This is not a demonstration of free speech. My right to free speech need not be demonstrated; it is immutable.
Let’s start at the beginning of the alphabet, shall we?
Amniotic Band Syndrome : This is an ugly one, everyone, but it confirms my suspicions about women and the
vagina dentata. Basically, ABS occurs when mommy’s womb tries to eat baby. “…believed to be caused by entrapment of fetal parts (usually a limb or digits) in fibrous amniotic bands while in utero.” Nobody tell the Chinese about this one; they’d be binding feet in utero before you can say “That’s just wlong”.
Anencephaly : Easily my favorite flavor of disabled infant. Of course, anencephaly is more complicated than simply having no brain, but it seems moot for me to spend much time explaining it, given that an anencephalic infant will be born and die in the time it takes you to read this post. But why are they my favorite? Because these babies accomplish what the ban on stem-cell research has hindered--infants with anencephaly are good for two things: donating organs to kids that have half a chance, and making me looking pretty.
I’ve got serious qualms with most parents who take non-functioning children to term, but parents of children with anencephaly have my blessing and encouragement. It’s all about utility, folks.
Barth Syndrome : First, the logo for this
website just breaks my fucking heart. I wonder what percentage of “My Kid’s Broken; Where’s The Warranty” websites have a logo made to look like the half-hearted scrawl of some poor child with a cleft middle finger. But Barth Syndrome isn’t about being mentally deficient. The characteristics are described as “Weakness in the immune system…heart muscle weakness…. General muscle weakness and fatigue… and failure-to-thrive”. The invention of syndromes like this drives me absolutely mad. Fifty years ago, peditricians would have diagnosed a Barth kid as “a terminal pussy,” recommending that instead of playing outside with the thriving little boys, that perhaps he should get used to playing with dolls and wearing dresses. Many millennia ago, a Barth kid would have been dead, plain and simple. I’m growing increasingly convinced that “syndrome” is a word meaning “It’s not really a disease. It seems to be a strong indication that my child was not meant to live, but since I have enough money to keep his weak little heart muscles pumping, let’s go ahead and make up a syndrome.” I wonder if doctors only name syndromes so that they have something tangible to put on the bill.
Bloom Syndrome : I aim to cover not only perverse genetic disorders that result in horribly malformed or non-functional children, but also the minor disorders. It’s likely that these “higher-born” mutants wouldn’t have made it in a pre-civilized setting, so they make it onto my “not meant to be” list. Those suffering from Bloom syndrome, for instance, is characterized by growth delay in-utero, as well as a predisposition to cancer and infections in life. Wikipedia claims that, despite the best efforts of modern medicine, most baby-Bloomers die of cancer by age 30. Wikipedia fails to mention, of course, the average amount of money spent to keep the Bloomers alive that long, and how many better places that money could go. Bloomers, seriously, you’re just a cancer-ridden balloon, waiting to pop; why should the world pay to keep you alive if you are going to die before you’ve paid your dues? To be fair, it’s conceivable that a person with Bloom Syndrome could live and hold a job long enough to actually give something back to the economy that paid for their lifetime of surgeries, examinations and antibiotics. No blame to the parents on this one, because the syndrome is entirely recessive; no way of knowing what’s lurking down there, right? Regardless, genetic tests are available, so get your genetically predisposed ass to the clinic before you make a Bloom baby.
Cat Eye Syndrome :
NT.net says this comes along with abnormal obstruction of the anus (read : every month, Bobby gets rushed to the hospital because he hasn’t crapped in a week and he’s going septic), absence of tissue from the colored part of the eyes (the namesake of the syndrome, which apparently only happens in half of them), cardiac defects, missing, extra, or undeveloped kidneys, short stature (Randy Newman said it all), skeletal problems, mental retardation (fairly light in this syndrome. It’s like saying “well, your son won’t be a physicist, but he’ll probably be competent enough to clean cafeterias and bag groceries. Have a cigar!”), a smaller jaw, hernias, the classic cleft palate (historically, people with cleft were shunned and burned, thought to be instruments of Satan—the biggest clefty of them all), and “rarer malformations” that can affect almost any organ.
