Hello there everyone. I’ve retreated to my man cave for a while to work on book two. To entertain you in the meantime, here’s one of the College Survival Guide columns I used to write for the local paper.
Dear Pat,
I recently had a rough relationship with a friend.
Actually, I was punch-drunk in love with the guy. We were on the verge of dating and did typical things like talking for hours on the phone, hanging out together, flirting, and beyond.
Everything was going great, but no one was making the first move even though we had talked about dating. When he finally asked me out, I later found out that he already had a girlfriend and was playing me the whole time. As you can imagine, I was angry with the fiery passion of a thousand burning suns.
Anyway, the next time we hung out I desperately wanted to ask if the rumors were true, but I never did. As the day went on, I kept thinking about all the lies this guy had told me and couldn’t imagine how anyone could be so heartless. Well, he kept making fun of me about one thing or another and I finally snapped. At the time, I was holding a one pound block of Colby cheese and this guy wasn’t quick enough to take cover. I had no intention of severely hurting him, but I’ve never seen someone go down that hard! I nailed him right in the kidney so it took him a few minutes to recover. I felt pretty bad afterwards, but he was feeling better the next day.
So now that the story is out of the way, I can ask you my question. Should I feel bad now that this guy has a giant bruise and will probably be peeing blood for the next month?
Sincerely,
Kristin
Only in Wisconsin could we have a problem like this: cheese-related domestic
abuse.
Come to think of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a few Wisconsin laws on the books relating to cheese-specific crime. Wouldn’t that make a great CSI spin-off? “This week on CSI – Dairyland: our heroes struggle to unravel a baffling second-degree lacticide….”
First, I have to say that this letter cracked me up, Kristin. The funniest one I’ve gotten in a long while. This is because it contains the two fundamental elements necessary for comedy:
1) Something horrible happening to someone else.
Mel Brooks said it best, “Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die.” There’s something buried deep in our brains that makes us enjoy the traumatic suffering of strangers.
It’s not a pleasant thing to think about, but it’s true. Think of every joke you’ve ever laughed at. 99% of the time what makes you laugh is something horrible. If a joke begins “An American, a German, and a Norwegian go fishing….” You already know the end. We end up laughing at the Norwegian because of his stupidity, or because something horrible happens to him. Or both.
Don’t believe me? Think about every Loony Tunes cartoon you’ve ever watched, or any episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos.
Still, don’t believe me? Check this out.
Case closed.
2) An element of the ridiculous.
Ridiculous things are funny. Like a monkey wearing a dress, or a clown having sex, or an English major with a job. In this letter, the ridiculous element is a girl is kicking a guy’s ass with a chunk of cheese: pure comedy gold.
I mention all of this because the humor of this letter really obscures the issue. So let me present a different, humor-free scenario:
There’s a guy and a girl. They hang out, flirt, “and beyond” doing the relationship dance. Later, the guy finds out that the girl already has a boyfriend. She’s been lying to him and leading him on, and generally taking advantage of his trusting nature.
So the next time they’re together, the guy is seething mad. He keeps it under control for a while, but eventually a comment makes him lose his cool. So he takes whatever is in his hand: a coffee mug, a wrench… whatever. Then he hits her with it. Hits her so hard that she falls down and can’t get up for several minutes.
Now the question: should the guy feel bad? Seems pretty straightforward to me.
So yeah, Kristin, you should feel bad. Because, when all’s said and done, you took something non-violent and made it violent. Someone hurt your feelings and you hurt their body. And ultimately, it doesn’t matter that he’s a guy and you’re a girl. It doesn’t matter if you use a wedge of gouda or a baseball bat. It doesn’t matter that he seems to be, on all accounts, a total prick. That’s just not a good thing. Feel bad. Apologize.
Now I’m not saying that what he did was any better. He abused your trust, and, in my opinion, that warrants him a severe, figurative, ass-kicking of some sort.
Unfortunately, you’ve forfeited your right to creative revenge by opening up the can of whoop-ass on him. Too bad, I could have written a great how-to get revenge column for all the jaded lovers out there. Oh well.
Oh Survival Guide, how I miss you….
What do you think, folks. If I offered to write new advice columns here on the blog, would anyone be interested? Let me know in the comments below.
Be good,
pat
My Funny Valentine
One of the side effects of working on the book intensively is that everything else tends to fade from my awareness. I fall behind on e-mail, miss scheduled appointments, ignore Sarah, and tend to let the blog slide.
So yesterday, as I hauled firewood into the cabin, I thought, “Is it February? Isn’t Valentines Day coming up?”
