Sunday Comics: Should You Have Children?

Deciding whether and when to have children is a major life decision that most couples go through, sometimes even before the couple is pregnant. Having deep, heartfelt conversations and thinking through the complex issues, the financial implications, and the emotional demands that parenthood demands takes considerable time and usually results in completely the wrong decision.

Experts in parenting have performed numerous, important studies and have developed the following flowchart to help prospective parents reach the right decision easily, allowing them to quickly return to their empty and meaningless lives.

Standup: Parenting

I realized that I never posted this older standup session. This is from a set at the San Jose Improv in April, 2012. It's an expanded, more, er, refined version of the short set I did at the Purple Onion.

It's about parenting. Or, rather, about sucking at parenting. The audio's not great. Oh, and it's not completely kid-friendly. A bit like me, I guess.

When I am King: The Rating Game

When I am King...

Movie ratings will be clearer.




Warning: This blog has been rated by the Malicious Blogger Association of America (MBAA):









I've always found movie ratings so helpful. They take two hours of complex content and boil it down into a single letter that tells me exactly how appropriate it is for my children. Were the rating any more involved, or any closer linked to the actual material in the movie, then I would have to read and think about it to decide what to do. But the fact that it's such a simplistic measure of the maturity level needed to enjoy the film means that I can quickly ignore it.

Rating are not about providing real information. They're about making us feel just slightly guiltier about things we're going to do anyway.

I was particularly pleased with the rating of The King's Speech, which I saw when it came out in 2010. It was a serious film, well executed, that provided that perfect mix of drama, history, education, and entertainment. It was a film that I enjoyed for myself, and enjoyed taking the kids to as a cultural and historical lesson. Or at least I would have, except that the film was rated R.

I had to watch the film again to determine why it got this adult rating, checking the several obvious categories:

• Nudity: This was Englad in the early 20th century. All of the characters were at least 5 layers of clothing away from naked.
• Violence: True, the climactic speech was on the eve of a horrific war. But they only showed the speech itself, not the fighting. No blood, no shooting, no punches. Not even a hearty backslap.
• Swearing: Oooooh, that's right. He drops the F-bomb a handful of times.

So it turns out that I'm advised to not take my kids to this excellent movie because they might hear a bad word. My kids hear worse language in my house when I stub my toe; what possible reason would I have for sheltering them from it in the movie theater? More significantly, how can the rating agency possibly put that kind of language on the same footing as, say, the gruesome death scenes or graphic sex acts in other R films?

When I am King, ratings will be more meaningful. Instead of obscure references like "inappropriate language" and "adult situations", the ratings will have concrete information about why the film got this rating, to help the responsible parent make the right decision. Or at least to make the wrong decision for the right reasons.

Here are some example ratings for existing films:


Space Buddies: A film that I was subjected to because of my youngest kid's abject love for anything related to dogs:

Star Trek: The Motion Picture: This film was pretty darn exciting when it came out, because it was the first Star Trek thing to come out since the original "5 year mission" was killed in its third season. But it only got a G rating, which is pretty a-typical for action movies. In hindsight, a better rating description would give some helpful information to the unwary moviegoer:

I enjoyed watching Airplane! with the kids last year. The hairstyles are totally dated, but the comedy still works. But some parents might want to know why Parental Guidance is avised:

The Hunger Games is an interesting series of books, now movies, delving into the loving and under-served genre of child genocide. Here is a more helpful rating:

We watched The Blues Brothers again recently, and were curious about the rating. Blues songs can be racy, but not quite enough to get an R rating, or so we thought. Maybe a more descriptive rating would have helped:

And finally, here's a more accurate rating for The King's Speech:

Maybe when I am King, I'll even make a speech about it. And I'll throw in a few bad words, just to get a juicy rating.

Standup: Scissors and Kids

I just finished a standup show with the SFCC Showcase at the San Jose Improv this afternoon, thought I'd post the results.

This set is an expanded version of Backup Plan, which I posted a couple of weeks ago - I had a bit more time to play with and a couple more weeks to work on it, so it's a bit different than the one at the Purple Onion.

I hope you like it. Don't tell my kids about it.

Standup: Backup Plan

Here's my standup bit from the SFCC Underground show at the Purple Onion last week. Thanks to Craig for capturing it. The video is a bit rough and shaky (I can't believe Craig didn't bring a tripod. Some friend.). But I think it lends an air of gritty faux realism to the film.

I wanted to post this piece on Mother's Day, because it's all about parenting. And Costco.

And yes, the MC said "Chet House".  I'm sure it was a joke, because he's a comedian. It was hilarious.

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

It takes a whole village to raise a child, but only a single parent to screw them up for life.

Spare the rod, spoil the child named Rod.

Children should be seen and not heard. That's why the camera was invented. And earplugs.

Bonus SAT hint: "child" is to "childish" as "adult" is to "adultery".

When I am King: No Kidding

When I am King...

Children will earn their keep.

Some spiders kill themselves and each other to feed their young. Those parents have it so easy.

Scientists believe that these spiders sacrifice themselves for the nutrition of their offspring. Parents know better: these cowards have simply foreseen their future and have opted out of it. They might as well get it all over with in one swift meal rather than suffer a lifetime of being an unwilling host to these little parasites.

