Pondering the Deep End

Man overboard!

That's what they shout when a guy falls off a ship. What happens when a woman falls off? They enjoy the silence.

Ok, before you hunt me down and gouge my eyes out with knitting needles, you should understand that that is the stereotype you should be fighting against, not me. I am only joking to make a point. And see? Making a point, that is so atypical in a Rob Blog. Usually there's an overboard post, lots of flailing and usually and drowned blogger washing out to sea the next morning.

My point is a gender thing. Different point ladies, although yes, that is a gender thing too. This gender thing always cracks me up. The other one I take quite seriously. I've seen a lot of the funny one lately. It pops up in blogs about guys bad mouthing their ex, and ex's bad mouth their guys.

What gives?

Can't we all just get along? We do it in LA. Things have been a lot better around here since OJ went looking for the "real" killer. I know I sleep safer at night. And see? There's something we all can agree on no matter what our gender.

"OJ Overboard!"

"Shall we open the champagne sir?"

"yes...when the ocean takes your OJ, you make mimosas."

Still, I'm not here to cry over spilt OJ, I'm here to talk about bloggers overboard: whiners clubbing their exes like they were made of seal. Whether their ex complained too much or not enough, there's not a life preserver just right enough in the world that can save Goldilocks from this mixed metaphor. Her fate is sealed; she's going down with the ship. And yet somewhere out there, is a blogger complaining about that.

"She went down on the ship, but she never went down on--"

Yeah, we don't care how crass we get when we're ex-bashing. So long as we draw blood. Anything to draw the sharks to the corpse trolling along the blog ship.

That's the other thing: we feed off the whining. Some bitch about their ex, and draw our shark shiver to chomp the chum. Soon, it's a mixed frenzy of ex-bashing and ex-basher bashers.

That's what happens with sharks. Somebody goes overboard with innards, and sharks get jiggy with it. They're so excited that if another shark gets in the way…well, it sucks to be that in the way shark.

"Sorry bout that bite Bob."

"It's ok. It's just a nick."

"Oh, you are bleeding."

"yeah. It'll be ok."

"uhm, hay, you know you're kinda tasty too!"

"Pete, I'm not that kinda--"

Yup, it's all over for Bob shark. The same happens to Bob Blogger. He comments out of his depth, gets his fin nipped, and ext thing you know, it's Bob sushi.

And that's where we go overboard. I know, it is a bit cliché to say "Can't we all get along" but I'm already beating a cliché horse corpse, why would I stop? Besides, it's a rhetorical question. Of course we can't get along. There's a 50 percent divorce rate.

So here I am going overboard myself. I'm not any better. I've bashed my share of ex, and tasted my fill of blogger meat. I'm just wondering if we were more compassionate, would we still be a marital death statistic? Are we bitter because somebody failed our expectation obstacle course, or did they fail the course because we were bitter obstacles?

Don't look at me for answers to this one. I don't know. I'm as guilty as every other ex-blogger. I know that when I fall off the ship, they'll make mimosas of my wake too.