House of Eratosthenes

What in the HELL is this thing. Oh God, I hope there is no truth to it, for if there is then our species has approached the level of abject stupidity where we should just pray for some horrible nuclear or biological or astronomical accident that will just end all the misery.

AMERICAN brides are rejecting the vow to love “till death do us part” in favour of more cautious promises such as staying together “for as long as our marriage shall serve the common good”.

Hey that’s just brilliant! If you’re going to piss away someone else’s life on a sham arrangement in which you fully intend to reap all the benefits while laboring under NONE of the obligations — and hey, female-genius, who’s to say he doesn’t as well, and isn’t THAT a recipe for matrimonial success — just be up-front about it!

I gotta admit, it beats the hell out of years and years of “we gotta buy this, we gotta buy that, my credit is shit so we’ll have to do it in your name, don’t worry, with both our incomes we can barely afford the payments” followed by a smashing uppercut of “I woke up this morning and realized I’m not happy so I’m outta here, have fun paying for all this stuff, you’ll hear from my lawyer soon.” There’s something to be said for honesty.

Traditionalists say increasingly popular phrases such as “I promise to be loyal as long as love lasts” are undermining the lifelong commitment that has been at the heart of marriage since St Paul told the Corinthians a man and wife are bound together “unto the grave”.

Oh, this is just a real innovation. Being loyal. As in, not screwing anybody else. Look, when you’re re-writing your wedding vows so that you have no real commitment to each other, everybody with an ounce of intelligence knows it’s all about lying and having affairs without feeling any pang of conscience — it’s not necessary to come out & say so.

Hey…on a completely unrelated subject, what’s this?

The institution of marriage may be under stress, but the presence of gay or lesbian couples has nothing to do with it. The major source of stress on marriage and prospective married couples is an economic one. This is because while marriage has economic benefits, it also has economic costs that fewer people appear to be able or willing to accept.

Americans’ age at the time of their first marriage, for example, is at an all-time high as most people now wait until they are in their late 20s to tie the knot.

Let me translate that for you: Most men now wait until they are in their late 20s to tie the knot.

“Why Men Won’t Commit: Exploring Young Men’s Attitudes About Sex, Dating and Marriage” is a 2002 report from Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Ph.D., and David Popenoe, Ph.D., Professor of Social Sciences at Rutgers. The report can be read here, and it shows that most of the pressure to marry later in life is being placed on the man. Well, not really. It would appear more accurate to summarize the report as: Marriages are taking place less often and it’s the man’s fault for not sacrificing himself as eagerly, with cutesy spin-words like “commitment-phobic” and spin-phrases like “it is men more often than women who are accused of being ‘commitment phobic’ and dragging their feet about marriage”. Interestingly, the report echoes the “most people now wait unti they are in their late 20s to tie the not,” above, with some reputable data reporting “The median age of first marriage for men has reached 27, the oldest age in the nation�s history.”

Gee…I wonder why? Sounds like a great deal all-around, fellas. You make all the financial commitments which are enforceable in court in any state, and really last until death do you part even though the marriage probably will not; your lovely bride promises to…uh, let me get back to you on that. What a great deal!

I’m not exactly filled with confidence by Drs. Whitehead and Popenoe here. I get the impression they have a limitless drive to identify the problem, but can’t or won’t identify what could be done about it. They seem to be falling short of acknowledging what a raw deal marriage has turned into from the male point of view, instead choosing to focus on the reaction shown by the males to what has happened to marriage over time. Let’s take their executive summary apart bullet by bullet:

The ten reasons why men won�t commit are:

1. They can get sex without marriage more easily than in times past

I never understood this. Step into the bride’s shoes for just a second. Ooh, it’s the Celibacy Fairy! She has waved her magic wand and now we live in a magical society where it’s impossible for a man to get laid until he gets married! Now we can use mens’ sex-drives to pressure them to get married sooner, because without that, nothing’s happening. So I don’t have to wait as long to get me a groom!

What an unflattering motivation. Who wants to be around a guy like that for a minute or two, let alone spend years with him? Seriously.

2. They can enjoy the benefits of having a wife by cohabiting rather than marrying

Redundant with #1.

3. They want to avoid divorce and its financial risks

No shit, Sherlock. Wow, what is wrong with men today? What chicken-shits they are, they don’t want to be guaranteed broke for the rest of their lives!

You know what? I could get my butt shipped off to Iraq so I can see people blown up every hour on the hour, bullets whizzing everywhere, my socks are rotten, there’s no deoderant, towelettes are gone, water’s gone, sand everywhere, hotter than hell, I don’t know what’s around that corner and it could very well be a terrorist who wants me dead. Worst place you can be, right? With a wife and children, I’ve still got better-than-even odds that they’re taken care of. With a divorce, your financial wherewithal to do anything, including being a materially decent father, is stripped off you like a peel from a banana. With the police power of the state. All fifty states. Guaranteed.

4. They want to wait until they are older to have children

Wow, yeah, like that’s a big disaster in the making.

5. They fear that marriage will require too many changes and compromises

Taking on a partnership that entails new obligations is a huge pain in the ass. Taking on a partnership where you’re the only one with new obligations, is a terrible, lonely feeling, and it’s not the way things are supposed to be at all. There’s no upside to this.

6. They are waiting for the perfect soul mate and she hasn�t yet appeared

See #3. When a single guy meets a lady and starts to think seriously about marrying her, if he’s got a brain he’s going to think “could she possibly fleece me…could she possibly fleece me…could she possibly fleece me.” Marriage-minded men do this all the time, they just don’t say so.

