I’m a Netflix subscriber, and as the father to a four-month-old, let me just say, thank you for existing. Nonetheless, my wife and I have noticed that sometimes your descriptions get a little too specific. For instance, I just looked at my Netflix category recommendations and one of the options read “Dark TV Dramas Featuring a Strong Female Lead.”

My wife and I call these Netflix Names. With a film genre, a few descriptive words and a little effort, you can make a Netflix Name for pretty much anyone or anything.

For instance, if I were a movie, you’d probably describe me as a “goofy Minnesotan comedy from the early 1980s.” If I were in a Netflix queue, I’d probably be right next to other goofy Minnesota-related comedies such as Mighty Ducks (terrible!) and Grumpy Old Men (great!).

Here are a couple improvised examples using some of your keywords:

A “family-friendly animated comedy about a monkey?”

That’s probably Curious George.

A “steamy controversial romance about forbidden love and horses?”

That’s bestiality.

While I don’t know the exact way you establish your category titles, you have to admit, those are pretty odd.

Anyway, my wife and I stream Netflix on our Wii, and we tend to watch somewhat different shows. I watch guilty pleasures like Star Trek: the Next Generation; she watches shows like Say Yes to the Dress or Grey’s Anatomy. So our Netflix recommendations are somewhat hit-or-miss to begin with.

Unfortunately, it gets worse. My niece (and her mom, my sister) occasionally visit, and when they do, they watch Netflix with us. My two-year-old niece likes to watch Dora the Explorer!, and her mom likes to occasionally watch period pieces about the United Kingdom such as Downtown Abbey and The Tudors.

Consequently, your service has recently recommended a rather incongruous lineup of selections, including Hellraiser III; Pride and Prejudice; Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta and Dora the Explorer!

When you put that all together, you get the Netflix recommendations of a crazy person. The only person I can imagine watching all of those selections back to back is some sort of serial killer. He’d probably start with Hellraiser to get psyched up, find his victim at a bridal store, strangle her with a corset like one Elizabeth Bennett might wear, and then stuff the evidence into a Dora backpack while fleeing the scene and shouting elementary Spanish phrases like La familia! and ¡Vamonos!

Finally, I have to admit that I wish that Netflix didn’t have such a good memory. On the occasional Saturday night when I’m the only person awake and I don’t feel like reading, I’ll skim Netflix for something to watch. If I’ve had a beer or two, I’m usually a bit more open to your suggestions. So I’ll watch one of the Tales from the Crypt movies you recently added, or I’ll watch an old Twilight Zone episode.

Unfortunately, this affects my future recommendations, and this can be a bit embarrassing when we have guests over, as you sometimes suggest some terrible options based on my late-night Netflix flings.

For instance, just because I indulged in a guilty pleasure like Hellraiser—once!—it doesn’t mean that you ever need to inform me about the existence of a movie like Thankskilling, which you recently recommended.

For the record, your description of that fine film reads: On their way home for Thanksgiving, five college kids run afoul of a homicidal turkey and must find a way to defeat the bird before they all die.

Similarly, please never suggest anything like Cheerleader Massacre; Invasion of the Bee Girls (tagline: They’ll love the life right out of your body!) or Santa’s Slay ever again.

Still, despite your faults, we enjoy your service a great deal, so thank you.

Let me know what you think, and take care,

Brett Ortler

The post A Letter to the Netflix Algorithm about its Category Options appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

A student, preferably the most trustworthy and well-thought of in the class, should serve as a failsafe. They will be issued a special box of colored pencils that conceals the detonator to the small, but lethal, amount of C4 hidden underneath the now-rogue teacher’s desk.

But even the trustworthy student could turn traitor and fall in line with the teacher, so a contingency plan must be in order for them too. Therefore the student immediately behind the failsafe’s desk will be in surreptitious contact with an AC-130 Gunship orbiting the school. If necessary, the secondary failsafe will get a hall pass to “go to the bathroom” and make contact with the gunship, which will target the offenders thanks to the GPS transponders embedded in the food they consumed in the cafeteria.