So half of them have cat eyes and cleft palates. Tell me, would you want to shake hands with that guy? Would you want to walk on the same side of the street as that guy?
Also, I hate to come back to money, but it really does run the world…. We know how to repair cleft palates nowadays, so that’s some money spent for an aesthetic improvement on somebody who may or may not even appreciate it. Also, probably hernia repairs, and therapy and pills for the skeletal problems. Will a Cat-eye kid ever be the President? Of anything? He’d be lucky if he was the President of his club of imaginary friends, looking like that.
Cat-eye syndrome? God said no.
Now for a brief transgression, so that I might offend those not suffering from birth defects and disorders.
Vietnam Veterans : The ultimate boo-hoo crew. We’ve got the crazy ones, who never got around to figuring out that they perpetrated one of the most hideous crimes in history; America will fall out of the limelight, and history won’t favor your village-burning, child-raping crusade anymore. The future will look back and wonder what extraterrestrial race gave you apes your weapons. Where were the tribunals? Where were the trials? None of you bastards even got the chance to say “I was just following orders”.
And then there’s mister “Ahh, no! I’ve got no legs! You should pay to have me sheltered, clothed and fed until my miserable life winks out.” So you got a Purple Heart? So what? I bet there’s a 3-legged dog somewhere with a purple heart (my research reveals that this is not true. Please visit
here to pay tribute to brave "Dogs Of War").
And don’t try to tell me you didn’t want to go. “It ain’t me. I ain’t no fortunate son!” Fuck you, asshole. What about the people who are even less fortunate than you? The sort of guys who were homeless schizophrenics before the war? Do you think Hobo Steve bought a round of drinks for his Vagrant Posse when he saw your birthday picked from the bucket? Do you think he cackled maniacally while you boarded that plane? (Well, nevermind the laughter) But do you think his maniacal laughter was at you, Mister “I Ain’t No Senator’s Son,” and not at some schizophrenic auditory hallucination?
No, you haven’t got my sympathy because you haven’t got it bad enough. If you want to feel better, why don’t you go molest a 12-year-old (girl or boy. I don’t judge). If you’re lucky, you’ll get a nice submissive preteen. If the world is lucky, you’ll get an Angelman’s brat who will bite your dick off. Then you won’t be so pissed about Charlie taking your left eye, you fucking fractured soul.
(And now back to our regularly scheduled program)
Conjoined twins : I put these people in just for shits and giggles. I have no problem with conjoined twins, as they pay their dues in comic relief. About one in every 400000 births result in a living conjoined twin pair, and there must be hundreds of conjoined twin jokes. This is just a guess, but I’m willing to bet that there are as many conjoined twins as there are jokes, gags, skits, or movies that make light of them. That sort of payback doesn’t tickle my threshold for biological inefficiency, so live on!
Cystic Fibrosis : Oh yes, Cystic Fibrosis, the saddest little boys and girls on the planet have it, and I don’t care. These little snotwads wouldn’t last a second in any sort of real world. In high school, I used to drive by a CF clinic on my way to school, and the sight of it just made me feel ill. Just thinking about the kids in there who wouldn’t really experience the outdoors, or walking through Los Angeles in the Summer. The clinic even had its own special ambulance (very expensive, and dedicated to those that shouldn’t be alive). The severity and prognosis varies from cysto to cysto, and there’s actually an Ironman Triathelete with CF (bravo. She beat the curve. She's king of the mucus hill), but it’s usually pretty grim. These kids just get all clogged up, go septic, and tank.
I’m torn on my judgment of CF; a few of them make it, and live relatively normal (if slightly more expensive) lives. A ton of them don’t make it, living short, abnormal, and incredibly expensive lives. I’m going to guess that Cystic Fibrosis is a net negative influence on the world, so fuck you, and fuck those who pay for you.
Hold up. Cigarette break (heh heh heh).
