Being a Breeder is Fun

It all happened so fast. One moment I’m a carefree single guy, playing in a rock band, drinking copious amounts of beer with nary a thought for the future – the next moment I’m married with two kids, working in an office and planning for my retirement.

What the hell happened?

Lately my hair started thinning out. Crap. I made it to my late forties with all my hair intact, and now, this? Isn’t baldness supposed to happen earlier on in life, like in a man’s twenties or thirties? It’s not fair to let me build up a false sense of smug security about my hair and then pull the plug (no pun intended) like that.

My waistline has also undergone a *ahem* slight fluctuation over the past few years. I used to be as skinny as a 2 x 4, now I’m, well, slight less so. Not fat, mind you, just not skinny. Ah, the changes age brings.

Mentally, though, I’m at my peak. What I lack in memory or attention span, I make up for in experience, wisdom, and emotional maturity. Thank heavens for that. It takes all the intellectual and emotional energy I can muster to stay on top of this ‘breeder’ gig.

Being a breeder might be fun, but it’s not always easy. For one thing, years ago, everyone was a breeder. Breeders had lots of company. These days, it’s a lot different. There are a lot of non-breeders around. And they have a lot more free time, disposable cash and material stuff than us breeders. Sometimes I feel jealous. All those exotic trips and restaurant meals; doing what they want when they want; being able to get-it-on with each other in any room in the house anytime of day or night without worrying about little peering eyes and curious ears - what a life.

But there are benefits to being a breeder. For one thing, if nuclear Armageddon were to happen tomorrow and the food supply were to run out, I could always cook and eat the kids. That’s a huge benefit right there. What price can you put on survival anyway? And they say that childhood obesity is a bad thing. Not if you’re a parent facing starvation it isn’t. In that case, it’s an extra week of life.

Aside from being a good source of nutrition, children can also be an unending source of entertainment. It’s all a matter of approaching this parenting thing in a creative manner.

In my household, the adults never stop laughing. Last evening at supper, for example, I plopped down heaping plates of asparagus, turnip and brussel sprouts in front of the kids and then sat across from them noisily eating a huge chocolate bar and bowl of ice cream. Well, you should have seen their faces. The wails were amusing, but it was the tears that really cracked me up – the way they make wet little trails down their little cheeks. I never laughed so hard in all my life.

Without a doubt, the opportunities for levity never end when you have children. Cutting off their phone calls when they are talking to their friends is always good for a howl of indignation from them and a good belly laugh for me. Listening on the extension and then nonchalantly joining in the conversation uninvited is another way to brighten up an otherwise mundane day. And then there’s the ‘turning off the TV in the middle of their favourite show for no particular reason‘ trick. That’s my personal favourite. The begging and pleading is funny, but when they stomp off to their rooms crying and wailing, well, it doesn’t get much better than that.

And we mustn’t forget the greatest invention for parental entertainment ever invented – the computer. It’s so easy for kids to get hooked on it. All the sites and games for children - my kids love ‘em. And so do I. We love email too. Whenever I’m feeling a little down or maybe bored, I just go into one of their accounts and delete a message or two – or maybe the entire email account. Then I hover in the background when the kid comes home from school and logs on. Whooo hooo, what a scene.

My oldest daughter (11) likes going on a website called “Club Penguin”. There, each kid gets to be a penguin character. They talk to each other, play games, earn penguin money and buy pretend stuff. It costs $6 a month to be a member. Last week I suspended her membership and told her that I wouldn’t reactivate it until she cleaned her room, scrubbed the bathroom, vacuumed the living room, did the dishes & laundry and washed the windows. By the time she finished crying, my cheeks were aching from laughing so much. You should see how clean the house is now.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, I’m lovin’ being a breeder. I cannot imagine my life without having those wonderful little people around to brighten my day. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my daughter just loaded her new MP3 player with a few hundred songs. It took her a whole week. And I’ve got the owners manual right here. Let’s see…….deleting songs. ……page 6.

It's a Nannyriffic World

It’s become such an ingrained part of our culture that we don’t even think about it anymore. It’s natural - like a baby crawling. In fact, it’s exactly like a baby crawling, only in reverse. Instead of crawling so we can learn to walk, we have given up walking so we can crawl. And crawl we do, straight to nanny government whenever something bad happens. It has become so much a part of us that it’s practically an involuntary reflex – beyond our conscious control. We don’t even know we’re doing it any more. The doctor taps our knee with a small hammer and our leg jerks upwards. Something unpleasant happens to someone and we reflexively become a pathetic parody of Oliver Twist. Our arms extend outwards towards government, clutching our empty bowls, as we plaintively beg: ‘Please suh, can I ‘ave sum‘ore?”.

Always more, never less. More help; more protection; more safety; more intervention; more intrusive meddling. It’s what we demand and it’s what our almighty government benefactor loves to provide. Day by day, year by year, decade by decade, government does more and more for us and we do less and less for ourselves, our families and each other. Government grows bigger and stronger. We grow smaller and weaker.

