Ok, so the mother of octuplets? Batshit crazy. The woman exhibits many or most of the classic signs of an animal hoarder. Really, it's uncanny and rather terrifying.
“I know I'll be able to afford them when I'm done with my schooling.” I'm not sure which is more laughable, her plan to support a family of 15 on less than $50,000 a year (even with food stamps and Medicaid), or the the idea that she is going to go back to school in the fall with 8 seriously premature babies under 1 year and 6 other kids under 10.
I would almost feel better if she would just own up and say she was planning to exploit the fuck out of the kids for Discovery Channel and shitty Wal-Mart books. At least then I'd believe she had a plan.
“All I wanted was children. I wanted to be a mom. That's all I ever wanted in my life. I love my children.” Well, fucking AWESOME. You know, animal hoarders claim to love the animals that are suffering in their care. The difference between normal people who love animals and people who hoard animals is that normal people recognize that their means, their space, and their energy are all finite.
Do people manage to successfully raise and provide for exceptionally large families? Yes. However, it's pretty un-fucking-likely that she is going to join their ranks. Most people who have 14 children don't have them under the age of 10--biology doesn't often work that way. Further, most people who choose to have not only older children to help the household run, but an adult partner.
Do I think that there is something wrong with single parenthood? Nope. I don't. Do I think there is something wrong with having really large families? Not exactly. I sort of question the ethics of bringing so many lives into the world from a an environmental standpoint, but really? People can choose to raise their kids to consume little and tread lightly, and maybe that huge family will consume less than the West County trophy family and their 1.1.1 ratio of individuals, bathrooms, and Humscalades.
HOWEVER I do think that there is a fundamental problem with bringing children into the world for whom you cannot provide--regardless of how many children are in question. The only way that this woman can ever hope to provide for those kids is by exploiting the holy living shit out of them, and that's a pretty fucked up plan.
Suleman? Yeah, batshit crazy. Her doctor? Should have his license balled up and shoved up his ass. I have not experienced the pain of infertility. I cannot imagine what that's like. Per her statements, Suleman had difficulty conceiving. Who knows why? I don't believe she's shared her diagnosis.
Whether she needed help to conceive or no, she could obviously carry a pregnancy--the woman already had 6 kids. So her doctor placing six embryos into her 33-year-old body is completely fucking ridiculous. This was not some last ditch Hail Mary attempt. This was a woman with SIX children. Two split? WHO GIVES A SHIT? Even if they hadn't, she still would have had sextuplets. How the fuck is THAT a good outcome, for mom, for babies, or for the community?
Clearly, what we need is for the medical community to step up to the plate and police themselves--with rules and guidelines and big-like-the-hand-of-god consequences for those who flout them. Like I said, I've never experienced infertility, and I'm not a reproductive endocrinologist. There might be cases where it makes a certain amount of ethical and/or medical sense to transfer that many embryos into a woman. This was CLEARLY not one of those cases.
However, if doctors don't do something about themselves soon, then lawmakers will. Don't believe me, and think personal choice will prevail? We have in place all manner of laws to protect people from their own stupid fucking choices. Example? Suicide is illegal. Call 911, say you plan to kill yourself, and soon the cops will be at your house to lock your crazy ass up for your own good.
I've read on various blogs and online communities that this is an issue of reproductive freedom and choice. And to some extent, I agree. Further, laws are very rarely subtle or sophisticated, and by design they are not meant to deal with the individual, but instead the aggregate. It would be a bad thing for lawmakers to regulate the use of these technologies because they really won't be able to do a very good job, but it would be a worse thing for no one to do anything.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Monday, February 23, 2009
The Resignation Letters I Wish I Could Send
Dear Immediate Boss,
I know you're going to miss me, my knowledge, and the opportunity to take credit for my ideas. However, because you're an ass-kissing yes man, I feel confident that you have a future of middling achievement ahead of you here at Corporate Happy Fun Job.
While I do regret that I will not be present to witness your future grammatical flights of fancy, I can only trust that your tangential understanding of the English language will continue to serve you and your unending pursuit of mediocrity.
I cannot thank you enough for all the important things you've taught me, including exactly how much alcohol a 32-year-old woman can reasonably expect to consume and still make it into work the next day. In return, please do contact me here if you should need assistance in my absence.
Sincerely,
etc.
Dear Swaggering Dildo,
I really do not know how to thank you for the opportunity to labor in in the unventilated mine shaft of your team for the past . . .god, it's so hard to tell time in this place without light. . . let's just call it a year.
Your inability, nay, unwillingness to listen to anything but the throbbing of your own engorged-yet-tiny penis has been an important lesson to me. To wit, that knowledge is secondary to swagger, and that knowledge is secondary to swagger.
When in my new role I am compelled to make a decision I will follow your fine example and simply masturbate--because input from knowledgeable actors invested in the process is for communists and losers.
In short, fuck you. I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire.
Yours,
etc.
Dear Co-Workers,
God help you. You're all so fucking stupid that I can't imagine how you don't just die because you forget to breathe.
Please note: before my final departure, all inquiries will be filtered through the ticking clock of my remaining days and answered accordingly. Following my departure, please seek your answers here, or when in doubt, here.
