Just back in San Fran after a lightning trip home. Tim's dad had a massive heart attack two weeks ago and was on life support in the ICU when we flew back to Auckland expecting the worst, a horrible nervy, bumpy flight past Hurricane Flossie(then menacing Hawaii) with an unwanted Sydney stopover, making for nearly a 24-hour trip with minimal legroom and salty, lardy nonsense for dinner. Tim's passport had expired and while we managed to get out of SFO--Orange Alert be damned--we noticed our mistake in Sydney, as did security personnel who rang North Shore Hospital to verify Tim's story.
Tim's dad looked awful the first time we saw him (tubes from every orifice, pale yellow color, unconscious) and strangely small under his warming blanket and shiny metallic shower cap. But each day brought amazing progress. Soon he was breathing on his own, sitting up, drinking cups of tea, recognising family, remembering names, speaking in full sentences. Now he's just about back to normal and he gets tremendous satisfaction from hearing how he cheated death the day he went out for a new letter box and collapsed at the hardware store only to be miraculously revived by CPR-certified staff and a defibrillator salesman who happened to be in the store for a demo. When he hears that he had quite literally stopped breathing and was unresponsive on the concrete floor, he cackles with the joy of coming back to life. He is an inspiration.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Friday, August 10, 2007
Evil exercise genius
Day off work today, tra la, tra la, so I slept in a little bit, did a teensy bit of writing and then went to the gym, feeling pretty durned chipper. Until I saw that Batshit Crazy Lady was leading the 10am sculpting class. I stumbled into her spin class once a couple of months ago after a particularly grueling work day, and if I hadn’t been a spaghetti noodle by the end of it, I might just have dismounted and slapped her. She pretended we were racing a stage of the Tour de France and gave a running commentary on each hill and valley, complete with stats on the leaders and trivia from her own experience watching the Tour in person. So-and-so is very charming, some racers drink scooners of beer at the end of the day, she has autographed t-shirts from riders etc, etc. We had a competition to see who would win the imaginary green shirt for getting to the top of the highest imaginary hill. I stopped and had a pint of cider at an imaginary pub.
So today my nice gentle sculpting class began with a musical prelude to the 2008 Beijing Olympics—apparently they released one of the songs this week to get people in the mood. It didn’t get me in the mood for my class, however—I actually groaned out loud and had to pretend to be clearing my throat so as not to offend Batshit Crazy Lady, who apparently has no idea just how aggravating she is. We did seven sets of push ups, we had to do squats in time to that nasty song about ‘lady lumps,’ we waved big heavy bars around for the benefit of our triceps—which, we learned, are the size of a stick of string cheese—and got a lecture about skin elasticity. "You don't have to do everything I am doing," she said as she launched into another set of push ups. "I am your sculpting waitress; I am just making suggestions."
By the end I was thinking that perhaps she is some sort of evil genius, because she makes people so mad they keep lifting those weights just to concentrate on something other than her chirping commentary.
And then she tried to convince us to follow her over to the other studio for her spin class, starting in half an hour.
“Just consider it,” she said, as damp women with strands of hair flopping in their mouths openly groaned at the thought. “Well, maybe next week.”
So today my nice gentle sculpting class began with a musical prelude to the 2008 Beijing Olympics—apparently they released one of the songs this week to get people in the mood. It didn’t get me in the mood for my class, however—I actually groaned out loud and had to pretend to be clearing my throat so as not to offend Batshit Crazy Lady, who apparently has no idea just how aggravating she is. We did seven sets of push ups, we had to do squats in time to that nasty song about ‘lady lumps,’ we waved big heavy bars around for the benefit of our triceps—which, we learned, are the size of a stick of string cheese—and got a lecture about skin elasticity. "You don't have to do everything I am doing," she said as she launched into another set of push ups. "I am your sculpting waitress; I am just making suggestions."
By the end I was thinking that perhaps she is some sort of evil genius, because she makes people so mad they keep lifting those weights just to concentrate on something other than her chirping commentary.
And then she tried to convince us to follow her over to the other studio for her spin class, starting in half an hour.
“Just consider it,” she said, as damp women with strands of hair flopping in their mouths openly groaned at the thought. “Well, maybe next week.”
Thursday, August 9, 2007
Dammit! If I'd only had another month...
How cute is this?
A Tortoise's Great Escape
Morning Edition, August 9, 2007 · A rare tortoise disappeared from a Virginia zoo. It's not clear whether a visitor freed it or it slipped out on its own, but it was gone. The Burmese Mountain Tortoise raced away with the speed a tortoise is famous for. Zoo staff found it seven hours later in a patch of bamboo just 20 yards from its pen.
You can hear all about it here.
