What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage by Amy Sutherland

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.