Abort, Abort! Pull Out, Pull Out!

My move is finished. By which I mean that all my boxed shit has been moved from the old American Jerk Home Office to the new American Jerk Home Office, where it all remains in boxes, because I still have no Internet access. There’s no point in even being in the place until my computer can talk to the Wonderful Fantabulous International Pornography Engine.

I’m looking forward to getting everything set up though, because I’ve found out that my neighbors on both sides of me have small infant children. Which should irritate the shit out of me because I hate children, but I actually don’t mind, because I fully intend to be out of the place before these kids grow up to be old enough to try to sell me band candy or marijuana.

Plus, I can overpower their squealing by playing Grand Theft Auto on XBox with my bitchin’ 700-watt Dolby DTS 7.1 surround sound system. Because nothing makes a parent quiet their child quicker than the amplified sound of sustained automatic weapons fire. It’s hard to yelp about wanting to watch Shrek again when Mommy’s simultaneously pressing your face into the carpet and trying to dial 911.

I’m actually looking forward to a neighborly conversation about the level of noise coming from my apartment, just so I can tell them I’m doing it to drown out the terrified, violated whimpers of “Bad touch, Daddy!” When it comes down to it, my complaints are about a screeching child in a one-bedroom apartment, and theirs are about high-end digital video and sound equipment. It’s not hard to place a flinch-bet on a game of Landlord Chicken between a guy who can afford $10,000 worth of home theater gear and a guy who can’t afford a condom. Let’s just say that the phrase “mutually assured destruction” wasn’t invented in a vacuum.

I just can’t figure out why someone who clearly can only afford a one-bedroom apartment would voluntarily have a child. It can’t be healthy for a kid to see Mom and Dad or Mom and The New Guy sleeping on the sofa every night. Or at least I hope Mom and Dad are on the sofa. Because their bedroom butts up against mine, and I don’t need to hear thirty seconds of “Jesus says to be fruitful and multiply” in Spanish, eight seconds of loud groaning and six hours of snoring every damn night.

I can only figure that it is some kind of religious thing; Jesus told them to have the kid because he hates abortion. Which, to me, is short-sighted; if your god demands that you raise a child when you only have the money for a small apartment, guaranteeing that you’ll never be able to to afford the sneakers, clothes and haircut it’ll take him to not be whomped in the locker room on a daily basis? You might want to think about getting yourself a new god, because your current one clearly hates children. And not just your child, but the fifteen other random children he will shoot with a semi-automatic weapon come high school.

All I’m saying is: picking a religion isn’t like ordering cable TV service; you have choices. There are gods who don’t give a fuck about abortion, and as a bonus, many of them are okay with fornication, problem drinking, and stabbing your enemies with a trident.

Hell, Zeus fucked any woman, man or beast with the temerity or brain damage required to make eye contact, and he killed about eighty percent of them afterwards. Not only would he not care if you ate an RU-486 so you could afford to finish up your Katherine Gibbs associates degree, he’d probably call you a wuss for not giving birth and dashing his or her brains out on some rocks.

But I understand that it’s too late to convince these parents of the error of their ways, so I’m planning on teaching these kids by example. Because even though I hate them, I like to believe that kids have better common sense than we give them credit for (The unexplainable and infurating resurgence of Strawberry Shortcake notwithstanding).

If you were a kid, who would you follow? Jesus, the savior who insisted you be born into a life of government cheese and Members Only jackets from the Salvation Army because he loves kids like you? Or your neighbor, the drunkard who’s able to afford more toys than you could accumulate in a thousand-year childhood and a sports car with a Darwin Fish sticker because he fucking hates kids like you?

I knew I should have held off on signing the new lease until I made an offer on the compound…

[tags]religion, Jesus Christ, Zeus, abortion, RU-486, neighbors, dark humor, satire[/tags]