Of course, there is the possibility that the entire classroom will fall under the megalomaniacal sway of the teacher. In this case, the child located closest to the door will open up and strategically place the designated Hello Kitty backpack filled with Claymore mines.

And we must admit, there is the remote possibility that the entire class could be radicalized, leaving them with enough weapons for a respectable militia. In this case, the school principal will open the school’s safe and retrieve the “lunch box,” an actual lunch box that holds the activation codes for a miniaturized W78 nuclear weapon.

The safe also contains a set of keys to arm the device. In order to prevent further potential violence, the principal and his or her assistant will turn their keys simultaneously, eradicating any and all threats.

The post To Those Who Say That Arming Teachers is The Best Way to Prevent Gun Violence appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

As you may know, we celebrated your one-month birthday two weeks ago. We made you a cupcake with the fraction “1/12^th” on it. Then we ate it. You didn’t get to have any. I’m sorry, but those are the rules. Forever. Maybe when you’re older—15, say—we’ll give you a little taste of frosting. Probably not. You see, your mother and I really like cakes, cupcakes, pie, and most other pastries. (Shepherd’s Pie is false advertising, NEVER TRY IT.)

Anyway, when you’re 18, you can go buy your own cake. Of course, I’m kidding, you’ll get to have some soon enough. Next month, we’re going to make you another cupcake, but with the simplified fraction 1/6 on it. We’re going to continue in this fashion until your actual birthday; we think it’ll make for some fun pictures. OK, OK, it’s just an excuse for us to eat a lot of cupcakes, accidentally make a “mistake” when writing with the frosting, eat the defective cupcake, and start over on another unblemished one, whereby the process continues. (As of this writing, I weigh 798 pounds.)

We’re also excited to celebrate your Pi Day (3.14159265359 years after your birth). I should clarify.  By “we,” I mean, “I”. Your mom thinks I’m a bit of a loon. Anyway, we’ll be celebrating it on Tuesday, September 8, 2015, so mark your calendar. Your future self might consider this too nerdy; however, given that you will be three and won’t have much to contribute to the issue, we’re making the call for you. (Plus, you only get one Pi day.)

In addition to your one-month birthday, you graced us with your first smile. As you may know, it’s pretty hard to tell when an infant is smiling at first, as babies make a funny face called a “gas smile.” I don’t know why they do this exactly, but it looks like the little one is smirking, sort of like if he or she were doing an impression of the Mona Lisa. (Come to think of it: This probably says more about the background of the painting than I care to know.)

Anyway, for a few weeks, every time you had the slightest facial expression your mother and I would immediately begin our newest infant-related game: Is it mirth or flatulence?

At first, it was all gas smiles, but then one day there was no question about it. You were grinning like we gave you a gondola full of gummy bears. (Trust me: that would be good.) Since then, smiling has been a daily occurrence, and I can usually get you to smile, though you like to make me work for them.

You especially like it when I make turkey-like noises. Since then, it has sounded like Thanksgiving at our household. Of course, you were only impressed by the standard turkey impression for so long, so I had to improvise. Now there’s the crying turkey, the laughing turkey, the turkey taking up yodeling. I’m working on the German turkey. (It is a turkey that yells a lot.)

In addition to smiling, you’re also growing. You’re now pushing 12 pounds (you’re probably over that, actually), and you sometimes down seven to eight ounces of breastmilk in a sitting. Then you belch like a biker.

In fact, you’ve grown so much that you no longer fit into the newborn clothes or the 0-3 month size. I don’t know if a Big and Tall-type clothing store for babies exists, but we’ll probably have to start looking.

Anyway, you’re currently dozing off next to me, (and snoring), and your mother and I are about to put you in your bassinet, so I’d better go.

Still can’t believe it’s been six weeks already.

With love,

Dad (and Mom)

The post Letter #9 to Oliver | Subject: Smiling, Turkeys, Smiling Turkeys appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

So it’s already been two weeks since you’ve been born! I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner; your mother and I have been quite busy at home with you, and it’s been an absolute blast.

Anyway, I’m happy to report that you reached two major milestones yesterday: You played with your first toy, and your umbilical stump fell off, so you now officially have a belly button!