Here’s a big one…
Down Syndrome : With such rich documentation and support out there for Down Syndrome, I don’t know where to start. They used to be called Mongoloids, I’m told. That term is now considered “offensive and medically meaningless.” Aside from some minor anatomical defects, Down Syndrome is basically a form of mental retardation. Wiki tells me that “the commitment of parents, teachers and therapists, to individual children” can produce a Down syndrome child who can earn a college degree, but so what? You’d be amazed what a team of people, armed with money, is capable of producing. A team of people built a rocket that brought human beings to the moon and back. A team of people can design a more efficient method of fuel combustion. A group of people can do a lot of spectacular things; so when I see a group of hard-working people step back from their finished product, and find that that product is a single individual capable of getting a college degree, I wonder what else those people could have accomplished. Perhaps if the battalion of educators started a school and taught a gaggle of giggling normals. Or what if they split up and went to teach in a deprived neighborhood full of normal kids with shitty prospects and no government funding for schools? When a genetically normal child goes to a good school and is taught by good teachers, that kid grows up and learns normally. If a team of teachers and counselors team up on a kid with Down Syndrome, how many kids still don’t turn out a college degree? How many never pick up spelling, or grammar, or multiplication? It’s a fucking shot in the dark, and a waste of human resources.
Fetal Alcohol Disease : this is a fucking travesty. We’ve known for years that drinking while pregnant causes trouble. Hell, it’s now pretty much known that alcohol really is a form of mild poison. So why should FAD exist? It’s bad enough that you can’t keep yourself from getting pregnant, and worse still that you fail to abort a child you are unprepared to raise, but to guzzle booze while the fruit of your loins spoils inside you… that is inhuman. The effects of Fetal Alcohol Disease are : mental retardations, facial deformities, stunted development, behavioral problems (so, what? Doing things like getting pregnant and drinking in term?), memory and attention deficits, impulsiveness (after this, they really start to get good), an inability to reason from cause to effect, a failure to comprehend the concept of time and an inability to tell reality from fantasy. It sounds like FAD sends your poor child on a lifetime drunk, wandering about with no sense of causality or temporality. They’ll either die in the throes of some tard-trip, or grow up to have more babies. Society, and myself, applaud parents who drink while pregnant. Great job letting your own personal satisfaction interfere with your only biologically meaningful contribution to the world (aside from rich, fertile fecal matter).
Holoprosencephaly : this is another freakshow, everyone. It has to do with malformation of the forebrain (the part that makes us human); there are three types, differentiated by the varying degrees to which the fetus’ brain divides into lobes. The malformation of the lobes results in facial defects. The chance of survival is directly related to the severity of the affliction.
The most severe degree involves, “serious malformations of the brain, so sever that they are incompatible with life and often cause intrauterine death.” I love how they sugarcoat the terminology, when it really should be a big red stamp that says “Your Kid Got Cooked On Its Side”. I mean, honestly, “Incompatible with life”?! How steeped in innuendo will we become before we finally start saying what we really mean; “Probable death”. Wiki adds, “Seizures and mental retardation may occur,” as if these poor little fuckers didn’t have enough to worry about.
Imperforate Anus : I really feel sorry for people with this, but it’s too rich with comic material for me to pass up (pardon my tease). Three types, again : “Low lesion, in which the colon remains close to the skin. In this case, there may be a narrowing of the anus, or the anus may be missing altogether, with the rectum ending in a blind pouch.” “High lesion, in which the colon is higher up in the pelvis and there is a fistula connecting the rectum and the bladder, urethra or the vagina” and “A cloaca, where the rectum, vagina and colon are joined into a single opening.”
This disorder is clearly just one of Mother Nature’s fuck-ups. She’s throwing human beings together, left and right, body parts coming down the conveyor belt ala Lucille Ball, but when the pace picks up a little bit (all those damn Pan-Asians, filling up the world with short people), she makes little mistakes here and there. Ears missing, only one nostril, intestines connect to the vagina instead of the ass. You know, little things.
Jacobsen Syndrome : I got excited when I found this one, but it was a false alarm. This is one of what I’ve come to call “Ugly Kid” syndromes, where a known genetic defect turns out to only have aesthetic effects with minor functional repercussions. “Closely-set eyes,” “short, upturned nose,” “displaced receding chin,” “permanent upward curvature of the pinkie and ring fingers,” and
Hammer Toes. I was excited by the sight of “Hammer Toes,” but it seems that this is nothing more than one or two toes permanently bent downward. Way to go, Jacobsen Syndrome. Way to let everyone down.