Make no mistake: Children are parasites, from the moment of their conception to the overdue time of their hosts’ demise. Consider the evidence:

Pregnancy: This condition is an extended period of illness, ranging from mild discomfort to frequent nausea to outright pain. Were it anything but pregnancy, we’d see the doctor about that tumor and have it treated with everything from heavy drugs to amputation. But for some bizarre reason, we suffer it to grow and our condition to worsen, until the moment of:

Labor: Giving birth hurts. I have heard that there is pleasure in the process, but presumably only in the sense that it is pleasurable to reach the end of that infinite torture (or maybe the drugs are just that good). We could experience a similar pleasure sensation by just banging our head against the wall repeatedly, eventually stopping just short of killing ourselves. I'm sure that stopping would feel pretty darned good too, although at least with the head-banging procedure we wouldn’t than have the follow-up job of:

Newborn Care: This is the phase when the parasitic relationship is most evident: we must cater to every need, every whimper, every annoying, stainful mess that the little creature makes, all so that they stay alive long enough to reach:

Toddler: In this phase, the parenting job expands to encompass both making sure that the child doesn’t kill himself and minimizing the damage that he does everything else in his path. He is dangerous enough to do anything and dumb enough to try. A good parent will make it through this phase without killing themselves in frustration or killing the child in revenge, so that they can both make it to:

Childhood: Here, the job becomes more relaxed and the parasitic nature of the relationship more subtle. We believe that we enjoy their company, but this is only because they string us along so that they can get the necessary food, money, attention, and parental suffering that they need to grow up and become:

Pre-Teen: In this phase, we kid ourselves that the child has become independent and that we now have our lives back. Meanwhile, we spend all of our waking hours ferrying them hither and yon, in addition to the existing host chores of shoveling money, food, and energy in their general direction, waiting for the moment when they become:

Teenager: This is perhaps the most difficult phase for parents to make it through without jail time. On one hand, the child still needs the shelter, food, and money that the host provides. On the other hand, they now hate us. As parents, we revel in this new, independent spirit that the child has taken on, while somehow missing the galling part about them hating us while constantly taking our things. It’s like giving financial aid to terrorists. This makes us welcome the thought of:

College: Freedom is finally achieved for the host and the parasite, as the child goes off to college to spend unholy amounts of money learning how to drink. The host relationship is more distant yet more painful as the family goes deeper in debt so that the child might one day reach:

Graduation: At this point, the child has extracted every cent, present and future, from the family coffers in the hope that they can now be independent. Instead, they return to the family home and continue taking anything else left. When there is nothing more to the host but a desiccated shell, they may finally go off on their own and experience:

Adulthood: Finally, the child is on their own. They have a job, they may even have started a brood of their own parasites. But somehow, they still depend on the parents for attention and occasional sponsorship. Once a host, always a host, even when:

Old Age: The host is now worn out, a shadow of their former self, eaten up by life and the incessant needs of its parasitic children. In a nurturing society, this would be the time when roles would switch and the children would become the hosts for the parents. But the child now has parasites of its own and no time for its used-up parents. If the parents are lucky, the child will pause long enough to arrange to have them locked into a home where they can while away the rest of their time, alone with their memories and deep sense of regret, until finally:

Death: Rest finally comes to the host. For arachnids, this might be a family time, a time of togetherness when the children would return to the nest to to eat Dad. But the truth is that there is nothing left of a human parent by this time, just barely enough to tumble into the ground.

The host/parasite relationship of parenting does not end until death. So maybe the spiders have it right - just get it over with quickly and avoid the torturous years of intervening hassle.

Why do we do all of this? We may hit our heads on the wall by accident occasionally, but at least we have the sense to stop once we've done it. But parenting just goes on and on. So why do we suffer the agony and blind need of these parasites? It's all due to evolution: evolution is responsible for children being just cute enough that we don’t discard them as soon as we’re onto their devious ways.

But evolution has also provided us an out here. In parallel with babies figuring out our penchant for cuteness, we, as a species, have figured out how to obtain and eat more food than our bodies can process. This habit is making us into the torpid, obese beings that we are, where a "workout" is the time that we put in scraping our thighs past each other as we trudge down the snack aisle at Walmart. And as the good hosts that we are, we have provided this over-abundance of fattening foods not only to ourselves, but also to our parasitic progeny.

In essence, we’re making our kids fat.

And while some consider this filial fattening a bad thing, I think that this dynamic is simply evidence that parents are fighting back. Finally we’ve found a way to defend ourselves from the leeches: if we can feed them enough that they are no longer so darned cute, then maybe our brains will not be so inclined to let these freeloaders suck us dry. Maybe if they don’t have cuteness on their site, they’ll have to plead for their care on merit alone, figuring out other ways to get our precious attention and resources. Maybe they’ll actually have to earn their keep.

Some have made a modest proposal that we simply eat the children, which would dovetail nicely with our ability to fatten them up. However, I suspect that this idea was put forth merely in jest. After all, I don’t know of a single condiment that goes with human meat.

