SALTY PETERS COMEDY

A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. Salty Peters and I were heading to meet up with old friends at Buffalo Wild Wings. During the car ride we needed to coordinate plans for the next day since we only have one car. She says to me, “You need the car to visit your parents right, since, I’m assuming, you don’t want to go with me to the baby shower.” She assumed correct. But that reminded me, that ever increasingly, people are having dual gender baby showers (DGBS). For those of you that do not know, a DGBS is a shower where both men and women are invited. No way, you might be thinking to yourself, who would do such a thing? Well, evidently a lot of women are cruel enough to host these things, and plenty more a crueler still for dragging their boyfriends/husbands along. Even sadder is that men are actually agreeing to go. Is sex really that hard to come by?

I told her in unequivocal terms, “I will never attend one of these things. Not ever. If anything, I will go with you, round up the pussy-whipped men, and take them to the bar to watch the game. Then when the baby shower is over, you call me, and the men and I will come back and clean the house for her. That, right there, is some Salty Peters style chivalry. But I’m not sitting around watching women oohhh and aahhh at Diaper Genies, changing table pads and whatever the fuck else there is.” That night, Mrs. Salty Peters gave me some good loving because she knows she married a real man.

Let me be clear, when Mrs. Salty Peters and I start our own family, I’ll be at the baby shower, well because it’s my baby. Duh! But I probably won’t be hanging around the party much. My sisters, sister-in-law and my mom and mother-in-law can handle all that shit. Me, I’ll be in the back yard with my dad, father-in-law and brother in law watching the game on a portable TV drinking beer and grilling steaks.

The DGBS is not unlike the dual gender wedding showers, which is just as unbelievable and just as depressing for men that attend. What in God’s name is going on in this world? I’ll cut you some slack if you are the groom and get stuck having to be around for this. Not a lot of slack, but some. As you can probably already gather, I will not be attending this shit either. Why, I wondered, would any groom-to-be agree to have one of these things? So I did a little Google research, and according to self-proclaimed wedding expert Leah Ingram, “With more couples paying for their own weddings, the groom doesn’t want to feel out of the pre-wedding festivities. The friends or family planning the shower have become more attuned to this.” Having just been married in August, I thought this sounded like bullshit. But I wanted to gain some additional female insight on this epidemic, so I called my college roommate the next day, just to be sure.

“Showers are lame, I never had a shower,” she confirmed. “I think they are greedy, like you’re asking people to give you presents twice.”
“But if you did have a shower, or were to attend a shower, what is your opinion of men attending these showers?” I asked.
“I feel that it should be an all girl affair, the men that attend them are intruding on the female fun.”
“But that’s the point I think, no straight male wants to go to a shower, he is dragged/pressured/threatened by the withholding of sex to attended.”

Having my theory confirmed, I felt the need to spread the message to as many men as possible. Warning them of the very scary and very real possibility that they too, will one day be asked to attend a DGBS/DBWS. Therefore, as a public service I devised a list of pre-wedding activities, whether a man should be involved, and why or why not. This may provide no comfort to the already miserable married, but having just gone through the hoopla myself last year, I found it important to share the knowledge that I gained. Consider it the pre-wedding version of, “I Wish They Told Me…”

·Engagement – This really applies only for the groom. You have to be there for that. Asking a girl to marry you through your Facebook status won’t be enough. Unless your girl is a dumb ass like Craigslist Killer fiancée Megan McAllister, then you can do whatever you want, she’ll always stand by you.
·Engagement Party – Since you, the groom just got engaged, obviously you will need to be present for this. And if you are dating a girl whose friends just got engaged and she asks you to come along to this, do not fear. The engagement party, as I understand, doesn’t require you to bring gifts or participate in any silly games. Ideally it is held a few weeks after the couple just got engaged and they want to celebrate the good news that, statistically speaking, they will be spending the next 5-7 years of their lives together.
·Shower – Here is where it starts to get a little bit tricky. You have the bridal shower OR the wedding shower (you don’t get to have both you greedy bitches). You as a man not only are not required to attend, despite the maniacal rantings of your bride-to-be or girlfriend, but you are looked down upon by men everywhere if you cave and attended anyway. And ladies, don’t be embarrassed if you show up to the wedding shower without your man there. Do you really want to be dating a pathetic excuse for a man that doesn’t stand up for him self and gets dragged to this boring shit by his girlfriend? Let me tell you this, those women do not respect their men and they will be dumping their sorry asses the second a real man comes along. And another thing, if your man is excited to go with you to the wedding shower, then he’s gay. Sorry to be the one to tell you so bluntly, but come on, on some level you already knew, right. If you really want to rub it in, when that one bitch inevitably comes up to you in front of everyone else asking smugly, “Where is Robert? He didn’t want to accompany you to this? Oh, that’s too bad.” You reply, “No, I didn’t even tell him. I’m not going to drag him to this. He’s out with his friends playing basketball.” Editors Note: Evidently Mrs. Salty Peters is now telling me if the wedding shower is supposed to be for the couple, then the groomsmen are required to attend. For what purpose, other than suffering silently with the groom, I do not know. But I still don’t see the difference between the wedding shower and the bridal shower. It’s not like the color scheme is different to butch it up a bit. The bridal shower is all pinks, and purples and pastel colors and so is the wedding shower. It’s all sissy pastel colors. The point here is if you are ever asked to stand up in a friends wedding, find out if they are having a dual gender shower first. I mean, you’d have to be a complete prick to decline to stand up in a friend’s wedding just because of the dual gender shower. By knowing in advance, however, you have several months to become a functioning alcoholic, just to make it through this craziness unscathed.
·The bachelorette party - If you have to get dragged to the dual gender shower, tell her you need to be present at the bachelorette party. Actually, don’t tell her a goddamn thing, just show up. If you have to suffer the embarrassment, then so does she. I’m dead serious about this. Once there, as the groom, whenever the stripper gets within five feet of your “blushing-bride-to-be,” kick him in the balls.