A Tortoise's Great Escape
Morning Edition, August 9, 2007 · A rare tortoise disappeared from a Virginia zoo. It's not clear whether a visitor freed it or it slipped out on its own, but it was gone. The Burmese Mountain Tortoise raced away with the speed a tortoise is famous for. Zoo staff found it seven hours later in a patch of bamboo just 20 yards from its pen.
You can hear all about it here.
Shiny boots and no good reason to feel cocky
Little bit of excitement on the train this morning. I stepped into the car to find not one but three BART police standing in the doorway with their big black boots and official somethingerothers strapped round their waists. I don't know if they pack heat, but they're got suspicious bulges on those belts. Little cans of mace, perhaps? They might have simply been commuting to work--surely one of the (only) perks of being in the BART police force would be free travel--or they might have been on their way to kick some sad homeless loiterer's butt. In either case, their presence made me feel decidedly less safe.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Up that jelly hill, under water
So tired this week. I feel like I'm walking under water, or through jelly, or up a hill that is not very steep but goes on and on past the horizon. This morning I woke up when the alarm went off then fell asleep for another 35 minutes--only thing that got me out of bed was my arm, which had also fallen asleep. Anyway, my tired draggyness has mucked up my gymming and my writing (I have a new little project, which I'm enjoying) so I am in self-loathing mode. My commute book this week is Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and when I compare my fatigue and sick ham to their ayatollahs and chadors I loathe myself even more. So it just feeds itself, you see?
Speaking of sick hams--Vodka is doing well. Every evening we have to put lady cream on his tummy, and under his chin, and on his legs--all the places he's rubbed his fur off with scratching, poor little pet. It is a two-person operation. Tim holds him by the scruff of his neck and I spread the cream on while he kicks and shakes with fear. It is a pathetic sight.
Speaking of sick hams--Vodka is doing well. Every evening we have to put lady cream on his tummy, and under his chin, and on his legs--all the places he's rubbed his fur off with scratching, poor little pet. It is a two-person operation. Tim holds him by the scruff of his neck and I spread the cream on while he kicks and shakes with fear. It is a pathetic sight.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
Itchy and scratchy
Vodka had to go to the animal hospital today. I noticed this morning when I cleaned out the hams’ cages that he had a horrible big scab on his tummy, and that he had lost fur under his neck and on his legs. He was also scratching like mad. It happened so quickly; he was fine a few days ago, nothing amiss, although I must admit that, given his bitey behaviour when we was a teen ham, I am always careful when I handle him and don’t often see his tummy. I did some quick online research and learned that he might have mites—very contagious and devilishly difficult to get rid of—which sounded like a real treat. I considered going to the pet store for some anti-mite spray, but the poor little dude was damaging himself with his scratching and biting.
So Tim rang a couple of vets until he found an animal hospital with experience treating “pocket pets,” as Voddy’s kind are known in the biz, and we were told to arrive any time after 3.30pm, when the doctor with expertise treating rodents and reptiles would be in.
We got there at 4pm, having first driven to 9th Street instead of 9th Avenue, to learn that the reptile/rodent man was stuck in traffic. It took an hour for him to arrive during which time a swarm of children crowded round Vodka’s cage and demanded to see him (he was tucked up in a wad of toilet paper trying to pretend he was roaming the Siberian steppes) and played a game of opening and shutting the surgery door over and over. Finally, a family with two sick dwarf hamsters—chocolate colored ones who’d gone off their food—went in to see the doctor. Soon it became apparent that at least one of them was a goner. Well, we couldn’t help but form that impression when the older boy came out of the exam room saying, “He’s going to kill Twinkie. I don’t know why Mom’s crying. Hamsters only cost $3. We can buy more.”
Another hour had passed.
A girl with two bottle-cap sized turtles disappeared into the exam room. Outside, a guy with headphones and a floppy blue sun hat started to dance on the footpath in front of a shiny green pick up truck, admiring his reflection. He really got into it. He had no shame whatsoever. After 10 minutes or so he sat down with a flourish, opened a book and read aloud as if making a speech, say a State of the Union address, to a crowd of thousands. A homeless guy wearing an eye patch and pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bags, and boxes, and goodness knows what, trundled past. He parked his trolley, chatted with the dancer/orator, clapped him on the back and yelled a bit. Pulled out a harmonica and began to play. At which point Tippy Toes Blue Hat began to dance again. I am not making any of this up.
Another hour had passed.
Finally, it was our turn. Vodka was weighed—he is a hefty 49 grams—and examined. The vet pulled off the horrible scab and invited us to touch it. It looked like cheese and felt like that old-fashioned almond icing that ends up on Christmas cakes. He turned the lights off and shone a UV light on Voddy’s tum to check for ringworm, which, he explained, glows apple green. It did. He took a skin scraping and checked the sample for mites under a microscope. All clear. And then he cleaned out the cheesy abscess behind the scab which, it turned out, was like nothing he’d ever seen. It went on and on, so deep that when he reached the end of the cheese he could see through Vodka’s skin to his liver. “You could stick a pencil eraser up there,” he said. “Now you have a little kangaroo hamster.”