When I am King, we will look into a myriad of ways to make kids less attractive and therefore more desperate for our attention. Beyond the current use of calories and basically unhealthy living, we may also investigate the use of permanent markers for transient facial disfigurement, mandatory and regular head-shaving, body piercing and tattoos[done!], and the banning of all acne creams. Relationships with children will not be the one-way give-until-you’re-dead affairs of today, but will instead be strong bonds built upon mutual need and distrust, the foundations of all good families.

Scout's Honor

My son is in the Boy Scouts, in keeping with a long family tradition that started with him (I never made it through the Cub Scouts). There are many things to like about the organization: he’s learning more about camping, outdoors, and adventure than he would in a lifetime of hanging out with me. And the organization is is great, from what I’ve seen, at teaching the boys confidence, leadership skills, and appropriate group behavior, such as cooking for your patrol without killing them.

There are some aspects of the Boy Scouts that I’m not as wild about, but on the whole it’s a good experience for him.

There’s one dynamic with the group that is a bit odd when you first run into it; they are totally paranoid about what could happen between unsupervised boys and adults. They have all kinds of rules and guidelines to make sure none of this stuff happens, and parents have to take training courses before they’re allowed to participate in any of the troop’s activities.

It seems a bit much at first. After all, it’s just a bunch of parents with their kids. But it's probably a good thing as a general rule, and makes the troops a safer environment overall. And who knows, maybe other organizations could benefit from a few more guidelines and online training courses.

It was this background of paranoia and mandated homophobia that was on my mind when we had the pleasure of seeing the Boy Scout Memorial in Washington, D.C. this past summer. Okay, we didn’t go to D.C. to see the memorial. In fact, we’d never heard of it and wouldn’t have really cared if we did; we were there to take in the museums and to see our government inaction. It’s just that we were walking from point A to point B and it happened to be along the way.

But I was glad we saw it. It’s a fascinating sculpture, with bold classical elements representing the hope and spirit of a Boy Scout and the wisdom and ideals of -

What th-, I, but....
Is that huge, naked man stalking that boy?

Yes, that’s right, the organization known for its paranoid attitude toward predatory behavior erected a sculpture that shows a happy and blissfully unaware scout being pursued by a big, naked guy. There’s also a woman there, but she’s got clothes on and doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

Clearing, the big, bronze adults didn't take the training course.

When I am King: More Demerit Badges

When I am King...

Boy Scouts will get better merit badges.

This is a continuation of my previous Demerit Badges diatribe. Anything worth saying is worth saying again. And again. Until you run out of material.

Last time, the merit badges of Television and Couch Potato focused on important skills that scouts learn and use at home. These skills will benefit the scouts as they grow into men and take on the mantle of laziness and sloth that our society expects.

Someone famous could have said, "We are defined not only by our actions, but also by our interactions." This time, we highlight badges that the scouts can achieve in the real world, as they interact with peers, adults, and strangers. These badges represent the best that scouts can be in a confusing world.

Geek

Getting out in the wilderness and exploring nature is what scouting is known for. But a well-rounded Boy Scout can be so much less. This merit badge will cover the important skills of today’s introverted geek: self-absorption, social awkwardness, and a disturbing attraction to computers.

Requirements:
1. Don’t talk to anyone. If you have to, reply in single. Word. Sentences.
2. Play with computers all day and night. If there is no computer available, pretend there’s one and type on it.
3. Make beeping sounds like a video game.
4. Pretend you’re a robot car for a week.
5. Learn pi to 28 places.
6. Meet with a merit badge counselor and stare at them awkwardly for the entire session, without saying anything.

Related Awards:
Computers, Binary, Anti-Socialism

Helping the Old Lady Cross the Street

Since the beginning of the Boy Scout program, the act of assisting an elderly woman across a busy street has represented the most important elements of what makes a great Boy Scout: kindness, selflessness, and annoying level of nosiness. This merit badge will focus exclusively on this fundamental skill of scouting.

Requirements:
1. Find an old lady. Find a busy street. Bring the two together. This is most easily done by leading the old lady to that street, but some scouts may wish to do it the other way around (this requires the Traffic Cop chit and a whistle).
2. Guide the old lady into the street. Some old ladies may be unwilling. The scout may need to take her hand or, in some situations, handcuff her to you (this requires the Tough Cop merit badge).
3. Guide the old lady safely across the street, getting her hit by no more than 2 cars or trucks. If the old lady is hit by more than two vehicles, you will need to start over, probably with a new old lady.

Related Awards:
Traffic Cop, Tough Cop, Dodgeball

When I am King: Demerit Badges

When I am King...

Scouting achievements will be more realistic.

My son is a Boy Scout, following in the great family tradition of - wait, I wasn’t a Boy Scout. No, he's obviously interested in camping and the outdoors because his family - wait, we hate camping (somehow the combination of sleeping outdoors, in the cold, near either people that are too loud or animals that are too hungry has never appealed to us). Perhaps he's just attracted to the open and liberal social attitude of the Boy Scout organization, a bastion of openness and acceptance in the reality of today's evolving societal and family norms. Or perhaps not.

Okay, search me why he's doing it.

One of the thing that drives the scouts is the skills that they acquire as part of advancing rank, in the form of “merit badges.” This badges are awarded to scouts that learn particular skills and can demonstrate their proficiency to the troop leaders. There are merit badges that range from First Aid to Nuclear Science. You can learn about animals in Mammal Study and then learn how to hunt them down in Rifles.

