Baby-proofing Liberals

From the Department of Homeland Security

Five Ways to Encourage Liberals to Have Fewer Children

If you’re a liberal, here’s what you can do to make Karl Rove a very happy man: Get yourself a labradoodle. Or any other kind of dog, for that matter. Even a cat will do.

Just don’t have children.

That way you’ll maintain a fertility gap that already is invisibly working to guarantee the political right will outnumber the left by an ever-growing margin.

– San Francisco Chronicle

Look, people. This is not a tough sell! I mean, they’re practically doing the job for us. But here are a few easy steps you can take to ensure that liberals continue to have fewer and fewer children.

1. Remind liberals that if they have children, they won’t have time to read the New York Times, Harper’s or the Huffington Post (or any other ultra-liberal publications, blogs, “unbiased” media, etc.) on a regular basis.

This one is just an introductory idea, a way to broach the topic of kids=time =not enough time to worry about which laws and rights the executive branch will encroach upon/take away. This should be an easy conversation to get going in a bohemian, locally owned coffee shop, which is where many liberals like to sip their elitist cappuccino mocha java soy no-whip lattes, or whatever they call them. (Plan a personalized coffee drink for yourself — they will recognize that you are not one of them if you order “I don’t know, just a coffee.”)

2. Promote the human toll associated with environmental “crises” like global warming.

Pepper your discussions with phrases like “carbon neutral,” “green energy” and “sustainable farming.” These phrases get liberals excited and angry and remind them that by having children, they’ll have to worry about making one more person a good custodian of the environment.

3. Overpopulation is a problem — adopt!

Even if the liberal you’re talking at (God knows you can’t talk with them) is thinking about having children just to produce more liberals, remind them of all of the orphans in other countries. (Media coverage of recent celebrity adoptions has practically done this for you!) See? It isn’t responsible to have your own children (thus passing on your evil liberal DNA to yet another generation of ecoterrorists and vegans)! The adopted children could still turn out to be liberals, but at least they’ve got a fighting biological chance. (NOTE: You don’t have to believe in evolution to use this argument.)

4. Appeal to the Generation X obsession with independence and rejection of the old (read: traditional) corporate way of working.

Don’t be like your parents, working for the man, getting that crappy watch when you retire from the job you hated for 35 years! It’s not like any of those companies offer the pension your dad has, anyhoo. This argument should compel them to start a small business, work as freelancers, become artists — all choices that will leave them with little or no health insurance. They’re so caught up in being responsible that they won’t have children under those circumstances. This will lead to thoughts about universal health coverage, and our next point.

5. Encourage expatriation

Next time you hear a liberal say, “It’s getting so bad here, I’m moving to Canada!” remind him or her that this is a viable option. Have some information ready about what it takes to become a Canadian citizen. Make it seem like an easy process. Say things like, “Vancouver is such a wonderful city,” or, “Canadians are so friendly, eh?” If you can get liberals to move to Canada, it doesn’t matter whether they procreate. They’re not our problem any more, and you have done your duty as a citizen of the greatest country on the planet by ridding it of those godless, unpatriotic socialists.

Now, for your next course in civic duty, Supporting the Military-Industrial Complex, please proceed to room 315…

N. Korean Free Speech

An interesting posting on Al Jazeera:

“North Korea has lashed out at the South Korean government for what it calls the “fascist action” of blocking public access to websites sympathetic to the North.”

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/3FE35248-0843-4DB1-97D4-DBBDB0CD9D7C.htm

You know you’re in trouble when North Korea is criticizing your free speech practices.

Knock-knock

A man walks into a bar. He turns around and walks right back out. He knows what’s coming. He’s not carrying a duck. He’s not carrying anything. He’s a normal guy, there’s not anything unusual about him. He doesn’t have a slick bet or hustle. He doesn’t have a story to tell. So the bartender will be carrying something. Or he’ll say something strange. Or he’ll meet someone strange at the bar.

The man turns to walk back into the bar. After all, it’s inevitable, right? No, it’s not. He stops. He can avoid the bar. He can go to a café for a cup of joe instead. He can go to a juice bar for a wheat grass. That’s ridiculous, he would never go for a wheat grass. Who is he kidding? He’s going to go into the bar.

A priest, a rabbi, and a shaman brush past him and walk into the bar. That’s it. He can’t go in now. That coffee sounds good now, even better than a Scotch. Surely there’s a café around here somewhere. He walks down the street a little. Another bar. Maybe on the corner there’s a café or a coffee shop. He’s never been in a coffee shop – always bars.

A man wearing a hat is leading a horse out of the bar on the corner. Seeing this, the man who doesn’t want to walk into a bar stops and surveys the block. He realizes that every door on this block leads into a bar. No cafes, no coffee shops. Just bars.

A woman approaches, blonde. “Where is the nearest bar?” she asks him. She looks puzzled and hot. Not that kind of hot. Well, yes, but really, warm. It’s summer, and she’s wearing a long fur coat. Her cheeks are rosy. She’s panting in the late day heat. She needs help. He wonders if she’s heard the one about the—no, better not ask that. He offers to show her the nearest bar and buy her a cold drink. She smiles, so grateful, and takes his arm.

A man walks into a bar with a blonde….

Shower Gravity

I yelled a question to my husband while he was in the shower the other day (I rarely have the patience to wait until he’s finished with, say, brushing his teeth before I must blurt out some mundane comment and then ask him a question he clearly can’t answer with a mouth full of foam.) We were getting ready to head out somewhere, and after he answered my initial question, he said:

“Sorry I’m taking so long. Shower gravity.”

And I could hardly blame him, because who hasn’t been sucked into a hot shower on a winter day for a finger-pruning amount of time?

His usual gravity vice is online. Actually, the pull of surfing or skimming stories off his RSS feed is usually stronger than gravity. It’s closer to the sucking power of a black hole. I have my own gravity issues, too, but I won’t confess which daytime television show(s) are drawing me in, sorry.

But there are worse kinds of gravity, relatively speaking, so I try not sweat these little anomalies of the physical universe. I could have French-fry gravity, or some other form of trans-fat gravity. Casino gravity. Cigarette gravity. One-up-you gravity. Couch gravity (not unheard of in small amounts) that would prevent me from playing in the mountains and cause me to gain 30 lbs.

However, gravity is something you don’t notice until you’re in an extreme situation. Your pruning skin will eventually send you looking for a dry towel, regardless of shower gravity. But with some things, you might have to go to the moon to figure it out. And sometimes we live with strange forms of gravity just because the escape velocity needed to get to the moon seems impossible.

I suppose the important thing is to find a hospitable, livable gravity, somewhere between the sun and the moon. Perhaps Earth?

“Shower gravity, eh?” I asked my husband.

He peeked out from around the shower curtain, grinned under his soapy mohawk and nodded yes.

You don’t have to sit under the apple tree long to figure out that relative to the other kinds of gravity out there, a little shower gravity never hurt anyone.