I think we can all agree on that, don’t you? I think, if you took a really honest poll, most people would admit that, at one time or another, they have kissed a baby in the presence of its parents and then immediately wondered if they’d contracted some type of degenerative skin disease.

Not all of these unfortunate babies are hideous, of course. Some just don’t look quite right. Maybe one eye’s a little bit lower than the other one. Maybe they have this weird birthmark in the shape of Angela Lansbury right smack in the middle of their forehead. Maybe their mustache isn’t as well-groomed as it could be.

This is especially true when the baby’s just born, during those first few days when its parents say things like “Oh, isn’t she precious” and their friends say things like “Dear God, what happened to your pet monkey?”

They don’t really say that, of course. That’s the problem. When it comes to the child’s looks, we all have to ignore the facts and pretend that they’re the most beautiful things on the face of the Earth. Preferably without vomiting directly on them. It’s the only characteristic we have to lie about. Nobody gets pissed if you say their kid smells funny, burps a lot, or screams so loud dolphins migrating off the coast stop to give your house the finger. They just laugh and nod their heads. But say their kid looks like something that came out of Freddy Krueger’s ass and suddenly you’re a douchebag.

This socially-mandated fiction speaks to the heart of the real problem–America’s unhealthy obsession with appearances.

Why is calling a baby ugly such an insult? Looks have absolutely nothing to do with what type of person you are. Except in this country, where a woman could pull fifteen quadriplegic orphans out of a school bus that plunged off a bridge into a piranha-infested river and all the magazines would focus on is whether or not her ass looked chunky in her wet jeans.

That’s why we have to come up with half-assed, bullshit compliments whenever we’re confronted with an infant whose face could permanently detach your retinas. Comments like:

“Wow, that unibrow sure makes him look distinguished.”

“At that age, my baby barely had any teeth at all, let alone three growing out of her ear.”

“She has a great personality.”

If you hear these–or similar comments–on a regular basis, just accept the fact that your kid won’t be getting by on his or her looks and move on. Hey, what better time to start teaching them the fine art of ass-kissing than when they’ll put any damn thing in their mouth anyway?

I was 13 years old and hanging out at my friend Matt’s house one night when this comedy special came on HBO. It was some old guy with white hair and a ponytail dressed all in black, but the audience seemed to like him, so I gave him a shot. Five minutes in, I’d laughed so hard I couldn’t see the screen anymore. All I could make out was this guy’s rough, raspy, angry yet child-like voice, saying things that I knew I shouldn’t be hearing, which just made them all the more funny.

When I made my brief, ill-advised foray into stand-up comedy (I believe the stench from most of my “act” can still be seen hanging like a dark green cloud over New Brunswick), I tried desperately to be like him. It was literally the only thing I had in common with every other comedian on the planet. We all want to be like him.

Well, not now, of course. The goddamn guy is dead.

Keep killing ‘em, George.

By

Gregg Podolski

What is a recession? Most economists define the term as, “The steady contraction of the national economy over a time span of no less than six months.” By contrast, most Presidents in office during a recession define the term as, “We are not in a recession.”

The fact is, most people don’t care what you call it when the economy spirals downward faster than Lindsey Lohan at Hedonism–all they care about is being able to pay their bills without resorting to drastic measures, such as selling health insurance.

The problem is that getting the country out of a recession is difficult, partially because the economy is a fickle beast, and taming it does not come easy, and partially because more often than not the people in charge of running the country are idiots. This isn’t their fault, of course. A simple walk through the food court of any suburban shopping mall will reveal that 90% of all people are idiots and the other 10% are trying to sell them something; politicians are no better or worse than the rest of us.

That’s why recessions seem to occur once every decade or so. See, when a smart person tries to fix something–like, say, a busted engine–he takes the whole thing apart, examines each piece carefully, determines what caused the breakdown in the first place and corrects the problem. Unfortunately, as a rule, smart people never last more than twenty-seven minutes in any type of management or leadership role in this country, which is why every time a recession hits, instead of digging down and uncovering the root of the problem, our elected officials tell us to “go out and buy stuff.” The thinking here is explained below, in Official Government Language:

1. People no buy stuff then economy go bad.

2. People do buy stuff then economy go good.

3. Ooh, cookies!

In other words, the American people are screwed. Recessions aren’t going anywhere, so we all might as well get used to living with them. The good news is that, even when things look their bleakest, there are still a few things we all can do to make sure the political party opposite the one we belong to is who gets blamed for the whole mess. After all, if there’s one underlying principal that our entire American way of life is built upon, it’s that blaming somebody else for our problems is far more important than other trivial matters, such as actually solving them.

While you’re busy pointing fingers at everybody from Big Oil to the housing market, you might want to try this thing called “saving.” The idea here is that, if you put a little money aside each week instead of spending it on minor frivolities that have no real practical value, then one day when you really need it, a large sum of money will be available to spend on one big massive frivolity that has even less practical value than all the little ones combined. Coach handbags and any electronic device that starts with a lower-case “i” immediately spring to mind.

Another thing you can do to survive these tough times is get creative with the necessities of life. We all need to eat, right? But with grocery stores marking up their prices nearly to restaurant levels, who says we have to actually eat food? In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay entitled “A Modest Proposal” in which he suggested the adults of Ireland eat their children as a way to make it through the Great Potato Famine, a tragedy that occurred when not one single person in Ireland came up with the idea of maybe growing something other than potatoes, leading to the starvation of several thousand one-track minded people.

I, of course, am not doing anything so drastic as suggesting that Americans eat their own children. For one thing, most of America’s children are so grotesquely overweight, the cholesterol in one third-grader alone would be enough to cause a coronary in a full-grown blue whale. No, what I am proposing is that we eat Jonathan Swift’s essay, or for that matter, any old piece of literature that’s been deemed a classic when, in reality, it is nothing more than a tool English teachers use to keep themselves from finding actual employment. War and Peace, Moby Dick, any manuscript about mythical deities that large groups of people gather to worship once a week–all these would be better served in our lower intestines than on the shelves of our local libraries. Plus, as an added bonus, all the ink and glue is bound to wreak havoc with our digestive track, virtually guaranteeing we’ll each lose a good ten to fifteen pounds the same way most runway models do before a big show. Hello beach body!

Finally, for anybody unfortunate enough to have their jobs taken from them as a result of cutbacks, outsourcing, drinking three martinis every morning for breakfast in the company cafeteria, or any of the hundred other symptoms of recession, rest assured that there are still some industries that will always be looking for qualified employees, even in the toughest of times. Health care, education, mechanical technicians–all fields that are constantly browsing monster.com for the perfect resume. All you have to do is decide which of these professions you’d like to enter, log onto your computer, and confidently fill out the application for unemployment found on most state websites.

Then take your first check and go out and buy stuff. It’s your civic duty.