But I feel, looking through the list of badges, that they are all rather dated. Sure, there are badges on Computers and Robotics, and the traditional Hoop and Stick Games badge was finally retired in 2007. But the current badges do not represent those characteristics of our society which we hold most dear. Where is the Shopping badge? Or the Wasting Time Online badge? And without badges such as these, how can a scout hope to succeed in a society that has come to expect such behavior?

When I am King, Boy Scout merit badges will better reflect the attitudes, values, and achievements of our society. No longer will the scouts produce men of quaint but dated character. Scouts will become shining examples of all that we respect in the world.

Here are a couple of badges that I’m working on:

Television Watching

The Television Watching merit badge introduces a boy scout to this core activity of our society, where he will learn to lose his time, his mind, and his life.

Requirements:
1. Watch television non-stop for 10 days.
2. Describe absolutely nothing that happened in the world during that period.
3. Name three ways in which commercials benefit society. [Retracted]
4. Meet with a merit badge counselor during a commercial break. Fail to meet their eyes, staring instead into the distance with a listless, glazed expression.
5. Be able to hum at least 15 theme show songs and 35 ad jingles.

Related awards:
Couch Potato, Obesity, Teenager

Couch Potato

Taking the time to relax is an important element in a fulfilling life. Extending that time to the exclusion of all productive activity is an art form that can only be appreciated by its active pursuit.

Requirements:
1. Do nothing
2. Get nothing accomplished.
3. Don’t meet with your merit badge counselor. Doing so would prove that you have not yet mastered this skill.

Related awards:
Television Watching, Eating, Sleeping

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Parenting

On the proper raising of children, with respect to the literature provided therein

And so it was, on that seventh day of July, in the year Two Thousand Eleven, that The Book (heretofore referred to as The Book) was given unto a child. And, Forsooth!, the wisdom and mysteries of the ages passed to the next generation. And there was great rejoicing.

Last night, that I realized that my oldest child was perhaps old enough to appreciate the wit and sagacity of that ancient and revered tome, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. One of the greatest things about having kids is trying to force-feed them the same content on which your own misguided life is based. Usually, this ends in disinterest on the part of the kid and great sadness and self-doubt on the part of the parents. Time and disappointment will prove whether this time the decision was merely flawed or completely stupid, but for now it seems like the right thing to have done. Like hopping over barbed wire instead of walking the extra 20 yards to go around a fence.

Douglas Adams’s books are some of my favorites, and are required reading in my chosen field (itinerant geek). The Hitchhiker's Guide series is the perfect combination of humor and science fiction, where by “science fiction” I mean it has a completely irrelevant and nonsensical plot. And by “plot” I mean, well, I don’t care. It’s just funny, dammit.

I should point out that The Book is, I believe, a massive apologia for the PC game, Starship Titanic. The game was written after the massive success of the Hitchhiker’s series, so in true Adams form, he had to go back in time to write the books to make up for the game in advance. So to have the right feeling about the author, you should really enjoy his works in the order in which he produced them: the game first, then the books. That way, you’ll end your relationship with him on a good note. Or, like me, you can read the books first, then play the game, then read the books again to wash the taste of the game out of your brain.

In any case, I hope I’ve just just added another Douglas Adams fan to the planet. Or at least another person that knows that the answer is 42. It's always 42.

When I am King: Warning: Smoking is Gross

When I am King...

Anti-smoking campaigns will be more effective.

Once again, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me alerted me to the critical news of the week. I rely on the podcast of that show for all of my information about current events, this time about

the new warning labels required on cigarette cartons. Apparently, the government, not satisfied with pithy quips like, “Can cause birth defects” and, “Has been known to cause cancer in just about every living organism” decided that it was time to make the message clearer, going for a more folksy, “You Will Die” message in the new labels.

I applaud their intent: every smoker is obviously so happy with their life choices that they need these little reminders of their impending doom. In fact, I’m jealous of the fun they get to have with every new pack, wondering what the picture and caption will be. The prizes and games on our cereal boxes pale in comparison.

But I disagree with their approach to the problem. It simply won’t work for this reason: everyone that would quit the habit because it can kill them already has (either by choice or by death). Everyone that’s left is either not getting the obvious message or just doesn’t give a damn. Making the labels more graphic will just stiffen their resolve like a toddler being asked to please not throw a tantrum in front of the nice lady from Child Protective Services.

Now you not only have a society full of smokers, but one full of grossed-out, pissed-off smokers.

The problem has always been in the messaging. Telling people that they might die eventually because of it, or that others have died from it doesn’t hold a smoking candle to the allure of teenage rebellion. And it doesn’t do much for the person weighing that risk against the difficulties of quitting an addiction.

When I am King, there will be a more effective marketing campaign to get smokers to quit. The ads will just point out other people in your chosen community. Parents who smoke will be shown that their kids are smoking, and teenagers will learn that their parents smoke. Both groups, horrified by the prospect of being lumped in with the other, will finally have some real motivation to quit.

