So then I dug a little more, and I found the one fact that wasn’t widely reported—the injection of the hormone shot had to be “just above” the scrotum.
Now look, I admit, what I know about men can barely fill a test tube.
But I have common sense.
And my guess is that a needle in the balls was more than most men could deal with, and who can blame them?
I tried to learn online about what “just above” meant, but I expect for most men, that might be a distinction without a difference.
Notice I didn’t say splitting hairs.
By the way, my research also showed that the injections were bimonthly, and I looked up whether that meant twice a month or every other month. And according to the Oxford Dictionary, it can mean either.
What?
Doesn’t that make a difference?
Especially if you’re the man getting a needle in his balls?
I think you might be able to turn his frown upside down if you said it was every other month.
But if it’s twice a month, most men might say no, thanks.
Now that would be a side effect that would end a study.
So we have our answer.
There won’t be male birth control unless we can find a better way to deliver it to men.
Like in beer.
In any event, the whole idea of men using birth control might be an exercise in be-careful-what-you-wish.
I used to think that male birth control would be a wonderful idea, but honestly, I wouldn’t want to delegate my birth control to somebody else, especially a guy who always forgets where he put his car keys, socks, and phone.
After all, if he makes a mistake, only one of us is left holding the bag.
So to speak.
Remote Control Freak
Lisa
My life has just been changed.
How, you ask?
Did I win the lottery?
Did I meet a man and fall in love?
More realistically, did I get another dog?
No, I got a new remote control.
And it changed my life.
I’m still trying to decide if this means something great about me or something awful.
On the Great side of the ledger is that it’s the simple things in life that matter.
On the Awful side of the ledger is that remote controls are not what they mean when they say it’s the simple things in life that matter.
And actually, what I think they say is that the best things in life are free, and let me tell you, Comcast is certainly not free.
But for good or for ill, I just got married, and this time it’s forever.
The deal was clinched by my new remote control, which is the latest and greatest incarnation that the company offers, and for that, I owe thanks to you, my beloved readers.
How so?
We begin our story when I do the laundry, which happens about once a month, no kidding.
I will let my sheets rot before I wash them, mainly because ain’t nobody sweating in my bed, if you follow.
You will recall that dogs don’t sweat.
I hate doing the laundry and so generally I gather up the sheets and a blanket really carelessly, roll them up into a ball, and stuff them in the washing machine and get it started. Invariably, somewhere in the middle of the cycle, the machine will stop and its yellow light will blink UL, which stands for uneven load.
I’m like, you’re telling me.
My load in life has been uneven for a long time.
And where can I find somebody to do mommy’s laundry?
So you get the idea, I’m so careless with doing laundry that last week when I washed my sheets, I accidentally washed my TV remote, so it’ll be really clean for the next time I wear it.
And if that’s not dumb enough, the next time I did the sheets, I washed the remote that I replaced it with, but miraculously, it still worked after. But the point of the story is that I posted on Facebook about the miraculous remote control that worked even after it went through the washing machine, and one of you genius readers posted: “Lisa, you have the old remote.”
That was all I needed to hear.
And now I have the new remote, which not only changed my life, but renewed my faith in American ingenuity.
Uh-oh!
Number one, it only has one button to turn the TV on and off, the way God intended.
This is a little-known fact, but it was actually Satan who invented the idea that you had to press a TV button and turn that on or off, then press a Cable button and turn that on or off.
The work of the devil.
Or the cable company.
Number two, the new remote control has voice recognition, so if you want to turn the channel to NBC, you just say, “NBC” to the remote.
In other words, you can actually talk to the remote control and have it do what you say—when you say it!
How many women have ever experienced that sensation?
Not this one.
Yet another reason I’m sure this marriage will last forever.
Finally, and best of all, the remote control actually knows when it’s dark out and lights up if you pick it up at night, which if you ask me, is the reason science was invented in the first place.
I remember writing long ago that I used to be jealous of Daughter Francesca’s remote control in New York City, which has a button that you could turn on to light up the remote. But now, here in Philadelphia, we don’t even have to press a button.
Our remote controls just know.
So it’s a brave new world for me, and for you too, if you get this new remote.
It didn’t even cost anything extra, above and beyond my normal monthly cable bill of $2,938,749,399,393.20.
Because the best things in life really are free.
The Bridal Shower 2.0
Francesca
We need to talk about bridal showers.
We’ve been kicking the can of this conversation down the last hundred years, and our procrastination has resulted in some stale, kinda sexist party games slipping under the radar.
Gals, we can do better.
Women used to get married a lot younger than we do now. At the turn of the century, when bridal showers first gained popularity, a woman achieved menarche and was ready for marriage.
You know the tradition is old, because they still called your period “menarche.”
Back then, you packed everything you owned—a mother-of-pearl hair-comb and a couple of pairs of hand-sewn bloomers—into a bindle and walked from your dad’s house to your husband’s.
It was easy to throw a great party in those days. You didn’t have to compete with smartphones.
Some of these bridal-shower games were amusingly quaint in the 1950s, they’re getting weird for a millennial bride.
For example, we have to stop treating bridal showers like housewife job training.
A.) Keeping house isn’t only a woman’s job anymore, and B.) chores aren’t that complicated or fun.
I’ve heard of a shower game where the bride is blindfolded and she has to guess the kitchen utensil by touch alone.
Unless this is prep for kinky kitchen sex, this game is past its sell-by date.
Come to think of it, that might be a great update! Blindfold the bride and have her reach into a bag to guess: sex toy OR kitchen utensil?
Hmm, is that a rolling pin or a—
Okay, maybe we’ll save it for the bachelorette party.