My New 50" TV and Other, Less Important Happenings

I wanted to write about my new 50” plasma TV today, but my wife said I should write about the baby instead. Lola, like all women, has confused priorities, but I’ll oblige her just this once because I’m tired of sleeping on the porch. Before I get any further, I want to make one thing clear: We’re not pregnant; only Lola is. Seriously, I took a pregnancy test this morning and it came back negative. I didn’t really mean to take the test. I just pee on a lot of stuff. Lola, however, distributes her urine more sparingly. The two pregnancy tests she took are only 99 percent accurate, so I guess it’s possible that they were positive for some reason other than a baby. Maybe her uterus is actually full of cobras. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor – although you wouldn’t know that given my incredible understanding of the female reproductive system. My understanding of the pregnancy test is that it shows an equal sign if you’re full of babies. The box doesn’t show the rest of the mathematical formula, but it must be something like “two people of opposite genders + too much free time = offspring.” I seldom do anything intentionally, but Lola and I were trying to have a baby, which I think means we both just won. It’s hard to be sure. Pregnancy is one of the few cases where intent defines the thin line between “congratulations” and “better luck next time.”

Judging by the clearness of the line, Lola got less pregnant between the two tests. My guess is that the cobras ate half the baby.

As Lola and I do with most of our important decisions, we made this one based mostly on peer pressure. Our friends Rocco and Phoebe just announced their own progress toward family-building, and there’s an unspoken agreement that Lola and I have to do everything they do, only better. Rocco and Phoebe bought a house, so we acquired a bigger one. Rocco got a Chinese character tattoo, so I sought out a more foreign one. People sometimes ask me why my back is covered in a life-like image of Ché Guevara wrestling a giraffe. I’m still not sure, but I think it has something to do with the conflicting values of capitalism and the Dewy Decimal system. Phoebe is three months along and doing fine, so Lola and I figured we’d be okay with childbearing, too. Unfortunately, Phoebe is so early in her pregnancy that making that kind of a judgment at this stage is kind of like saying, “See, he’s alright,” after a man jumps off a cliff but before he hits the bottom. It’s a stupid analogy, unless Rocco and Phoebe jump off a cliff, in which case Lola and I will be right behind them.

At the very least, this pregnancy should make my parents happy. My mom has been looking forward to grandchildren ever since I first brought home a girl. At the time, my argument against immediate procreation was that I still had the whole fourth grade ahead of me. Who am I kidding? I didn’t even look at a girl until college, and even now Lola and I communicate mostly by postcard. Residing in separate zip codes made conception tricky, but as with most baby-making operations it involved love, compassion, and those vacuum tubes they have in the drive through at the bank. I’m Catholic, and my Protestant wife is a non-denominational godless heathen. Birth control was a touchy subject for us at first, but like most religious couples we settled on the only obvious baby-preventing compromise: multiple open-hand palm strikes to the face. You have no idea how hard it is to stay interested in the conception-related procedures when even a passing request for conjugal relations inevitable results in a concussion. To conceive a child, Lola and I simply upped the cuddling and toned down the blunt force trauma. Forget the pill or natural family planning; the growth of real families is most effectively controlled through ninja-like blows to the cranium.

I wish “no” just meant “no” instead of “a broken nose and three hours in the emergency room.”

I suppose this is the point where I should start cleaning up my act. Assuming that the Internet and the civilization that supports it aren’t wiped out by SARS or the bird flu or Beatlemania, my future child could come to this site someday and read all the snide things I wrote about his or her conception. To that child, remember this: There was no paternity test. It’s important for me to maintain plausible deniability in case you turn out to be something horrible, like a war criminal or a vegetarian. Also, I don’t know what name you will end up with given your mother’s horrible taste, but I always intended to name my first three children Wario, Stumpy, and MacGyver. As of this date, I have no names picked out for if you’re a boy. Also, I claim credit for only the following genetic traits: gangly, ape-like arms; overactive sweat glands; and an awkward but distinctive lope that makes its bearer immediately identifiable to observers standing up to four hundred yards away. These characteristics were intended for a being standing more than six feet tall, so if you inherit any of these traits along with your mother’s gnome-like frame, just remember it could be worse. My fourth choice name was The Fartster.

Lola is about a month along, so the kid should arrive here sometime next September. We were originally going to wait until Lola saw a doctor, but the physicians she talked to didn’t want to see her until she was eight or nine weeks along. So keep and mind that all of this is based on our own attempts at conception, a missed period, and two home pregnancy tests. There’s always the possibility that Lola is going through menopause at the age of 23 and that only the cobras in her uterus are pregnant. Baring that contingency, Lola and I managed to succeed at this whole making-a-child-thing on our first try. Apparently knocking up women is one of my many previously undiscovered talents. I hope I also have an undiscovered talent for totally ignoring children while my spouse raises them, a technique my own father has nearly perfected. He had little recourse, though, given that the last headcount of his children had to be rounded to the nearest dozen. Lola also wanted me to put in a reference to her parents, so Mr. and Mrs. Lola’s Parents, I just did horrible things to your daughter. See you on Memorial Day.

Now that you’ve suffered through all the boring stuff, here’s what you really care about: my new best friend and our child’s future babysitter.