One other approach the FDA could try is to make the labels as frank as possible, like “This cigarette will kill you,” and then backing up the threat by lacing it with poison. Not only will this be truth in advertising and an excellent disincentive to others that see the warning, but it will also reduce the smoking population, one by one. I’m not actually arguing for that approach, just saying that it would work better than the ones taken so far. But perhaps killing the target demographic is not what the marketing folks had in mind.

When I am King: Trips with Kids

When I am King...

Strollers will be banned.

I spent last weekend at Disneyland, for reasons that I won’t go into. Suffice it to say that raising children does not result in opportunities for exciting travel and exotic nightlife.

Besides the obvious joy of spending two days and evenings standing in line with thousands of my very closest friends and overpaying for bad food from perky cashiers, the highlight of the weekend had to be the transportation contraptions for the children.

It turns out that Disneyland is where all children are. The place is overrun. It’s like the Gulag for little political prisoners. I thought my kitchen had an ant problem, but it’s nothing compared to the kids scurrying around Disneyland.

My strongest memory of the experience was of the many strollers. They were everywhere, These handy inventions allow parents to drag their kids to places that they’re too young to appreciate. So where evolution and common sense trains us to know that anywhere the kids can’t get to on their own is not somewhere they need to be, strollers allow us to take them anyway. These wheeled contraptions also serve as modern pack animals, allowing us to store necessary provisions like sodas and snacks to keep us fattened up and further unable to hand-carry these items.

All of this is fine - if people want to bring their infants and toddlers to places that they aren’t old enough to enjoy and won’t remember in 2 weeks and generally make the experience awful for the whole family, that’s up to them. I don’t mind the kids. It’s the strollers that I want to destroy.

Strollers are mobile tripping hazards. They’re like the shoes in the entryway, the toy cars in the kids rooms, the sleeping dog at the top of the stairs. And they’re constantly on the move, shoving their way through the crowds like a miniature Italian driver. The only person not tripping on them is the kid in the driver’s seat. This is probably the real enjoyment that kid has; he can’t enjoy any of the fun rides, but it must be a kick to keep seeing adults jumping out of his way and falling over his moving throne.

Strollers are like the shopping carts of the homeless, filled with recyclable containers and the mostly important possessions of the parents (plus the children). But at least the homeless have the decency to use carts that aren’t tripping hazards; you can heard and see those things rattling toward you for miles. Strollers sneak up on you and stick their front wheels in front of your sneakers before you know they’re there.

Then there’s the other approach taken by parents of children that can walk but can’t be trusted: leashes. These clever devices attach to a harness on the kids and allow they to walk with their parents without the parents having to go to the effort of actually reaching down to take their hand. They’re just like dog leashes, except for the choke collar. Ostensibly, the leashes allow the children the freedom to walk on their own without letting them completely escape. But in practice they’re used very differently. You typically see them being used by people that seem too tired to walk around and are using the energy of the children to help; the kids are straining at the harness and helping propel their parental blobs forward. The other way I’ve seen them used is like fishing tackle - when the parents want the kids closer, they reel them in and land them like a forty pound trophy fish. All they’re lacking is a barbed hook; maybe there’s a catch and release law in effect.

The leashes share a similar tripping characteristic with the strollers. But where the strollers perform their job with the front wheels jutting out in front of your feet, the leashes do so by stringing a trip wire at knee height across a wide distance. On a good catch, a leash can net three or four adults at once.

When I am King, these tripping hazards will be banned. Ideally, we’d return to the sane approach of only taking the little tykes to places where it wasn’t a complete hassle to transport them; if they can’t walk and they’re too heavy to carry, try spending that day at home instead. It’s why television was invented. And duct tape.

But I realize that some parents will insist on carting the little creatures around, so we’re working hard on replacement solutions. For example, there is now a surgical procedure to attach wheels to their feet. So when they complain that they just can’t walk another two miles to that ride with the two-hour waiting line, you can pop the wheels on and drag them.

There are also backpacks available for easily carting children around. These have existed for ages and provide a great solution to the problem, but fights against the tradition that we have of not exerting any effort. So my ministry will make available a Sherpa service to assist you in carting your brood around. Getting young children around the theme park or even the local Walmart can often seem like climbing Mt. Everest, so we’ll provide the appropriate resources for these excursions.

With these new inventions, you’ll be able to take more trips with less trips.

When I am King: Gameskill

When I am King...

Video games will train our children.

As a new owner of a fancy phone, I’ve been doing a lot of research into phone applications (I’ve been playing a lot of games). One of the games I’ve been losing my life to is Angry Birds, a game in which you launch birds at pigs.

Launch birds at pigs.

It struck me, when I first started playing the game, that game designers have simply given up on the whole “plot” thing. I could imagine the meeting when the company tried to define the vision of the game: “There are these pigs, right, and they take these, um, eggs. And, let’s see, the eggs must have come from some birds, right, and they birds would be pretty angry, and … Ah, screw it. Let's write some code.”

But as I’ve sunk more of my nonexistent spare time into the game, I realized that there is actually a deeper level on which the game operates. It’s not about plots, and stories, and characters, and all of the traditional elements of an engaging fantasy world. Instead, it’s about life skills.

Think about it: you learn to precisely target the birds at the enemy to destroy them and their defenses. You sow terror in the pig community in the hopes of getting the eggs back. You wreak havoc and revenge upon every pig you see, advancing levels only when you have killed every pig in sight. And you do all of this with minions that are happy to die for the cause.