The fairy tale maiden used to clutch her chest and sigh “my hero” when the dashing knight vanquished the evil villain. Not any more. Now she struts to the press conference microphone and publicly pouts about how there would be no evil villains in the first place if only our mighty government hero would fund more social programs.

But it wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, people actually overcame obstacles in their lives without begging government for help. It’s almost impossible to believe. Were we really that unenlightened and regressive as a species? Imagine, actually accepting that, in life, we sometimes have to take the good with the bad. What WERE we thinking? After all, there should be no such thing as ‘bad’. And if there is, it’s the government’s fault for not regulating it away.

Hey parents, need that extra second income so you can buy that big screen and go to Cuba on vacation? Are the kids getting in your way? Don’t worry. The government will give you state subsidized daycare so Mommy can get out there and do stuff that’s really important and fulfilling, like maybe work in an office or a shopping mall.

Hey University students, are you having to go sober a few nights a week because those nasty tuition fees are eating up all your partying money? Hey, don’t worry, government will cap tuition fees for you and tax the middle class to pay the difference. Pretty cool huh?

Hey girls, is that hot boy ignoring you because he knows you don’t put out? What’s wrong with you? Get horizontal already. There’s nothing to worry about. If you get pregnant, the government will pay for an abortion or, if you decide to keep the baby, it’ll give you a free apartment and monthly welfare cheque, even if your boyfriend lives with you. Now that’s progressive.

Are your elderly parents getting in the way? Are you stressed out at the thought of having to take responsibility for them in their final years? No problem. Just ship them off to a handy-dandy government funded Nursing home and forget about ‘em. They’ll be happy, you’ll be happy and you’ll have a lot more free time to watch reality TV and bitch about how tough life is.

Are you or someone you love dieing of cancer? Never fear. Here in glorious nannyriffic Canada you get health care for free. Yep. You don’t have to do anything for yourself. Just let nanny do it all. Here, take a seat. The doctor will see you in three weeks. The specialist will see you three months from then. Tests will be done next year and treatment should start, oh, sometime between your wake and your funeral. And don’t worry about the cost. It’s all taken care of. Of course you’re not allowed to pay for faster service. That would be unfair to the people who can’t pay. So you’ll just take what nanny gives you and be grateful for it. Here, have some oxycontin. That’ll take the edge off while you wait.

Our enslavement was inevitable; our freedom fleeting and doomed from the start. Maybe humans were not meant to be free. After all, we have always lived under one form of tyranny or another, whether it was by tribal chiefs, dictators, monarchs, feudal landlords or whatever.

And now look what’s happened. This whacky experiment with democracy and capitalism is hardly a few hundred years old and already it’s starting to unravel. When it started we were free. People knew that freedom was directly linked to personal responsibility and autonomy. Our constitutions protected citizens from the state and enshrined individual rights and freedoms for all. And then what happened? Why, we promptly proceeded to barter away our freedom and autonomy to the state, piecemeal fashion, in exchange for safety and help in managing our lives.

You see, deep down inside, modern people don’t really want to be free. Been there, done that. What they want is to be protected and safe. ‘Risk’ is the new N word - a dirty word that must be expunged from our society. In fact, we have reached the point where taking even a minimal risk can be a crime, punishable in a court of law.

Not wearing a seat belt is stupid. It’s not particularly dangerous, mind you, given that 99.99999% of drivers never get in a serious accident, but stupid none the less. Same with adults who don't wear helmets on bicycles & motor cycles or 'personal floatation devices' (what a moronic term - what the hell was wrong with 'lifejacket'?) on water craft. Stupid - yes. But illegal? Should it really be the government’s job to haul us to court and punish us for making a free and conscious personal decision to take a stupid risk? Geez, if acting stupidly is a crime, why is Rosie O'Donnell still walking the streets?

And speaking of stupid risks - it seems to me that it’s far riskier to have unprotected sex these days. If the government was really interested in protecting us it would punish anyone who engages in sex without a condom. Maybe give ‘em some demerit points on their driver’s licenses or something if they are caught doing it in a car. It seems a little inconsistent to fine someone for not wearing a seatbelt but let them get off scott free when it comes to something as dangerous as not wearing a condom. Especially for gays. The fine for them should be double, given the significant health risk.

After all, if government insists on being in the business of protecting us from our own indiscretions and bad decisions, it might as well take its role seriously, and start by addressing the proliferation of AIDS. After that, it can get on with enforcing the seatbelt laws. It’s simply a matter of setting the right priorities.

Mass Murder and Self Delusion

"THIRTY-THREE DEAD” read the headline as I collected my paper from the doorstep. “Gunman massacres 32 at Virginia Tech University and then kills himself.”

Another day, another madman, I thought to myself, as I made my way to work. And I thought little more of it. No disrespect to the victims or anyone affected by this atrocity. It’s just that I try not to expend time thinking about horrible stuff that is beyond the ability of humans to predict or prevent.

