FANCY NEW VIDEO MACHINE...

This morning the Mrs. hollered at me and said she was gonna run up to Bobby’s Pawn Shop (it's just right around the corner), and browse around seein as our anniversary is coming up in a few months.

Now, I had my suspicions that wasn't the whole truth, cause last night she was looking for this real nice bracelet of hers in the jewelry box and couldn’t find it. I suspected that she was going up to Bobbys to see if it had somehow mysteriously ended up at his place. But since I couldn’t think of a good reason off the top of my head to stop her, I said, “okay,” and just braced myself for the worst.

She was gone a good long time, and when she got back she had this box that was a good bit bigger than a bracelet box (whew!). So I asked her what she got, and she told me that she had got us a new video player, and it was a “really, really good deal.” Then she set it on the dining room table and went on.

So I walked over and looked at it, and it says right on the box "Fake-o-jap DVD Player." I could tell by looking that the box never had been opened. I try to warn the Mrs. about shopping at Bobbys…but what’re you gonna do? I was just relieved that she didn’t come back with a bracelet amazingly similar to the one that was mysteriously missing. I was real confused looking at this box. Well, she comes walking back in the room, and I guess I looked puzzled. So she asks me what’s up and I tell her that “I can’t pronounce what this is…I can read it, but I can’t pronounce it.”

“What do you mean?” she asks me. Then I show her where it says “DVD,” and tell her I can’t pronounce that word, cause it don’t have any vowels. She looked at me like I had an extra antler.

So I guess she was trying to make a point and she asks me “Andy, how do you pronounce LSU?” So I tell her “L…S...U.” And she says, real smarty-pants-like, “well it’s the same thing, dummy.” So I get just as smart back at her and point out that "it ain’t the same thing, cause LSU has a vowel in it." I guess I told her!

Well anyway after we got that cleared up I asked her if it would work on black and white, and she said it would. So she went on to do some housework and I broke this Fake-o-Jap DVD Player out and hooked her up. I figured I’d try her out, but the booklet had real little writing, and a bunch of it not even American, and I couldn’t find my reading glasses so I just figured I’d wing it.

So I get out my tape of "Return to Gilligan’s Island" to test it out (that Dawn Wells is a nice-lookin gal), and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to load ‘er in. I tried and tried, but just couldn’t. As bad as I hate to ask the Mrs. for help on anything, I hollered at her for help.

Once again, a sort of snotty conversation ensued between the two of us… So after she got it all explained to me how our old tapes don't work in it, I asked her what we were gonna do for watching tapes. She says that we can rent the right kind, or buy the right kind…I see a lot of hard-earned money going out for these new tapes in the near future…I don’t think this was such a good deal, but if I take it back up to Bobby, he’s only gonna give me fifty cents on the dollar back for it before he boxes it back up and catches the next "sucker." So I reckon we’ll keep it.

Well, my mother-in-law is coming by to loan us a couple of these new tapes that fit this Fake-o-Jap DVD Player. I almost wish the Mrs. had found that bracelet that mysteriously disappeared from her jewelry box. Stupid Japanese…don’t even put vowels in their words.