Fun with Fetuses

Someone posted a sonogram to facebook the other day. I hope she's really happy. I'm a little sad, though. She's trading possibility and a killer beach bod for a tiny, incapable monster that won't appreciate her for 30 years.

Mostly, I'm just skeeved out by pregnancy. I mean look at this thing:

I know you're supposed to look at that T.V. static peanut and see a baby like so:

But all I see is this:

I'm pretty sure I've seen that Pokémon before. I'm also pretty sure it burst out of Kane's chest in Ridley Scott's Alien.

Pregnancy is terrifying.

An End to Innocence

Well, it's finally happened.

Two of my friends, one I've known since middle school and her long-time boyfriend, have gotten engaged. They loved together, lived together, and now they're getting married because it's a wonderful display of grossness and affection.

Oh, and did I mention she's not even pregnant?

See, that's the deciding factor in this becoming the end of my childhood. Someone I went to school with, who is well-educated and financially stable(ish–come on, we're still entry-level), is getting married because she wants to, not because she has to, as has been the case with a couple friends and about 8/9ths of my family for the last 30 years.

Oh, sure, I've had friends do this before, but it was always someone's older sister, or a Facebook post for someone I haven't spoken to since we parted ways after 10th Grade English.

Or, like I said, BABIES HAPPENED.

No more. We are now part of the age group that has jobs and apartments and dogs and gets married because we love somebody and don't even care about the crazy tax breaks.

Look at these responsible bastards.

I thought I was done with all that "So when are you getting married??" B.S. after my younger cousin got knocked up and the line of succession skipped me.

Jeeze, I think I need to go lie down. And then go eat about four boxes of Cocoa Puffs out of a salad bowl and throw water ballons at passing cars or something

On Pregnancy

Met a woman today buying three books about pregnancy and a copy of "The Vow." Let's just take an inductive leap and assume she's going to skip straight to the "Hormonal" chapter.

Honestly, I was surprised she didn't grab half a pound of Godiva and a jar's worth of fried pickles.

Of course, we don't sell fried pickles, but I'd eat enough to get sick if we did. Probably best we don't, then. Chocolate and pickles are good together too. Crap, I think I've been pregnant for my entire life. Like Godzilla.

"Ugh…I think my ankles are swollen!"

On Pregnancy

I saw a pregnant woman today and, for the first time, I considered the notion of a baby:

Just this horrible, translucent, tailed parasite swimming around inside you, gorging itself on the sustenance you provide, waiting to burst forth from your stomach like a xenomorph facehugger and rely on me for the rest of my life to support it.

This is the most disgusting thing I can
imagine, right now. I'd rather see gore
or actually watch a Ridley Scott Alien
movie than think of this.

I gagged a little.

All this tells me two things. First, that I should absolutely not become a father any time soon, as I obviously have a pretty warped perspective on the miracle that is biological reproduction.

Two: when I do make the mistake of/am wonderfully blessed by having children, I'm going to be a pretty fun dad to play house with.

BieberBabyGate

Here are the only things I will say about BieberBabyGate, as I firmly believe talking about this at all gives more power to Bieber and the mainstream media by and large, bother things I would normally discourage.

1. Who is thinking of poor Selina Gomez through all this?

Seriously, that girl is 19, patiently and chastely waiting for her beau to come legal, and here this bitch comes in and makes her the youngest step-milf on Waverly Place.


2. The age of consent in California is 18. When they supposedly boinked, Bieber was 16. This girl, Mariah Yeater, had just turned 19.

Based on California state penal code and previous legal precedent, this was technically statutory rape.

Thankfully, someone has agreed to look into that angle if it pans out. Because if a teen heart-throb should ever knock up a groupie in the bathroom backstage at one of his concerts, we should at least have the decency to shun her, call her fat, and force her to have the baby in a low-security state penitentiary.

Thank god it's just a misdemeanor. Maybe they'll let her off with a restraining order and fine. So she really better be right about this, or she's not going to be able to recoup that loss with any sweet, sweet child support.

Whatever. "Undisclosed settlement," here we come. 15 years from now there'll be another mop-headed blond ingenue (or male equivalent), and I still won't give a shit.

Books I Thought I Shelved Until I Rechecked the Title

• "Diapers are for Babies" - Family and Child Care
  
• "You're Not Pregnant, You're Fat" - Health; Diet and Exercise
  
• "So You Keep Throwing Up But You're Still Getting Fatter" - Pregnancy
  
• "Bloodslut" - Teen Paranormal Romance (Actually titled "Bloodlust, but I was reading it upside-down)

Of Psychology and Divorce

My friend and I once had a conversation about divorce and parenthood, chiefly from the perspective of the child. As it stands, the parents of pretty much everyone I was friends with before the age of twelve have gotten divorced. Mine did it when I wasn't even three yet, so I like to think that once again I'm just ahead of the curve when it comes to certain things.

In talking, we noted that a late divorce probably causes more anger on the part of the child but is short-lived. A mature child can eventually deal with it and as an adult even be relatively unscathed. An early divorce, meanwhile, likely has a greater impact on the formation of the child's personality, for example, the way I can't stand loud, angry arguing or baseball.

And somehow, I'm not exactly sure how, we got to talking about the children born to parents who shouldn't have been together in the first place. Granted, my parents were like that, but at least I was planned. Also, I came out awesome.

Some of our friends, however, have already had babies. Others are the product of similar "Oops!" moments for their young parents. Let me say here and now, I have no doubt in my mind that every single one of these individuals has been the light of their parents' lives. These children are the definition of "happy accident." Despite all the possible disadvantages, I have never seen children more loved by their parents.

