Being a woman is great in this post proto-feminist world, and if you aren’t already a modern woman, I’d like to take you out of the kitchen and bring you up to speed. I was raised to believe in antiquated ideas — such as a woman needs to act like a lady and that a child needs both a mother and a father! Preposterous. Last week I squeezed out eight fatherless kids while at the sports bar during half-time – I do have a few pre-existing kids from different baby daddies, but I was keeping up with all the octomoms in the neighborhood.

Multiple births are the new Mercedes.

The only married couple I know, Bob and Bruce, come over every so often to teach my boys how to be men, and then take them shopping for child-appropriate skincare and those awesome bio-degradable Chanel onesies I’ve seen on many fatherless celebrity babies.

When Bob and Bruce are busy, the guys I pick up at the bar the night before hang out with them for guy-time. This is handy because I learn these men’s names as they introduce themselves to my brood. Once they are acquainted I can get to work on my new fragrance line without worrying about the rugrats.

Had a real job back in 2008, but that stable, pre-proto-feminist lifestyle is so not important these days. Who needs jobs and money when you can be featured in a reality show and/or dance with the stars while pretending to not exploit your friends, family and children? (more…)

What is horror?

The word comes down to us from the Old Roman, horrere, which means literally “to stand on end” (as in hair) or “to shiver,” whether from fear or cold – Ovid refers to the “chill-bearing breath” of the North Wind (Metamorphosis, I.65).

Halloween is a unique holiday, marked for the celebration of the chill bearing, when demons and witches are allowed to come out to play and scare the bejezzus out of us – or at least, that’s how it used to be.

Over the last decade or so, Halloween has become less about creep and more about camp; Dracula and Frankenstein costumes replaced by Octomom and Obama masks (OK, those are more scary). What I want to do here is help those who would like go old school this year, and have a truly frightful All Hallows’ Eve.

(First suggestion – avoid bars. Like St. Patrick’s Day and New Year’s, Halloween brings out the amateur drinkers, a more loathsome species than any undead thing you may encounter. No, Halloween is best spent alone with someone special to snack on in the dark, with something scary to read, listen to, or watch.) (more…)

Octuplets mother Nadya Suleman, is getting death threats, which is to be expected in today’s culture of rational debate. Maybe she’s crazy or irresponsible, I don’t know. Her decision to have 14 children doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the public outcry from all sides against her. But none of the arguments against Suleman are quite as vacuous as the empty bumper-sticker dogmas held by the left. The mother of octuplets exposes how these positions aren’t rooted in logic, but are held in convenience to achieve emotionally preferred ends.

It’s not sick to want to have 14 children. It is sick to wish them aborted, wish harm on the mother or assume she has done some great evil. I don’t know that having 14 children is a mistake, and neither do you. I’ve known plenty of people who were raised in abject poverty and came out just fine. (more…)