Angry Birds is training the next generation of suicide bombers.

This might be too subtle to catch at first. Then you get to the level where you launch the bomb bird at the bus full of pig children.

And while this could be construed as disturbing on some level, the fact is that our children need to develop life and career skills. Gone are the days when responsible parents would send their children out to harvest the crops, milk the livestock, and slaughter the family pets. And children learning a manufacturing trade in sweatshops is a dying tradition. Even the coal industry, a natural for minors, is sealed to the little tykes. So where are kids supposed to pick up the crucial experience that can carry them into their brief adulthood and us into our retirement?

Meanwhile, most kids spend every possible waking hour playing video games. What better way to train tomorrow’s adults than by teaching them through this engaging and interactive medium?

When I am King, all video games will teach important life skills. We’re part of the way there today, with such educational opportunities as performing hits for the mob, massacring aliens with heavy firepower, and jumping over crates to collect coins. But we could go so much further with a little more focus on the critical elements that our society revolves around:

• Investment bankers could be raised on games that teach how to bankrupt the economy while spending government bailout grants in performance bonuses.
• Budding politicians could be taught important talents such as looking determined, promising undeliverable goals, and outright lying.
  
• All kids could learn the fine art of begging, as a backup when the other alternatives don’t pan[handle] out.

The time that kids spend playing will make them more qualified for these and other critical roles in our society. When our children can learn a trade in their leisure time, it's time to cut funding for education, because that's what governments do.

When I am King: Bringing Up Upbringing

When I am King...

There will be no more parenting.

Today, I wanted to talk about the most important job of adults. No, not emailing YouTube links at work. I'm talking, of course, about parenting.

In our real jobs, the ones we get paid to do, we provide products or services or additional layers of unhelpful bureaucracy to our clients. But in parenting, we are imparting the rules of life itself not only to our children, but, indirectly, to everyone that they will interact with and every generation that they parent. So, in effect, as a parent you have a significant impact on the entire future of our planet.

At the same time, parenting is the job that we are the most unqualified to do.

For the job that pays the bills and provides the stress and adrenaline that keeps us going until retirement, when we'll simply expire from exhaustion and relief, we spend years getting ready and our entire working life perfecting the necessary skills. First there are the 12-ish years of primary education where we learn such important skills as hiding from bullies and sucking up to the teacher. Following that, we optionally head off to college, where we learn to drink heavily without dying. And we may even continue on in graduate studies, focusing in on particular areas of study, such as learning how to live below the poverty level for indefinite periods of time.

After this decade or two of education, we're finally ready to enter the job market. But we don't start out delivering finished products to users. Instead we train and act as part of a team, honing our skills over the years before we actually take on any semblance of responsibility or ownership in our field. So it can be many years more before we are trusted in our capabilities enough to unleash our output onto our users.

And in some fields, such as software, there is a high tolerance for failure. After all, if the 1.0 version is awful, there is always 2.0 next year, or 3.0 the year after that. Upgrades are a way of life.

But the job of parenting is given to us for the simple reason that we happen to be the oldest person in the group. That's like having the pilot of the airplane be the person seated closest to the cockpit. Or the designated driver be the one that's the least passed-out on the floor of the bar. Or the elected official be the one with the most money. No, scratch that last one; that is the way politics works.

I think the theory is that we're trained to be parents because we grew up. That's like saying that I'm a good fighter because I've been beaten up.

In parenting, the very tools that train you are themselves the products of your ineptness. You're not just screwing up a prototype; it's the product itself that suffers. That child holds every nuance of your failures in their very being, learning from your mistakes to grow up and make them all over again with their children, passing along the mistakes of their ancestors for generations to come.

If you have more than one child, you could think of the first one as the flawed first version, and the second child as a better 2.0 product, except that you aren't allowed to pull the 1.0 version off of the shelves. The second one isn't an upgrade from the first; they're both out in the market for life. Besides, are you really that confident of what you've learned with the first child that you think you'll nail it better with the second one? All you've learned is how you can make some things easier for yourself the second time around, like how long you can let that diaper go without causing too much of a rash or public health hazard. It's not clear that any of the mistakes you made the first time have taught you how to not make them next time around. In fact, you probably won't really understand the mistakes until the project is finished and you see the resulting adult that you helped create.

And we wonder why teenagers lack respect for their parents? That's just the age at which they realize the awful truth.

When I am King, we'll leave parenting up to the experts: nobody. There will be no more children, no more parenting, and, eventually, no more human race. Sure, it's an extreme solution, but think of the larger benefits: more free time and money to try fill that hollow emptiness in our lives, and the eventual recovery of the planet from our incessant existence.

When I am King: Yes We Cancer

When I am King...


All parents will take up smoking.

When I was a kid, I'd bring home "gifts" from art class; projects that I had made in class with limited materials, constrained time, and no talent. But the thought was there; the thought that I had better get something for my parents for their birthday, Fathers Day, Mothers Day, or an apology for the baseball through the living room window.