First, let’s talk about your belly button. It’s an innie, and after realizing it was there, we immediately pressed it, but sadly, nothing happened. Kayli and I had hoped that if we pushed it perhaps something good (cake or pie maybe) would appear, but alas, that was not the case. (Our own belly buttons remain stubbornly inoperable.) This belly button setback notwithstanding, we remain convinced that someday a belly button will live up to its potential.

You also played with your first toy yesterday. It is a rabbit toy, and like all rabbits, it is slightly terrifying. I don’t know why people think rabbits are cute. They have oversized teeth, they’re smelly, and they reproduce far too quickly. In this respect, they are like certain patrons at the local Walmart.

Not only did you play with your first toy, we also read you your first book last week. As I need to dig out a bunch of my children’s books, I went out and bought you a bunch of them, including some standards, Curious George, Babar, The Slightly Irregular Fire Engine, and a whole bunch of others. You now have your own bookshelf, which we plan on adding to in short order.

I purchased one book—Edward the Emu—based on the title alone. As you might expect, it is about an Emu. (He lives in a zoo.) We read it to you, but every time I said “emu,” you cried. We took this as a sign that you didn’t like the book. As a sign of solidarity, your mother and I both pledged to try to find, and eat, emu-on-a-stick at the upcoming Minnesota State Fair.

Right now, however, things are emu-free and you are more content. You are currently sleeping on a pillow next to me. You are lying on your back with your hands straight up into the air. I think you are either having a dream about being arrested or you are practicing to be a football referee.

Your mother is sitting here, too, and we’re all watching the 2012 Summer Olympics, which are being held in London. The Olympics have been a lot of fun to watch, though your mother and I think we would be better commentators than many of the folks that NBC has hired. (They all seem like pretentious jerks.)

Your mother, and I, however, would have more unorthodox comments. For instance, while discussing the dominance of the U.S. and Australia in swimming, we agreed that the U.S. is good likely because we are pretty wealthy and have access to lots of pools. I mentioned that Australia is probably good because they have the ocean to swim in; your mother looked at me, shook her head, and said, “No, Brett. It’s the sharks. Their swimmers are good because they are chased by sharks.”

Your mother and I also agree that the medals could be improved. As I understand it, the actual medals themselves aren’t actually as advertised—gold and silver medals are both mostly silver, but the bronze medals are actually bronze.

If we’re not going to go with the actual metals, let’s get a little more creative. We think it’d be great if the gold medal were an oversized version of one of those chocolates covered in gold foil. The silver medal could be a Peppermint Patty, and the bronze medal could actually be bronze, but we think it’d be great if the third-place finishers didn’t know it wasn’t candy before they bite into it. That’s what they get for placing third.

Finally, you might be wondering what your first few weeks of life were like.

The best way I can put it is: living with a newborn is like living with a tiny frat boy: they sleep all day, they’re obsessed with breasts, and they’re practically guaranteed to puke on you three to four times a week.

With that said, it’s been an absolute blast. We both wish we could simply stay home with you all the time. (I already had to go back to work. It was pretty hard.)

As a sign of our how much we like you, your mother and I have already given you a bunch of nicknames. The most popular ones right now are:

Ollie McGolly

Sir Wigglington

OllieBollie

Fuss-Fuss-McGus (when you are fussy)

You haven’t been awake all that much, but you are a hungry little guy. And when you want food, you want it now. You make this abundantly clear because your fingernails are like little eagle talons. And when you’re crabby, you’re even more aquiline: you make a bunch of squeaky bird-like noises and dig in your claws into whatever—or whoever—is nearby. I am covered in scratches.

When you cry, you waive your arms around like the Robot from the TV show Lost in Space. You probably don’t have the slightest clue what I mean. Let me explain: It featured a robot that waived his arms around a lot whenever he sensed danger and said “Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!”

I suppose he doesn’t seem like a very impressive robot to you. You live in the future, and you probably have robot friends. For all I know, we may even have a robot President.

In any event, I’ll try to keep up with the letters, so you can have an idea of what your early days were like.