That, my trusty followers, it everything you need to know about pre-wedding festivities in a nutshell. Oh, as far as the bachelor party is concerned, under no circumstances tell her when it is. Just tell her your best man is planning it and that it is a surprise, even if it’s not. And for the love of God, try to get it in another city if you can, like Las Vegas or New Orleans. You don’t want her to accidentally/on purpose find you that night with four big fake titties in your face.

• Have you seen these pathetic men carrying babies around with them strapped to their chest in a Baby Bjorn?  For those of you that don’t know what these are, it’s the thing that separates the real men from the ones that pluck their eyebrows and wear concealer to cover their pimples in high school.   If you see a man carrying a baby around like this, just go up to him and kick him in the vagina.  I’m not saying that men shouldn’t carry their babies around.  What I’m saying is don’t be a pussy, carry the kid around in the car seat.  Somewhere along the line, this sackless excuse for a man got nagged and bitched at by his overbearing wife that he needs to carry the baby like this.  “I think it’s only fair that you carry the baby like this because then you can appreciate what I went through carrying the baby around for 9 months.”  Grow a pair you whipped motherfucker.  Stand up to the control freak and tell her, “No.  You’re a woman.  You body was designed by God and evolution to carry a baby around.  If you think it was too heavy, it’s because you didn’t have the self-control not to binge on everything in sight.  Now you look like a fucking hippo mated with an elephant.  I have biceps.  That’s how evolution made me, so I’m carrying the baby around with rippling muscles.  I’ll carry the baby all day, I don’t mind, but I’m not strapping that shit to my chest.”  And according to the website, the Baby Bjorn now comes in new colors.  To illustrate my point that, as a man, you have to be half a fag to agree to use this shit, here are some of the new colors.  Pink Passion, Red Heart, Orange Flame (seriously, flame, as in flaming homosexual) White Angel and Blue Moon.  Let me tell you, if anything called Blue Moon is going to be strapped to my chest, it’s going to be a keg of Blue Moon beer with an IV providing a steady dose of beer into my bloodstream.  Now that I think about it carefully, the guys that using these things aren’t only pussies, but they were probably breastfed until the age of 9. Gross!

   

• Mike Tyson weighed in on the whole Chris Brown/Rihanna situation recently.  Here’s what he had to say.  “My personal opinion about that is, he’s just a baby.  He’s just a little baby that don’t know how to handle his emotions when it comes to a woman.”  Wow, the balls on this guy.  I know he’s Mike Tyson and can kick the shit out of any Average Joe but still Mike Tyson has some nerve.  Chris Brown doesn’t know how to control his emotions when it comes to women.  This from the guy that got convicted on rape charges in the early 90’s.  Talk about calling the kettle black.  Um, bad choice of words.  Moving on.

   

• The Craig’s list killer, Phillip Markoff, was apparently engaged to Megan McAllister, a BU classmate.  I feel sorry for the poor girl.  Can you imagine finding out your fiancée is a psychotic pervert?  She is probably replaying every time she and Phillip did any role-playing. 

  “Where there any signs?” 
  “Yeah, we always played hooker and john, and once he got a little rough.  I didn’t think anything of it at the time I kind of liked it.  But now I’m totally freaked out.” 

  
  And I saw on the news today that he had a “secret stash” of women’s underwear.  Um, do you have to call it a secret stash?  Isn’t that a bit redundant?  The media is really dumb.  A stash, by definition, is secret to begin with.  If it’s out in the open, it’s not a stash it’s a collection.  What I really want to know is how they met.  I’ll be they met on an Internet dating sight.  Can you imagine the customer complaint e-Harmony is getting from this girl?  “Hey, thanks for hooking me up with Phillip.  He just happens to be the Craig’s list killer, you assholes.  Maybe you should have put that on the personality test.  Do you like to murder hookers?”

