In the grand tradition of the dog and pony show that is my life, I have made yet another discouraging discovery making my goal to be the white, male Oprah just a little harder to reach. Like a fat child reaching for the Milk Duds on the top shelf, the sustenance I yearn for is slipping from my sweaty fingers.
I began my internship with the utmost certainty that I would awake to some form of shining broadcasting brilliance, thus beginning my backstabbing climb to the top. The sun set on my internship months ago, but I feel like I have hit the ground harder than that unfortunate grape stomping mess on YouTube. Yes, she and I share two things: pain and humiliation after a failed venture. Something we don’t share: vicious, wide hips.
In truth, I feel I have grown in so many places. My camera work is refined, I have a keener eye for the vivid imagery necessary for a good story, my broadcast writing style has matured and I know the inner workings of a news station.
Though, in my opinion, I do not think I am the boy wonder of television that everyone assumed I would be. It seems I am the cigarette that mediocrity cannot quit burning down. With a month-and-a-half until graduation, it seems I have woken up next to a dark lover that I do not recall going home with. Crawling out from under my hangover, I clearly see the sharp, icy features of my bedfellow.
This lover is doubt. Doubt is shocking, doubt is unexpected, doubt has cankles.
In all honesty, I get very frustrated with myself if I do not pick something up right away. I could stay for extra hours and follow the waves of the TelePrompTer until mastery flows within my bloodstream, but I am not sure that I want to work that hard for something I really want.
One could make the connection that my lack of effort is a direct cause of why I am the only guy with facial hair in my freshmen algebra course. It’s a good thing I am pretty.
Cut to my new plan. I am going to marry into a relationship that batters my spirit until I can no longer recognize the heinous reflection in the mirror. I am going to find a woman who is so power-hungry, so controlling, so poisonous that she would sell Betty White to a group of gang-bangers just to get to the top. Ipso facto, if she gets to the top, I get to the top even if it means giving Ms. White a scorching case of herpes, and I LOVE Betty White. I am going to find a wife who is ruthless. I am going to find a Kate.
The Disney movies got it all wrong. As a child, these movies taught my sisters and I the lessons that my parents were too drunk to teach. They misguided us into the notion that marrying for love was everyone’s destiny. I have no interest in marriage or a family, but I have every interest in having more money than God while my name is spoken in every household.
Finally, now, I can breathe in the sweet smell of clarity. People do not get married for love and happiness, they get married when they need something. Even the aforementioned Disney movies taught us that if you are clever enough to focus on the hidden messages. Cinderella was locked in the shackles of white slavery while conversing with mice during ecstasy-induced rants. She needed a way out. Sleeping Beauty had a narcolepsy problem after years of childhood molestation at the hands of three flamboyant old ladies. She needed a way out. I just found out I am not very good at my chosen profession. I need a way out.
My way out comes in the form of a succubus with five shades of blond highlights sitting atop a haircut that is as crazy and unbalanced as her moods. Dear Kate Gosselin, I am single, eager and ready for you to beat the shit out of me.
Let’s not lie about these circumstances, the world only needs one Ryan Seacrest and I am not getting any younger. I am running out of options, and God forbid my hairline should start to recede. Everyone’s favorite accident, George W. Bush, raped and left our economy for dead, making gainful employment slim. As enterprising as I am, I don’t think I can sell my sperm and plasma to make ends meet, as suggested by the career counselor whose breath smelled suspect of Bourbon and shame.
Instead, I have to sell soul facsimile and my body to Kate Gosselin. My only concern is in regards to her fertility rate being higher than my typical blood alcohol level on a Tuesday. Hopefully the self-tanner and the bleach from her highlights have rendered her uterus unable to support another life.
First and foremost, I have to catch my little minx. I have narrowed her whereabouts down to three places. Through years of observation and relation to the affluent blonde drones that are my cousins on the Mallory side, I have discovered these soul-sucking banshees arm themselves with a weapon. This weapon is an oversized piece of consumer-driven pretension that reminds other, lesser women without it of their status as the fugly friend. This weapon is the COACH bag.
