Marriage: A Dont do it Yourself Guide

I live in Orem Utah, it is huddled in between two universities and there is a lot of business catered towards students. I think the most common businesses in shopping malls are jewelry stores. People here have marriage fever. They go off to college with the idea of first finding a spouse and second getting a degree, if that does not interrupt with the first objective. Where I live anything can be a date, from going to a church activity to filing your tax return. The boys here just want to spend time with Utah’s gorgeous young women, even if it is just waiting in line at H&R Block. I imagine they would almost always be sure to mention to their lovely date that married couples get tax breaks and then they would look at them in the eye as if to say “I said that because I want you to imagine us married, I have done it since I was 14.” Good work men, last I checked women love seeing a man who has the tax brackets memorized. Of course at the church activity it’s even easier that the topic come up. They will talk about characteristics of a successful marriage and the dude will start listing off all of his attributes that he will bring to marriage. Hoping that somehow, be it with luck or divine help, he will recite verbatim from the list of attributes desired in a spouse these women made when they were fourteen years old in the third hour of church.  Another thing that is classic Utah is a magazine published by the church called the Ensign. Every once in a while I find an article that talks about how some thirty year old guy has been trying to get married for ten years and is unable to. Tip: lose the sultry pickup lines and say something substantive.  Or a woman that tells of how she contributed to society even though she wasn’t married. (Your efforts in the neighborhood association aren’t wasted, the Halloween parade is super important for society) So I get a little confused when I see marriages down.  With so much buzz and so many people wanting to get married, and on the other hand the social normality of marriage dropping I would say we are in a wedding crisis. Well, I would never write something on my blog that would only point to a problem and not a solution. Remember the fact that I am better than congress and so doing that would be unthinkable so here is my solution.

Meet Jarab and Vanasai, ok I don’t know if those are their real names but they look like a happy couple right. I mean Jarab, the dude, has a creepy smile on his face as if to say “I can’t wait to unwrap your 47 layers of clothes” and Vanasai loves her husband so much that she put some jewelry on, I imagine the chain from her ear to her nose makes this middle aged man of the orient go wild! Well I bet you would be surprised to know that this prime couple did not decide to get married, their family members arranged it for them. What a brilliant solution. We could get rid of the dating scene. No more awkward devotionals or weird comments at H&R block. No more of the sad doorstep scenes where the girl is hoping the guy will kiss him but he did not get the hint when the girl said “you’re a really good guy and I would love to date you more” and no more date rape. I must say this family is super kind, I would never be mad to come home and my family had found someone to marry me, I would thank them forever.

Arranged marriage is a great idea because divorce practically disappears. We are currently seeing about a 45 percent divorce rate. In arranged marriages that percentage is ten times less. Sure, the cultures are different and in these countries divorce is worse than a double homicide but at the end you can’t argue with statistics.

So with this idea all the people who want to get married can, and even the ones who don’t want to would be obligated to so that they could bring their family honor and let’s not forget the small fortune that  might be a key influencer, and by a key influencer I mean the deciding factor.

You see kids it’s not that hard to solve problems when you ignore the cliché nonsense of today, like love being an important factor in deciding who to marry. Your parents know you best and they can pick a wonderful partner for you. Sure he may be abusive, hairy, and creepy but in the end it made your family rich and helped decrease the divorce rate. That’s change you can believe in.

Yours untruly, cause I am my own

Benjamin Williams

America, the environment, and student life

I recently saw that the Republican led New York Senate approved a gay-marriage bill. Floods of memories came back of John McCain’s daughter telling the party that they should support gay marriage, and maybe they listened. All the irony lays in the fact that it happened in New York. When I think of New York some images comes to mind, I see a green street sign that says “wall street” and I imagine all of the trading that is so iconic of business and the cliché, down to the letter Republicans. So, to all you confederate flag flying repubs, who rallied around Richard Nixon during Roe v. Wade you can now take off the mantle (because your party just threw it out the window) of being the religious party of America. Yup, the holy elephant that used to be adorned with golden crosses can now be replaced with a hairy man in a tank top waving a rainbow flag in support of gay rights. I guess you got one sound bite of your typical speech right; anything IS possible in America. Who would have thought that the “Religious Party” of America would make same sex marriage legal in the biggest state to date to do so. But hey they are the party of Reagan and Lincoln so who cares.

Now that I have talked about how the reds have become a bit more blue I want to talk about my other favorite color. Green. You wanna know why I like green? Of course you do because your reading MY blog. I like green because it’s the color of money. The more green I have means I can buy more luxurious life style toys that I don’t need. The more green I have means I can drive a better functioning car and not live in Detroit; a city Lucifer himself would avoid. Now I am going to tell you why there is a part of me that hates green. It seems to me that “going green” has become the new marketing strategy for many businesses. To me the slogan screams out, “We make a super crappy product but we didn’t use any trees to do it” Well folks, if you love greens as much as I do you would agree that it is stupid to waste precious dollars (ok so they aren’t that precious anymore) buying crappy products just because they have “gone green”. Did you know there are plates and cups made out of a corn based material that is bio degradable? That means for me to eat in an “eco-friendly” manner I have to increase corn consumption. I bet lots of hungry children would love some hot corn and I doubt they would care if its on a paper plate. These days they are eating paper but have corn plates, call me old fashioned but I prefer eating corn and having paper plates. The saddest part about all of this is that it is not subliminal at all. Businesses are telling us what their after in their slogans and then sell the slogan right back to us to make us feel like we are helping the earth. Pirates!

You wanna know a sucky college student activity? Eating frozen yogurt. I promise it does not help you lose weight. If you want to lose your belly eat an apple, not cake batter frozen yogurt with reses on top. Just a pointer. The other day I heard some people talking about how wonderful and miraculous frozen yogurt was. Really kids? Of all the miraculous things to talk about you chose yogurt? Let’s just veto men on the moon, modern medicine, the human body, rock n roll, literature, animals, and replace those wonderful conversations with talks about synthetic ice cream. Two thumbs up frozen yogurt fanatics!

Well that’s about it for today.

Yours untruly, cause I am my own

Ben Williams

An Introduction to Narcassism

Hey folks, narcassism is also known as being in love with oneself. Psychiatrists say that it is a medical condition. Hats off to you doctor, really you graduated from medical school and that takes time, money, dedication and inteligence. But I must confess, if being in love with myself is a medical condition I am sick as ever. No, I don't want to take Zoloft or any other drug. I prefer the road less traveled by, yup I prefer convincing the world (by world I mean everyone that reads this) that my views, my ideas, my hopes for humanity are better than CNN's, the Food Network's, and yes even better than congress's. (That is not that hard to achieve.) So world, (again, refer to definition above) if your sick of superficial news casters, uninterested grocery store workers, & unethical businessmen come on into my cyber store of narcassism. you dont need a doctors note for these narcotis.

Yours untruly, cause I am my own.

Ben Williams