OT: Humor: Why Men Don't Write Advice Columns

[KE Peace]

Received from a [male] writer friend today: )(~

Why Men Don't Write Advice Columns

Dear Walter: I hope you can help me here. The other day, I set off for work leaving my husband in the house watching the TV as usual. I hadn't gone more than a mile down the road when my engine conked out and the car shuddered to a halt. I walked back home to get my husband's help. When I got home I couldn't believe my eyes. He was in our bedroom with the neighbor lady. I am 32, my husband is 34, and we have been married for twelve years.

When I confronted him, he broke down and admitted that they had been having an affair for the past six months. I told him to stop or I would leave him. He was let go from his job six months ago and he says he has been feeling increasingly depressed and worthless. I love him very much, but ever since I gave him the ultimatum he has become increasingly distant. He won't go to counseling and I'm afraid I can't get through to him anymore.

Can you please help?
Sincerely, Sheila



Dear Sheila: A car stalling after being driven a short distance can be caused by a variety of faults with the engine. Start by checking that there is no debris in the fuel line. If it is clear, check the vacuum pipes and hoses on the intake manifold and also check all grounding wires. If none of these approaches solves the problem, it could be that the fuel pump itself is faulty, causing low delivery pressure to the carburetor float chamber.

I hope this helps.
-Walter

[Styxx]

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha! )(~)(~)(~)(~ What a riot! )(~)(~)(~

[SeanHannifin]

Ah, I remember seeing this a while ago, still hilarious!! :D :D :D

Wait a sec... in the original article I saw (http://www.collegehumor.com/picture:1781082) the advisor was "Miriam" ... who changed it to Walter, changed the story, and proliferated it through the web? :D :D

Oh wait, Snopes says its fake (http://www.snopes.com/humor/letters/miriam.asp) anyway! Not sure which version came first... still funny though! :D

[BenNichols]

lol brilliant!

[Gustov Varbirski]

Well, I can't speak for Sheila, but I believe it helps with a problem I've been having. Many thanks to Walter.

[Garritan]

I'm just nodding with a beer in hand, waiting for the punchline... ~| Yep. :p

[Pingu]

I'm just nodding with a beer in hand, waiting for the punchline... ~| Yep. :p

Oh come on Gary. Isn't the humour obvious?

Walter is clearly useless at tailoring his advice to the given audience. He should have realised there is no way a Sheila was going to be able to check on all those parts. More to the point he forgot to ask whether she stalled after hitting a stationary object, or whether she'd filled a diesel engine with petrol. Rookie columnist.

[KE Peace]

Oh come on Gary. Isn't the humour obvious?

Walter is clearly useless at tailoring his advice to the given audience. He should have realised there is no way a Sheila was going to be able to check on all those parts. More to the point he forgot to ask whether she stalled after hitting a stationary object, or whether she'd filled a diesel engine with petrol. Rookie columnist.


ROTFL! :D:D

[Styxx]

Hmm, I dunt know why but this reminds me of my first date. We went to the drive in to see Jaws. I asked my date if she wanted to move to the back seat and she answered; "I would rather stay up her with you." :D

[KE Peace]

Hmm, I dunt know why but this reminds me of my first date. We went to the drive in to see Jaws. I asked my date if she wanted to move to the back seat and she answered; "I would rather stay up her with you." :D

I think it's all in the style of delivery, Styxx ;)
(At least she preferred sitting next to you than being alone and that's a step in the right direction, methinks....)

which brings me to....

Karen's Blind Date Nightmares

There are very few of these, because I hate blind dates. I hate dates in general (except the kind that come in a box in the supermarket, which unlike the other kind, are very tasty :D). Dates make me nervous because naming them as such always seems to indicate that something, dictated by the Department for Standardization of Mating Behavior (DSMB), is expected to happen. (Expectations make me edgy, too:eek: So does the acronym DSMB, for some reason I can't quite grasp....).

I don't date. I might go someplace with someone, but that does not constitute a date in the sense of part 1.2 of the DSMB's Standardized Manual of Dating (SMD). It constitutes "going someplace with someone". I do that with alot of people and it's fun. "Fun" is the opposite of "date".

