In response to Janelle’s recent blog posts, I’ve come up with some wedding advice of my own.

Disclaimer: This is all crap.

Who to Marry

Marry someone you won’t fight with. This is actually impossible, but I’d feel bad if I didn’t tell you that first. Make sure you’ve had at least one serious, relationship-rocking fight before you make the decision to get married. (That’s probably the only solid piece of advice in this whole post, actually.) It’s also a good idea to invest in a Playstation and maintain separate living rooms.

Marry someone who can cook. Unless you can cook. Then, marry someone can’t cook, so they will appreciate the fact that you cook. If you don’t cook and you can’t find someone who cooks, marry someone who manages a restaurant. Unless you manage a restaurant. You can probably figure out the rest.

How to Marry

In deciding what kind of wedding to have (or whether to elope), you must ask yourself one important question, and that is, “Is this person going to plan a wedding that will embarass me?” If you both have similar tastes, plan a wedding. If you produce indie films and your partner works at the Build-a-Bear Workshop, go to Vegas.

Never, under any circumstances, do a cat wedding (for people) (or for cats).

Vows

Refer to the above section.

Traditions

Two of the most persistent traditions at weddings are the bouquet toss and the garter toss. These are not fun. They can be made palatable by altering the outcome—for instance, throwing the garter directly at the guy who just needs to hurry the hell up and ask his girlfriend to marry him. Better throw the bouquet at him too. Make sure to seat him near the front for easy access.

All speeches should be written in iambic pentameter. This ensures that only people who know how to write well will give longer speeches. Also, the rhyming couplet at the end signals that the speech is, in fact, over, eliminating that awkward is-it-over-or-is-this-just-awkward moment in the audience.

Unity candle. Seriously, what the hell?

Throwing rice constitutes a food fight, and when you throw food at me, it means war. I have direct access to both the cake and the caterer. Don’t throw rice at me, because I will not hesitate to lodge a dinner roll in your throat.

In ancient Rome, the wedding cake was actually more like bread, made from wheat or barley, and was broken over the the bride’s head as a symbol of her fertility. More traditional weddings today will have the bride and groom smash the cake into each other’s faces as a symbol of their joint fertility. If you don’t want to have kids for a while, don’t even touch the cake. Best not to take any chances.

String quartets add a nice antiquated feel to a wedding and are highly recommended for anyone born in the 18th century.

When to Marry

6:30

I want to adopt a pig from Iceland and name her Pjörk.

There’s a term—basketball widow—that describes a woman whose husband completely disappears during basketball season, essentially leaving his wife a widow for basketball season. Well, I’m a basketball widower. My wife completely disappears whenever college basketball is on. This, of course, means she’s basically gone right now.

So today, rather than sit through a game of stomping and yelling at basketball, I decided to get out and go shopping for some books and clothes and things for my garden. It didn’t hit me until later how weird it was that I was looking at shirts and picking out little houseplants while my wife sat at home and watched sports. Just last week, Janelle and Landon sat down for the big game, and I made them sandwiches and got them crackers with crab dip.

I can’t let my manhood be threatened just because my wife likes sports and I know how to accessorize. But I know it won’t be long before Spring is in full swing and she’s out mowing the yard again while I’m in the kitchen making cranberry-brie puff pastries. I am slowly turning into a housewife. I need to go listen to some classic rock and look at cars. Now.

Science has just proved that stalking is the next logical step in human or near-human affection. Kenji, the emoting robot, a project at a Toshiba robotic research facility, grew quite attached to a stuffed human-sized doll (in the picture on that original post). A female intern, taking diagnostics and uploading new programs to Kenji daily over a few weeks, soon became the next object of Kenji’s affection. One night, after finishing up her diagnostics, Kenji began hugging the intern repeatedly and actually physically stopped her from leaving the room.

Now, bear in mind, Kenji was only programmed to express himself in pre-recorded dog and cat noises. Imagine a barking, meowing, rampaging robot rushing toward you repeatedly, trying to give you hugs with its 100kg hydraulic arms and you’ll get an idea as to how creepy this is. With some foresight, they could have added one or two extra lines of code to tell the robot that no does indeed mean no. Really, scientists, I’ll write it for you:

if (input == “No”) return false;
else hug();

The intern was trapped in the room and had to run from the hugging robot until she got through to some researchers who came in and shut Kenji down.

This story also brings up another interesting question: Why in the hell is Toshiba creating emoting robots? The idea of a television somehow loving me back scares me a little more than it appeals to me. Given the infrequency with which I watch television, I’d be the robotic equivalent of a player, calling up my television once a week for a little casual fling and then leaving her for a solid week to talk with my other friends and spend time with my wife. I don’t know what I’d do if someone ever urged my television to leave me and get on with its life.

Imagine what would happen to the computing world. All I.T. departments in businesses would have to be equipped with PC Whisperers along with the usual geeks and nerds to talk edgy computers down from the edge. Clingy computers would refuse to operate for others when their usual users were out. We’d have to develop the electronic equivalent of prostitutes: computers we could use and then leave with no emotional attachments

In the end, Kenji ended up hug-assaulting everyone who worked with him closely, so they’re probably going to have to shut him down permanently. Their next project? Programming a robot that’s a real bastard. Scientists, here’s some code for you:

if (input == “No”) hug();
else kick(groin);

It looks like this.

Stolen from Facebook:

1. Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
   or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to Quotations Page and select “random quotations”
   or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four or five words of the very last quote on the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
   or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days
   Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together.

My results:

Fail!

I just wrote this letter to ABC:

What do we have to do to save Pushing Daisies? This is the only television show I’ve watched regularly in years! The show reaches a demographic that none of your other shows will—not even Eli Stone. It’s a demographic that just doesn’t watch network television, and we’ll all be driven back to watching Wes Anderson films and working on our novels if Pushing Daisies indeed pushes the daisies. The show has a wit, charm, and emotional depth that cannot be replicated. Please re-sign this show!

If you like the show, I would recommend you go to their website, click the Contact ABC link at the very bottom, and tell them (politely) how you feel.

As for why the show is tanking, the facts are these: It’s because it has an overtly right-brain appeal. People have complained that the plots don’t make sense and are constructed for people who don’t like to think, but the depth is there—it’s manifested in things like psychological development, artistic style, and philosophical issues. It’s the antithesis of shows like CSI, which are nothing but a collection of intricate details with no real substance to them.

It’s been said that there are two types of fiction books: plot stories and character stories. Character stories are usually considered the more intricate, but plot stories are usually the better sellers. See the connection? The dynamic has finally hit television, and it’s flopping horrendously. I hope this isn’t a sign that shows like this won’t see production in the future, because Pushing Daisies is a real gem in a sea of synthetics. This makes me quite sad.

When life gives you llamas, make llamanade.

Lyrist’s Locution: your #1 source for locution pudding!

Seriously, who’s searching for this?