The Bathtub: Too Much Information: The Cutting Room Floor

The theme this week is marriage, which is probably the only thing in the world the Tubtributors know less about than Knut Hamsun's The Growth of the Soil. At least one of us had read that book. When it comes to marriage, none of us have any experience whatsoever. Jerome comes closest because he's engaged, but an engagement does not a marriage make. (Well I guess technically yes, a marriage is exactly what an engagement makes, but ahhhhhhhh whatever who cares.)

The last wedding I attended was my sister Kelly's in September 2005. I was a bridesmaid, and being a bridesmaid can be a lot of fun because you learn a lot about yourself in the process, like that you need to grow your hair out two more inches or you will ruin the pictures and that oh yeah, if you make a scene at the reception then so help her God, your sister will kill you.

Just kidding! Actually I needed to grow my hair out three inches. No really, my sister was a great bride and her wedding was really fun and she looked very, very authentically bride-ly--straight out of a bridal catalogue, even:

So anyway, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that if I make the introduction to this post really long, then maybe nobody will notice that the actual meat of it is a little undercooked. Or maybe my point is that I am qualified to speak about neither weddings, nor marriages, nor horses, nor carriages, nor fruit, nor fiber, nor anything that goes together like any of those things.

Mmmkay, enough stalling.

[45 minutes of thinking of what else to write/shopping for makeup online ensues.]

In America, marriage is more than just a way celebrities bide their time until getting divorced. It is an institution of enormous religious, political, and cultural significance, and, um . . . what else?

[20 minutes of thinking of a new direction for post/shopping for hair products online.]

Take Two

You know what I think is funny? The phrase "the perfect marriage of." It's really overused, but it sounds really dumb, and whenever I hear it I get a really stupid mental image of whatever two things are being discussed--like peanut butter and chocolate, or NASCAR and Scientology--wearing bride-and-groom costumes and walking down an aisle as organ music plays.

It's also funny to me that despite our overuse of the "perfect marriage" idiom, nobody ever says anything is "the perfect divorce of" something and something. That phrase is a "Googlenope," which Gene Weingarten defines in this column:

When a phrase cannot be found on Google, I call it a Googlenope. Once a Googlenope is discovered and written about, it is no longer a Googlenope.

In trying to think of how "the perfect divorce of" could be used in a sentence, I am--

[Stumped. But also running out of time and money to do any more online cosmetics shopping tonight. Five minutes of browsing Google results for "marriage."]

Take Three

So, about marriage . . .

Take Four

The funny thing about marriage is that--

Take Five

Marriage-marriage-wedding-divorce-blah-blah-unicorns-magic-cookies-who-cares-anymore-I'm-never-going-to- go-to-sleep-tonight.

Take Six

You know what? I have tried harder at writing this post than some famous people actually try at making their own marriages work. And I got some good makeup out of it. (That I bought.) It's not perfect or even really good, but I'm willing to settle. It's easier than to keep trying.

Maybe I know more about marriage than I thought, after all.

Lauren McMahon (e-mail, website) writes "Too Much Information" on Mondays at noon. Find out more here.