WOMEN SPEAK IN ESTROGEN AND MEN LISTEN IN TESTOSTERONE by Matt Groening RELATIONSHIPS: When a relationship ends, a woman will cry and pour her heart out to her girlfriends, and she will write a poem titled ''All Men Are Idiots''. Then she will get on with her life. A man has a little more trouble letting go. Six months after the break-up, at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday night, he will call and say, ''I just wanted to let you know you ruined my life, and I'll never forgive you, and I hate you, and you're a total floozy. But I want you to know that there's always a chance for us.'' This is known as the ''I Hate You / I Love You'' drunken phone call, and 99% of all men have made at least once. There are community colleges that offer courses to help men get over this need. SEX: Women prefer 30-40 minutes of foreplay. Men prefer 30-40 seconds of foreplay. Men consider driving back to her place as part of the foreplay. MATURITY: Women mature much faster than men. Most 17-year old females can function as adults. Most 17-year old males are still trading baseball cards and giving each other wedgies after gym class. This is why high school romances rarely work out. MAGAZINES: Men's magazines often feature pictures of naked women. Women's magazines also feature pictures of naked women. This is because the female body is a beautiful work of art, while the male body is lumpy and hairy and should not be seen by the light of day. Men are turned on at the sight of a naked woman's body. Most naked men elicit laughter from women. HANDWRITING: To their credit, men do not decorate their penmanship. They just chicken-scratch. Women use scented, colored stationery and they dot their ''i's'' with circles and hearts. Women use ridiculously large loops in their ''p's'' and ''g's''. It is a royal pain to read a note from a woman. Even when she's dumping you, she'll put a smiley face at the end of the note!!! BATHROOMS: A man has six items in his bathroom-a toothbrush, shaving cream, razor, a bar of Dial soap, and a towel from the Holiday Inn. The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 437. A man would not be able to identify most of these items. GROCERIES: A woman makes a list of things she needs and then goes out to the store and buys these things. A man waits till the only items left in his fridge are half a lime and a beer. Then he goes grocery shopping. He buys everything that looks good. By the time a man reaches the checkout counter, his cart is packed tighter than the Clampett's car on Beverly Hillbillies. Of course, this will not stop him from going to the 10-items-or-less lane. CATS: Women love cats. Men say they love cats, but when women aren't looking, men kick cats. LAUNDRY: Women do laundry every couple of days. A man will wear every article of clothing he owns, including his surgical pants that were hip about eight years ago, before he will do his laundry. When he is finally out of clothes, he will wear a dirty sweatshirt inside out, rent a U-Haul and take his mountain of clothes to the laundromat. Men always expect to meet beautiful women at the laundromat. This is a myth perpetuated by re-runs of old episodes of ''Love, American Style.'' THE TELEPHONE: Men see the telephone as a communication tool. They use the telephone to send short messages to other people. A woman can visit her girlfriend for two weeks, and upon returning home, she will call the same friend and they will talk for three hours. RICHARD GERE: Women like Richard Gere because he is sexy in a dangerous way. Men hate Richard Gere because he reminds them of that slick guy who works at the health club and dates only married women. MADONNA: Same as above, but reversed. Same reason. LOCKER ROOMS: In the locker room men talk about three things: money, football, and women. They exaggerate about money, they don't know football nearly as well as they think they do, and they fabricate stories about women. Women talk about one thing in the locker-sex. And not in abstract terms, either. They are extremely graphic and technical, and they never lie. MOVIES: Every actress in the history of movies has had to do a nude scene. This is because every movie in the history of movies has been produced by a man. The only actor who has ever appeared nude in the movies is Richard Gere. This is another reason why men hate him. TIME: When a woman says she'll be ready to go out in five more minutes, she's using the same meaning of time as when a man says the football game just has five minutes left. Neither of them is counting time outs, commercials, or replays. FRIENDS: Women on a girl's night out talk the whole time. Men on a boy's night out say about twenty words all night, most of which are ''Pass the Doritos or Got any more beer?'' RESTROOMS: Men use restrooms for purely biological reasons. Women use restrooms as social lounges. Men in a restrooms will never speak a word to each other. Women who've never met will leave a restroom giggling together like old friends. And never in the history of the world has a man excused himself from a restaurant table by saying, ''Hey, Tom, I was just about to take a leak. Do you want to join me?''
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