These objets d'art were always ashtrays made from clay and baked in a kiln until hardened into its irreversibly misshapen form. There were white ashtrays, gray ashtrays, lumpy ashtrays, and lumpier ashtrays. These blobs of primordial earth littered the house, protecting our furniture from ash as they protected our interior aesthetic from taste and refinement.

There was no thought given to encouraging our parents in a deadly habit, or promoting second-hand smoke that we would all breathe in every day (anyone remember the smell of stale smoke in a hot car on a road trip?). Instead, there was just the guarantee that you could throw some clay on the table, mash it into a roughly concave shape, paint it, bake it, and you'd have another heartwarming present to give to the folks.

Nowadays, of course, that just isn't done. It would be wrong of schools and teachers to encourage kids to make colorful accessories of death. It would be like decorating a syringe for their drug habit, or giving candy to prolong their obesity: it's just not done (except for the candy bit. What else do you give someone that obviously loves it so much?).

So kids today are left completely at a loss for gift ideas. Birthdays and holidays come and go, and the kids are always scrambling for what to give to demonstrate their undying desire for more gifts on their own birthdays. Should they draw something? Paint something? Buy a tie that won't be worn?

All of this worrying is causing unnecessary stress for our children. How can we have our nine year olds fuss about such things when we need them to lose sleep over future SAT scores and music recitals?

When I am King, all parents will take up smoking. By so doing, we will create a demand for ashtrays in our houses and thus resolve the art-gift dilemma for the next generation.

Pregnant women will, of course, be an exception. But once that kid's out of the oven, get yourself a pack and start puffing; that child will be making ugly clay objects before you know it.

When I am King: Apparent Failure

When I am King...

There will be no Father's Day.

I used to think that Father's Day was about feeling guilty as a son. It was the one day each year when you got to reflect on everything that your father did for you, like letting you be born in the first place and then not managing to kill you out of neglect and incompetence. It was also a chance to reflect on what a worthless son you were, because how could you ever compensate for such awesome contributions to your own life? Out of unsalvageable situation came a card and a gift:

Dear Dad: Thanks for life. Here's a tie.

I thought, as I grew up, that the only way to ever pay back the favor was to become a father to your own children, passing along the gift through the generations.

What a load of crap.

Now that I'm a father, I realize that it's a far more complicated occasion. Not only do I still feel inadequate as a son, but I also feel like a complete disappointment to my own children.

This day is not about celebrating those in your life that are special, or paying back in some small way the love and sacrifice that these people have squandered on you. It's about making you feel guilty about everything you're not: you are not the perfect son, and you are not the perfect father. You're just the person that happened to be there at the time. You're like the stunt double for the real actor, who's over in the canteen having a mocha while you climb through the burning wreckage of your life.

When I am King, there will be no Father's Day. We just can't handle this annual guilt. Besides, I don't wear ties.

I'm not sure about Mother's Day, because I can't speak for them. From what I've seen, Mothers are a lot better at their job than we Fathers are, so they may not need the break.

When I am King: Spelling Beegone

When I am King...

I will do away with the Spelling Bee.

Last week, I spent an evening at a Spelling Bee for fourth and fifth graders. I don’t like to admit it, but I was emotionally overcome by a sense of, well, horror.

A Spelling Bee is like a death match with letters. There is no team to win or lose with. There is no score or grade. Instead, play continues until only one child is left. The last one standing in the puddle of tears must by definition be the winner.

A girl steps up to the microphone and the judges say the word, “psychoanalysis.” She can ask for it to be repeated, derived, defined, and used in a sentence. These are all good stalling tactics and you can see their mind whirring around thinking, “I have no idea what that word is.” Meanwhile, I’m in the audience thinking, “Does that 9 year old really need to know that the word is a combination of roots from French and Celtic?” Then the girl spells the word, haltingly, knowing that everyone is watching and listening to every letter. And since everyone in the room is either a competitor or the parent of one, they are all secretly hoping she will fail.

And she does, eventually, because every child except one does. The judges let her get to the end of the word, while everyone else in the room knows that she was dead as soon as she said “P-H”. After she repeats the word at the end, signaling her completion, the judges ring a bell. it’s a small bell, a friendly bell, and it means YOU FAILED. Each child will remember the sound of that little bell for eternity, listening for it in the auditoriums of life waiting for it to ring out and tell them that they have been judged and found wanting. That they are a Bad Speller.

The girl waits politely at the microphone while the judges tell her what she should have said, and all of the parents and other children nod knowingly, “I would have spelled it the right way.” One of the parents served as the failure committee, greeting each losing child with a goodie bag so that the kids can remember losing. She gives the girl her bag, pats her on the back, and sends her, slowly weeping, toward her parents. Then the failure committee mom goes back to the box of shame to get another goodie bag, because there’s another kid stepping up to the mic, and they’ll probably lose, too.

When I am King, there will be no spelling bee. It obviously doesn’t go far enough in training these children that it’s every man for himself in this world. Instead, children will be locked in a hot room with a single juicebox. Then we’ll see who’s got what it takes. But at least in this competition there will be no roomful of people witnessing each child’s unique failure, no goodie bags of shame, no sweet bell of doom. There will just be a prize, a winner, and a roomful of straw-gouged runners-up.

