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Overview
Zany radio hosts Rick & Bubba rocketed onto the New York Times bestseller list with their first book, Rick & Bubba’s Expert Guide to God, Country, Family, and Anything Else We Can Think Of. Now Rick & Bubba are back, and this time the world truly isn’t safe.
In The Rick & Bubba Code, Rick and Bubba tackle subjects ranging from the South, politics, and romance to manhood, in-laws, and political correctness. Now cow is sacred. No hold is barred. Laugh along with the “sexiest fat men alive” as they uncover the mysteries of the universe.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781418531119 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Christian Publishing |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2023 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 223 |
| File size: | 884 KB |
Read an Excerpt
The Rick & Bubba Code
By Rick Burgess, Bill "Bubba" Bussey, Martha Bolton
Thomas Nelson
Copyright © 2007 Rick Burgess and Bill "Bubba" BusseyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4185-3111-9
CHAPTER 1
DISADVANTAGES TO BEING A MAN
Here's just a portion of the ever-accumulating list.
1. In an emergency, it's "Women and children first."
Who made up this rule? Obviously a woman. Or a child. It certainly couldn't have been a man. After all, man was created to survive. It's the "survival of the fittest," not the "demise of the most polite." We suspect some woman probably made up this rule during some long-ago emergency, and the men standing around at the time were too weak to object.
We are not weak men. In fact, whenever I (Rick) am on an airplane, I always look around and make sure I'm in a position where I can take anybody that's between me and one of the exit doors. I realize this sounds a bit self-centered, but it's simply survival instincts. It's also for the greater good of the others on the plane. I know if I can get out of that airplane first, then I'll be in a position to run to a nearby farmhouse, have a soda, and then call 911. (In an emergency situation I have been known to drink an entire can of soda in five seconds flat.) The rescue team would be on its way for the others in no time at all.
Another reason why I should be the first one off the plane is because when the elderly lady sitting in the emergency row next to me starts shoving the passengers out the door and down that big yellow slide, there needs to be someone at the bottom who is strong enough to catch them. I couldn't let women and children just tumble down an emergency chute with no one down there to catch them. That's not the kind of stock I'm made of. I would stand there dutifully waiting for that first big guy to come sliding down and then assign him the job while I looked for my luggage.
It would work the same if I were on a cruise ship. If I have to knock a few others out of the way so I can get into the lifeboat first in order to help those behind me, well, then so be it.
Never let it be said that Rick Burgess wasn't willing to put his safety first for the ultimate safety of the masses.
2. Men have to take out the garbage.
Again, who decided that this would be the man's job? The bottom of the bag can rip open just as easily for us as it can for our wives. We're not even the ones filling the bags either. Our trash rarely makes it into the trash containers in the first place. Should the pain of all those missed "baskets" be compounded with having to haul the trash bags out to the curb, too?
Like other men, taking out the garbage is my (Bubba) job. And like other men, I didn't even get a vote. Every Monday morning it is incumbent upon me to see that the garbage cans make it to the street. According to the Betty Bussey Family Proclamation, I handle everything outside the house; she handles everything inside the house. But the garbage cans, which are technically both inside and outside the house, have been declared my responsibility. There's no bucking it: It's written in ink, with calligraphy.
For years I operated under the mistaken assumption that writing a book and having a radio and television show was a big deal to my wife. I have since learned it is not. In fact, when our first book came out, Betty lovingly said, "That's wonderful, honey. But you're still rolling the trash can to the street!"
If this book sells a million copies, it will still be, "That's wonderful, honey. But you're still rolling the trash can to the street!"
If I win the Nobel Prize for literature, she will send a note up to me right in the middle of my acceptance speech, reminding me that my true calling involves cans filled with banana peels, Twinkie wrappers, and toilet paper rolls.
After all, Betty takes this job of mine seriously. It doesn't matter how successful I become in life. In the end, my total worth will be judged (as it is each week) by one standard alone: whether or not I have taken out the garbage.
3. There are no sofas in men's restrooms.
Okay, ladies, this one's a fairness issue. Each of us has accidentally walked into enough of your restrooms to know that we men are being shortchanged in the public restroom department. Your facilities are clean, some smell like flowers or sea breezes, and a good number of them have sofas. This is in addition to working toilets, filled soap and paper dispensers, faucets that you can turn on and off, and the occasional bottle of hand lotion.
Men don't get any of that. The attendant checklist on the wall of the average men's restroom has a last entry of June 12, 1998; the soap dispenser will be empty and crusted over; the faucet—if it's even running—will squirt water in six different directions; and you will never ever find anything that even resembles a sofa.
As for aromas, our status as Southern gentlemen keeps us from going into detail. Just know this: if you've ever wondered why men's restroom lines move a lot faster than women's, the answer is simple—a man can only hold his breath for so long.
4. Even if we fall from thirty-foot scaffolding, we are not supposed to cry.
I don't know who made up the rule about men not being allowed to cry, but again, not fair. The fairer Kleenex-toting sex has known for centuries that sometimes in life, you just have to cry. After all, you can't watch your team lose the Super Bowl by a field goal and not show some sort of emotion. And you should see us bawling every April 15th.
