Oct. 18, 2015 - 7:37 a.m.

Molly and JoyJoy

NewWifey(tm), like most people, keeps a list in her head titled "Things That Irritate the Shit Out of Me". And like most women, that List can change at a moment's notice, and for no discernible reason. Like the other day I came home and NewWifey(tm) screamed at me the moment I walked in the door: "Fuckin' Mamie Eisenhower!!"

I stopped long ago being startled by things like this. I just said, "Yeah, she sucks alright. What'd she do this time?"

"PINK!" she yelled, pointing at her monitor. "It was Mamie Eisenhower who started the whole 'pink is a girl's color' bullshit. Up until her, it was blue. I hate pink!"

The next day I came home and she was wearing a pink taffeta skirt. "Isn't it cute?" she squealed.

"I thought you hated pink."

"Yeah, but isn't it cute?" She paused. "Don't get me wrong. Mamie Eisenhower still sucks."

This is why it's so hard being a husband. You never know whether you're on The List when you get home, why, or for how long. I think this goes a long way towards explaining why there are so many gay guys in the world. It's just easier.

However, there are two things that are ALWAYS on NewWifey(tm)'s List: Jehovah's Witnesses, and our TV service provider. Let's start with the telly.

I've mentioned before that I didn't have a TV before getting married. Buying my very first one when we got engaged was my big concession, without which NewWifey(tm) would have been on the next Greyhound back to Ozarkistan. I wasn't thrilled, but seeing as how the trade-off was access to regular, and depraved, sex, it seemed like a good deal at the time.

And at first it was. The peasants had their opiate, hubby wallowed in debauchery every night as payment, and peace reigned in the kingdom.

Then the first dragon appeared.

"Waaaah! I want cable! WAAAAAAAAAH!"

"What's the matter with our antenna signal?"

"All we get is three New York channels and that Korean church broadcast on UHF. I WANT CABLE!!"

So we got cable. And peace descended over the land again.

Until the next dragon appeared. Then the next. And the next.

"Can you believe what our cable company is doing? Raising our rates AND taking away some of our channels!"

"What channels are they taking away?"

She looked at the list. "The Golf Channel and Cartoon Network. Whew. It's only channels you watch. Ok, that's not so bad."

But the next time they axed "The DIY Network" and "TruTV". Four months later they pulled the plug on TLC.

That was the last straw.

"HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO WATCH 'MONSTERS INSIDE ME' (the disgusting medical "documentary" series about digusting people afflicted with disgusting parasites) AND 'SEX SENT ME TO THE ER'? WE'RE GETTING SATELLITE!"

So we cancelled our cable and put a dish up on our roof. Bang, three hundred and seventy nine channels of crap. But at least it cost less than cable, and NewWifey(tm)'s parasite-and-dangerous-fornication shows were back.

As was peace.

For oh, seven months.

That's when the satellite channels started disappearing. I mean, literally disappearing. During winter we often lost the entire signal whenever there was more than 24 inches of snow on the roof. And there is ALWAYS 24 inches of snow on the roof in the winter. AND the rates started going up. AND Direct-TV began culling more programs from their basic package. Including...drumrollllllll...."Monsters Inside Me".

That was it. NewWifey(tm) had had enough. It was her or Direct-TV. One of them was going to die by her hand.

I hasten to add here that none of this affected me. I was quite content to let our service provider reduce the number of available channels until we got down to a choice between a test pattern and "The 700 Club". Then we could shoot it.

Needless to say, NewWifey(tm) was not on board with that. She started sinking into real despair.

Sigh.

I guess, for the sake of my marriage then, I had to do something. It's that whole stupid "...or worse" clause I uttered 15 years ago. Dammit.

A week later a large box from Woot.com got dropped off on our front steps. Inside was a Roku TV, which by sheer stroke of luck Woot had just put on sale for a hundred and twenty five bucks, brand new, warranty included. It arrived barely in the nick of time. The day before I had caught NewWifey(tm) with her chair pulled up to the microwave watching the empty carousel go round and round. She wasn't gonna last much longer.

"What's that?" she asked as I lugged the box in.

"This" I said, "Is your revenge. It's called "Roku". You can stream all sorts of channels on it, from major networks to tiny little specialty channels; YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, and so on. No cable, no satellite dish, no antenna, nothing. Just a router."

"Can I watch live network TV?"

"Ahhh..........no. Not yet, anyway. I think there's some hardware we can get, but....anyway, what do you want to watch?"

"Goats."

"What?"

"Goats" she said. "I want to watch goats."

This was a surprise, but not a complete one. I knew NewWifey(tm) found watching goats to be rather soothing, in the way that many people can gaze out over the sea for hours lost in contemplation. There's a little country store down the road from us called "Penning's". They have a petting pen on the side of their store stocked with chickens and geese and goats and matted sheep so kids will have something to throw rocks at while their parents are inside buying overpriced local produce. On nice days NewWifey(tm) will take a walk down there with a little folding chair and plop down in the parking lot next to the fence and just sit and gaze until the sun starts going down and she has to trudge back.

I looked for goats.

And what do you know - there is a dedicated goat channel! Some elderly handicapped couple down in Florida has a pair of fat white goats named "Molly" and "JoyJoy" in a pen ringed with internet cameras that feed a live stream to anyone around the world who shares their mania. Even at night, when they switch on infrared cameras! Damn. I thought having a butt fetish was embarrassing....

