OW! ZING!

[Greg Montalbano]

Wanted to share this, apropos of absolutely nothing (other than that, being
an election year, we're going to be hearing the terms "God" and "family
values" bandied about even more excessively than usual)...
from the SF Chronicle Morning Fix guy:


The formula, apparently, goes thusly: Birth yourself some twins, triplets,
or even quadruplets, it's Gosh and How about that, a pat on the back and a
nice mention in the local paper, maybe a 6-month supply of goat's milk from
the local dairy and a free dinner for 6 at Sizzler, good luck and have a
nice life. 

However, have your sweetly undereducated, God-fearing selves a field day
with fertility drugs (what some New Jersey couples apparently call
'prayers') and somehow manage a totally arbitrary birth of quin, sex, or
septuplets, you get to call yourself a small medical miracle (what some of
us might call a 'freak of nature'). Then it's a truckload of Isn¹t that
amazings and Aren't you blessed, excessive mentions in the national press
and an outpouring of gee-whiz TV interviews, and a small mountain of free,
landfill-ready diapers donated by a major plastics company. And lastly, of
course, your very own instant, unofficial charity foundation, because gosh,
you deserve a whole mess of free money, for some reason.

It's an amazing little fund, whereby you get to act completely innocent and
surprised by your wildly inordinate contribution to the already bloated
human population, and still manage to coerce gentle, weirdly misguided
citizens into flooding your mailbox with cute little personal checks with
cute little butterflies on them, all ostensibly to help you raise your
excessive brood, a horde of babies now of course gifted to you not by a mix
of modern insemination techniques and multiple Pergoral injections, but by
none other than the Big Egg Subdivider himself, God Almighty, because if
anyone knows how much the planet really craves sudden, greedy spurts of
population growth, it's the Man upstairs. Now where's my checkbook?




++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++    
 Liberals have a real hard time distinguishing between what they like 
     and what they approve of, just as conservatives have a real hard time 
     distinguishing between their own emotions and God's plan for everyone. 
                         Jon Carroll, 14 Jan 00