The fact of the matter is, we (Rick and Bubba) do cry. And we're man enough to admit it.
5. Unlike women, we can't flirt our way out of a traffic ticket.
A cop pulls a pretty girl over for running a stop sign. The girl smiles (or cries), bats her eyelashes a few times, and the cop might let her off with a warning. This same cop pulls a guy over for the exact same infraction ... and it's life with no chance of parole.
6. We have to take orders from women.
All our lives it seems that we men have been taking orders from a woman. When we were young, we took them from our moms. When we grew up and got married, we started answering to our wives. Now for me (Bubba), it's my cute little seven-year-old daughter, Katelyn, who is starting to order me around. My goal in life is to someday be the one in charge before I die. ... that is if it's okay with my mom, Betty, and Katelyn.
Note: We originally planned to have twenty items on this list, but we couldn't finish it. Bubba had to take out the trash, and Rick's wife said that six was plenty.
CHAPTER 2ADVANTAGES TO BEING A MAN
Don't get us wrong. There are some advantages to being men.
1. No one expects men to grow up.
No one looks twice at a man still playing with video games into his forties and fifties. In fact, the best thing that adulthood did to us was get us a job where we could buy our own big screen TVs to play our video games on. This is totally acceptable in society.
Not true for a woman. If a forty-five-year-old woman were to pull out her EZ Bake oven and start trying to cook a roast for dinner, we'd send her off for an evaluation. And some take-out food. We don't want to see our wives standing over a stove that's half her height, baking us a cake the size of a cookie. We want her using a real kitchen and making us a real dinner after our hard day of ... watching football and playing video games.
2. You get to be the fun parent.
For many men, their duties in childrearing are lighter so there's more free time to play. Moms—not all mind you, but most—are better at teaching the lessons of good hygiene and manners and at keeping the kids somewhat presentable. A Dad's strengths lie in the tickling and wrestling department.
If our kids don't remember anything else, we want them to be able to say one day, "Dad played with me." We think every kid secretly hopes that he can say that about his or her father. That, and that he was the strongest and smartest man in the world.
3. No childbirth pain.
This is a great advantage to being a male. Our part in producing offspring is, well, a lot more fun than childbirth. We don't have to go through the pain of labor. We may be there in the room for the birthing process, but when it's all over, we just scoop up the baby and do the touchdown dance without breaking a sweat. Our poor wife, worn out from some twelve hours of hard labor, can barely lift her head, and we're sitting on the side of the bed complaining that the air conditioning's a little cool and could the nurse turn it down a notch or two.
Don't be misled, though. We men don't escape all pain during childbirth. Our cheek muscles get pretty sore from helping with all that Lamaze breathing, as well as from our wives pinching our faces as they turn it from the TV back toward them and say, "Quit watching that game and pay attention!"
4. Style is not as important.
We men can wear khaki shorts and a jersey every day of our lives and we're happy. Or our favorite pair of sweats. Or even a shirt from the sixties. We have learned to be content in "whatsoever state we're in." We don't need a bunch of pairs of shoes either. I (Rick) have just three pairs of shoes: tennis shoes, beach sandals, and Sunday shoes. No matter what Paris Hilton thinks or how often she shops, three pairs of shoes are all any of us really need.
5. We can open jars, in most cases, without bringing in the dynamite.
Emphasis on "in most cases." We're not sure what they're sealing pickle jars with these days, but NASA ought to be looking into it for their spaceships.
6. Men don't have unrealistic expectations of themselves.
Unlike girls and their Barbies, guys have never taken the Ken doll seriously. Guys don't grow up thinking that's what we have to look like to be successful in life. No grown man is walking around saying, "If I could just be more like Ken." When's the last time you saw Ken designer clothes for men in a department store? As far as we know, no one is marketing Ken Dream Garages or Ken Corvettes to us men. No man is in therapy today because of what living up to the Ken image did to him in his childhood. Nor is he starving himself because he doesn't have the same chiseled chest or waistline as the Ken doll. We just don't get caught up in trying to meet an impossible standard. Barbie's pretty, but it's an unattainable goal, ladies. Do you have any idea how many Hershey bars you'd have to pass up to have a two-inch waistline?
7. Our last name doesn't change when we marry.
This can be a huge advantage, especially for bachelors who own monogrammed towels that still have some threads left in them.
8. Overweight, average-looking men can marry stunningly beautiful women.
We are living proof of this. For some reason, many women put a top priority on personality and a good sense of humor when dating. Most men are a tad more shallow.
9. Men never have to clean a toilet.
Even when I (Rick) lived alone, I called in help for this job. Not a cleaning lady either. I just paid a plumber to come in and change the whole thing—commode, tank, seat, and all. That's so much more sanitary than actually cleaning it. What I'm waiting for is self-cleaning toilets. Why someone hasn't started marketing this is beyond me. We've got self-cleaning ovens, why not self-cleaning toilets?