Yeah, go ahead and call it “soul mate” if it makes you feel better.

7. They face few social pressures to marry

Whoops! Topic drift. You are two Ph.D.’s putting together a report. When we’ve elected you to dictators-for-life, we’ll give you a call and then you can start ruling us with an iron fist and enacting new “social pressures” to put together your utopian society.

Maybe I’ve got a personal bias here, but I don’t see much potential for fixing problems by exerting pressure on people so you can force them to commit financial suicide.

8. They are reluctant to marry a woman who already has children

Why is there any pressing need for them to? Why is it that nowadays you can’t swing a dead cat around without smacking the face of a single woman who already has children? Where did all the dads go? Did they get sucked into some parallel universe chock full of missing socks and old-fashioned diskette sleeves?

Oh wait, I forgot I should have known. She married a guy and pledged to be his wife for “as long as love lasts” or “as long as the common social good is served” or some such bullshit, and woke up one day and decided the contract was fulfilled. That’s when she became a single mom. Hey, what lucky guy wouldn’t want a prize like that?

Step right up, stud. Be the next duck in the shooting gallery.

9. They want to own a house before they get a wife

Makes sense to me. Hey, I can’t guarantee that this means he’ll keep the house if there’s a divorce…but I can practically guarantee there’ll be a divorce. Why not give it a shot?

10. They want to enjoy single life as long as they can

I love the single life I had before I got married the first time. It’s been sixteen years since the day I said good-bye to it, and not a day goes by where I don’t wonder what the hell I was thinking. If a never-before-married single guy asks me about it, you think I’m not going to tell him that? What do you think the other divorced guys are saying and doing? You think we’re keeping our mouths shut? Or lying? Or the never-before-married guys aren’t asking us?

I got a clue for you: Nobody asks more questions than an about-to-be-married, never-before-married single guy. It’s only their whole freakin’ LIFE, you know, can’t blame them for being a little inquisitive.

I’m not sure what it is about being a Ph.D. When you go to Ph.D. school they must herd you into a huge auditorium and subject you to a seminar where you are stripped of any respect at all whatsoever for male intellect. What is this expectation of self-sacrifice — self destruction — on the part of men? I can see respecting it if there’s some noble goal involved, like, a man taking a bullet for one of his own children or grandchildren. But to demand that a man trash his own life? Everything fun about that life, in addition to his financial health, his ability to accomplish material things large & small? So that some bitch with a princess-complex can get spoiled?

When did we decide that good husbands spend cash, rather than hanging onto it, to damage their own households? Cars with wipers on the headlights traded in every year or two because “it’s time”? Wedding dresses that will never be worn again? The two-month-salary rule for a wedding ring? Weekly therapy sessions where she gets her head filled with pro-divorce anti-male bullshit?

There is something sacred, when all’s said & done, about money, and something noble about keeping it in the bank. Have we forgotten? There are things you can do in life that demand money, and there are things you can do in life that do not. Raising those kids and giving them a decent start in life, falls into…and I’m not sure why, when or how we forgot this…the first of those two. Maybe we’ve reached the point where being a decent father, and being a decent husband, have begun to share a painful mutual-exclusivity. Spend wisely to accomplish the former, spend lavishly to achieve the latter.

MEMORANDUM TO ACADEMICS:

Mark my words carefully. This social trend of skyrocketing divorces will continue as long as you use the word “phobic.” Which will thrill you endlessly because you’ll have a social problem to study, and I’m sure you’re smart enough to see that aren’t you. If your cable company told you “hey we’re going to keep billing you every month for the rest of your life but we can cancel your service at our discretion any time we’re not happy with you” would you still want a cable subscription? What if your car insurance company promised to keep billing your credit card every month for the rest of your life but declared that continuing converage was contingent on its own “happiness”?

Would you still want cable TV? Would you still want car insurance? No? Would you then call yourselves cable-phobic? Insurance-phobic? Cut the crap, eggheads. When you see common sense and self-preservation at work and call it a phobia, you don’t look like educated academic-types, you look like dipshits.

MEMORANDUM TO SOCIAL CONSERVATIVES:

You’re right, the institution of marriage is dying. But lay off the gays for a little while, just to shake things up. The problem with marriage is not scope; the problem with marriage is purpose. As long as people are getting married for the express purpose of being “happy” every single day, when anyone with any maturity at all knows that this is not what life is really all about and it’s not what life can be all about, nothing will ever get better. You may be knights in shining armor, but the anti-marriage dragon is munching away on the King’s Castle and by attacking gay marriages, you’re spending your time and resources jousting with…a little lavender bunny rabbit.

You want to stop someone from marrying? Stop fatass television-watching Marxist parasites from marrying. A real marriage is all about sharing, not taking. If the marriages we recognize start to conform with that, then perhaps the institution will recover. If they don’t, it won’t.

MEMORANDUM TO BRIDES CHANGING THEIR VOWS LIKE THE ABOVE:

I’m Michael Corleone. You’re Fredo. You go somewhere I might be, let me know a day in advance so I won’t be there. I’d tell you why you’re messed up, but you wouldn’t understand because you’re retards. You suck. Go out in the rowboat and say a Hail Mary.

It disgusts me to know that in order to get married and change your vows this way, you have to have a working pancreas, spleen, lungs, heart, corneas, limbs and a vagina. Those parts could be plugged into a more worthwhile human being. Can I really say the same about your intended groom, and a brain? I dunno. You deserve each other.

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I Do, Until I Don’tMonday, August 8th, 2005

I Do, Until I Don’t
Monday, August 8th, 2005