my last post about Izzy Kalman, someone asked a question (September 8, 2013 at 1:39 A.M.) that deserves a post of its own. I was asked if I had any advice for victims of bullying. What can victims do while they're still being victimized? The reader specifically asked how the victims could escape and who could they trust or turn to for shelter and advice.

Until now, I haven't approached the problem from the perspective of offering advice to victims for several reasons:

First and most obvious, I think more like a terrorist than a counselor. Bullies and their enablers are vermin.

Second and almost as obvious, if I offer advice to a victim, it doesn't work, and the victim decides to take his/her own life, you can bet there will be a lawsuit. Vast legions of scum sucking bottom feeders will demand to know what my qualifications are. Do I have a graduate university degree in psychology or some similar discipline?! Who do I think I am offering advice to a teenager who may be contemplating suicide?! You get the idea. Lawyers operate under the assumption that problems are best addressed by suing the party that offers the greatest cost/benefit ratio. It won't occur to them to go after the bully or its enablers. That would be too much work with too little cash to be had.

Third...and this should also be obvious...bullies and their enablers are criminals. They won't magically transform into civilized people if a few of their victims receive good advice. The problem will be solved when the public places bullies and their enablers in the same category of hate mongering vermin as skinheads, wife beaters, and child molesters.

With that in mind...I saw a public service ad just last night involving a website called Stomp Out Bullying. I looked over their site a bit but I haven't contacted them and therefore cannot say whether or not they are effective at solving the problem. Since they spent money to advertise on television, I feel relatively safe passing the information on.

Best of luck.

Chicken Soup with the value of human life...

There's an old joke that goes something like this:

It's your anniversary and you're on a cruise ship with your wife and your mother. The ship starts to sink and neither of them can swim. If you only have one life preserver, which one do you give it to?

The answer is of course...you'd give the only life preserver you have to your dog.

This joke may be intended to make you think about who's more important to you: the woman who brought you into the world, the woman whom you found attractive enough to want to spend your life with, or a four legged animal that drools on you, chews holes in your sneakers, and urinates on the rug. It could also be just another petty insult to women, something familiar to those who enjoy mother-in-law jokes. Or it could be a reminder that your dog might really be man's best friend. As readers are hopefully aware by now, I don't perceive the world the way most other people do. I see something else entirely when I think of this joke...

It's your anniversary and you're on a cruise with your wife...and your mother?!! Why is your mother there?

Is your mother so possessive and controlling that she has to accompany you and your wife on your anniversary cruise? Is she like the mother in Pink Floyd's, "The Wall?"

Mother's gonna screen all your girlfriends for you. Mother won't let anyone dirty get through."

Goodness...what could go wrong with that kind of parenting?

And what sort of woman would marry a man who was so thoroughly controlled by his mother? Is your wife so out to lunch that she thinks this is normal? Or are these two women good friends and you're just the sucker who brings home the money? Or...and this is just my opinion...is this joke just a thinly disguised story about three very sick people who share an extremely dysfunctional relationship?

I used to sell real estate many years ago. This allowed me to closely observe how people lived, how they managed their homes, and how they interacted in those homes. I routinely encountered some very sick, dysfunctional families. More about that later perhaps...

Did you catch the most important word mentioned so far? "Relationship" is a word you hear a lot on the Oxygen Channel and on daytime talk shows like Oprah and Dr. Phil. The word "relationship" tends to get shuttled into the category of petty female concerns, but it's actually quite important. The relationship you have with others determines whether you want to save their lives or watch them drown while you pet your dog. And since this weblog features people who commit some remarkably uncivilized acts, the kind of relationship that exists between men like Eric Harris, Timothy McVeigh, Adam Lanza, and the rest of humanity is probably worth devoting a little effort to understanding.

And now for the value of human life...

The primary reason for having laws against homicide is simple. People have to be intimidated into pretending that other people's lives matter because human life has no intrinsic value. If you don't believe me, just consider all of the thousands of people who die every day without affecting your life at all. As long as you have no significant relationship with any of them, their deaths simply don't matter. In other words, human life, like gasoline, cotton socks, and crescent wrenches only has utility value. And the utility value that any individual places on any other individual's life is a function of the relationship that exists between them.

I'll be adding to this post in the next few days. Until then, think about the sort of relationships that exist in your life.