10. Men can dress faster than women.
Men can be showered and ready to go in ten minutes flat. A woman may take ten minutes just to get a bath ready. She has to pour in the bubble bath, light the candles, get the bath pillow in place, put the CD in the portable CD player, and make sure the water is at the perfect temperature. Then when the phone rings and distracts her for thirty minutes, she has to let the water out and start the process all over again.
This kind of womanly behavior drives me (Rick) crazy on Sunday mornings when I'm trying my best to get the family to church on time. I finally had to tell my wife, Sherri, to please set the alarm earlier, just so she'll be able to get ready before the rest of us ever get up. I love Sherri, but I'm going to have to speak the truth in love on this one. When we're all ready and looking sharp, we'll look around and think, "Hey, we're gonna make it on time this week!" But then the word comes down that Momma hasn't even started getting ready yet, and the collective, "Oh, no," can be heard throughout the entire house.
Ladies, there can't be that much to do to get ready. Why not follow our lead? We men can take a shower, towel dry our hair, throw a little gel in it and we're good to go in a matter of minutes. Having this talent is clearly an advantage for men.
But maybe it's a disadvantage, too. We're the ones who have to wait for you.
CHAPTER 3ADVANTAGES TO BEING A WOMAN
No matter what political person is in power, the truth remains: Women rule the world.
CHAPTER 4THE RICK & BUBBA CODE TO UNDERSTANDING WIFE-SPEAK
Since this book is about secret codes, no code is more secret than the Wife-Speak Code. This ancient tongue, passed down from woman to woman since the dawn of time, is one of the most difficult languages to translate, due to the fact that there are virtually no qualified male translators, and female translators often refuse to cooperate for fear of exposing the code's secrets. This is how wife-speak has managed to keep us guys in the dark for hundreds, even thousands of years.
But take cheer, a small ray of light is now shining through the darkness. After years of research, professors at the Rick and Bubba University of Relational Linguistics in Gadsden, Alabama, are now prepared to break this ancient code and offer to the general public the secret interpretations for the following Wife-Speak phrases:
Wife-speak:Can you take the kids with you?
Hidden code: The kids are going with you. I don't want to hear your excuses or your whining. These kids have been driving me insane all day and if you don't get them out of here, I may have to start eating my young, beginning with the plumpest and most immature one. That would be you.
Wife-speak:You're not going to wear that, are you?
Hidden code: I am completely mortified every time you put that on. You are not wearing that. The 80s are over. Save your breath and just go change.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Rick & Bubba Code by Rick Burgess, Bill "Bubba" Bussey, Martha Bolton. Copyright © 2007 Rick Burgess and Bill "Bubba" Bussey. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments, xiii,Facts, xv,
Prologue, xvii,
PART I - DECODING MEN AND WOMEN,
Disadvantages to Being a Man, 3,
Advantages to Being a Man, 7,
Advantages to Being a Woman, 12,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Understanding Wife-Speak, 13,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Male Hygiene, 17,
The Father's Day Wars, 21,
The Rick & Bubba Code for Determining Your "Guy Quotient", 25,
Opinion-less, 29,
PART II - DECODING ROMANCE,
How Bubba Met Betty, 35,
How Rick Met Sherri, 40,
Valentine Anxiety, 44,
Whatever, 49,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Marriage Accounting, 55,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Joint Hunting Trips, 58,
The Power of a Woman, 62,
PART III - DECODING PHYSICAL FITNESS,
Questions We'd Like to Ask Skinny People, 66,
The Rick & Bubba Diet, 74,
Tennis, Anyone?, 76,
The Rick & Bubba Exercise Video, 78,
PART IV - DECODING POLITICS,
Fix What's Broken and Leave the Rest Alone, 82,
Presidential Pardon, 84,
The First Department of Transportation, 88,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Foreign Affairs, 91,
PART V - DECODING FAMILY,
Before You Know It, They'll Be Driving, 94,
Fire in My Loins (It's Not What You Think), 99,
A Georgia Safari, 101,
On The Hunt, 105,
Why We Love Betty Lou, 110,
Hostages, 113,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Understanding Family, 119,
Home Alone ... With Dad, 124,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Babysitting for Dads, 127,
PART VI - DECODING RICK & BUBBA,
Rick & Bubba's Museum of Art, 132,
Snakes in the Line, 134,
Rick Gets His Due, Bubba Gets His Frankfurter, 138,
Death by Tiger, 140,
The Rick & Bubba Code—The Movie, 143,
PART VII - DECODING THE SOUTH,
The Rick & Bubba Code to the South, 146,
Southern Labels, 150,
Biker Bistro, 152,
Don't Give Me Any Lip, 158,
PART VIII - DECODING RELIGION,
The Rick & Bubba Code to the Good Book, 162,
What the Baptists Got Right, 165,
Pew Pet Peeves, 168,
Keeping the Faith, 170,
PART IX - DECODING LIFE,
Whistle While You Work, 174,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Understanding Service Professional Lingo, 176,
Death Doesn't Become Us, 183,
The Rick & Bubba Code to Life, 188,
Epilogue, 196,