I have a confession to make. Recently, I bought one of those gratuitous self-help novels. Not exactly a packed-with-homilies, Reader's Digest equivalent like Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus and the various Chicken Poop for the Souls. No. My book was a little different. Just slightly. Titled Women are from Bras and Men are from Penus: A Parody, I knew I had found my guide through the vacuum-sealed labyrinth of the male mind. With easy-to-follow advice to take the refinement out of human relationships.It starts with the strap line for the book: A Survival Guide for Bypassing Communication and Getting Even in your Relationships. And continues to get better. The book goes back into a time when two opposite civilisations lived on two separate planets - Bras and Penus. Upon spotting the Brassierians, the Penusians boarded the Starship Enterthighs and made the trip in seven lights years - a trip that would've ordinarily taken three but the Penusians refusedto ask for directions. Anyway, as soon as the two species set eyes on each other, they were "enthralled". For a while. Until they decided to travel to Planet Earth. "Once on Earth, however they developed selective nausea. They wouldn't be nauseous all the time - only when they were with each other. Pretty soon the touching turned into poking.pounding.short-range nuclear weapons." And then strategies, schemes and skullduggery gave birth to several combat manuals. All because, "Men will never understand women and women will never understand men - and that is the one thing that men and women will never understand."Broken into 13 chapters - `How to Manipulate the Opposite Sex', `Men Go Up and Down Like Yo-Yos' and `Women Go 'Round and 'Round in Cycles' - the book deals with how to take all the normal things that make up a male-female interaction and turn it into an argument only you can win. Normal, regular stuff like nagging, the television remote and conversation. Here are a fewnuggets of wisdom from my new Sacred Writ:What men are saying What men are thinkingwhile a woman is talking - while a woman is talking:Uh Huh. The last time I saw a mouth like hers it there was a fishhook on it. I see. This woman can chew a man's ear off faster than Mike Tyson in a rematch.How to ask a man to do something:1. Make sure the man is conscious.2. Crash the hard drive on his computer and line the bird cage with the sports section.3. Punish him when he refuses to cooperate. Microwave his remote on high power for 55 minutes. Rotate ¬ turn, and microwave yet again for another 35 minutes.Confounded? The book even excerpts sections from the Penusian-Brassierian and Brassierian-Penusian Dictionary that explains the mis-communication: When he says: "No, those jeans don't make you look fat."Translated means: "It's all those extra cookies, pies and cakes you ate that make you look fat."When she says: "I think I love you."Translated means:"I haven't thought about a divorce for nearly three hours and eleven minutes."Even more confounded? After all if it is such a state of siege why do men and women even stray into each other's orbits?.`Discovering our Emotional Neediness' has the answer:Reasons why she needs him:To have someone to check out a noise in the middle of the night.Why should she risk her life if there's a crazed maniac in the living room with a pick axe?To have someone to take to a wedding.Why should she look stupid standing alone at the alter.Reasons why he needs her:To have someone he can count on.To bail him out of jail.To assist him in his grooming habits.He needs her to tell him if he has something hanging out of his nose.But the best chapter is `Keeping the War Raging: Now and Forever'. It tells you the professional way to wage war. In the case of men, women are advised to: withhold food, withhold sex and hide the remote. In the case ofwomen, men are advised to: hide her charge cards, hide her make-up and rig the bathroom scales.Am I being totally over the top by agreeing with authors Anna Collins and Elliot Sullivan, both qualified SuCs (Stand-up Comics)? I mean it is not as if this is a great book or a classic comic. Far from it. It's just that I was hooked from the moment I saw its scurrilous, fading yellow cover and then flipped open to read, in smudged ink on tackier-than-toilet paper- paper, the first line: "This book is intended as a survival guide and, as such, must go beyond political correctness since human lives are at stake. The battle of the sexes is war, and clearly war is hell." So true.