Word to your mother,
etc.
Dear Corporate Happy Fun Job,
Behold, my sublime left tit.
I'm out. Peace.
I know you're going to miss me, my knowledge, and the opportunity to take credit for my ideas. However, because you're an ass-kissing yes man, I feel confident that you have a future of middling achievement ahead of you here at Corporate Happy Fun Job.
While I do regret that I will not be present to witness your future grammatical flights of fancy, I can only trust that your tangential understanding of the English language will continue to serve you and your unending pursuit of mediocrity.
I cannot thank you enough for all the important things you've taught me, including exactly how much alcohol a 32-year-old woman can reasonably expect to consume and still make it into work the next day. In return, please do contact me here if you should need assistance in my absence.
Sincerely,
etc.
Dear Swaggering Dildo,
I really do not know how to thank you for the opportunity to labor in in the unventilated mine shaft of your team for the past . . .god, it's so hard to tell time in this place without light. . . let's just call it a year.
Your inability, nay, unwillingness to listen to anything but the throbbing of your own engorged-yet-tiny penis has been an important lesson to me. To wit, that knowledge is secondary to swagger, and that knowledge is secondary to swagger.
When in my new role I am compelled to make a decision I will follow your fine example and simply masturbate--because input from knowledgeable actors invested in the process is for communists and losers.
In short, fuck you. I wouldn't piss in your mouth if your teeth were on fire.
Yours,
etc.
Dear Co-Workers,
God help you. You're all so fucking stupid that I can't imagine how you don't just die because you forget to breathe.
Please note: before my final departure, all inquiries will be filtered through the ticking clock of my remaining days and answered accordingly. Following my departure, please seek your answers here, or when in doubt, here.
Word to your mother,
etc.
Dear Corporate Happy Fun Job,
Behold, my sublime left tit.
I'm out. Peace.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Bitter
So, this week at Corporate Happy Fun Job has been crazy making. At this point the negativity surrounding my job has gown, cancer-like, to the point where it is beginning to blot out the sun. There is nothing, nothing not eclipsed by the ticking clock that counts the minutes between now and when I have to go back to that place.
I am particularly susceptible to career-related disgust right now because they announced our raises this past week. The fact is this: I knew that I was going to be righteously pissed by the entire affair; that there was no way they were going to give me what it would take to make me happy. What blew me away is how VERY, VERY pissed off I was. As my boss sat there and blathered on and on and fucking ON about how generous CHFJ’s fucking package is, I just sat there and stared at the sheet in front of me. The one that, in black and white, laid out for me just how underpaid and overworked I am; just how worthless the hours I’ve wasted making everyone around me money while I struggle and get nowhere.
What I said was, “I see this, and I am disappointed.”
What I thought was, “Only a fucking retarded person would be satisfied with this, and I am not fucking retarded.”
At this point, I am permanently exhausted. I spend 40-50 hours a week biting my tongue; 40-50 hours a week avoiding the truth; 40-50 hours pretending that somehow I am not totally, terribly, pissing away my life in this ridiculous place with these ridiculous people.
And it’s not working any more. Do you have any idea how much self-discipline it requires to lie convincingly for 40-50 hours per week? Because I sure as shit didn’t. It’s excruciating.
And then, and then, AND THEN . . . The stupid bint asked me to coach (coach?!?) the fucker on our team who has the job I should have—who makes more money than I do—because he’s underperforming.
*sputter*
At that point, I think a part of my brain actually turned black and died. Collapsed on itself, like a wee dying galaxy. The part of me that is the real me, the part of me that I like and bring out off-leash to spend time with loved ones, wanted to jump up and overturn a chair. It wanted respond with a perfectly reasonable “Are you shitting me?” My god, the woman has no sense of irony and no concept of timing.
Instead, I sat there like a whipped fucking bitch and just took it. And today? Five days later? Recalling the conversation makes me want to cry. I’ve become complicit in my own fucking failure, my enthusiastic disappointment.
Working on not spending half my waking life with people I hate doing things I detest, and waiting for Spring.
I am particularly susceptible to career-related disgust right now because they announced our raises this past week. The fact is this: I knew that I was going to be righteously pissed by the entire affair; that there was no way they were going to give me what it would take to make me happy. What blew me away is how VERY, VERY pissed off I was. As my boss sat there and blathered on and on and fucking ON about how generous CHFJ’s fucking package is, I just sat there and stared at the sheet in front of me. The one that, in black and white, laid out for me just how underpaid and overworked I am; just how worthless the hours I’ve wasted making everyone around me money while I struggle and get nowhere.
What I said was, “I see this, and I am disappointed.”
What I thought was, “Only a fucking retarded person would be satisfied with this, and I am not fucking retarded.”
At this point, I am permanently exhausted. I spend 40-50 hours a week biting my tongue; 40-50 hours a week avoiding the truth; 40-50 hours pretending that somehow I am not totally, terribly, pissing away my life in this ridiculous place with these ridiculous people.