With love,

Dad (and Mom)

The post Letter #8 to Oliver: Subject: Eagles, Toys, Robots, Books, the Olympics appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

From my letter: First, since you killed Pluto, have you considered making Pluto your trophy, like the Predator does with the skeletons of his quarry?.

Mike Brown’s response: I have a picture of Pluto with a black eye on my door. That’s about as close as I get, I think.

From my letter: About Eris: As I understand it, before Eris and its moon Dysnomia received their official designations, you referred to them as Xena and Gabrielle, obvious references to the TV show, Xena: Warrior Princess. Did you discuss this beforehand with Lucy Lawless and Renée O’Connor, the stars of that show?

Mike Brown’s response: I didn’t ask ahead of time, but Lucy Lawless did call to say thanks, so I think she, at least, was OK with the idea.

From my letter: Finally, one last question. As you killed Pluto, I have to ask: have you ever played Mortal Kombat? Given your skill at dispatching actual planetary objects, you’d probably be pretty good at killing virtual enemies. Then again, Mortal Kombat was probably a generation or so after your time, but you played Asteroids, right?

Mike Brown’s response: I was a Space Invaders guy. I thus think of Pluto not as some asteroid bystander to get out of the way, but as an evil alien menace attacking. It makes me feel better about myself.

From my letter: P.S. What is your view on the brontosaurus?

Mike Brown’s response: I think it is wrong for scientists to change terms I learned when I was a kid.

The post Brett’s Letter about Pluto to Mike Brown gets a response! appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

Check it out here, and share it if you like it, yeah?

Thanks for reading!

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Let me explain: in the upcoming election, Minnesota voters will be deciding whether to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying. A ‘yes’ vote will permanently ban same-sex marriages, enshrining that position in the Minnesota Constitution. A ‘no’ vote would ensure marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

Many of the proponents of the amendment have argued that a ‘yes’ vote will help defend “traditional marriage.”

Well, I’ve done my homework, and I have to admit, they have been very convincing. I had no idea how many types of traditional marriage there were. I assume that since one type of traditional marriage is allowed, the others are too. That’s great news!

To be honest, when I learned about traditional marriage, I felt duped!

In my current marriage, all my wife does is work a full-time job, love our little infant (and me) unconditionally in a committed relationship, and act as my closest confidante and best friend. Clearly, THAT IS NOT TRADITIONAL ENOUGH. When I got married to my wife back in 2008 2010 (doh!), I hadn’t even considered my other marriage options!

As I now know, for most of history, wives were chattel, a form of property. This was even codified in the Ten Commandments in the Bible, a book the defenders of traditional marriage refer to often.

The tenth commandment makes this clear:

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house [his property] thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife [property], nor his manservant, nor his maidservant [slaves, equivalent to property], nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s. [property, biological property/donkey, all other property]

*[Annotations obviously mine.]

This couldn’t be clearer.  Your neighbor’s wife is clearly viewed as property, as they are lumped in with all their other stuff (their house, their slaves, their cat., etc.)

This wife-as-property idea wasn’t an exception, either. It was the rule! (More than that, a commandment!) The moral of that story is clear: You shouldn’t covet your neighbor’s wife because she is not your possession.

So now that I know my wife is my possession, I imagine putting her up for sale is no problem. So while I wait for offers to pour in (I imagine there will be a robust market for her), now I can to get to the fun part: Considering the other traditional marriages.

There are so many options. I mean, do I want to have one stable wife-relationship but with boatloads of concubines? Do I want to go all Henry the Eighth (minus the obesity and executions) and trade my old wife in every twenty-five minutes? Do I want to be a polygamist? (No, too much work.)

Obviously, the concubine option is alluring. Multiple partners without all the gravitas of the “until death do us part” nonsense. I can just see it now: a new partner every few months, no guilt, it will be like college all over again!

And this idea has such a history. I mean, it was practiced by the likes of Abraham and Solomon. Abraham—that guy was the patriarch of the big three monotheistic religions! Judaism, Christianity and Islam all look up to him! So if he did it, why can’t I?

