Half a Brain Is Better Than No Brain

by Bob Wallace 

All of the research I've seen over the past several years claims that men only use half their brain, while women use all of theirs.  This I believe, since I can drive and listen to the radio simultaneously (obviously men use the same side of their brains for driving and music, meaning driving a car is like listening to music!) but if I have to look for an address, down goes the radio volume, since I'm using the Address-Looking-For Side, which doesn't get along all that well with the Music/Driving Side, so I end up like a duck walking in circles because one leg is shorter than the other.  

The good thing about this half-a-brain stuff is that men can concentrate on one thing, like writing software and programming a computer for 20 hours straight while subsisting on Coke and Ding Dongs, or studying a fly's eyeball for 20 years, which is why we've invented almost everything, like squirtguns and bubblegum.  It comes from being able to tune out most of the world.  

Women, on the other hand, supposedly use all of their brains, meaning the poor double-hemisphered things can't tune out the world to the blissful extent that men can, so the end result is that neither sex understands the other.  It's also why some women (like all of them except .00000001%) can't drive, or else have to do a 17-point parallel park, because they're paying attention to too many things at once, like driving and talking on the cellphone and putting on their make-up while looking in the rear-view mirror and rear-ending my Chevy Cavalier twice in one day.  

Because men can tune out the world more easily than women, it's why when I look at my floor, I see an inviting expanse of carpet for me to lie upon.  Women, on the other hand, see a googolplex of snickering germs, gnashing their fangs and waiting, piranha-like, to strip the flesh from human bones.  The same thing applies to the bed, which I never make, since I'll just have to unmake it at night.  As soon as I'm out of the bed, it might as well have disappeared from the earth, while, on the other hand, women not only have to make the bed, they have some sort of genetic compulsion to garnish it with one of those Beanie Babies with names like "Tangles" or "Snookums." Then they go shopping, which I believe is imprinted on their DNA, like their bizarre compulsion to put the toilet seat down all the time.  

It's also why I see the closet as a place to a) store tools, then b) put my clothes when they're c) not lying in easily-accessed heaps on the floor or in the corners.  I just tune everything out. Closets, floors, corners--what's the difference?  At least I don't think the purpose of a closet is to store 20 pairs of shoes, some of which never get worn, just admired because they were "On Sale," which means women think they "saved" $50 because they only cost $100 instead of $150.  

Every woman I know tells me the same thing (which is the same thing they tell all men): "No, you're doing it all wrong!"  To which I, and all men, respond, "What's this 'it' I'm doing all wrong?"  What do they expect from me, or as I'm often referred to, "a sucking, blowing, mean-dog rat-bastard pig-bum"?  No wonder the women I know go rapidly from wanting to kiss me to wanting to kill me (sometimes, it's the other way around).  I always tell them, "I know I'm supposed to be bad, but, boy, it feels so good."  Usually their response is, "You're trying to trick me! You wait until I find a baseball bat!!"  

Sometimes I think I should have a surgeon install a string with a ring at the end of it in the back of my neck.  Then I could just pull it, and a recorded voice would say, "Yes, dear, I'm always wrong."  I might have a couple of other recordings, too, like, "Of course I'll stop and ask for directions."  

Because women use both sides, the Talk Side is connected to the Feeling Side, whereas in men the Talk Side is connected to nothing.  That's why they want to talk to men all the time, whereas men just want to sit in the recliner, tune the world out, and use the remote to zip through all 99 channels in one minute.  That is, when we're not killing teeny-tiny harmless spiders that women swear are the size of VW Bugs.  

When we sit like that, ladies, we're recharging our batteries while tuning out the world.  Women apparently recharge theirs by trying to talk to us.  It's why conversations sometimes go, "Babble babble babble," "Uh huh," "Babble babble babble," "Uh huh."  

And when a woman asks a man, "What are you thinking about?" and he says, "Nothing," he's telling the truth.  There's nothing inside our heads, not even static, like from an untuned radio. It's a complete blank, just like a Wheaties box the kids have cleaned out: it might look good on the outside, but inside there's not even a few crumbs.  

I could quote that refrain from My Fair Lady: "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"  But that would be silly.  Then they'd be men, not women.  On the other hand, if men were more like women, then we wouldn't have 99% of all the inventions in the world.  Including, I might add, shoes.  

So, ladies, I guess you'll just have accept us all you always have--the Good, the Bad, and most definitely, the Ugly, the latter of which, in my case, means trying to make my underwear land on the ceiling fan while it's spinning.