   

• This whole week Mrs. Salty Peters was away on business.  Monday afternoon was rolling around and it was time for me to do my business, that is, I had to go number two.  I walked in, closed the door, dropped my pants and sat on the toilet, as is the normal routine.  Then it him me, I’m all alone in the house.  There is no reason that I have to close the door.  So, I leaned forward a bit and opened the door.  This is so cool, I thought, I haven’t lived alone in so long; I forgot I could do this.  I feel so rebellious, acting against all the norms that dictate society.  Such freedom, such liberty.  Wait, this feels weird and dirty.  I’m closing the door.

   

• Stimulus commercials.  Why are these things so boring?  And why is everything a stimulus plan or a bailout.  Everywhere you look, it’s like this is the only idea that people have.  Seriously?  Is the advertising industry this bad?  The guys on Mad Men must be kicking themselves in the face over how painfully uncreative these commercials are.  Not just that, but grammatically, they don’t make any sense.  I saw this one for McDonald’s where they are advertising an “Appetite Stimulus Plan.”  This doesn’t make any sense.  Let me break this down for you.  President Obama put forth an Economic Stimulus Plan, meaning that his plan would stimulate the economy.  So it would follow that an Appetite Stimulus Plan is a plan to get somebody’s appetite working again.  If I’m heading to Mickey D’s, however, I don’t need an Appetite Stimulus Plan.  Clearly, my appetite is already stimulated, that’s why I’m heading there in the first place.  What I need is an Appetite Satisfaction Plan.  This is like Sprite jumping on the bandwagon of creative stagnation, and changing their slogan from “Obey Your Thirst” to “Sprite: The Thirst Stimulus Plan.”  Oh shit, I just gave them an idea, didn’t I?

   

• So Mrs. Salty Peters and I are doing a little bit of grocery shopping at Meijer last week (which also happened to be the day I had my battle with the goose), when we are ready to check out.  We walk up and see a new feature at Meijer.  “Any Size Order” self-check out lanes.  I had seen the 15 items or less self-check out lanes, but never before did I see an “Any Size Order” self-check out lane.  Now I like to be at the forefront of technological advancement, so my eyes light up like a fat kid at the breaking of a piñata, and I stroll over to use the new lanes.  Everything is going along smoothly until I look up and several aisles down, and old lady is checking out in a “conventional” lane.  I scoff a bit and that’s when it hit me.  I’m ringing and bagging my own groceries, but I’m not getting a discount for doing this work, let alone getting paid.  Meanwhile the pepperoni faced teenager three aisles down is getting paid $7.50 an hour just to ring, and the retarded, err, cognitively impaired girl is bagging the groceries, for the same minimum wage rate.  How the hell did this happen?  When did we get fooled by The Man telling us self-check out lanes are cool.  I always felt a little cool, a little bit superior, because I was able to use those lanes no problem.  I’d be pissed when I got stuck behind some middle-aged soccer mom staring at the screen blankly.  “If you don’t know how to send a text message, then don’t attempt to use the self check out lane!” I would scream in my head.  But really, this was just a big cost cutting ploy in an attempt to make us do our own ringing and bagging while trimming the workforce.  It’s a scam I tell you and it costs American jobs, albeit, minimum wages jobs for anorexic teenagers.  But still, it’s money that’s not getting paid to people that will spend it back into economy.  Self-check out lanes are unpatriotic, and if you use self-check out lanes, then the terrorists have won.

   

• I don’t see the allure a virgin holds for some men.  Frankly, the man that gets all excited when he discovers a girl is a virgin is quite creepy.  That man is barely one step up from a child molester if you ask me.  Anyway, I still remember people talking about how they like to hook up with virgins because you get to be the first one there.  Why is this fun.  Think about it.  Would you rather be in Vegas in the 1800’s or would you rather go to Vegas now?  That’s what I thought.  The joke is really on you when you hook up with a virgin, because she doesn’t know what she’s doing and instead of having sex it turns into a giant how to presentation.  The only way I can see this being a positive is if you intend on having a long-term relationship with a girl and she just happens to be a virgin.  Because, if you already have had a fair amount of sex, you know what you like and don’t like, and you can mold your virgin however you see fit for your sexual needs.  Then this is a benefit for you.  It’s like going to college instead of entering the workforce right away.  You might not make any money for a few years, but once you get the degree, it’s so worth it.  And the best part is that she hasn’t had any sex, so she doesn’t know any better. 
  “Really, it’s common for girls to do that to guys.”
  ”Of course it is.  Now stop questioning the teacher and do exactly like you see on the instructional video The Porn Identity.