Dear lord. The only thing worse than a family play group is one from some pretentious, conservative, religious school. Like the one I encountered at my local chicken fast food restaurant. I was like an atheist deer caught in a god-fearing headlight; believe me, there was enough holy water thrown at me to clean my paintball gun (and legally, I’m not confessing to anything in that statement). With floor length skirts and turtle necks abound, I thought for a moment that I might be watching the new season of Big Love. Which I’ve been waiting for forever since the strike. Surprised I frequent a series about men marrying multiple womyn? Me too, but there is something quite satisfactory about watching three womyn, who are obviously lesbians, use a man under wifely pretenses. And I have much love for HBO. Big love.

But I digress. Times like these actually make me want to have kids, but just so that mine can corrupt the goody, impulse-suppressed spawns that I saw at this establishment. Thinking about this was all I could do not to regurgitate my waffle fries, for the adult-sized crocks and overuse of the names Elijah and David were too much for me to handle. “Mommy’s right here!” they take turn yelling in dramatized, high-pitched, soothing voices, “are you ok?” Here’s some info: your children’s ears haven’t developed enough for frequencies so high. Just go get your kids. And sit. And where’s your husband to reprimand you for wearing your khaki pants below your belly-button?

I would much rather watch Big Love on HBO. Why, oh why do I go out in public places like this? It must be punishment for trusting that the public is becoming more educated on the realities of living in a socially-stinted world. I would much rather watch bickering wives and the ever-turbulent, but oh so entertaining, fighting compound crazies in the safety of my own home. The best part, other than the fact that the second season is just as good as the first season, is that it is make believe. The scene that I described above, is so polygamist satire I couldn’t believe it. But on the television, you can pretend that all of the real people, who are similarly disillusioned and stuck in the past, are make believe too. And you can turn it off when you have seen too many cardigan sweaters for your own good. Bad womanyst you may think I am, but who doesn’t love to see just how ridiculous the institution of marriage really is? You’re right Common Organic, there are many toxins out there.

What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers is is a book by Amy Sutherland that has been getting much attention in reading circles full of witty, cute-as-a-button womyn (who are afraid of smart people like me) lately. It teaches you to train your husband to do things around the house by using techniques common in animal training. This paragraph was to show Mr. Kriticle that I can be somewhat kind. The rest is for the other readers:

OK. OK. OK. I’m trying to tell myself What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage is at least better than books on good house-keeping. All psych students know the old trick where you can get a professor to move by having everyone look at the place you want them to go, which is all well and fun, but do you really need this kind of effort to get your spouse to move? If you have to stare at the kitchen for hours in your already droning life to get your husband wash a few ceramics, you need to call a lawyer. While I agree men are comparable to rats and canines, please tell me why womyn need to spend their lives finding out how to get them to do tricks. Despite the satisfaction some pop-tart soccer mommy might have when her husband actually talks to her like a human being instead of one of the children, you are still deciding to surround your life around his brainlessness.

What’s saddest about What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage is that it only adds to the asinine concept that women have to spend money, bow down all day, and get off all night to get men to do what they are better off doing themselves (and that includes all three tasks dears). Here’s an example that is so generously offered by a review in Newsweek: “If your mate picks up just one dirty sock without being asked, give lots of praise.” Do I really need to comment on this? For those of you desperate procreators who think this is insightful, read it again. Read it slowly this time. Now read it one more time. Now you have two options:

1. Realize that you should never feel compelled to praise someone for something they should do out of respect, responsibility, or cleanliness
2. Stab your self in the eye because you think you should have to reward a male for doing something you do all day.

The article cites BF Skinner and other classic conditioning psychological researchers for this, guess what I call it? Growing up. Now, lets all agree that showing tits and kissing ass is not a broad’s only natural talents, and encourage womyn to instead get a backbone and kick ass until they get what they deserve because we’re not only entitled, but also superior. Want more? “Don’t take it personally: Laundry is just laundry, not a symbol for how much your spouse loves you or values your marriage.” Then it shouldn’t be a problem for your beer guzzling, idiotic husband to get off his ass and do it himself.

Conclusions: Sutherland is a conspirator with a penis and a wife who defied him by cutting her hair without permission. I’ll give it 2 and a half stars only because it compares men to animals.

So if you are now a one-eyed subordinate, empower yourself with The Daring Book for Girls and trick yourself, once again, into thinking you are free. Or, for those of you who are smart enough to know that confining yourself to pleasing a male for the rest of your life, get The Daring Book for Girls and The Dangerous Book for Boys and learn how to be self-sufficient. Either way, after you’ve read these, take your DIY to a new level and try Getting Off: A Woman’s Guide to Masturbation to fully realize a girl can be perfectly happy without an X chromosome in their life.

Who ever said womyn weren’t bad ass? Wally Lamb surely has found a way to capture the ballsyness of broads - and in their own words. Couldn’t Keep It to Myself: Wally Lamb and the Women of York Correctional Institution (Testimonies from our Imprisoned Sisters) and I’ll Fly Away: Further Testimonies from the Women of York Prison are inspirational books written by the womyn in a writing workshop in York, Connecticut. And these ladies aren’t eating bon-bons and cooking for their hubbies. In fact, some of them wrote about stabbing their hubbies. These womyn were in the only womyn’s state penitentiary facility. I’ll Fly Away is the second installment of Lamb’s collection of biographical writings from the girls, following the success of Couldn’t Keep it to Myself

I had first encountered Wally Lamb in what I call my White Oleander phase. It was the time in pop-culture when, for at least a week or so, people wanted to read about womyn - as long as they were suffering. Most of this was fueled by the rising popularity of book clubs among womyn and token men. At any rate, I loved White Oleander: A Novel, by Janet Fitch, and, in the natural progression of the Oprah induced White Oleander episode, I moved on to She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb. I loved this book, and could even associate with the lead character Delores’ experiences in young adulthood. But alas, I was young and impressionable - and shocked when I found out the author was a man! Looking back, the novel may have been better suited in the teen fiction section, as the dramatized extenuating circumstances are enough to make me gag now that I have grown up problems.

Either way, She’s Come Undone was good enough to make me dive into Lamb’s next book, I Know This Much Is True. Though the writing was as eloquent and easy as Undone, Wally writes much better as a womon than a man. I can just picture him as the skinny, “Am I gay?” confused, too-nice-for-his-own-good kid, macrameing in the corner of gym class, thinking of the tribulations of periods and pads. For whatever reason this is, I Know This Much Is True was an awkward account of a stereotyped macho male: stubborn, selfish, emotionally inept. Though this is a fitting description of men, even I was rolling my eyes at the meat-head generalizations.

Moving on to our penitentiary books, however, becomes another story (book humor, get it?). Here it’s not Lamb, it’s the ladies. Stocked with street experience and a world of little regard for censors, these womyn pack the emotions all over the pages. The stuff that makes people uncomfortable, the stuff that makes life seem more scary, the stuff that idiotic men and womyn like to pretend doesn’t happen; this book reveals it all. Most of these womyn have been abused and neglected by society, men, and their families. The short stories portray the undeniable fact that us with ovaries often get left in the dust. Sure, the whole entire human race might be dependent on our reproductive purposes, but the day man learned how to pinch our nipples like a radio receiver, we became worthless. Couldn’t Keep It to Myself and I’ll Fly Away are perfect reminders of what desperation can do, and what crap womyn find themselves having to go through just to end up in prison.