Women

Dr. Mike is an advice columnist whose main qualification for dispensing life-changing wisdom is his Ph.D. in Soap Opera Appreciation from the University of Tim Online (all major credit cards accepted).

Here is what fell out of this week's mail bag:

Dear Dr. Mike,

Why, I ought to rip your arm off and beat you with the bloody stump.

I don't know what to do about my marriage. My husband came home last night and seemed very preoccupied. When I tried to cheer him up by suggesting that we go out to dinner at his favorite restaurant, Casey's, he just shrugged and grabbed the car keys.

He barely spoke through dinner, and when I asked him what was wrong, he just said, "Nothing." He had a beer before dinner, and another one after meal arrived. On the way home I tried everything I could think of to cheer him up, but it was as if he was on another planet. If he answered me at all, it was only to grunt, "yes" or, "no."

In my last column I talked about our quest to buy a new dishwasher. In case you missed it, I was totally convinced when our adventure started that I knew exactly what I wanted - a futuristic study in stainless steel kitchen tech. Luckily, my wife was kind enough to explain that I was a complete idiot.

The whole episode turned out pretty well, though. We ended up finding just what we needed, and I inexplicably lucked out, ending up with a really super-cool black monolith of a dishwasher I call "Darth Vader."

When we bought Darth, the sales woman offered to have her store's experts install him in our kitchen for an additional $85. Since I already had a dishwasher the same size as the one we were buying, I thought to myself, "How hard can it be? Unhook the water, power, and drain from the old one, then hook 'em up to the new one. An hour at the most. $85? For that? Pah!" 

My wife and I recently bought a new dishwasher.

It's not that we were unhappy with our old dishwasher; it ran just fine if we got up early to shovel the coal and let the boiler in the engine build up a good head of steam. Unfortunately, a clip broke on one side of the cup rack, and repairing it was going to involve replacing everything except one of the rawhide door hinges, so we decided that it was time to go shopping.

As you might have guessed, it's been a while since we bought an appliance, and we were shocked at some of the advances in technology. I figured that a logical first step would be to check Consumer Reports to find out which models would get all the crud off the butter knives, and which ones were more likely to become sentient and destroy all human life.

In this column I have talked from time to time about "guy cars" and "girl cars." I have pointed out that there are a few fundamental differences in how most men and women view their automobiles. 

The typical guy wants a car that is an expression of dominance over his personal universe. He wants it to project an image of his status and virility to the world. He wants it to be a four-wheeled extension of his ideal self, looking and sounding as powerful and in-charge as he (comically) imagines himself to be.

Most women are happy with a car if the engine starts when you turn the key.