The first was in high school, where I agreed to do a friend a favor and go to the senior prom with a friend of his whose girlfriend had ditched him just before the prom, poor guy. So we're in the car all gowned and corsaged and tuxedo'ed up. Just for clarity, I wore the gown and he wore the tuxedo (those who know me and my friends well enough know that is not necessarily obvious -- everyone knows I love a good tuxedo, and some of my guy friends are, well, a little "different" :D)

So, my friend told me this guy played the organ, and quite well. I figured that would be a good conversation starter. So it went something like this:
"So, Jerry tells me you play the organ!?" "Yep." [awkward pause] "Um, so... what music do you like to play?" [awkward pause, imagine you are a gearshift and you're grinding away, hoping to make it to second and aren't sure it's going to happen...] and so went the whole evening, grinding and lurching and stalling, conversationally speaking. The guy was very shy and wounded to boot. totally understandable, really.


Then there was the one where I wished I had been in the back seat (without the guy). A friend in Florida who I visited to be in her wedding party set me up with a friend of her fiance, saying he'd take me to a movie. That sounded nice, and very hospitable, since I was new there and didn't know anyone. So this guy takes me to an X rated movie in a drive-in theater. Leagues behind Jaws. "uh-oh", I thought. Things went downhill from there. Details unnecessary....yechhh!

"I wanna be.......... da-DAH! [beat] your sledge hammer! da-DAH!"
--Peter Gabriel

At that point, I didn't want someone to be my sledgehammer, I just wished I had one. :p

Karen

[KE Peace]

Oh but nowadays, if I ever find myself in that kind of awkward situation, having more maturity and experience with relating to people, I know to do one or more of the following:

I start raving about the joys and structural superiority of object-oriented programming and design methods, or the details of score creation and music production in Finale, or present a lecture on the workings of the MIDI protocol, down to the individual message types and their parameters. I make sure to get very excited about the parameters. ~| Can't lose with those -- unless of course you're talking to a professional composer/sound engineer or...... um..... it just occurred to me that most of the people I talk to are one of those things..... which brings me back to..... I don't date. ROTFL!

[robh]

I don't date either.
.
.
.
My wife won't let me!

Rob

[KE Peace]

I don't date either.
.
.
.
My wife won't let me!

Rob
That's smart Rob, esp. if your wife owns weapons of any kind :n:

[Tony Monaghan]

I remember my first ever date, saved up for ages to take this girl to a very expensive restaurant (trying to impress). Plates were served, I picked up my knife and cut into the delicious stake and as I cut towards me managed to pull the whole plate off the table and onto my lap. My face sure was red but don't know whether it was the embarassment or the hot food being where it shouldn't be.

Needless to say that was the first and only date with the girl, guess the restaurant didn't impress her.

[jmpaquette]

I start raving about the joys and structural superiority of object-oriented programming and design methods, or the details of score creation and music production in Finale, or present a lecture on the workings of the MIDI protocol, down to the individual message types and their parameters. I make sure to get very excited about the parameters. ~| Can't lose with those -- unless of course you're talking to a professional composer/sound engineer or...... um..... it just occurred to me that most of the people I talk to are one of those things..... which brings me back to..... I don't date. ROTFL!

Karen, that's incredible! A new cookbook: The Joy of OOP! Or OOP for Dummies! Years ago that was the trend: a "cookbook" of circuits, subroutines, or whatever else one wanted to elucidate upon.

The "blind date" or "date" issue is very easily handled: if it starts to feel like a "date," when you go into the restaurant just ask the waiter (host, hostess, etc.) for separate tables.:)

I think "Walter" is a jerk because he (?) did not ask truly relevant questions, such as "What do you mean by 'conked'?" or "What sort of a noise did you hear? Was it more of a 'conk' than a 'clonk'?" or "Is it hotter in the summer or in the country?" Relevant questions to gather relevant information. One shouldn't offer prognoses before gathering details about the symptoms. I think Walter is a frog, just leaping to conclusions.

Besides,

*()


Joe

[KE Peace]

I remember my first ever date, saved up for ages to take this girl to a very expensive restaurant (trying to impress). Plates were served, I picked up my knife and cut into the delicious stake and as I cut towards me managed to pull the whole plate off the table and onto my lap. My face sure was red but don't know whether it was the embarassment or the hot food being where it shouldn't be.

Needless to say that was the first and only date with the girl, guess the restaurant didn't impress her.

That must be it, Tony. Girls are often intimidated by very fancy restaurants, especially at a young age. ;)Too bad she wasn't more forgiving. (Hey I'm curious what happened after the plate in the lap. Did you pick it all up, put it back on the table and then resume as if nothing had happened? It occurs to me that that could be very impressive! ("Wow, this guy's got a cool nerve!"))

