1.) Ignore everyone’s advice (except for the person that wrote what you are now reading, but including any self-help-newlywed-books-for-couples-to-read-together that people will give you as a wedding present because they are too cheap to buy you a rice cooker and too lazy/thick too write the definitive marriage guide which of course you now are reading).

If you were trying to get thicker, fuller blooms on your rose bush you might ask the nice British lady across the street with the lush flower garden for a little advice on water and soil, but we are talking about marriage, man. Look around you. Nobody has it completely right. For thousands of years men and women have been trying the best they can to coexist without driving wooden stakes through their sleeping partner. And do you think that pasty, smiling couple wearing matching chambray shirts on the dust jacket of your wedding present, fresh off the ”couples retreat 2007” tour, has stumbled on the magic potion? What about the lady with forty-five cats who keeps telling you to never go to bed angry and always keep things interesting? Nope. Her cats are inbred, and so is her advice.

I’m telling you to handle this how you have handled everything else in your 32 years on this earth. Wing it. You are a smart guy, or I wouldn’t let you be my best friend. Figure it out. Try. Fail. But keep trying. Keep talking to each other. Don’t be so busy thinking and obsessing about ”it,” the marriage, that you forget to have one. Otherwise five years from now you’ll be rushing home from work on a Friday because that’s your planned Make-Your-Own-Ice-Cream-Sundae-Night, and you and I won’t be friends anymore

2.) Argue Often and with Gusto, but in Private.

Apathy kills more marriages than Larry King. And nothing gets the blood moving like good old-fashioned argument. Give and take is healthy. Disagreement means you are both thinking, and both involved. Revel in your difference. Remember, if two people always agree then one of them isn’t needed.

Am I saying you should scream at each other, walk out of restaurants, throw bowling trophies (never come to a marriage without mysterious trophies-even if you have to buy them at a yard sale), or behave like the cast of Real World 2? No, of course not. Good, sound and calm arguments preclude all of the above. Good arguments prevent bottled up explosions and sulking.

When I used to wait tables, I was blown away by the amount of sulking men in the world. Is this just an American thing? Has Oprah emasculated us that much? Usually, I would wait till the woman was in the bathroom, before smacking the man open-palmed across the face. Then I would buy a shot of tequila and make the now red-faced sulker drink out of a dirty shot glass.

“You’re a man,” I would whisper right before she returned. ”Act like it. Don’t make me follow you home and smack your face again.”

I made really good tips on those occasions, and nobody ever complained about the service. Later the men would return to thank me for saving their marriage/relationship/job and promise to name all their children after me (Jamie is versatile in that regard.) So don’t sulk. Argue, then move on.

3.) Try not to die.

Many a music career has been bolstered by a timely death. Most writers wish they could cash royalty checks from beyond the grave. But death really harms both comedy careers and marriages alike. Dying tends to make any healthy marriage suddenly stale and one-sided.

To put it in plainer terms, my friend, it’s time to start taking better care of yourself. You now have someone else to think about. So quit trying to kill yourself with Bacon and Bacon Hot Pockets. Seriously, don’t die, or I will smack your face.

4.) Keep Picking Your Nose, But Stop Wiping It on the Bathroom Wall

Maintaining your sense of individuality while maintaining a healthy marriage can be difficult. As couples get older often they are not viewed anymore as two separate people, but suddenly they become one person (Bradgelina for example). This is one of the most scary aspects of marriage to me.

There are certain things you do that make you uniquely you. Don’t change these things. Be proud of them. There are other things you do that also are unique, but you may need to change them. Part of being a human being is growing, learning, and evolving. I think marriage is a wonderful excuse to stop being child, but don’t grow up so much you become unrecognizable.

I think it’s healthy for a married couple to pursue interests exclusive of each other. In other words, get away from each other some. Have some time for you. And don’t change…except for all that annoying stuff. Change all that.

5.) Laugh Till Milk Comes Out Your Nose

People say all the time, “I married him because he made me laugh,” or “I am looking for somebody with a good sense of humor.” I want to know where all these funny, laughing people are? People get married, have a couple of mortgage payments and all the sudden, life isn’t funny anymore. It’s very serious actually. And all that laughter is gone. What happened? Please keep being your laughing, silly selves. It will make me happy to see you guys growing old together, still belly laughing, still grinning, still spitting your drinks out at restaurants.

6.) “Love means always having to say you’re sorry.”

