Thursday, August 19, 2010

Redefining Marriage

I'm not going to get into the marriage debate with anyone because no amount of debate will make any difference to what really matters. What I will do, however, is relentlessly mock some of these extreme examples of people who have taken marriage to levels it was never intended to go.

November 2009. A Japanese man married Nene Anegasaki. Big deal, right? I don't know if any of you have heard of the Nintendo DS game "Love Plus", I hadn't before I read about this. Apparently Nene is one of the characters in the game. This wasn't like some Comic-Con appearance where his girlfriend dresses up like the character (or slave Leia, which apparently is a big thing). No, he brought his DS to the ceremony and was married to the character.

May 2010. Lee Jin-gyu from Korea marries his pillow. To be fair, it wasn't just a regular pillow. It was a large one with the picture of an anime character on it. I know what you're thinking... "Whew! That's okay then. For a moment there, I thought this was going to be weird.

Uwe Mitzscherlich, a German postal worker married Cecilia, his love of ten years. What could possibly be wrong there? She wasn't a game character or a pillow. The doctor told Uwe that Cecilia was ill and may not live for much longer, which seems to have prompted the wedding. Now, when I say "doctor", I really mean veterenarian. I'll let your minds wander around to all the different possibilities for a minute before I mention that Cecilia is a cat. Said Uwe, "Cecilia has such a trusting character. We constantly smooch and she has slept in my bed from the beginning of our relationship, which is unique." I almost feel to apologize about some of the things I may have said about pet parents, because this is a whole new level of stupid. I've heard many statistics in psychology and sociology about how married people tend to live longer, and how people with pets tend to live longer. I can't say I've seen any statistics on the lifespan of people who marry pets. I wonder if there's a government-funded study in there somewhere...

On a similar note in India, Selva Kumar felt guilty about killing two dogs around fifteen years ago and feels he has been cursed with paralyzed legs and hands as well as the loss of hearing in one ear as a result. What's the cure? It's so obvious, I don't know why anyone would even have to ask. Find a stray dog and marry it. No, seriously, he married a dog. It may be too soon to tell if the curse is lifting or not, though.

A 37-yr old Chinese man, Liu Ye, married himself to show his dissatisfaction with reality. He had a life-sized cardboard cutout of himself dressed as a woman to stand in at the ceremony. To be clear, the cutout was not dressed as a woman, it was a photo of him dressed as a woman. I'm not sure how the divorce proceedings would work in a case like that. How would you structure visitation rights? Who would get the house? What about the conditions of the restraining order? It seems a little problematic at best. The scary part was that he found 100 people to actually show up to the ceremony. Personally, I'm not sure how he managed to stay single long enough to marry himself.

I won't even discuss the man who married his Volkswagen Beetle named Vanilla, or the fact that he had relationships with Airwolf (the helicopter from the 80's TV show), or a Ford Ranger he named Ginger. Won't talk about the woman who married the Eiffel Tower (changed her last name to Eiffel too), or the woman who married a piece of the Berlin Wall, or the woman who wants to marry a roller coaster ride.

Forget about trying to define which two (or more) people can get married, apparently we need to start worrying about what people can marry. And what if these people believe in arranged marriages? Heaven forbid any of them should actually have children, but just imagine when mom or dad introduces you to the family pet, or Wii game, or whatever, with that hopeful gleam in their eyes.

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