Half-Assed Effort

There’s a lot more involved in getting a divorce than people realize. It’s not a matter of filing paperwork and then it’s all taken care of cleanly and done. God, no, that would be convenient. That would be like pulling the bandage off quickly. But instead, every single step of the way has to drag out for months upon months upon months, with infinite bureaucratic hoops to jump and red tape to work through. You think you can just get a person’s name taken off of a mortgage? Fat chance, pal. It doesn’t work that way. If you’re lucky, and your ex hasn’t completely trashed your credit rating, the best you can hope for is to refinance it and, in all likelihood, get completely shafted on the financing charges and the interest rate. You want a court date? Tough shit. Courts are booked up for months, and when your date finally does roll around you sit in the court room the whole day listening to assholes gripe at each other about all the reasons they hate each other now, until finally you find out that they have to reschedule you for another goddamn month down the road because the previous cases took too long.

I was dealing with another one of those steps the other day. Changing the names on insurance forms is actually one of the easiest steps in the whole process. You don’t really think about it ahead of time, it’s such a minor detail, but it actually was a fairly pleasurable experience, as things that remind you of the destruction of your dreams for the future go. My agent, a bald man named Vinny, actually smiled the whole time he was working. When I asked him, “Why do you seem so pleased?” he informed me simply that they deal with this sort of thing once every couple of weeks or so. Divorce is no big deal in the insurance game. It’s a bonus for them, really. All of those pesky line-item discounts they had to grant you before go away now, because she’s taking this house, this car, and these property policies for herself while you’re left with one other car and some renter’s insurance for your new whole in the wall, nearly condemned apartment. “It’s sort of like death claims, really,” he told me. “You get your first one or two, and you’re really upset. You get all wracked with sympathy. But, after a few months, you get used to it. It’s still a bad thing, but ultimately it’s just business as usual.”

That’s the way I feel about the Brat Pack (see, this is related to the match. I bet you thought I was just rambling again.) The first few times I dealt with groups like yours, it lit a fire under me like nothing I had ever experienced before. It got me charged up, got me flying down the ramps to go do battle with all my heart and soul. It made me want to get better, to compete at a level beyond anything anyone had ever seen. But now, it’s more of another day at the office. It’s routine, humdrum. I’ve done it before, I’ll do it again, and I won’t care then either. At least then I’ll probably put on a better show, not for any change in effort on my part but simply because I’ll have someone to work with who is actually somewhere near my level, unlike the underwhelming Katelyn Buehler.

So thus, I am sitting her typing out a short, blah-dee-blah, narrator talking to the air promo near the last second, and why I couldn’t be bothered to come up with something spectacular for this piece. If nothing else, I gave you the war promos from earlier in the week. You should thank me for that entertainment, at least. It’ll be more than you can expect from this garbage match.