'REPRESSION AND RELEASE: the Western Dream on Three Squabbles a Day'
From Wd
- "F@*k!!"
- "C#!t!!"
- "G*£*!!"
Why was Dan shouting at the top of his voice late last night in the Grand Canyon campsite, upsetting the two Australians and many of the geologists next door? And how is this intimately related to Dan spending so much time in the dark, womb-like recesses of the trailer?
"Good morning. Before I start zis lecture, I would like to zank all 13 subjects of my experiment—I'm sorry, all 13 surviving members of ze expedition—for their unwitting participation over the past fortnight, and for changing their socks at least twice a week.
I would also like to zank them for their tolerance. I am sorry, but we academic psychologists do not wash dishes, even when it is our turn. This is partly the way we design our research projects, but mostly because we have very soft hands.
But I digress. The participants were chosen for their many marital states: married, single, divorced, nearly married, all but married ... you get ze picture. Then they were put through a series of stress situations, amounting to what we experts call a 'vacation'. At ze end, they would be taken to Las Vegas, home of the quickie wedding and the quickie divorce, and we would see what happened.
Ze director of ze experiment was Ron, one cool guy with a very low tolerance for any other way of arranging the food boxes. It was Ron's job to drive the participants from A to B, and sometimes, if it was too windy, to C.
In no particular order, the other participants were:
- Collette and Tim, two advertising executives with deeply honed Scrabble skills and a disturbing taste in 1970s prog-rock,
- Dan and Bev, partners in travel, but not partners in any other way, you know what I mean, two Oxford graduates plagued by varying degrees of disillusionment with their banking jobs,
- Jinny, an Americanised Indian who had problems understanding Dan's plummy accent, even though most of the time he was just saying "Excellent" or "That's a shame",
- Gary and Jenny, who started going out together after Gary came to fix Jenny's radiator,