Karsch-Neugebauer Syndrome : also known as
“Lobster Hand,” in which the middle finger and knuckle are missing, leaving a cleft between the two fingers on either side. It’s deeply sad that people with Lobster Hands probably want to flick people off more than anybody in the world. Look for this disorder on Google Images sometime. Also, I’m pretty sure
The Penguin had Karsch-Neugebauer in the second Batman movie.
Lissencephaly : or “smooth brain”. People my age may remember a point in elementary school when it was common knowledge that every time you learn something, you get another fold in your brain. Well, the elementary school buzz was wrong, but the folds to help you think. That’s why lissencephalic children don’t have what it takes to do fractions. It’s an interesting idea for a case study : watch a lissencephalic child it’s entire life, and try to determine how many times they have a thought. Then, at the end of the afternoon, you cut open the cadaver and count the wrinkles to see how close your guess was. It’s kinda like guessing the number of jelly beans, or maybe just counting the number of times your cross-eyed dolt thinks “jelly bean!” before he falls over and dies.
(And now, another break, to further the range of my grand offense)
Katrina Victims : Get Rich Or Die Swimming.
I hope you enjoyed this chance to be on television, because the next time you’ll see your shiny eyes reflected off a lens will be when COPS busts in on you beating your wife. Before Katrina, we were a nation in desperate need of absolution; four years since 9/11, hundreds of thousands of foreign soldiers’ lives on American hands…. We needed something to make us the victim again. We needed something to make us feel like our lives are difficult.
So Americans get a good three weeks of Red Cross donations in, and their conscience is satisfied until the New Year. I’m sorry the relief money is drying up faster than your city, but never fear, Nawlins; the Holiday season will bring a whole stew of donations given in other people’s names. Oh, and don’t let our unabated holiday celebration get you down, because there is a silver lining : Odds are there’s a tree floating in your house right now, and when you finally get home, you can trim and decorate to your poor heart’s content. In fact, the glass shards from the window it came in through will add an element of skill to the tree-trimming process. IMPORTANT NOTE : If your child has Angelman’s syndrome, I highly recommend removing the glass shards for the safety of your vegetable; or maybe you should leave it and let nature take its course.
Neurofibromatosis : Here’s another freakshow syndrome. Type one is characterized by the growth of multiple neurofibromas, which are benign tumors on nerve cells. They pile up on the outside of the body, and produce very unsavory looking individuals; kinda like an early Dali painting, or maybe just a kid who got stung by the fifty angriest bees in the world. Type two is the scary one, though. It seems like the tumors just pop up all throughout your body, until you fill up with them and die. By age 20, patients lose hearing because of the tumors in and around the hearing centers of the nervous system; they are, literally, up to their ears in tumors. I imagine that dying of Type 2 Neurofibromatosis is like drowning in the ball pit at McDonalds.
Prader-Willi Syndrome : feeding difficulties in early infancy, excessive eating and morbid obesity in later infancy, mental retardations, and the lack of function of the gonads. Every symptom is a clear sign that this child was not meant to live. It won’t eat as an infant (Mother Nature’s failsafe, sometimes the broken babies won’t eat), it eats too much as an older infant (next failsafe, the kid does bad things that deteriorate its health), and its reproductive organs don’t work (final failsafe, if some sick fuck keeps this kid alive, at least the kid can’t have another kid getting his/her Wednesdays on. The fate of this child is, obviously, to die. Let it die.
Rubinstein-Taybi Syndrome : I’ve figured it out, everyone. I’ve been “researching” all sorts of genetic disorders and syndromes, and I’ve noticed that many of them seem to be named after the Jewish Doctor that wrote the best case study on it. Perhaps this is some sort of semitic footrace towards monetary gains; maybe there’s a contest to see who can make the most money off of parents, dead-set on making their broken child look and sound normal. Happy Hannukah, by the way.
Schizencephaly : I love these encephalies. None of them have a hyphen, or some Polish doctor’s name in them. Schizencephaly is exactly what it sounds like; there are abnormal splits, or clefts, on various parts of the brain. Prognosis depends on how many schisms one has, as well as on the size of the schisms. I imagined a bunch of tiny eye-like slits all over the brain, but I found an X-ray that shows the dark side of this disorder. Reminds me of Finneas Gage, who had a metal pole blown through his head. The metal pole in the case of schizencephs is exposure to toxins in the uterus. I hate to scold twice, but any pregnant women reading this should drop the box wine and lock it up until labor pains kick in.