Then I thought, “Won’t I be up here in Hayward, shackled to The Wise Man’s Fear over Valentine’s day?”
I realized it was true and went inside to call Sarah. I asked if she was cool with that.
She was cool with that.
I went back to carrying firewood and found that I couldn’t remember when I’d last posted a blog, or what it had been about.
Then I thought, “I’m pretty sure I’ve written a Valentine’s day column at some point in the past. If I could find it, that would save me some time.”
So, after I was done schlepping in the wood. I dug through my files and found I was correct. I had written a Valentine’s Day column. In fact, I had written several of them over the years.
Then I found this one. A column I had written several years ago and forgotten about until now.
This, my friends, is what we writers refer to as serendipity.
[Editor's note. For a few of the references in this column to make sense, you have to understand that by the time I did this column, I had been writing it in the local paper for over seven years and actually had a sponsor who underwrote the column. This provided me some much-needed ad revenue, and let me offer prizes to people who wrote in letters. Usually a gift certificate from a local coffeeshop.]
[Editor's note - This isn't really an editor, by the way. It's just me. But "Pat's note" doesn't sound nearly as official.]
Well SAMIEL, flattered as I am by your proposal, I find myself skeptical. Lately, people have been writing in fake problems just to get free coffee from the Mission. So I suspect that this letter is pure bullshit. Well, maybe not *pure* bullshit, but at least three-nines fine.
First off, there are no photos of me up at myspace, only illustrations. Secondly, nobody says: “OMG!” And lastly, I have a hard time believing anyone would offer their girlfriend a date with someone else as a V-day present.
I expect it’s much more likely that this is a blatant attempt to get close to my girlfriend.
While my cynical nature inclines me toward the first possibility, I’m going to take Kaitlyn’s politely-phrased suggestion and focus on the positive in this column. I’m going to assume that you’re smitten with my ladyfriend, and, with V-Day coming up, you decided to make your move.
No offense to your girlfriend SAM. She’s obviously a woman of impeccable taste. But she can’t hold a candle to my girlfriend.
My girlfriend’s name is Sarah. She is, to put it plainly, the best of all possible girlfriends.
Some of you might remember the V-day column from a couple years back when I bitched about how girls get to cash in on Valentine’s day, while guys got screwed in the deal? Well, last Valentine’s day, Sarah bought me flowers and candy, took me out to dinner, and gave me a backrub. How’s that for cool?
But that’s only the tip of the iceberg. She’s hella smart, a great writer, and better at math than me. She does community service, keeps up on current events, and makes awesome banana bread. Her hair smells really, really, good.
Sarah is also hot. Beyond hot. I’m not even kidding here. You know when you see a geeky guy walking around an absolute bombshell and you think, “The hell? How did he end up with her? She’s a thousand times hotter than him!” Well Sarah and I are like that, with the main difference that I’m pretty damn sexy too.
It’s like a story problem: if Sarah is a thousand times sexier than Pat, and Pat is fifty times sexier than you… Do the math: (Damn sexy x 1000 + boobs = Sarah.)
Shes so sexy that Homeland Security is worried about her falling into the hands of the terrorists. Fema has passed a special set of laws requiring her to always wear at least three layers of clothing whenever she’s in public. If she wears only one layer, she causes car wrecks. If she wears a tank top, men without protective eyewear have grand-mal seizures and passing women become suddenly bi-curious.
When she gets naked, the sexiness she throws off is like the radiation from a nuclear bomb. If we hadn’t lined the walls of her bedroom and bathroom with three inches of lead, no man in Stevens Point could wear tight fitting pants, and every woman in Central Wisconsin would be gay.
I’m running low on space here, so I can’t go into details about the sex. So let me just say this: Damn.
Perhaps most importantly, Sarah is sweet. I have a tendency, as Kaitlyn pointed out, to get a little grim. I tend to waver back and forth between a raging inferno of furious anger, and a chilly pillar of bitter cynicism. But being around Sarah is like a drink of cool water. When she’s nearby, you realize that the world is a pretty nice place after all. Sometimes her influence is all that keeps me from turning into a cussed, crotchety old bastard.
Love ya sweetie, happy Valentine’s Day.
Awww…. Isn’t that sweet?
If you’d like to leave a comment for Sarah telling her how lovely she is, feel free.
That said, don’t get too fresh. She is, after all, My Girl.
Unless you are lady-types, of course. Then you can get as fresh as you want. Be my guest.
Later all,
pat