Another hour-and-a-half had passed.
So Vodka is fine. He has a big hole in his tummy which I have to keep an eye on in case food and other debris gets stuck up there. I have to clean it out with an ear swab every month or so. And for the next week I have to spread vaginal cream on his chest and under his arms to deal with the itchy ringworm.
As soon as we got home he jumped into his wheel, his favorite spot in the world, and hunkered down for some quiet time. I am willing to bet money he was supersonically screaming at Lime: "They poked a hole in my tummy and now I have to wear lady cream. What the f***!"
So Tim rang a couple of vets until he found an animal hospital with experience treating “pocket pets,” as Voddy’s kind are known in the biz, and we were told to arrive any time after 3.30pm, when the doctor with expertise treating rodents and reptiles would be in.
We got there at 4pm, having first driven to 9th Street instead of 9th Avenue, to learn that the reptile/rodent man was stuck in traffic. It took an hour for him to arrive during which time a swarm of children crowded round Vodka’s cage and demanded to see him (he was tucked up in a wad of toilet paper trying to pretend he was roaming the Siberian steppes) and played a game of opening and shutting the surgery door over and over. Finally, a family with two sick dwarf hamsters—chocolate colored ones who’d gone off their food—went in to see the doctor. Soon it became apparent that at least one of them was a goner. Well, we couldn’t help but form that impression when the older boy came out of the exam room saying, “He’s going to kill Twinkie. I don’t know why Mom’s crying. Hamsters only cost $3. We can buy more.”
Another hour had passed.
A girl with two bottle-cap sized turtles disappeared into the exam room. Outside, a guy with headphones and a floppy blue sun hat started to dance on the footpath in front of a shiny green pick up truck, admiring his reflection. He really got into it. He had no shame whatsoever. After 10 minutes or so he sat down with a flourish, opened a book and read aloud as if making a speech, say a State of the Union address, to a crowd of thousands. A homeless guy wearing an eye patch and pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bags, and boxes, and goodness knows what, trundled past. He parked his trolley, chatted with the dancer/orator, clapped him on the back and yelled a bit. Pulled out a harmonica and began to play. At which point Tippy Toes Blue Hat began to dance again. I am not making any of this up.
Another hour had passed.
Finally, it was our turn. Vodka was weighed—he is a hefty 49 grams—and examined. The vet pulled off the horrible scab and invited us to touch it. It looked like cheese and felt like that old-fashioned almond icing that ends up on Christmas cakes. He turned the lights off and shone a UV light on Voddy’s tum to check for ringworm, which, he explained, glows apple green. It did. He took a skin scraping and checked the sample for mites under a microscope. All clear. And then he cleaned out the cheesy abscess behind the scab which, it turned out, was like nothing he’d ever seen. It went on and on, so deep that when he reached the end of the cheese he could see through Vodka’s skin to his liver. “You could stick a pencil eraser up there,” he said. “Now you have a little kangaroo hamster.”
Another hour-and-a-half had passed.
So Vodka is fine. He has a big hole in his tummy which I have to keep an eye on in case food and other debris gets stuck up there. I have to clean it out with an ear swab every month or so. And for the next week I have to spread vaginal cream on his chest and under his arms to deal with the itchy ringworm.
As soon as we got home he jumped into his wheel, his favorite spot in the world, and hunkered down for some quiet time. I am willing to bet money he was supersonically screaming at Lime: "They poked a hole in my tummy and now I have to wear lady cream. What the f***!"
Friday, August 3, 2007
Ewww
The sun is shining, there’s a lovely breeze coming through the window, it’s nearly lunchtime, and I am not in the mood for a rant, BUT I am repulsed by news that a woman in Arkansas has just given birth to her 17th baby. I love kids, I want kids, I am looking forward to kids, but this is just not on, people. The world is so overpopulated it’s making the elephants cry, physically this many pregnancies is a burden no woman should bear, surely her older children have had enough of the baby-a-year scenario (who wants to bet Mom and Dad are going to wake up one day soon with a posse of socially deficient little monsters on their hands?), and Mom’s hair? Just horrendous.
But I defer to someone who can outline the situation with far more finesse. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote this piece in 2005, when Mr and Mrs Arkansas brought baby #16 into the world.
God Does Not Want 16 Kids
Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?
And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"
But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Duggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other's Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.
It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it?
Is it wrong to notice how all the Duggar kids' names start with the letter J (Jeremiah and Josiah and Jedediah and Jesus, someone please stop them), and that if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong? But I'm not judging.
