Issue 16 (August 2001)
A Letter from the Editor
Professor Sham's Gender Given
All women are psychotic.
All men are assholes.Professor Sham's Laws of Gender
Men always move along a single, predictable path, in pursuit of a goal.
Women move along an undefined and unpredictable path.I have been observing people all of my life. I have a gene, passed from my grandmother to my mother to myself and to my sister, that draws people with problems to us. These people tell us everything. We listen. We console. I take notes. I am a writer, and it is my goal in life to be able to turn everyone I know into a character. I want to be able to be given a situation and know how anyone I know would react in that situation. I told this to John Pullen once, and it made him afraid. He does not want to be known that well. I can write men well. I know how men react. I have a problem writing women, and I know why.
For years I had contended that all women are psychos. It just made sense to me. Look at them! There never has and never will be any way to predict what a woman will do. The only time that a woman is predictable is when she gets into a psychotic fit. That's when we are able to make observations such as, "Oh, sweet lord, she's going to throw that chair at me," or "For the love of the baby Jesus, she going to drive right through that line of traffic."
This observation offended some women. So I came up with a second observation. All men are assholes. It's true, guys, you can't deny it. All men are self-centered. Those who give, give in order to be recognized. When we treat a woman with respect, we do so for either social status or in order to get laid.
A while ago, Kurt Vonnegut came to Syracuse University and began by telling us that all women are psycho and all men are jerks. If Vonnegut agreed with me, I knew I was on to something.
Along with Dr. S. Max Kloeppel, I began to develop my Law of Gender. We both took the above generalizations about men and women as truth and began to explain How the World Works to our roommate, Ania. Here, I lay the foundations of our many discussions.
Professor Sham's First Law of Gender
Men always move along a single, predictable path, in pursuit of a goal.
In all of our actions, men are predictable. Men always pick out a goal and begin to move towards it. This movement is not along a straight line, but it is predictable. Most men never reach this goal. Oft times, another more immediate goal sways us from our path. For example:
I have fallen from the sky (presumably from a plane) and landed in the middle of a desert. I decide that I must get out of the desert, so I pick one direction, and begin to walk in that direction. I have chosen west, following the setting sun, as I am not a morning person and know that I have to walk through much of the night in order to keep myself alive. After two days of stumbling westward, I notice an oasis off to the south. My movement has been predictably westward, but now a more immediate goal, getting drinking water, will change my path. This is completely understandable and predictable. After filling up on water, I continue westward.
Men often have mid-life crises. These usually happen more than once in a man's life. He has been walking through the desert for so long that he eventually asks himself what the point is. It is obvious that he was at the eastern edge of the desert to begin with, and he has made the wrong choice. However, he does not turn back. He merely pauses, reflects and cries. His path is unaltered.
Please note that most men don't know the nature of the ultimate goal they are seeking. Usually they will merely move in one direction, assuming that eventually see that goal like I assume I will reach Baghdad.
Professor Sham's Second Law of Gender
Women move along an undefined and unpredictable path.
Women are not electrons spinning around a nucleus along a defined path. They gravitate around a point, but their position may never be predicted. They are the electron cloud.
The nucleus of the atomic woman is the goal. It is always there in sight. Women do not move directly toward that goal, however. Instead, they circle it endlessly, sometimes closer, sometimes further away. This movement is completely unpredictable. For example:
An evil genius drops a woman into a pit with a lion. There is one door out, and the key to that door is tied around the lion's neck. The evil genius has conditioned the lion to be afraid of people. The woman knows all this. The lion will not move unless approached. The woman will not run at the lion, for she is also afraid of him. Every once in a while food is dropped for the woman and for the lion. Whenever the woman looks like she will make peace with the lion, he is violently shocked. The woman will not give up. She will try to keep the lion on his toes: sitting back one minute, running behind him the next. Sometimes she will try to force the door open; other times she will attempt to scale the walls of the pit. Sometimes she will sit down and cry; other times she will scream in rage at the omnipresent evil genius.
Women develop eating disorders because it seems like the right thing to do. If men don't like them as they are, they will love them if they taste puke every time they kiss them.
Unfortunately, that is all the time I have for now. Check back in our next issue when I will discuss the Butter Axiom.
The Butter Axiom
The ultimate goal in life is nakedness with the promise of a second interlude of nakedness.