Triple X Females : The Wikipedia article from which I got my list of disorders features “Triple X Females” as a link on the list. I, weary from many hours of cripple-bashing, thought this might be an unlikely oasis of pornographic pleasure. Instead I found this : “Triple X syndrome most often causes no unusual physical features or medical problems. Females with this condition are usually taller than average, may have menstrual irregularities, and, although rarely exhibiting severe mental impairments, sometimes have an increased risk of learning disabilities and delayed speech and language skills.” This is not nearly as enticing as
“XXX Females” should be. I think I might actually be more interesting in the anencephalic kids than these tall, menstruating mutants. Squick away, I like to say.
Usher Syndrome : “a genetic disease causing deaf-blindness.” I stopped reading early into this one. I’m pretty sure this syndrome was named for pop songwriter and singer, Usher, who appears to be deaf. I had not known that Usher was also blind, merely assuming that his house was devoid of mirrors and his fashion sense could not be helped.
But really, this syndrome is an express-train to deaf and blind station. The article mentions cochlear implants, which are basically a hairy wire shoved into your cochlea which picks up sound vibrations and transmits them to your brain (really cool, isn’t it?). In an intro psych class I took, they told us that many deaf people oppose the use of cochlear implants, considering the gift of hearing “culturecide,” or the intentional destruction of some, supposed “Deaf Culture”. I mean, I remember watching kids shows when it was hip to have a deaf kid on the cast; the brief rash when half of my friends picked up rudimentary sign language, only to forget it by the time Pogs were released. Culturecide my ass; let the deaf hear, even if it’s only a slight improvement.
Wolf-Hirschhorn Syndrome : characterized by “profound mental retardation, microcephaly, seizures, hypotonia, and cleft lip and/or palate…. They are described as happy, loving children.” It’s a saving grace of W-H Syndrome that the children are happy and loving; I think it’s really, like, lame when retarded kids are misanthropic and self-centered. Fucking autistic kids, man. I swear, autism is just introversion running rampant. Anyway, Wolf-Hirschhorn is just another in the long list of “Donkey Door” children; Dad opened Mom’s door #3, and all he found was a donkey, a dud child, a blank, a waste of space, a drooling (yet happy and loving) idiot. Didn’t you know you’ve got to get your genes tested before you play The Price Is Life?
Angelman Syndrome : a “neurological disorder in which severe learning difficulties are associated with a characteristic facial appearance and behavior…” Characterized by “feeding problems, delay in sitting and walking, absent speech, poor attention span and hyperactivity, severe learning disabilities, epilepsy, unusual movements, affectionate nature and frequent laughter, wide-based stiff-legged gait, below average head size, often with flattening at the back, poor sleeping pattern, 40% chance of squint, and 10% chance of scoliosis.” This is where Wikipedia leaves us.
Angelman Parent’s Syndrome : characterized by “heightened sensitivity, met dangerously by a tendency to seek out others of their kind.” In some cases, Angelman Parents have exhibited “delusions of grandeur” and “a poor grasp on causality; they suffer under the belief that if they protect their Angelman child with enough zeal, the syndrome will disappear and they will lead the happy, relatively normal lives they grew up dreaming about.” See also : “Cocksucker”, “Motherfucker”, “Cunt-whistler”, or “Asshole”.
So what's the lesson? What is this angry, misanthropic fucker trying to say? Does he want parents to be more conscientious before concieving children they will later refuse to abort? Does he take a more radical view, in favor of killing or abandoning terminal or worthless children after they are born? Would he kick a retarded child, if given the chance, or would he show as much love and compassion for it as the next human being? If you read this entire 13-page atrocity, feel free to judge me, to attack me, to persecute me for my words, but you'll have to live with the knowledge that you are only attacking my words. What actions I have completed in my life follow a path completely separate from this rant. To persecute someone for what they have said is un-American, and downright shameful. Even more shameful than what I have just written?
I'll say maybe.
-Alfonzo
