Sunday Night Sermon #1

I know, this is usually my day of rest. Well you know what? Days of rest are for suckers. Yeah, that’s right, I just called your god a sucker and I meant it.

From now until I get bored of it, I’ll be cross-posting blog entries here and on a new blog at rinderpest.com, a nice little corner of the Internet inhabited by some very funny people (and some not so funny people but don’t tell Sam, Steven Brett, and Cindy Clayton I said they weren’t funny).

Enjoy!
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Science. It gives us so much. Medicine, iPods, Internet porn . . . and also new and exciting ways for people to reveal their freakishness. Take, for example, this recent article in the New York Times concerning single women who, unable to cope with the telltale ticking of their internal clocks, decide to spend thousands of dollars and years of their lives attempting to get preggers.

I’m not completely calloused. Only partially, maybe a little more. Let’s say I’m 54% calloused. I understand that these women give a lot of thought to their choice. They have every right to make the choice they do, etc. etc. They are also insane (for certain definitions of insanity [definitions I made up]). From the article:

“Last fall, she went to the Donor Sibling Registry and got a shock: the Aryan bodybuilder with the leaping sperm has fathered 21 children (and counting — he is still an active donor), including four sets of twins. These children are all 3 and under, and their families — four lesbian couples, three heterosexual couples and six single mothers — have formed their own Listserv, where photographs of the children (all blond, with a strong familial resemblance) are posted, and daily e-mail messages are exchanged about birthdays, toilet training and the like. They are planning a group vacation in 2007. . . . And they aren’t sitting idle; one woman had magnified his baby picture, in which the donor is blowing out candles on his birthday cake, to the point at which a first name may be legible. Another mother has a hunch about the donor’s provenance based on the way he pronounced certain words on his audiotape.”

To all the fellas out there thinking of making cash off your precious, precious seed — beware. The woman who eventually chooses you to fertilize her eggs might just end up outside your window with a pair of binoculars. Also, you may end up fathering an entire village of ubermensch.

The delusions that some of these women are operating under are fascinating. For instance:

“And like virtually all of the prospective single mothers I spoke with, she had every intention of finding a mate after the child was born. “Taking this whole ‘I have to find the father of my child’ out of the equation might make it a lot more relaxed and easier,” she said. “The guys are smelling it, and they run.” “

Right, because while a woman who is only interested in spawning is a bit of a turn-off on a date, nothing says “take me now” like a wailing two-year old in the next room. Another woman purchases sperm spur of the moment because the receptionist at the clinic informs her that there are only a few canisters left of the popular stud she was eyeing from the catalog.

To be clear, I’m not using this as an opportunity to blame science for the downfall of society. Stupid people have been breeding since . . . well, for quite a while I’d say. It’s really just a bold new method for people to show exactly how messed up they are. Happily, I’m sure that there are many women who undertake the procedure with full, realistic knowledge of what’s in store for them. And I’m sure that they manage to raise healthy and happy children, and I’m sure of these things because I have to be, otherwise I’ll spend the remaining hours of my weekend very, very depressed.