Still, I wondered what that could do to a child's personality, knowing that, while you are absolutely loved and supported by both parents unconditionally, it is a fact that you were not a planned pregnancy and for at least a few months before and after popping your head into the world (so to speak) were a pretty big inconvenience overall.

I postulated that one of our friends, a child conceived by accident would care very much about people liking them, would go to great lengths to please others and often go quiet as to how much those same actions negatively impacted him/herself. He would be a people-pleaser, but soft spoken. She would be as unobtrusive as possible, willing to stand up for herself when need be but low-key in her self-reliance. There might be resentment towards how the parents interact with each other, and perhaps at an earlier age than most such a child would realize her parents are human and prone to error just as she is. A child could learn from his parent's mistakes and not repeat the behaviors which years later led to their own wonderful birth, achieving great things.
And that's when my friend and I realized we were describing the exact person we had set out to mentally dissect.


Basically, what I'm saying is
a) we conducted a proof by independent verification, and
b) we conducted a colossal waste of time before going into an A&P to buy juice.

On Unnecessary Bieber

Really, people?

Do we really need to know what your kid would look like if it was fathered (mothered?) by Justin Bieber?

I was all on board with age progression on Shiloh Jolie-Pitt because, frankly, that kid has Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt for parents. It's either going to be some kind of Greco-Roman statuary or the biggest flesh pile of recessive traits since Rodney Dangerfield's mom had to strap a steak around his neck to get the dog to play with him.

I was even alright with this celebrity look-alike craze that comes up every few years. It's fun. I look kind of like some fun people. There are always funny glitches that pop up on humor sites. It's acceptable.

But Bieber? REALLY?

Let me give you a hint. You want to know what your Bieber baby will look like?


It'll look like a fucking baby!

Why? Because Bieber is still a fucking baby.

Look at his cheek bones. Those things haven't grown yet. His eyes are still close together. He doesn't have an Adam's apple, for Christ's sake. This is a boy who obviously has not gone through puberty, hence his ability to sing like a 13th century castrate.

Sweet Jesus, the boy might still have baby teeth and we're popularizing the notion that he can father children? This is exactly the kind of crap that's going to be keeping "16 and Pregnant" on the air for another decade.

On Dreams, Pt. IV

As I am writing this, it is a little before 10:30 on Friday morning. Those of you who know me will be surprised I am mentioning a time that ends in "a.m." that coincides with their being actual daylight outside.

Truth be told, I had a scary dream. I feel like the mark of being an adult is having a nightmare and immediately being able to roll over and go back to sleep. This time, however, I felt legitimately rested and awake.

My dream was actually so disturbing, so disgusting and out of character for my mind I can't even legitimately be afraid of it.It was like watching a cross between an over-the-top Japanese gorefest and Jennifer's Body (which interestingly I mentioned last night to elucidate how horrendous Megan Fox's acting is. "Have you seen 'Jennifer's Body?' "No?" "Exactly.")

It seems in my dream I was a detective of some kind. I had a very cool gun, in fact. I had just been transferred onto the Tokyo Police force, apparently through some twist of fate mirroring the flash-sideways universe on LOST.

Wandering around, I bumped into a couple well dressed men who, according to my inner monologue, were gangsters, yakuza, presumably, but inexplicably white. In fact, one of them was my friend Steve. Steve was immaculately dressed in some kind of swanky 3-piece corduroy suit.

Apparently, Steve was an ill-tempered Japanese mafioso, because when I kept insisting I felt like I knew him from his suit he pulled his gun on me. That was the point I dove to the ground and reached to the back of my waistband for my own weapon, as my partner went for his.

Then things got all gross and creepy. Steve's boss, rather than see him in custody, fell atop Steve, raining blows upon him. Once stunned, him bit into both of Steve's ears as a scarring display of disowning. Then somehow he slipped his right arm underneath Steve and managed to disembowel Steve bare-handed. Considering I don't watch horror movies, my brain did a pretty decent job of rendering stomach, small and large intestines spilling out of a ripped abdomen.

Meanwhile, all of this is being overlaid with a scene of a Japanese woman dying in the process of birthing a still-born fetus that looks like an angry, Satanic alien baby. That was gross, but did I mention I was feeling her pain? Yes, my guts were exploding outward from my mouth, bubbles of digestive lining herniating up through my esophagus and out my mouth, bursting and squirting out white bile like a mid-nineties Super Soaker, the heat of which was palpable as it often sprayed up to hit me on the nose and face. Maniacal fetus baby cackled and hissed at me, some kind of demonic, extra-dimensional observer.

So yeah, that was pretty weird. I mean, I don't even think Japanese police officers are allowed to carry guns.

On Fertility Treatments

400 BABIES!!!*



I'm fine with people going to great lengths to naturally produce genetic offspring, but I've got to tell you that when you implant, like, nine fertilized embryos and are surprised when more than two take root, you're an idiot and kind of an asshole.

Sure, you're excited to have babies. We get that. You couldn't have any and suddenly you've got two or three and it's awesome for you. However, there are some of us who are both young and fertile, who view children as almost antithetical to where we want to be in life right now.

That's why when we see your "TRIP-LETS" license plate on the back of your red mini-van we get annoyed. You have children. We get it. Stop looking for attention.

I saw your three teenage daughters in their nearly-identical green plaid flannel shirts and their skinny-fit, dark wash hipster jeans, and none of them looked very happy about still dressing identically at their age. Just stop it. Being a parent has consumed your identity and at this point those of us without progeny to support are just unnerved by your willingness to let this happen.

The chest-burster scene from Alien still seems a bit too metaphorical for us.


*Babies brought to you by PowerThirst Energy Drink. Yes, it still exists.