MEN ARE SCUM, PART 2038

Hey, the Department of Labor said it!

Comments

[Joel]

You said you'd never tell!?!?!?

[Zoodle]

I cannot get the articles. Just keep getting a page demanding that I register. Would someone please tell me what the article says?

Thanks.

[judi]

no, it's dave's weekly column; please don't repost it here. sorry you have to register at the herald, but you can find it elsewhere if you look. :)

[SteveB]

Damn, but I'm going to miss Dave and his insightful analysis on the status of our mutual gender.

He has that unique ability to cut through all of the meaningless "statistics" presented by those so-called scientists and analysts, and deliver a comprehensive viewpoint.

Oh yea, he also understands that a crucial third-down situation requires a high-level of attention. Now if I can just get my wife to understand that, I'll be all set.

[Zoodle]

Hi Judi. I was already registered at the Herald but I forgot my password. Since I receive Dave's column on Monday's I never bothered to reset my password but, for Dave I am more than willing to jump through hoops.

The article was excellent, as usual. And too, too true! Had a big dinner last night. As usual, all the women were in the kitchen cleaning up after and the men...well, one guy put the extra table away and then they all wandered off. Typical.

[chumbucket]

But Tina, the important question is, when your cousin scored the touchdown, did he spike the ball or the baby? The ball? Then we men rest our case.

But seriously, what's the joke that ends, "Roo roo!"?

[Sally Lewis]

I just wanted Dave to know that not only have I, as a woman, opened a beer bottle with my teeth, but once, in a crisis, for two of my favorite man-types who could not find a tool to open their beer bottles--we tried fingernail clippers, the lock recess of the car door, etc., I figured out a way to open a beer bottle with a pair of jumper cables. I'm thinkin I'm kinda invincible in this area.

[Monsoon]

...the department asked 21,000 Americans how they spend their time when they're not working.

And they answered *housework*??? I just finished changing diapers, filling juice cups, making breakfast, starting the laundry and mowing the lawn. And if you were to ask me tomorrow what I do when I am not working, I would not mention ANY of the above. I WAS STILL WORKING!

I would answer that I wasted away my weekend blogging, playing Civ and overdosing on political propaganda. Far more fun.

[reneviht]

Hey, I do a lot of work around the house!Do you have any idea how difficult it is to convince the rest of my family that computers are hard, so that I spend my time fixing their problems instead of doing real work?Well, do ya?

[Kat]

..the department asked 21,000 Americans how they spend their time when they're not working.

.. and no one said "Filling out pointless surveys for the Dept of Labour?"

INCONCEIVABLE!!!

[monkeyshines]

Monsoon

Kudos to you. My mother didn't "work" while I was growing up but she canned the produce of about an acre worth of garden, baked bread about once a week, did the laundry, helped my dad put in hay, then did work for the church, and did errands for her mother. Plus in our neighborhood that was considered a bit of a slacker. In my dad's defense I remember him working triple turns at the mill and coming home to fix cars and the fense if the cows got out. My mother tried telling us (the children) that Labor Day was a day they let children out of school so they could labor. Heh, Heh!

[monkeyshines]

Sorry that's fence not fense. What is a fense? How can you have a de-fense if there is no fense.

[Ima Nasshat]

Dear Chumbucket:

Two men were captured in the bush by cannibals and taken captive. They were brought before the tribal chief, who informed them both that they would be killed. He advised the men that they had the choice of dying by boiling water and he pointed out a large cauldron being heated over a campfire, the quick death by spear, or roo-roo. The first man thought for a moment and asked the chief what roo-roo was. The chief replied that roo-roo was an ancient sexual ritual, so the first man chose roo-roo.
The chief replied, "that's an excellent choice," and then lead the man to a large tree, tied him naked to the tree where he was sexually raped by all of the men in the village and left to die. The other man had witnessed his partner's demise and told the chief that he preferred to die by the quick spear. The chief looked at him and said, "that's also an excellent choice too, but first, roo-roo."

Now ya know!

[Eric]

For those of you who are unable to see it, here it is.

IN DEFENSE OF A MAN'S-EYE VIEW

BY DAVE BARRY

Oh, swell: We have yet another survey showing that men, when compared to women, are scum. Just once, I'd like to see some survey asking questions that would highlight areas where men are more likely to be superior, such as:

1. If it was an emergency, could you open a beer bottle with your teeth?

2. How many hours per week, total, do you spend fretting about your thighs?

3. Do you have the emotional stability to make a meaningful lifelong commitment, through good times and bad, to a set of underwear?

4. Do you know the joke whose punch line is: ``But first, roo roo!''?

5. If another person is not saying anything, and you're wondering if this might be because something is bothering that person, and you ask that person what that person is thinking, and that person says ''Nothing,'' do you accept this perfectly reasonable answer, or do you proceed to NAG THE PERSON HALF TO DEATH?

But do we see these questions on surveys? We do not. Instead we see questions like the ones asked in a recent survey by the U.S. Department of Labor. Having apparently run completely out of useful things to do, the department asked 21,000 Americans how they spend their time when they're not working.

It turned out that women spend twice as much time as men on household chores and child care, while men spend more time on leisure. On the surface, this looks bad. But surface looks are often deceiving. A good example is the iceberg, which appears to be a big hunk of ice, but if you look beneath the surface, you find that it is ... OK, it is actually a big hunk of ice. So we see that this is in fact not a good example, and we should just move on.