So that was the first channel we added. "Goats Live TV". Starring Molly and JoyJoy. All improv.

After that we added the usual stuff - Netflix, YouTube, etc. - and a few specialty fetish oriented channels por moi (NewWifey(tm) told me to be sure I emphasized those are for me, and ONLY me).

Two weeks later we untethered ourselves from cable, satellite and rabbit ears. Once I found a way to stream RedTube onto that big screen I had no qualms at all letting slip the moorings of traditional broadcast. Au rivoir, ciao and tootaloo, motherfuckers.

And with that, "TV service provider" got knocked off NewWifey(tm)'s List forever.

Which left Jehovah's witnesses.

And they got knocked off yesterday.

Yesterday was Saturday. That's grocery day around here. Every Saturday morning I'm out the door around 6 am making the rounds, hoping to beat the crowds and find the best deals. And this time: score! ShopRite set out a tub filled to overflowing with shell steaks marked down to $3.99 a pound. Three ninety-nine a pound! That's cheaper than ground chuck, and I didn't hesitate. I jammed my elbow into the side of some fat old guy who was taking too long to make his choice, and dove head first into the cooler. I scooped as many as I could into my arms, my pockets, my jacket, and only stopped when I needed to come up for air. When I got to the register I spilled so much beef out onto the conveyor belt it set off a DefCon-2 alarm at PETA headquarters.

Twenty minutes later I hauled my four over-stuffed rucksacks-o-meat up the stairs to Dangerhouse and kicked open the door.

"HONEY! LOOK AT ALL THE -"

I stopped.

Inside our living room, their backs to me, were a middle aged man and woman. They wore crisp white shirts, the man in grey trousers and the woman a neatly pressed plaid skirt. They each had a Bible and a stack of pamphlets in their lap. Neither looked up at me.

On the other side of the room, facing them - and me - was NewWifey(tm).

Behind NewWifey(tm) was our new Roku set.

Playing a RedTube video. With the sound off.

NewWifey(tm) knew that I knew immediately what was going on. We had discussed a number of times before what our response would be if vermin like this ever showed up at our door. Since there's a large Jehovah's Witness hall only a short drive away, it was inevitable. NewWifey(tm)'s original suggestion was that she would answer the door naked, like she sees everybody on the internet bragging they do. But I pointed out that it was only men who did that. A fat middle-aged guy answering the door in the buff ramps up the Disgust Quotient through the roof. A nekkid babe answering the door risks having the opposite effect. I suggested porn.

She took that suggestion.

I took my bags of cow and quietly circled around to the kitchen where I could watch the proceedings from a safe vantage point.

There really wasn't much to see. About the only actual motion in the room was the sucking and fucking on the screen behind NewWifey(tm). She'd chosen a particularly brutal gangbang bukkake clip, featuring a tiny Asian girl who looked to be no more than 15 having what seemed like wiffle ball bat sized dicks jammed into her mouth and every other orifice, sometimes several at once. By the end she looked like a glazed yellow donut.

NewWifey(tm) was a picture of polite composure, sitting upright and sipping Twining's Lady Grey tea from her good bone china service. There was a teapot and two untouched full cups of tea in front of her on the coffee table going cold. Every now and then NewWifey(tm) would take a sip, dab at her mouth with her napkin, and go back to staring at the couple across from her.

The couple across from her did not move. They sat bolt upright, their gaze doggedly fixed on the cups of cold tea in front of them.

Finally one of them - the woman - spoke. "Thank you for your hospitality, but I think we'll be going now."

"Going?" said NewWifey(tm). "But you haven't even told me about your beliefs yet! Why don't you give me at least a basic overview? I've always been curious about what drives you people. Maybe I could even join you!"

That seemed to make the woman wince. She managed a "Unfortunately we really must be going. Perhaps some other time...at our Hall, next time." And she and the man stood up.

NewWifey(tm) waved them cheerfully off as they walked down the driveway and up the street. Then she turned and came into the kitchen.

"You were right" she said. "Worked like a charm."

I laughed. "Ok. You can turn Molly and JoyJoy back on now."

"Back on?" she said. "That's what I was watching when they showed up. You think goats is ALL I like? C'mon, toss a couple of those steaks on the grill and join me. I've got a Peter North classic cued up, ready to go. And don't forget the wine!" she yelled as I sprinted out to the Weber.

And so peace once again descended upon Dangerhouse, as did NewWifey(tm) on me. Thank you Roku. And fuck you Direct-TV, fuck you Jehovah's Witnesses, and fuck you Mamie Eisenhower. I'm not on The List. HA!

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Postscript: I wrote this a few months ago but forgot to post it in the bedlam of NewWifey(tm)'s health issues and so on. In the ensuing time, Molly the Goat passed away (ovarian cancer, of all things - lady goats, get those checkups!) and the owners decided to send JoyJoy back to live with her original family, on the farm where they got him (her?). They now have two new goats who are neither fat nor snow white, and NewWifey(tm) is having a hard time warming up to them. But she will, I know. And if she doesn't, RedTube is proving to be a good stop-gap. Talk about a win/win.

Ciao kids. Don't let those religious nuts get your goat.

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