And it’s not working any more. Do you have any idea how much self-discipline it requires to lie convincingly for 40-50 hours per week? Because I sure as shit didn’t. It’s excruciating.
And then, and then, AND THEN . . . The stupid bint asked me to coach (coach?!?) the fucker on our team who has the job I should have—who makes more money than I do—because he’s underperforming.
*sputter*
At that point, I think a part of my brain actually turned black and died. Collapsed on itself, like a wee dying galaxy. The part of me that is the real me, the part of me that I like and bring out off-leash to spend time with loved ones, wanted to jump up and overturn a chair. It wanted respond with a perfectly reasonable “Are you shitting me?” My god, the woman has no sense of irony and no concept of timing.
Instead, I sat there like a whipped fucking bitch and just took it. And today? Five days later? Recalling the conversation makes me want to cry. I’ve become complicit in my own fucking failure, my enthusiastic disappointment.
Working on not spending half my waking life with people I hate doing things I detest, and waiting for Spring.
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Musing on a Sunday, Not At the Office
The lingering winter and my steadily deteriorating work situation have worked in concert to lobotomize me. My brain is mired. I am completely uncreative, totally uninspired, and borderline unable to interact with people. My life has, in essence, turned me back into me at 13, but without the urge to write truly awful poetry.
I mistakenly believed that things wouldn’t ever get as bad at Corporate Happy Fun Job as they did last year at this time. I can only attribute that ridiculous assumption to optimism born of desperation—to have believed otherwise would have melted my soul and destroyed me. Now, in the throes of misery, I’m too close to it to reflect upon it. There is only the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other forced death march, interspersed with momentary speculation about how much my manager resembles a swaggering dildo frat boy.
That explains a lot, actually. That whole swaggering dildo thing.
As works sucks up more and more of my time, the rest of my life concomitantly begins to ravel around the edges. Things like socks and clean panties sort of fall by the wayside, and let’s not even talk about the whole damn dust situation.
And winter. . .winter. I am so done with winter. Rather than becoming more accepting of the entire season situation as years go by, I fight it more and more. I feel like I have done my time and paid my dues, and should no longer have to suffer the indignities of winter. Unfortunately, February is only beginning. Spring is at least a six weeks away, and the days when we can be confident there will be no frost are longer still.
The madness, he is lurking.
On the bright side, the dark and hopeless days of the Bush administration are finally, fabulously, behind us. President Obama (*swoon*) has impressed me incredibly during his first two weeks in office. Further, I don’t believe I’m impressed solely by the contrast between Obama and his idiotic predecessor, but rather by his determination to do right; to be a statesman and a leader rather than a politician.
When he signed the Executive Order to close Gitmo, I sat there sort of dumbfounded, thinking to myself, “Huh. He can just do that. Just . . . make good things happen. Because he’s the president. Fuckin’-A right.” And then he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, and I almost wept, because suddenly I no longer felt so much like I had a target painted on my ass and a sign around my neck that said “Fucking Sucker” in letters 3 inches high.
Hand to god, I would likely hump the President’s leg, but it would upset Michelle and his kids and the Secret Service would wallop my ass. The Boy, though, would understand because I am a woman of serious and sudden wants and, as my husband, he knows and accepts this about me.
I mistakenly believed that things wouldn’t ever get as bad at Corporate Happy Fun Job as they did last year at this time. I can only attribute that ridiculous assumption to optimism born of desperation—to have believed otherwise would have melted my soul and destroyed me. Now, in the throes of misery, I’m too close to it to reflect upon it. There is only the one-foot-in-front-of-the-other forced death march, interspersed with momentary speculation about how much my manager resembles a swaggering dildo frat boy.
That explains a lot, actually. That whole swaggering dildo thing.
As works sucks up more and more of my time, the rest of my life concomitantly begins to ravel around the edges. Things like socks and clean panties sort of fall by the wayside, and let’s not even talk about the whole damn dust situation.
And winter. . .winter. I am so done with winter. Rather than becoming more accepting of the entire season situation as years go by, I fight it more and more. I feel like I have done my time and paid my dues, and should no longer have to suffer the indignities of winter. Unfortunately, February is only beginning. Spring is at least a six weeks away, and the days when we can be confident there will be no frost are longer still.
The madness, he is lurking.
On the bright side, the dark and hopeless days of the Bush administration are finally, fabulously, behind us. President Obama (*swoon*) has impressed me incredibly during his first two weeks in office. Further, I don’t believe I’m impressed solely by the contrast between Obama and his idiotic predecessor, but rather by his determination to do right; to be a statesman and a leader rather than a politician.
When he signed the Executive Order to close Gitmo, I sat there sort of dumbfounded, thinking to myself, “Huh. He can just do that. Just . . . make good things happen. Because he’s the president. Fuckin’-A right.” And then he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, and I almost wept, because suddenly I no longer felt so much like I had a target painted on my ass and a sign around my neck that said “Fucking Sucker” in letters 3 inches high.
Hand to god, I would likely hump the President’s leg, but it would upset Michelle and his kids and the Secret Service would wallop my ass. The Boy, though, would understand because I am a woman of serious and sudden wants and, as my husband, he knows and accepts this about me.
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