Man Cave

Every man needs a cave. It’s an urge that can be traced directly to ancient homo sapiens, who desperately needed shelter from pterodactyls and telemarketers. They don’t seem very scary now, but you have to remember that everything was a lot bigger back then. Prehistoric men were naturally drawn to caves, which were move-in ready and usually located in neighborhoods with good school districts. But ancient women didn’t like the caves because they were damp and hard to decorate. Ancient men initially ignored these complaints because they wisely understood that women don’t like anything. In fact, cultural anthropologists have proven human speech was developed entirely by women as a tool for whining in a more specific fashion. It was sometimes hard to get a message across with the old method of whining, which consisted entirely of grunts and eye-jabbing. And so it was that after many generations of nagging and female-induced blindness, men left the caves and moved into trendy condos. It was an upgrade, men were told, but deep inside the male species would always yearn for a less civilized place where it was okay to draw crude pictures on the wall or poop in a corner just because it sounded like a good idea at the time. As a proud male descendent of this less than proud lineage, I’ve decided that it’s time for me to take a stand and create a man cave of my own – with my wife’s permission, of course.

I didn’t need a man cave until we got a DVR. Lola uses it to record approximately ninety-percent of all televised content available in the western world. Watching all that content keeps Lola firmly in control of our living room TV most days, preventing me from using my Xbox360. Sure, I could hook it up to another TV, but the one in the living room is a fifty inch HDTV. The one upstairs in only thirty-two inches measured diagonally, and the one in my office is about thirteen. It’s not a real TV if it can’t be seen from low orbit. Hooking up a gaming device to one of our auxiliary TVs would be about as functional as attaching it to a microwave oven. Having been effectively driven off the main floor of the house, Lola saw it fit to allow me to purchase a second HDTV for use in the room of my choosing. Operation Man Den was finally a real possibility. Sure, I could have claimed a far flung corner of our house as my own months ago, but there wouldn’t have been much point. A man den isn’t a man den without something shiny to stare at in the middle of it. Cavemen didn’t have HDTVs, but they did have fire. The flames didn’t have great graphics, but they provided hours of entertainment in the form of games like “Poke the Fire with a Stick,” “Push Jim into the Fire,” and “Poke Jim with a Stick While He’s on Fire.” Consequently, people named Jim seldom had family lines that survived into the modern era.

Lola hoards everything important in the house in her lair, the living room. Pictured: My big TV, my Rock Band accessories, and the comfortable furniture. Not pictured: My dignity.

Besides featuring a violent form of entertainment, the only other requirement of a man cave is that it exists on a floor other than the one on which the woman of the house primarily resides. In our house, Lola has established her lair in the living room, leaving the second floor, attic, and basement as possible man cave locations. Basements are preferable in most situations since there are usually fewer valuable items in them that can be destroyed by the chance release of beer, blood, or urine, but ours won’t work for that purpose. It’s unfinished, it lacks adequate outlets, and it’s full of all the stuff that should go in our non-existent garage. Our basement warranted temporary consideration for man den status only because it very closely resembles an actual cave. If I looked hard enough, I wouldn’t be surprised if we found ancient hunting spears and the bones of giant telemarketers down there.

If you can measure your love for something by the number of times you photograph it, then I love my grill approximately sixteen times more than I love my wife.

The attic was ruled out as a possible man cave location for similar reasons. Sure, it’s a great place to hide from wayward pterodactyls, but it has no insulation and has a less-than stellar record with open flames. Our house has a new roof only because a neighboring building burned two years ago, taking the top of our house with it. The last time I went up there, Lola screamed at me for three days about tracking soot into the lower floors. I could put my man den up there, but if I did I’d have to make sure I never entered the main part of the house again. If there were a fridge and a toilet in the attic, I’d go for it, but I’ll have to put that plan on hold for now since pooping out a third-story window is against city regulations.

That leaves only two unoccupied rooms on the second floor as potential sites for my man cave. The one with blue walls, which the former owner used to store his child, will probably be used for the same purpose by us eventually. I’m positive that the second I set up shop in that room Lola will have triplets out of spite. I plan to stay out of that room because karma is the most effective form of birth control. That leaves the carpeted bedroom as my future man cave location. The room is at least ten degrees cooler than the rest of the house at all times, which means it’s ready to be warmed by the hot-air output of an unreasonable number of electronic devices. I’m still trying to explain to Lola that buying a sixty-five inch TV for the room is a smart, economical move since it can double as a space heater. Besides a pitifully undersized thirty-two inch TV, a futon, and a few book shelves, the room is empty. My understanding of the situation is that Lola plans to use her end-of-the-year bonus to buy new furniture for the living room. The living room furniture would then be relegated upstairs to the man cave, assuming we can build a pulley system or futuristic matter teleporter to get it up there. Most of the current living room furniture ranges in value from “free because someone gave it to us” to “free because we dug it out of the garbage,” so it should be a perfect fit for my new living space. It’s nonexistent worth should limit the complaints from Lola when one of the loveseats really does end up covered in beer, blood, and urine. I have to practice juggling my chainsaws somewhere.

To properly envision the potential of the man cave, you have to imagine that all of this stuff has been replaced by a bigger TV, more ample seating, and some kind of a ramp so I can do barrel rolls on a motorcycle.

Operation Man Den will supposedly go into effect some time after Christmas, but that may just be one of those lies Lola comes up with to distract me while she tries to take away my matches. I tend to be rather melodramatic when access to my Xbox360 is limited by her presence in the living room. However, all is not good in the world of man den planning. Lola has recently floated multiple threats that the new TV we buy has to be fifty inches or smaller, which is kind of like telling your sixteen-year-old he can buy a cool new ride just as long his new car is actually a goat. Sure, he’ll get plenty of milk, but his date will be less than thrilled when he tries to drive her to the winter formal. I’m not sure where I was going with that analogy, but it probably had something to do with headbutting Lola until she gives in. I knew there was a reason I own a bike helmet.