In order to meet a Kate, I will have to station myself at the COACH store and wait. Of course, one cannot just pick the first Kate one sees. If I see a lady purchase a wallet, she is probably not determined enough. I will let the lady who purchases a modest purse go, because she is probably a good person who does not believe in materialism. While that may bode well for Mother Theresa, I am not about to buy my groceries at Sam’s Club. Next.
I will wait for the lady who looks as if self-tanner threw up all over her body, for she is the prodigal son of the Kates. The one who buys the bedazzled potato sack of a COACH bag is the one who will sell her family for anything from a tummy tuck to a tooth whitening. She will systematically ruin my life, while the tears of my unhappiness nourish her. She is the Promised Land.
A Kate can also be found at the gym three or four times in a single day. Through days of mathematical equations and scientific observations I have pretended to do, I have concluded that a Kate will either be on the elliptical machine or bench-pressing 350 lbs. This is tricky because apparently they will let any uggo into the gym, so I have to look out for a few sings. Gym Kate will have her face full of MAC makeup and will be so botoxed up that sweating will be impossible. If she is yelling at someone — preferably her very plain sister — on her Blackberry, even better.
With graduation inching closer, I cannot afford to chance not finding a Kate. My dad sometimes goes hunting on reserves that allow you to pay a fee in exchange for them releasing a herd of whatever creature he is hunting. For a herd of Kates, I will simply have to go to one of the darkest places imaginable. He and his yellow labs do this because they are wealthy, and they want to be winners. I want to be a winner, even if it means doing the unthinkable. I will have to go to a scrapbooking party.
After chugging five Gatorades to avoid dehydration, I will be ready to converse with this untapped elite. I will have to limit my vocabulary and tone down my opinionated ere so as not to appear too strong-willed. Kates have an appetite for the meek and spineless. As Jesus said, and I know this because I read it on his Twitter, “The meek shall inherit the earth.” I believe Kates like this find humor and irony in those visually offensive words that are found in Midwestern homes. Words like, “Live. Laugh. Love. Dominate” are catnip that appeals to the notion that they have taste in what is hip. After mentioning how good the latest Jodi Picoult novel is, I will subtly bait my hook. I will visibly display my page of scrapbook elysium that has cute sayings, like, “You Knocked on My Door. My Heart Answered,” or, “I Used to Be Coked Out and Hardcore, Until God Gave Me Little Angels,” or, simply put, “BOTOX!”.
Once they are enticed by these folksy sayings, I will seal the deal by posing this question, “Do you want to come over later and watch Marley & Me, whilst enjoying some of my Healthy Choice sensible serving, almost tastes like popcorn? I must warn you, my bachelor pad could use a woman’s touch, and I love video games and nitrate-laced takeout.” Throw in a line about wanting to be a stay-at-home dad, and the rest will fall into place. Hook. Line. And Sinker. Ed Hardy, here I come!
All that is left to do is to put up with ten years of emotional castration, and then the sweet relief of a D-I-V-O-R-C-E will be my salvation. There is the little matter of what happens to the eight children. Though, hanging on to them could segue into a book series, as well as a clothing line. We all know that her uterus incubated those children for a very well-thought out, systematically executed economic plan. You honestly don’t think it was a coincidence that the number of tax write-offs happened to fit into a clever rhyming scheme for an accidental TV show? Hardly. Kate had that planned since she was ten, which is why she wears Dolce & Gabbana as her casual clothes. For all these reasons, I think I will hang on to my future set of multiples and raise them vicariously through a frazzled, and underpaid nanny.
There you have it, friends. This is my way to survive during these tumultuous financial times in America. Marry someone you hate. Let them pervert your American dream beyond recognition, and then end the marriage with more money than you started. It is a little something I like to call, economic strategy.
Brady Mallory, an Austin, Minn., native is a broadcast major at South Dakota State University.
