Ten Tips for the Coerced and Unenthusiastic Father

If needing to make good on your Satanic accord, inform your wife that after years of her unsubtle pressure you’re now willing to ejaculate into her during periods of ovulation. Should any nagging doubts or Eraserheadian fatherhood anxiety plague you, the unwilling father, in the weeks thereafter, here are tips for quantum erasing some of those.

One: To the best of your ability, sever ties with all her relatives and social relations. If she resents this, describe the vampiric energy economy wherein a baby supplies the elder generation’s interminable demand, these forebearers practically fuming if they aren’t offered the placenta to eat. Describe with distaste this generation’s employment of food euphemisms, “Look at the little jellybean. ” “I just want to eat you up. ” Here is man’s true cannibalistic nature laid bare. (A cannibalism of spirit, rather than flesh, conceded.) Worse yet is how a baby somehow offers voice to the human adult’s most insipid internal monologues: “Is that a doorway? I think it is. I think that is a doorway. ” Conclude with sorrow that this is the median quality of the human animal’s inner monologue.

Two: Baby-proof all electrical sockets.

Three: If fiscal planning is essential for a low-earner dependent on blog-based revenues, buy a few Facebook ads out of the baby’s nascent college fund to increase traffic and remuneration.

Four: If wavering on your satanic accord, i.e. ‘Maybe all a dream, ’ then read aloud to your partner from Better to Never Have Been by David Benatar, which advocates the anti-natalist position that it is immoral to birth yet another human being into a world of suffering when enough extant human beings are already suffering that you could adopt. If the jacket copy succinctly summarizes: …coming into existence is always a serious harm. Although the good things in one’s life make one’s life go better than it otherwise would have gone, one could not have been deprived by their absence if one had not existed. Those who never exist cannot be deprived. However, by coming into existence one does suffer quite serious harms that could not have befallen one had one not come into existence 17 she may question your fatherhood bona fides, and wonder if, abortively-speaking, it is not even yet too late. Should 17 (Benatar, 2006) she be the non-compliant party, the Infernal Serpent might concede that at least you’d tried.

Five: Television commercial saccharinity oozes forth from the rough ground of real life, so accept that the whole, “Say goodbye to your sleep/enjoyment of life” meme must be suffering’s means of essaying itself through tepid humour that barely even tries to disguise itself as such.

Six: Ducts and vents will also require babyproofing. Sharp knives will need to be replaced with dull knives. Bid adieu to your clean cut through the raw chicken breast. Whereas colleagues at Reluctant Gourmet advise to “let the knife do the work, ” prepare to do the work yourself by sawing those breasts ragged until your prophesied offspring is fourteen or older, when new threats like crystal methamphetamine and any Philoviruses percolating in the upper peninsula of Michigan’s simian population may take precedence.

Seven: Choosing a name for accursed offspring can be a bone of contention amongst even the healthiest of couples. If your relationship is, to be charitable, strained, then all the uglier. To avoid the worst of it, insist your child be named Marcel_Proust. Insist on the underscore rather than Proust as middle name, or he’ll be plain Marcel in no time, and soon thereafter something as pedestrian as Marc. Argue that by naming your baby Marcel_Proust, he’s obligated to pick up a copy of La Recherche at some developmentallyappropriate life stage, providing him the eternal gift of Proustian self-reflection, as well as some minor iteration of Proust’s elegant prose line, helping to uphold the family tradition of self-reflexive and prosodic blogging. If your wife’s full-time job precludes her from reading the 4,215 pages of La Recherche assigned to her, meaning she cannot conceivably complete your weekly comprehension quizzes, ask if this shortcoming doesn’t render her ill-qualified to discredit your sobriquet of choice. Argue that she could quite easily in fact “be able to love” a child thusly named. If her “best friend” also finds the name ill-considered, ask why her “best friend” failed to obtain even the lowest level of Baccalaureate degree if she is so brilliant? Why did her best friend have to go to Seneca College to study Early Childhood Education if she is so adept at naming children? If talks reach an impasse, play a manipulation game or two by singing the praises of your 45-year-old and hopefully-barren mistress. If that too fails, i.e. “She has borderline personality disorder and you know you can’t tolerate her for more than a single lurid hour at a time, ” then concede that the name will be Ikea_Shelf or whatever while intending to oversee all birth certificate duties while she is under epidural so that when her consciousness re-asserts itself and a nurse introduces the red and screaming but healthy and hearty and somewhat strapping Marcel_Proust to her, hopefully then the name will take.

Eight: If said mistress with borderline personality disorder has always wanted a baby but now lacks the youthfulness of womb to produce one, inform her as gingerly as possible that you’ve changed your address and the set of keys she’s stolen certainly won’t work at the new address; why would they? Otherwise, she will likely arrive unannounced with all the violent intentions she was possessed of on the night you made the mistake of calling her “tedious. ”

Nine: If your wife claims nothing cheaper than an $1800 stroller will suffice, find a perfectly good one at a garage sale for a fraction of the cost. That fraction being a nice clean one of 3/1800, or by reducing to the lowest common denominator: 1/600. If your wife contends, “This is a child’s toy. A stroller for a baby to push her own toy baby around in, ” then make a big production out of fortifying its more translucent fabric with rawhide at your workbench. If your wife sends Amazon link after Amazon link for the $1800 stroller, place a ten-pound flour sack in the toy stroller to demonstrate how it could easily meet ANSI standards if heaven forbid subjected to ANSI scrutiny in the event of a wrongful death investigation.

Ten: If you do choose to go a different route, i.e. ‘the non Marcel_Proust route, ’ avoid rhyming names like Amelia Bedelia, lest your child be teased, this according to colleagues at the Mom365 blog.

4 COMMENTS ON “TEN TIPS FOR THE COERCED AND UNENTHUSIASTIC FATHER” Mom365 Blog: Please don’t link to us again. Early_Childhood_Educator/10: Proud Centennial College graduate here! UGHHH Child Protective Services anybody… Erik Wargo: Potential negligence would be occurring in the future so how to imprison him for that right now tho? David Astaire: Do you really still believe in Newtonian relics such as past or future, lmfaoing at your life.