Bedtime Stories

Dylan Thomas mumbled, “I can’t remember whether I drank for six days and six nights when I was twelve or was sick for twelve days and twelve nights when I drank.” And then passed out into the guacamole. Again.

I was hanging out again with Dylan, working through the remnants of a six-pack of scotch. I was asking his opinion on reading bedtime stories to children, but was having trouble getting anything more out of him in his brief periods of consciousness than a few hiccups and a belch or two.

It’s my studied opinion that reading to kids is a horrible experience. It sounds great from the outside, of course: you get time with your child and you get to read them the classics and the books that you loved from your childhood. Plus, it’s a great excuse for climbing into bed early and avoiding tedious responsibilities around the house like unstopping the toilet in the downstairs bathroom or putting out the small electrical fire in the laundry room.

But then you encounter the reality of it: kids don’t want to hear what you want to read. You approach the situation with goals of reading Wind in the Willows, or The Hobbit, or passages from Freud, but your kids complain that they’re not enjoying your selection and hand you a Dora picture book. How compelling can it be when the girl’s best friends are a map, a backpack, and a fox that steals her stuff?

So I put it to Dylan as he lay moaning on the table, “Is it better to read anything than not read at all?”

Dylan muttered something unintelligible in Welsh with too many L’s and slumped to the floor. A brilliant man, Dylan, and a heckuva guy to have over when you wanted a game of Parcheesi and a hangover for the following week. But it was always difficult reading the his meaning. It’s the poet’s way: using words carefully to impart imagery and beauty while completely eluding comprehension.

I would rather stick to my principles and keep reading my choices of Hume, Descartes, and essays from Bloch to the kids, but then they pull out their ultimate defensive weapon: they fall asleep. So is it worth trying to educate them against their will, or should I just give up and have them enjoy their bedtime stories instead? Do I send them to bed wiser for the experience, yet crying in horror from Dante’s descriptions of Hell? Or do they go to bed happy and satisfied, knowing that once more Swiper has been defeated by the clutch timing of a knapsack?

Dylan was awake later, licking the grout on the tile floor, hoping for remnants of a fantastic vindaloo we’d had that evening, when he gave me his answer: “Do not go gentle into that Good Night Moon.”

Then he fell asleep with his face in the dog's bowl.

When I am King: O, Besity!

When I am King...

Children will no longer be fed.

Ours is truly a growth society - we’re growing fat. Clothing sizes are getting larger, our cars have become monstrously huge just to fit us, and entire industries have sprung up in the medical community to help us get back to a reasonable size so that we can do it all again.

The only things that haven’t compensated for our girth growth are airplane seats, which are still built for the body of an average 8 year old anorexic. Of course, this dynamic is intentional, helping to make air travel the wonderful experience that it is.

Last year, Disney World had to fix up their “It’s a Small World” ride. For one thing, they had to make the boats more buoyant to keep our massive bodies afloat. Also, they plan to rename the ride, with the top contenders being:

• It’s a Big, Fat World
• It’s Not a Very Small World Anymore
• It’s a Small World with Huge-Ass People

and

• Caution: Boats May Sink

There are many theories on our growth curve. Is it the sugary drinks we suck down like we’re racing to put out an intestinal forest fire? Is it the fast food that we supersize just in case we don’t get another meal this decade? Is it the food itself, so filled with preservatives that we’re being mummified in life? Is that we buy so much food at these warehouse stores that we have to eat larger portions just as a means of storing it in our houses? Or are we parents stuffing our children at an early age, responding to some obsolete and disturbing instinct of fattening up our domestic animals for consumption?

My ministry has been studying the problem and has come to the following conclusion: we need look no further than our children. That's a good thing, because they're getting so huge we can't see past the little porkers.

Any parents out there know that when your kid is involved in activity, any activity, from a sport to a scouting group to a book club, there has to be snacks. Some parent is involved in coming up with the snack schedule, and then all of the parents end up bringing snacks on their turn. Donuts, juice boxes, cookies, candy, some token fruit which usually goes uneaten, chips, pizza… there’s always food at these things. And if you ever suggest actually not bringing food, the other parents stare at you in horror. “They’ll need a snack! They’ve been in school for two whole hours after lunch!” Never mind that the activity ends right before dinner time and you’ve just stuffed them with enough junk to fill a piñata; they must be fed.

So the kids go on with their activities, eating more all the time, getting them into a habit of gorging themselves that will have them crushing their bathroom scales in adulthood.

When I am King, there will be no more snacktivities. In fact, there will be no more food for children at all. We will keep them on a strict IV-drip diet to ensure that they get just enough nutrients to survive (ours is not a cruel regime). We must reverse the fattening trend and get our young ‘uns back down to where they should be. We will give them a good place to start from, so that they can have plenty of time to grow into the obese adults that we know they’re capable of becoming.

And now, I’ll leave you with a song. This is one of the jingles being considered for Disney’s revamped ride:

It’s a world of food, and a world of drink,
It’s a world of eating, till we can’t think.
There’s so much that we eat
That it’s time we agreed
It’s a fat world after all.

Chorus:
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat, fat world.

There are happy meals that we supersize,
And those chicken parts taste so good with large fries.
Now it’s harder to hide
‘Cause our butts are so wide
It’s a fat world after all.

Chorus:
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat, fat world.