And don’t get me started on Solomon. He had 700 wives and 300 concubines. And while that didn’t turn great for him (moral of the story: You should never have 1000 women simultaneously in your life), it was more a matter of degree, and not a problem with concubinage generally. (Also: Concubine is a funny word. It sounds like some sort of hat. Or a seashell. Concubinage sounds like a disease.)

So now that I’m considering acquiring concubines, I don’t know to start. Is there some sort of concubine store? I guess I could go down to an adult store like Sex World, but the last time I was there (in high school), I don’t recall see any women for sale.  Instead there were just a lot of DVDs and all sorts of battery-powered equipment and what appeared to be miniature jackhammers. It looked like a creepy hardware store.

Hmm. I just searched online, and didn’t find any concubines for sale. Is concubinary a hush-hush sort of thing? Given popular culture, it doesn’t seem like it. (Jersey Shore is about concubines, right?)

Anyway, maybe I need to establish an advertisement seeking a concubine, too. That’s what the “casual encounters” section is for on Craigslist, yes?

Wait, after re-reading through all this, now I’m confused. If traditional marriage varies so much—and clearly it has—then what’s the difference between a man marrying have a dozen women, or marrying one and sleeping with a bunch on the side, and a pair of men in a committed relationship getting married or a woman and another woman tying the knot.

In the end, the biblically sanctioned notions of traditional marriage seem a lot wackier—and more socially pernicious—than what I would call real traditional marriage: two people, irrespective of their gender, committing to each other for life.

That’s why I’m voting no on the Marriage Amendment in Minnesota (and similar bills elsewhere) and encourage you to do the same.

Oh, and one quick note to my wife: I love you, honey. Sorry for putting you on sale on Craigslist.

The post Putting My Wife for Sale on Craigslist in Honor of Traditional Marriage appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

I’m a constituent in your district, and I recently stumbled upon your financial disclosure forms for the year of 2011.

I was perplexed by what I found. In 2011, you received $92,273 in union disability payments. As I understand it, you have sleep apnea. It’s a serious illness, and it’s certainly worthy of disability payments. I’m sorry you have it.

That’s not why I’m writing. Rather, I’m writing because I noticed that in the same year that you received disability payments from your union, you also received the standard salary that members of Congress receive—$174,000. (Unless you opted out, you also received that salary this year.) Furthermore, as the “assets and earned income” section of the financial disclosure forms make clear, you also have quite a few other assets. You have a couple houses, a cabin, not to mention bank accounts and other funds worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. (The checklist of that page looked a bit like a tic-tac-toe game gone wild.)

Truth be told, it seems disingenuous for you to claim disability at all. You’re working a full-time job (and have a great deal of other assets), and as a Congressman you’ve made it clear how much you dislike unnecessary, wasteful spending.

But you’re taking part in exactly such wasteful spending yourself; the only difference is that we’re talking about a private disability trust. Nonetheless, the principles are the same—other disabled Delta workers no doubt need that money far more than you do. After all, not everyone at Delta earned a pilot’s salary, can hold down a good-paying full-time job, or has your net worth.

So in the end, you’re taking a handout—and one that you don’t even need. For someone who argues that “Congress must learn to do what families in Minnesota do every day, live within our means” that’s quite a strange example for you to set.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Take care,
Brett Ortler

The post A Letter to Congressman Chip Cravaack, Subject: Disability, Wasteful Spending and Entitlements appeared first on Funny Letters and Mad Science.

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All babies should wear bear shoes.

My wife and I are now the proud parents of a five-day-old baby, and as we expected, he’s already drastically changing our lives. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.

1. Babies = Time Travel

If you want a time machine, forget Doc Brown and his Delorean: instead, have a baby. Except, this time machine is no express train; it won’t whisk you away to 2015 or send you traipsing back to 1955 and the days of “I Like Ike.”

No, this time machine is entirely random. When your kid won’t stop crying, time essentially stops. That might sound obvious, but experiencing your kid doing it is another thing altogether.  It’s excruciating. (This happened to our little guy on our second night.)

And really, little guys and gals have lots to cry about—being hungry, dirty diapers, and of course, the shocking realization that eating one’s own hand is not very tasty.

