Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Joys of Holy Matrimony (Sharpest Blade in the Drawer Division)

LAS CRUCEZ, New Mexico, March 11 - A woman from Las Crucez, N.M. (pop. roughly 95,000) has been charged with three counts of aggravated battery against a household member, and a separate battery count, for allegedly stabbing her ex-husband after she looked through the call history of his cellular telephone.
   A March 7 Associated Press story declined to say what she discovered in in the phone. A cursory Google search - one never clicks past the first page, because one has better things to do, such as napping - shows that other news outlets, including Las Crucez television stations, are as lazy as this reporter: all ran the AP story, so details about the telephone's contents remain sketchy all across the World Wide Web (www.).
   The story is full of suggestive details, however, each of which seems a perfect springboard for a novel (or, these days, a Twitter posting).
   "According to police," the AP writes,"[the woman] and her 29-year-old ex-husband were at her home late Thursday when she became upset after looking through his cell phone's history."
   (This information appeared in the second graf - that's newspeak for paragraph - of the AP story. The AP did not write "[the woman]." They wrote "Shaw," indicating that this was the woman's Christian name. But the first graf does not give her full name. This is an oversight of monumental proportions, and points to the appalling state of American journalism. If you can't trust the AP, whom can you trust?)
   Why, one wonders, were they at her home? They are, for goodness sake, ex-husband and -wife. One would think it prudent, not to say preferable, to maintain a good deal of distance between oneself and a second party under those circumstances. Alas, those enjoying, or who have enjoyed, "a union between a man and a woman" have their own ways, some of which are mysterious in the extreme. 
   The AP quotes detectives as saying that the mysteriously one-named Shaw, who was mysteriously enjoying (enduring?) the company of her ex-husband, became enraged at the mysteriously un-reported, and deeply mysterious, contents of her husband's portable telephone. Not altogether mysteriously, she drew a knife "and started swinging at her husband, striking him at least three times."
   His injuries were, according to the AP, "not life-threatening." Perhaps if the couple had still been married, the woman would have tried harder to do serious damage to the man she had taken for better or worse, in sickness and health, till death did them part. After all, if death did them part, the contents of his carry-around telephone would be moot, now wouldn't they?
   Plainly, heterosexuals take seriously the institution of marriage. Even after disrespecting the sacred institution by bailing on it, they are so drawn to the one to whom they pledged their troth that, when the loved one disobeys, they feel compelled to stab the shit out of them. 
   Gays and lesbians waiting for the blessed day when same-gender marriage rights become available should take note.

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