BOOM, Blake!

The dollar sign and the female silhouette have two things in common. One, they’re symbols of the most influential forces in any man’s life – the two aspirations that can drive men to accomplish the grandest feats and commit the most wicked atrocities: Women and money.

And two, they’re the hottest mud-flaps I currently stock at my online big-rig accessories store, e-TruckStop.com. These things are selling like hot-cakes; I literally cannot keep them on the shelves. Which must make it hard to have to choose one over the other. I feel for you, Blake, and I wouldn’t trade places with you for a million dollars.

Actually, no — I would. A million dollars would solve your problem completely.

But short of a million, I wouldn’t want anything to do with your predicament — which is that you’re a hopeless pessimist. Because as I see it, Blake, you’re choosing to focus solely on the negatives: Your girlfriend only loves you because you’re rich. But why is that such a bad thing? I only love McDonald’s for the McRib, and our relationship will continue to flourish so long as they leave it on the menu. It’s called compromise, Blake — they keep pumping out condensed meat in the shape of a rack of ribs, and I keep forking over the $2.89 that I spent all morning fishing out urinals and sewer drains.

Start thinking positive. If you’re truly concerned that your girlfriend will leave you if you stop making a lot of money, then think about what she’d do if you started making more money. Mow the lawn? Clean the attic? Put your bookshelf in alphabetical order? Love, like every other emotion, is traded in exchange for something else.

The EMS crew that I saw ripping open the collapsed skeleton of a Chevy Malibu with the jaws of life on the way to work this morning “traded” eight minutes of extra traffic to me for the flurry of expletives I shouted at them while I drove by. Now, would I be upset if I hadn’t gotten the chance to throw a piping hot cup of coffee at a volunteer paramedic this morning? Of course not, Blake — because I’m a grown-up.

These might as well be wedding photos

Forget about all the reasons your girlfriend could possibly come up with to dump you. I’ve played that game, Blake, and it’s not fun. Thinking about what “might” happen if the ceiling of your bedroom buckles under the weight of your hidden box of pornography and six-hundred pounds of smut magazines crush your girlfriend’s legs is kind of a downer — and the only thing that came out of it was an expensive trip to the hardware store.

What is fun to think about is your girlfriend loving you even more — and the only way to make that happen is to earn more money. It’s pretty simple logic: If you make more money, a woman that only loves money will love your money even more. And you know what aspect of your money she’ll have to love by default? You. You’ll be like the lifelong friend of the star quarterback in high school that gets invited to all the cool parties.

Things will start off rough — you’ll be teased, ridiculed, and harassed. But after a few years of abuse, the other football players and cheerleaders will begin to accept your presence simply because you’ve been there for so long. And trust me, Blake — once you’re “in,” you’re in for good. Unless the ceiling of your room in your parents’ house buckles under the weight of your hidden box of pornography and crushes the legs of the girl that washes the pom-poms after football games. In that case, your only option is to transfer.

So stop collecting “what-ifs” and start collecting what really counts in relationships: Money. Besides, hypothesizing over what your life could have been had you done things differently will seem a lot more fun after 40 years of toiling in a career that you hate.

BOOM!