But my point is that this survey is very misleading. Take the concept of ''housework.'' It may be true that women spend more TIME on it, but what, really, are they accomplishing? In my own home, my wife spends a lot of time picking up our 4-year-old daughter's doll clothes and laboriously putting them back on the various naked Barbies, the naked Snow White, the naked Ariel the mermaid, and the incredibly lucky naked Ken.

When my wife does this, she is clearly working, but she is not what a man would call ''working smart.'' A man knows from harsh real-world experience that all of these dolls will soon be naked again, and so he makes a conscious decision to leave the dressing of the dolls, and the cleaning of his daughter's room in general, until a more sensible and productive time, such as when his daughter enters college. But does this man get any slack from the so-called ''Department of Labor?'' He does not.

And let's talk about child care vs. leisure. For women, these are two separate activities, but men have perfected a productivity-enhancing technique called ''multitasking.'' Say a man is supposed to watch a child, but he also wants to watch a football game. Thanks to ''multitasking,'' this man can keep one eye on the football game, while at the same time keeping the other eye also on the football game. But in some remote sector of his brain he is vaguely aware that there is a child around somewhere, and if he hears anything suspicious, such as sirens or an explosion, he will respond immediately, unless it is a crucial third-down situation.

Speaking of which: I was once at a Thanksgiving gathering where there was a backyard touch-football game involving all the guys except one -- I will call him ''Fred'' -- who was watching us while holding his infant daughter. My team was short one player, and we were in a crucial third-down situation, so we looked over at ''Fred'' -- an excellent receiver -- and, after making us swear we would never tell his wife, he very carefully set his daughter down on the lawn and joined the game for a single play, which resulted in Joel -- excuse me, I mean ''Fred'' -- scoring a touchdown. This never would have happened if we had allowed ourselves to be shackled by the rigid, inflexible definitions of ''leisure'' and ''child care'' that have for so long enslaved women and the so-called ``Department of Labor.''

Am I saying men are perfect? I am not. There are certainly areas of domestic life where men could show more sensitivity toward, and awareness of, the imbalance between them and women, and I intend to address these areas in detail. But first: Roo roo!

[Eric (Not the One who Posted the Column)]

What a great joke the roo roo one is. I've often heard "roo roo" replaced with "chi chi" with the final punchline being "Very well then, death by chi chi."

This obviously brings up a serious question. Which is more prevalent, roo roo or chi chi? I recommend some sort of Senate committe work on this.

[PeeJay]

No, the joke is death, or roo-roo. The punchline is "no one ever choose death" so it is "death by roo-roo!

[PeeJay]

The first "roo-roo" should have had a question mark behind it. My bad.

[blog READER]

Hey eric (the one who posted the column).
Please read post number three printed below:

no, it's dave's weekly column; please don't repost it here. sorry you have to register at the herald, but you can find it elsewhere if you look. :)

Posted by: judi on October 24, 2004 10:50 AM

[Jeff Meyerson]

Tina: as a mystery reader I was sure when they looked at the guy he was going to use the baby as the football for that one play. He didn't, so no harm no foul (mixing sports metaphors).

Eric: bad boy, never disobey Judi's directives.

Zoodle: for the Herald:
[email protected]
password: miamivice

[Deontologist]

Tina,

I'll take a score of those diaries, heck a gross of 'em!

You, uh, don't mind if I sell them do you?

[shakes head in dismay at Eric]

[SchadeBoy]

I am so glad I now know the joke. Gotta admit, after reading it, it sounded familiar. Oh well.

Time to go grade papers.

[RickC]

Has anyone noticed that women's answer to what they do when not working is more work? Hello... more work means you're not done with the work.

[LabSpecimen]

I heard the joke as "bafunda" instead of "roo-roo." InsolentWench, who occasionally posts here (and happens to be Mrs. LabSpecimen) also uses the on-line name "bafundaette."

Oh, wait. You didn't care about any of this, did you? Must... save... myself....

Booger!

[Wes]

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the punchline and/or method of sacrifice is know as "Ooga Booga"

[everysandwich]

For your stats, Eric, I also heard that joke first with the "chi chi" variant. I'm in Atlanta. Does the punchline change from "roo roo" to "chi chi" between Florida and Georgia? Clearly some kind of study is needed.

[LabSpecimen]

I'm thinking that a government grant is in order.

[everysandwich]

Yes, Lab Specimen, a grant. Brilliant!

[MOTW]

When men and women are not at work
What do they do, where do they lurk?
Women clean household and floors
Straighten kids’ rooms, sock drawers
Whilst mumbling that men are such jerks.

The men, on the other hand, play.
"We like leisure!" they put on the survey.
For their honesty, they’re hated -
By the females berated,
Providing fuel for Dave’s witty essay.

[slyeyes]

Eric, report immediately to Amy Tan in the RBR Scandal thread. She has a whip all warmed up for you.

Hey! No need to run!!

[Jess S]

I heard that joke as Oingo Boingo...

[Brainy Jello]

"...tied him naked to the tree where he was sexually raped..."

As opposed to other kinds of rape?

[Potato]

I'm pretty sure there's a Futurama episode that plays off of this a little, and there they refer to it as snoo-snoo...

[Blogchik]

Gene Weingarten told this joke on one of his chats. I thought it sounded familiar.

Which is of course why Dave couldn't spell it out more in his column! :)

Tina- yes, please compile. Post em on the Y.

[UUNetBill]

The way I heard the roo-roo joke was "Death, by Bunga-Bunga!" Must be a regional thing. . .

[Duncs]

No no no, you are all wrong, its "death or bumkins?"
defendant "I choose death"
cheif "Death!......by bumkins!"