I have a friend who used to co-babysit (yes, it required two sitters) for a family of 10 kids, and she reports that they were, almost without fail, manic and hyper and bewildered and attention deprived in the worst way, half of them addicted to prescription meds to calm their neglected nerves and the other half bound for years of therapy due to complete loss of having the slightest clue as to who they actually were, lost in the family crowd, just another blank, needy face at the table. Is this the guaranteed affliction for every child of very large families? Of course not. But I'm guessing it's more common than you imagine.
What's more, after the 10th kid popped out, the family doctor essentially prohibited the baby-addicted mother from having any more offspring, considering the pummeling endured by her various matronly systems, and it's actually painful to imagine the logistics, the toll on Michelle Duggar's body, the ravages it has endured to give birth to roughly one child per year for nearly two decades, and you cannot help but wonder about her body and its various biological and sexual ... no, no, it is not for this space to visualize frighteningly capacious vaginal dimensions. It is not for this space to imagine this couple's soggy sexual mutations. We do not have enough wine on hand for that.
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?
Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain't lookin' good.
Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin' tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation. Is that an oversimplification?
Why does this sort of thoughtfulness seem so far from the norm? Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?
You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God's little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty's own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: "We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them." This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.
Let us be clear: I don't care what sort of God you believe in, it's a safe bet that hysterical breeding does not top her list of desirables. God does not want more children per acre than there are ants or mice or garter snakes or repressed pedophilic priests. We already have three billion humans on the planet who subsist on less than two dollars a day. Every other child in the world (one billion of them) lives in abject poverty. We are burning through the planet's resources faster than a Republican can eat an endangered caribou stew. Note to Michelle Duggar: If God wanted you to have a massive pile of children, she'd have given your uterus a hydraulic pump and a revolving door. Stop it now.
Ah, but this is America, yes? People should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want with their families if they can afford it and if it's within the law and so long as they aren't gay or deviant or happily flouting Good Christian Values, right? Shouldn't they? Hell, gay couples still can't openly adopt a baby in most states (they either lie, or one adopts and the other must apply as "co-parent"), but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.
No, no one says that. That would be mean.
But I defer to someone who can outline the situation with far more finesse. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote this piece in 2005, when Mr and Mrs Arkansas brought baby #16 into the world.
God Does Not Want 16 Kids
Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?
And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"
But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Duggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other's Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.
It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it?
Is it wrong to notice how all the Duggar kids' names start with the letter J (Jeremiah and Josiah and Jedediah and Jesus, someone please stop them), and that if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong? But I'm not judging.
I have a friend who used to co-babysit (yes, it required two sitters) for a family of 10 kids, and she reports that they were, almost without fail, manic and hyper and bewildered and attention deprived in the worst way, half of them addicted to prescription meds to calm their neglected nerves and the other half bound for years of therapy due to complete loss of having the slightest clue as to who they actually were, lost in the family crowd, just another blank, needy face at the table. Is this the guaranteed affliction for every child of very large families? Of course not. But I'm guessing it's more common than you imagine.
What's more, after the 10th kid popped out, the family doctor essentially prohibited the baby-addicted mother from having any more offspring, considering the pummeling endured by her various matronly systems, and it's actually painful to imagine the logistics, the toll on Michelle Duggar's body, the ravages it has endured to give birth to roughly one child per year for nearly two decades, and you cannot help but wonder about her body and its various biological and sexual ... no, no, it is not for this space to visualize frighteningly capacious vaginal dimensions. It is not for this space to imagine this couple's soggy sexual mutations. We do not have enough wine on hand for that.
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?
Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain't lookin' good.
Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin' tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation. Is that an oversimplification?
Why does this sort of thoughtfulness seem so far from the norm? Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?
You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God's little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty's own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: "We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them." This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.
Let us be clear: I don't care what sort of God you believe in, it's a safe bet that hysterical breeding does not top her list of desirables. God does not want more children per acre than there are ants or mice or garter snakes or repressed pedophilic priests. We already have three billion humans on the planet who subsist on less than two dollars a day. Every other child in the world (one billion of them) lives in abject poverty. We are burning through the planet's resources faster than a Republican can eat an endangered caribou stew. Note to Michelle Duggar: If God wanted you to have a massive pile of children, she'd have given your uterus a hydraulic pump and a revolving door. Stop it now.
Ah, but this is America, yes? People should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want with their families if they can afford it and if it's within the law and so long as they aren't gay or deviant or happily flouting Good Christian Values, right? Shouldn't they? Hell, gay couples still can't openly adopt a baby in most states (they either lie, or one adopts and the other must apply as "co-parent"), but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.
No, no one says that. That would be mean.
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