Of course, more often than not, time seems to accelerate, so one day your little guy/gal is five days old, then suddenly they are five, fifteen, twenty five.

Now I know I’m only five days in, so I’m extrapolating a bit here, but I’ve experienced this vicariously with my niece (already nearly two!), and I’m assuming this effect will only get more pronounced.

Taken all together, the experience is pretty mystifying. I mean, imagine if this were a movie: Most of the action would be shown in fast forward, except for the excruciating portions, which are in slow-motion. And there’s no predicting any of it, minor disasters (goldfish funeral #732; the infamous ice cream accident of June 1, a.k.a. ice cream down! ice cream down!) happen all the time, and there are no smooth transitions from shot to shot. In other words, life with a baby is something like an avant-garde film.

2. I really need to start working out again.

I used to work out quite a bit, especially in high school and college, and I stayed in reasonably good shape until a year or so after grad school (about three years back). Then, when I started working a 9-5 for the first time, I started to let things slide a bit.

Now I don’t look like the Hindenberg or anything like that (THE HUMANITY!) but I know I don’t have the strength or endurance I once did. Not even close.

Having a baby made this quite clear. Our baby boy was large—nearly 10 pounds—and while 10 pounds doesn’t sound particularly heavy, carrying a ten pound baby isn’t as easy as it sounds.

First of all, it’s a wiggly ten pounds, so it’s hard to keep a grip. Plus, there are only so many ways to hold a baby, as you have to support their neck and their bums. So you’re constantly using the same muscle groups. All of this adorable weightlifting occurs in tight spaces, so you have to get pretty Cirque du Soleil with things; in our hospital room there was a breast pump, a table for meals, the fold-out bed, the giant hospital bed, the IV, the vitals monitors and all of our accumulated stuff (diaper bags, presents, paperwork).

And then there are the reps. If your baby is somewhat fussy, like ours, you end up picking him/her up, walking them around and putting them back down quite often. This adds up to some serious lifting. My advice: Buy Epsom Salts in advance.

There’s another reason to work out. If you’re like me, you’ll notice your papa-bear instincts kicking it—that whole must-protect-baby-and-mama-bear thing. While I think I could do OK in a scrap, I’d like to get in better shape for that, too. (To be fair: at 5’6, I wouldn’t make much of a proper “papa bear.” More like a Papa Ewok.)

3. Your pre-baby definition of tired and your post-baby definition of tired will, how shall we say, differ.

I know, I know, you’re expecting this, but there’s no real way to prepare for it. I think part of it is when you’re up with your little one, you’re exerting mental effort as well as physical effort. So it’s doubly tiring, and if the kid is sick or fussy, there isn’t always a reprieve, and your fatigue compounds itself.

4. Babies really like to scream.

Pretty self-explanatory, yeah?

5. Even when they are screaming, babies are pretty darn cute.

Oliver likes to scream. (He gets this from his mother, I think.) But even when he’s going at full volume—and this kid’s got lungs—it’s still cute. Oliver’s cries tend to sound something like, “Wh-wh-wha-whyyyyy?” as if he has been grievously wronged.

6. I really need to buy my parents a beer.

See #3, #4 and #5.

7. My preconceptions about parenting were often wrong.

I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I was wrong. I had the broad strokes right (changing diapers! feeding baby! toys!), but I got the day-to-day details all wrong.

I figured there would be a reasonably set feeding and changing schedule and that his behavior would be mostly predictable, even at first. Nope and nope.

While I know I’m only five days in, I feel safe in saying this: If you don’t have kids, you don’t know what it’s like to parent. In other words, no amount of anticipation and preparation equate to experience. That’s like thinking you know what it’s like to experience skydiving without, you know, actually doing it.

To extend that metaphor a bit more, unlike when you’re jumping out of a plane, in parenting there isn’t a real back-up chute. I mean, there’s family and friends, and their support is essential, but when it all comes down to it, you’ve got a tiny person who needs food and shelter and toys and most importantly, your constant love and attention, and they’re relying solely on you.