Hah! Get used to saying it. The proper response from now on is either “Sorry” or silence. But I have no idea when to use which. That’s why I am single. Oh yeah. Don’t go to bed angry, and always keep it interesting.

I wish you both all the best. I send you both all my love and friendship. I promise I’ll be there for your guys…just not when it’s important like your wedding day. I am so happy for you, and am smiling like an idiot even now as I write this. Congrats and all the very best.

‘True Love’

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn’t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn’t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn’t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends’ sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it’s obviously a plot behind the human race’s back!

It’s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who’d want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life’s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn’t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there’s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

-- Wislawa Szymborska

If we were meant to
Know each other only in China
And our branches
Never again scrape against the same window,
Or even if they do,
I want you to remember
Us floating with the moon on the South China Sea.

While postcards from yourself
When you were young,
Pencil drawings of necks and ear lobes on napkins,
And other varied
And loose papers
Cram into the heavy gray cabinets of your memory,
Don’t let this scrap of a night flutter away.

Don’t lose the five of us making our way outside,
And squeezing past street vendors
Selling lamb on a stick
And past the row of parked mopeds,
And into the muggy tightness of that taxi
At three in the morning and asking for
The beach outside of town.

Of that tiny red taxi bumping to the sea,
Bursting at it bolts and door hinges
With all our knees, elbows, shoulders and shins.

And how the sea, duly impressed with our
Stripped-down boldness,
Made molds of ten feet in the soft sand
Before we three Americans
And two Chinese
Flung ourselves into its salty yawn.

While the rest of Haikou tossed and turned,
The warm tide embraced us
Before carrying us out to a raft
Anchored at dreaming distance from the shore.

Maybe we all met one week before that
So we could reflect the moon together
That night while lying on that raft.
Our eyes were open like traps,
Our bodies dripped with the moonlit sea,
Our breathes were heavy with wonder,
And the air was filled with the names of
Constellations
Whispered in unison
First in English
Then in Chinese.

Why am I so confident? Because I invented the genre. Go to Flickr. There is no Helicopter/Cheese/Cracker group. One reason these pictures are so rare is because people never have them all together at the same time or the same place. You could Photoshop those things together, but that would pathetic. Photoshop makes my blood boil, so don’t get me started. Anyway, think about it. Lot’s of people have had crackers and helicopters, or cheese and crackers, but never all three at once. And if they did, it wouldn’t occur to them to make a life-changing-word-view-altering-statement via avant guard photography like it did me.

My mom told me once that I had an eye for photography, and I thought she was just being nice because she was my mom. But no, as it turns out, she has an eye for people that have an eye for photography. She’s right, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom.

Another person on the boat, who shall be known as The Near-sighted Medic, saw my genius and decided that since cheese and crackers and helicopters was my thing, he would be a pioneer in the world of sliced sausage and helicopters (see picture below). The results were uninspiring. One of my friends did get a picture of me holding up his rainbow-shaped sliced sausage. I look like I am trying to help because I am nice, but really I am thinking: “I am thirty-two years old, I am holding a piece of rainbow-shaped sausage as a helicopter flies away for a Near-sighted Medic, I don’t even have health insurance, and I will die alone.” Later I told The Near-sighted Medic I wouldn’t be able to talk to him anymore because I didn’t support his vision, plus I didn’t like him making light of my new life’s work. I still had two more weeks out there with him. Thankfully it wasn’t awkward because he couldn’t see me unless I was within a two feet radius of his thick glasses.

I have lost a lot of weight since that picture, so I don’t need a lot of people commenting how fat I am now. I saw I had problem and stopped eating so much cheese. I am almost back to my normal/sexy weight. Oh and just so you don’t think I am limited in my cheese and cracker genre, have a look at this fast boat, cheese and cracker picture. Coming soon to a fine gallery near you.

So the plan is to work through the summer and maybe some of the fall. I am not sure yet. Then I will move to Chengdu, China. There in Chengdu, China I will resume Doom in China. I will finish my novel about China. I will also be more diligent about updating this. I hope.

So this boat is pretty nice. I have a cabin to myself, with internet in-cabin. The gym is huge, so I have been carefully getting ripped. The vessel is large. The crew seems laid back. I am not certain how long I will be out here, but at least I am on such a nice big boat.

I want to thank those of you who patiently come to my little coffee-stained page hidden in the back of the internet. I realize I don’t reward you often enough with updates, inspired writing, or exciting news. I do appreciate your kind words and the knowledge that a few people I have never met show up occasionally to read my writing. Thanks.