ADVENTURES IN FINE DINING
----------------------------
or "Bohemians at the Broadmoor: When Worlds Collide"

That reminds me of a funny story of my own -- my then man-friend (Richard, still a close friend) and I went to a fancy French restaurant here in town (http://www.broadmoor.com/penrose-room.php). I ordered something called Foie Gras, which was described in very decorative terms; each little item decorated in a different way with vegetables, nuts, spices and so on. Now if I had been thinking, I would have known what I was ordering. I know what pate de foie gras is. And I know what pate means. You'd think by the process of subtraction I'd get it. But I was so entranced with the thought of all these well-presented and artistically decorated little "things", that I didn't think that I was ordering -- goose livers. If the menu had said "Goose Livers decorated in High Baroque Style" or some such, I wouldn't have ordered them. I HATE liver of any kind. The very smell of it makes me want to barf. And Barfing is not allowed in the Penrose Room restaurant under any circumstances. IT is simply VERBOTEN. Oh, excuse me -- interdit-- since we're being French here.

Have you ever seen an actual goose liver (not to mention that the way they get the goose's livers like that is by cruel force-feeding, which makes them unpalatable to me ethically as well). The are the consistency of jello. Liver-flavored jello, no exaggeration. And I hate jello, too. :mad:

So here they come. they are very pretty and nicely presented. And the thought of eating them makes me want to gag. Richard looks at me sternly and says something like "You ordered them. They are expensive. You WILL eat them, at least half of them and I'll eat the other half". Fair enough, I couldn't argue with that. I counted it the price of ignorance.

It took an act of will on my part; I ate them sort of like one eats oysters -- let them slide down the throat as quickly as possible. It took all my strength of mind not to gag. I had to think of them as something else, which was hard because I have a very keen sense of smell. (Think Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs: "You wear ____ perfume, but -- not today. Today you smell like....")

But it was overall a good experience there, because we met a couple of young people, whose job it was to faun over us. One of them was the wine steward. We told him we were just a couple of old bohemians out for a good time. Then he rolled up his sleeves conspiratorily and showed us his elaborate and plentiful tatoos. "If my friends knew I worked here, they'd laugh me out of town" he said. "We won't tell." we promised him.

:)

[KE Peace]

Karen, that's incredible! A new cookbook: The Joy of OOP! Or OOP for Dummies! Years ago that was the trend: a "cookbook" of circuits, subroutines, or whatever else one wanted to elucidate upon.

The "blind date" or "date" issue is very easily handled: if it starts to feel like a "date," when you go into the restaurant just ask the waiter (host, hostess, etc.) for separate tables.:)

I think "Walter" is a jerk because he (?) did not ask truly relevant questions, such as "What do you mean by 'conked'?" or "What sort of a noise did you hear? Was it more of a 'conk' than a 'clonk'?" or "Is it hotter in the summer or in the country?" Relevant questions to gather relevant information. One shouldn't offer prognoses before gathering details about the symptoms. I think Walter is a frog, just leaping to conclusions.

Besides,

*()


Joe

I heard Dr. Ruth even had a book called for Dummies. Everyone wanted to be a dummy at something LOL! I think a Dummies book for the generalist would be good, too: "Life for Dummies" -- for those who don't have a clue. Ever.

Separate tables! Now there's one I never thought of!

Re: Walter. Good point. You are good at this, Joe; maybe you should start an advice column of your own. Have you ever heard "Click and Clack"'s show "Car Talk" on public radio? Two car advice guys, who are very knowledgeable, but they are also hilarious, so much so that they are fun to listen to even if you are not remotely interested in cars. Think Cheech and Chong meets Mr. Goodwrench. http://www.cartalk.com/

Thanks for started my morning with a few more laughs, Joe. )(~

[Tony Monaghan]

That must be it, Tony. Girls are often intimidated by very fancy restaurants, especially at a young age. ;)Too bad she wasn't more forgiving. (Hey I'm curious what happened after the plate in the lap. Did you pick it all up, put it back on the table and then resume as if nothing had happened? It occurs to me that that could be very impressive! ("Wow, this guy's got a cool nerve!"))

Nothing as impressive, they (rather sniffily), replaced my meal after I muttered something about slidy place mats and lack of friction. I'd lost my appetite by then anyway...

[Garritan]

which brings me to....

Karen's Blind Date NightmaresKaren,

For vicarious thrills you may want to look at Stuntman (http://www.thestuntman.la/). Use your mouse to pick up a guy (and toss him around). ;) :n: