I did not kiss my wife good morning this am because her eyes were puffy and she had a small knot of snot seeping from her nose. Through bleary eyes she warded off my attempts at affection, saying, “I have to brush my teeth. My mouth feels like it had Napoleon in it all night. And he did things.” What things the midget megalomaniac might have accomplished overnight in my wife’s orifice I did not inquire. But it reminded me that one afternoon Napoleon announced that he wanted to go rabbit hunting. He had never before expressed an interest in hunting, but his servants knew what to expect if there were no rabbits for the impatient emperor to execute come the dawn, so they bought up every available
rabbit in the Paris markets, about 3,000 of them, and released them on the intended hunting ground. This might have been a reprieve from being hasenpfeffer on some French peasant’s stove, but unfortunately most of the rabbits had been hand raised in hutches and their sudden night of freedom must have been horrifying for them. So the next morning, when Napoleon stepped from the Imperial carriage musket in hand eager for the slaughter he was met by a stampeding hoard of desperate bunnies that saw him as their savior. Like Beethoven, they were mistaken. Disgusted by this mob of over fraught fuzziness, the Master of Europe beat a hasty retreat.
*
It seems as if nobody calls their babies “Napoleon”, anymore, but it may be coming back into fashion, as in Napoleon Dynamite. In ancient Celtic the name means “son-of the lion”, and what with 4 babies born every second and about 245 born every minute world wide, the chances of a new Napoleon at least in name would seem assured. But the world’s best shot at a genetically Celtic hare-a-parent just got a vasectomy. Mick Philpott, a 17 year old unemployed truck driver chose this ultimate form of birth control after the birth of his 16th child (by his wife, Mairead, age 26) and his 17th child (by his mistress Lisa Willis, age 23). Amazingly, these two ladies, who live with Mick in a 3 bedroom apartment, account for only ten of his children, while five other femme fete-gals popped out Mick’s remaining 7 offspring. And not one of the 17 is named Napoleon.
*
Mick’s apartment is provided by government welfare (in ad
dition to about $72,000 in childcare payments) and he insists he is looking for work, if not an actual career. But I would suggest he’s already found what he’s good at, and he’s even found somebody who will pay him to do it. Meanwhile, in India, 90 year old Nanu Ram Jogi has just fathered his 21st child. Not only has he bettered Mick Philpott’s record numerically, but Jogi was married to all of the 4 women who caught his sperm, making him a comparative moral saint. He explains his accomplishment very simply. He says, “Women just love me.”
*
Ou
t of the 10, 800 babies born every day in America a disturbingly large percentage are without a legally identified father. In Britain that number reached 50,000 newborns last year, and an English think tank has proposed a $450 fine for any birth certificate filed without a father listed. Allow me to point out the obvious, which is that everybody knows who Mick Philpott is, and fear of notoriety does not appear to have discouraged him, or his partners in crime from becoming a burden on the state.
*
There are about 60 million Brits at the moment with about 60,000 born every year, and yet 2 month old Katie-Lee can
only be described as one in a million. Her mother, Steph Pleasance, says even the midwife asked if the newborn was wearing a wig. But there, atop the infant’s scalp is what cannot be described as a full head of hair, or even an ample mane, but a fright wig of orange fleece. This kid looks like she’s wearing a 1960’s shag carpet. She resembles the stand up comic Carrot Top. Her grandfather admits “I was shocked when I first saw her.” He also admits to having considerably less hair on his own head than his newborn grandchild did. And after two months the hair has neither fallen out nor changed color. One might almost suspect there was a clown in the woodpile, if that joke were not fundamentally offensive in so very many ways. .
*
Given a choice nobody would want a baby with orange hair, not even Bozo’s mom. In New York City, as in much of Western culture, the most popular sperm comes with an implication of blond hair and blue eyes. But suddenly those very genetic traits are in short supply because the U.S. Health Department has banned the importation of human sperm from any country that ate British beef during the “mad cow” scare, and that means that healthy Scandinavians cannot spill their seed on our soil. And that means that Americans looking to produce a test tube Scandinavian look alike are out of luck. The head of one of the six sperm banks in the big apple explained, “Our problem is we can’t get enough sperm. And the quality of sperm is not getting any better.” Now, where have I heard that complaint before?
*
The problem in Caracas, Venezuela, turns out to be not
the start of life, but the finish. People, it seems, are just dieing to get out of the Caracas morgue, or so says Carlos Camejo, a 33 year old man who awoke after a traffic accident in horrific pain because the medical examiner was trying to sew him back up, after having started the autopsy when they realized Carlos was bleeding into the big gash they were making in his body, which dead people are not supposed to do. His wife arrived to claim the corpse, only to find him on a gurney in the hallway, complaining about the pain. My guess his wife told him, “You don’t know anything about pain, buddy, until you give birth to a baby.” And one with blond hair, I’m betting.
rabbit in the Paris markets, about 3,000 of them, and released them on the intended hunting ground. This might have been a reprieve from being hasenpfeffer on some French peasant’s stove, but unfortunately most of the rabbits had been hand raised in hutches and their sudden night of freedom must have been horrifying for them. So the next morning, when Napoleon stepped from the Imperial carriage musket in hand eager for the slaughter he was met by a stampeding hoard of desperate bunnies that saw him as their savior. Like Beethoven, they were mistaken. Disgusted by this mob of over fraught fuzziness, the Master of Europe beat a hasty retreat.*
It seems as if nobody calls their babies “Napoleon”, anymore, but it may be coming back into fashion, as in Napoleon Dynamite. In ancient Celtic the name means “son-of the lion”, and what with 4 babies born every second and about 245 born every minute world wide, the chances of a new Napoleon at least in name would seem assured. But the world’s best shot at a genetically Celtic hare-a-parent just got a vasectomy. Mick Philpott, a 17 year old unemployed truck driver chose this ultimate form of birth control after the birth of his 16th child (by his wife, Mairead, age 26) and his 17th child (by his mistress Lisa Willis, age 23). Amazingly, these two ladies, who live with Mick in a 3 bedroom apartment, account for only ten of his children, while five other femme fete-gals popped out Mick’s remaining 7 offspring. And not one of the 17 is named Napoleon.*
Mick’s apartment is provided by government welfare (in ad
dition to about $72,000 in childcare payments) and he insists he is looking for work, if not an actual career. But I would suggest he’s already found what he’s good at, and he’s even found somebody who will pay him to do it. Meanwhile, in India, 90 year old Nanu Ram Jogi has just fathered his 21st child. Not only has he bettered Mick Philpott’s record numerically, but Jogi was married to all of the 4 women who caught his sperm, making him a comparative moral saint. He explains his accomplishment very simply. He says, “Women just love me.”*
Ou
t of the 10, 800 babies born every day in America a disturbingly large percentage are without a legally identified father. In Britain that number reached 50,000 newborns last year, and an English think tank has proposed a $450 fine for any birth certificate filed without a father listed. Allow me to point out the obvious, which is that everybody knows who Mick Philpott is, and fear of notoriety does not appear to have discouraged him, or his partners in crime from becoming a burden on the state.*
There are about 60 million Brits at the moment with about 60,000 born every year, and yet 2 month old Katie-Lee can
only be described as one in a million. Her mother, Steph Pleasance, says even the midwife asked if the newborn was wearing a wig. But there, atop the infant’s scalp is what cannot be described as a full head of hair, or even an ample mane, but a fright wig of orange fleece. This kid looks like she’s wearing a 1960’s shag carpet. She resembles the stand up comic Carrot Top. Her grandfather admits “I was shocked when I first saw her.” He also admits to having considerably less hair on his own head than his newborn grandchild did. And after two months the hair has neither fallen out nor changed color. One might almost suspect there was a clown in the woodpile, if that joke were not fundamentally offensive in so very many ways. .*
Given a choice nobody would want a baby with orange hair, not even Bozo’s mom. In New York City, as in much of Western culture, the most popular sperm comes with an implication of blond hair and blue eyes. But suddenly those very genetic traits are in short supply because the U.S. Health Department has banned the importation of human sperm from any country that ate British beef during the “mad cow” scare, and that means that healthy Scandinavians cannot spill their seed on our soil. And that means that Americans looking to produce a test tube Scandinavian look alike are out of luck. The head of one of the six sperm banks in the big apple explained, “Our problem is we can’t get enough sperm. And the quality of sperm is not getting any better.” Now, where have I heard that complaint before?*
The problem in Caracas, Venezuela, turns out to be not
the start of life, but the finish. People, it seems, are just dieing to get out of the Caracas morgue, or so says Carlos Camejo, a 33 year old man who awoke after a traffic accident in horrific pain because the medical examiner was trying to sew him back up, after having started the autopsy when they realized Carlos was bleeding into the big gash they were making in his body, which dead people are not supposed to do. His wife arrived to claim the corpse, only to find him on a gurney in the hallway, complaining about the pain. My guess his wife told him, “You don’t know anything about pain, buddy, until you give birth to a baby.” And one with blond hair, I’m betting. *
At the time of the accident Carlos must have been rubbing a very big rabbits foot. 
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