I don’t ask “why” every time something bad happens to strangers. I don’t look for reasons and I don’t look for cures. I just accept it and move on. Maybe it’s because I’m a male and we have the neat ability to compartmentalize stuff. May it’s because I’m an insensitive clod and uncaring lout. Or maybe it’s just because, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that sometimes bad things happen to good people and, quite often, life just isn’t fair.

Sometimes I feel very, very alone. Few others appear to think this way. In fact, everyone seems to think that every problem has a cause and society has an obligation to find that cause and take care of it so nobody else gets hurt.

Most people, it would seem, are not satisfied with simply acknowledging that sh*t happens. They want to examine the sh*t and poke through it looking for small undigested bits of food to analyze. It’s as if they believe that through their analysis they will somehow be able to design a diet that produces sh*t that smells like roses. Sorry folks, but some people turn to sh*t no matter what you feed ‘em. Nothing to see here. Move along.

A gun man goes on a rampage. Gun control fanatics poke their heads out of their grant funded burrows and claim that nothing like this would happen if only we would ban guns. Gun advocates, on the other hand, claim that the killer would have been stopped short if all students were allowed to carry concealed weapons. Anti-drug zealots point to the fact that the killer was on some sort of pharmaceutical. Therapists and psychoanalysts speculate about his childhood. Community activists use the opportunity to demand that the government put more social programs in place. A spokeswoman for some toilet tissue company claims that if the murderer had only wiped his bum more often with their pillow-soft toilet tissue, he never would have been in that ghastly mood to begin with.

And then there’s the famous “reverse blame” trick. The killer was an immigrant from South Korea. South Korea's Foreign Ministry reportedly expressed condolences and said South Korea hoped that the tragedy would not "stir up racial prejudice or confrontation''. Hmmm, now where have I heard that before? Wait….I know, we hear it from Muslim community leaders every time some whacko Islamic nut-job kills people here in the West. Apparently it’s all the rage these days whenever there’s an attack by someone of a non-white persuasion to turn it around and pretend to be scared of a backlash. It never happens when the killer is white though and the victims are not. You’d never hear a representative of the white community begging a non-white community to please restrain themselves from “racial prejudice or confrontation”. After all, that would suggest that the non-white folk could actually think racist thoughts. And as we all know, only white folk are like that.

In any event, I digress. Aside from the fascinating social and political overtones that mass murders typically offer, I really don’t think too much about them. And, I firmly believe that trying to figure out 'why' these things happen is often neither useful nor sensible. Punish the perpetrators when these things happen. That's pretty well all we can do.

After having our so-called experts study human behavior and social constructs for decades, we are still no closer to stopping stuff like this from happening. The lunatics still pop-up from time to time to make the experts look ineffective and useless. Sometimes I think that the experts are really nothing more than social activists with degrees - more interested in invoking social change than actually finding a solution. That said, they do, however, serve one useful purpose: They make us forget our powerlessness. They make us feel like there’s something we can do to prevent the next big one. And, like self-deluded fools, we buy into it.

Quick: name me an important Canadian value. Strength? Naw. Honour? Nope. Courage? OK, stop it, you’re starting to crack me up. No silly, the most important Canadian value, next to tolerance, is compassion. Sigh.

Everyone wants to be compassionate. No, wait, I mean everyone is expected to be compassionate. So, everyone does their utmost to make everyone else think they are compassionate. And would a compassionate person deny some nice research scientist a tax funded grant so she can do more research on why people behave badly and kill other people? Of course not. Why, that would be positively un-compassionate.

OK. I know what you’re thinking – “What a heartless goof this guy is”. As if we are really that different from one another. In reality, the only difference between me and you, is that I’m not fooling myself into believing that I am something I’m not.

If you are like most people, you probably think of yourself as compassionate and caring. You don’t like to see others suffer. Me neither. But that doesn’t make me (or you) caring and compassionate. It just makes us normal, self-absorbed people, capable of occasionally furrowing our brows and displaying short bursts of quasi-empathy. Daily I pass homeless people in the street. Momentarily I feel bad for them, but I don’t take any of them home. Do you? Daily I read about murder, rape, starvation, abuse and genocide in the papers. Momentarily, I feel sorry for them, but It doesn’t affect my appetite or my sleep. Does it affect yours?

I seem to be incapable of feeling anything other than a brief, distant touch of something remotely resembling sympathy when strangers are killed. All I really care about are people who are part of my life. It’s sad about the dead students in Virginia. It’s a sad thing. But it’s not a sad feeling for me. Not particularly. If I was to feel sad every time a complete stranger was murdered, I’d be a pretty dour guy. Do you know how many people get killed every day around the world? Enough to make feeling sad for them a full time gig. And who wants to go through life like that? Better to just be a self-absorbed, pitiless cad. And best to be honest about it. I may be a pitiless cad, but at least I’m not self-delusional.