8. No one should ever make fun of mothers, (or women generally).

I’ve never really understood the word “pussy” as a byword for weakness. If you’ve never seen a woman endure the less pleasant day-to-day aspects of pregnancy, you really have no idea what you’re talking about. (It’s not surprising, then, that the world is primarily used by high schoolers and other young men who have little to no contact/respect for actual pregnant women.)

And of course, all of that pain is merely the previews to the feature film: when a woman goes into labor it’s the “pussy’s” big day, and it was goddamn awful, even for me.

It was like watching my wife being tortured; all that was missing were the guys in fedoras and a flickering fluorescent bulb overhead. Somehow, my wife endured it, and even more than that—she was cracking jokes when her contractions were about a minute apart. She is far tougher than I am: I would have been yowling like a kitten in a blender.

Biological nuances aside, I think that having folks witness a woman actually giving birth could go a long way toward helping us ditch some of our shoddy societal preconceptions about women (and perhaps the use of the word “pussy”). Plus, if teenage girls and boys were to actually witness a birth (they could do so in one of those observation hospital rooms with the one-way glass) they may then realize what bringing a child into the world actually entails. If they did, there might be a subsequent “scared straight” effect, and perhaps they would make better choices in their nascent sex lives. (Plus, this would be a great way to augment a health class or a biology class.)

Of course, I’m aware that this would probably never happen, for a myriad of reasons. Not least that we’re a nation of hypocritical prudes: some of the most famous women in our culture are actresses, many of whom have had topless roles, and nearly all jaunt down the red carpet in plunging, showy gowns. But showing the actual biological machinery at work (breastfeeding) is practically anathema.

9. No one should ever make fun of single mothers.

See #7 and #8. Doing this with two people is hard enough. Doing it alone is almost unfathomable.

10. Changing diapers isn’t the hard part.

The hardest part has been those moments when I’ve been unable to settle our little guy down, despite having fed him, changed him, and having done all I could to account for his well-being. It’s unfair that the most innocent should have to suffer.

11. When you go to the hospital, bring your own pillow.

Hospital pillows are often covered in this weird plastic, and it feels like one is sleeping on a jellyfish. The pillows don’t just feel weird, either. They squeak when you reposition your head. Pillows shouldn’t sound like birds; I consider that a self-evident truth.

12. Baby swings are worth more than gold.

Worried about the collapse of the dollar? Don’t invest in gold. Invest in baby swings. These things are seriously undervalued. Once the baby is here, it’s often pretty fussy, at least for us. Our little guy likes to be rocked, but unless you can crush a beer can with your biceps, your arms will be shot pretty quick. Baby swings solve this problem; Oliver likes them so much, we’ve got two (thanks to our fine friends and family).

13. Doomsday preppers are probably nuts. But baby prepping makes complete sense.

I’m not a doomsday prepper, but my wife and I were baby preppers. Let me put it this way: We practically own stock in the Pedialyte company, we’ve got more diapers than the Octomom, and we have cornered the market on baby outfits featuring cute cartoony crabs and lobsters. (There is perhaps nothing cuter than a pissed-off infant looking all Mr. Angrypants while wearing a shirt that features a large smiling crab.)

14. Modern Medicine Probably Saved My Wife and Child

While my wife and I wanted our child to be born the traditional route, we eventually had to opt for a C-section. I’m glad we did, because it probably saved both of their lives. After they ganked Ollie out, they measured his head; it was 14.5 centimeters in circumference; when the female reproductive system is ready to deliver, the opening is 10 centimeters. The doctor said it herself, “There was no way that baby was coming out that way.” To put it another way, if this birth had taken place 150 years ago, there probably wouldn’t have been a happy ending.

15. You’ve probably wasted a lot of your life.

I’m 29. I’ve spent considerable amounts of my life playing Nintendo systems of one sort or another, drinking a rather staggering amount of beer, and generally not being productive.

As I’m a writer, this is clearly problematic, and I’ve always had a vague of idea of how much time I’ve been wasting. But now that Ollie’s here, it’s quite clear. I suppose you never know exactly how much time you’ve wasted until you don’t have time to waste anymore. As they say in Star Wars: we shall redouble our efforts!

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