Dear Hank,

I have a serious issue that needs addressed. I’m a conservative, belong to the NRA and have just finished my bunker cause we all know what’s coming in 2012. My damn wife wants to decorate the damn thing and take down all my desert storm pictures. We will be sharing the space with our son who is two right now and our cat Sherman, but I can’t give up my plaid couch and plasma T.V. We’re heading for a divorce after 15 yrs. of marriage over this! I need help!

-Lost in Arkansas!

Dear Lost,

Most women aren’t as smart as you give them credit for. For one, she ain’t gonna divorce you over some damn plaid couch and plasma T.V. There has to be a much better reason than that. Why look at Tiger Woods. His wife just caught him cheating with half the female population and she’s allowing him to stick around. Now granted, he is her gravy train, but you can be just as useful to your wife in marriage as you can if she divorced you. It’s just a diversionary tactic. And we both know a lot about those from being in the war, now don’t we?

Two can play at the diversionary tactic game. Here’s what you do. While she’s down there measuring for drapes, up high on that step ladder, go down there and ask her when she’s out buying the fabric if she wouldn’t mind going over to the hardware store and picking up some rat traps. She’ll tell you, in that “I-know-it-all” tone of hers that there ain’t no rats in the house, and all you have to reply is, “yah, I know hon, but I’ve seen droppings down here,” and then watch the fun as she starts shrieking and telling you she ain’t coming down from that ladder.

That’s about the time you become her own personal knight in shining armor and offer to help her down from the ladder and out of your man cave. All you have to do from there on out is to bring up an empty rat trap every so often and tell her that those are some very smart rats down there and you’re just gonna have to wait it out and let them die from starvation. Throw some stinky socks and maybe a couple of half-opened Vienna sausage cans back there behind the plaid couch to stink up the place a bit, and voila, you have your bunker back.

Come Armageddon time, you won’t have to share your man cave with anyone other than your two favorite pals, Bud Wiser and Jack Daniels.

-Cheers,
Hank

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