Got thinking today after chatting with a friend about how procreation is bullocks, and only those who have gone through a pre-approval process, complete with credit check, mental evaluation and parenting classes, should be allowed to give birth.

Of course, no one in their right mind would pass, as no one in their right mind would actually conceive if they took to time to really think about what spawning a small, squealing, pooping infant entails, but that doesn’t seem to stop anyone…

Not that I am against children, having children, or using children in a recipe. On the contrary, they’re pretty goddamned cool, not to mention scary as they have brains that grow, evolve and eventually ask for the car keys, unlike their furry four-legged counterparts.

It’s just that I can’t help but look around me at those I know who have them, and think that many of them are the very people who probably should have pulled out.

Not that some of them are not fine parents, and not that it really matters once junior is born, s/he’s here, sit back, keep your hands inside the moving vehicle at all times and enjoy the ride. But so many people have kids for the wrong reason…

We’re all guilty, at one point or another, for using our bodies to get what we want, to use them and what we can do with them for leverage, collateral or currency. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying.

But, when it comes to the ultimate in what, for many people, is a need to control the other person, what about the kid?

No relationship has ever, in the history of the world, been saved by having a child.

No emptiness caused by lack of introspection has ever been filled by giving birth.

And what do you do when the reality strikes you square in the face? Even if you can control the other person and make them jump when you say jump, squirm, cry and come running back to you when you demand it, for all eternity like the lopsided, fucked up and abusive relationship it’s always been, at the end of the day there’s someone counting on you to be there for them, take care of them, nurture and guide them… and if you didn’t go into it for the right reasons in the first place, in how many ways is that innocent bystander getting gypped?

Trust me, I speak from experience on this.

And this is why, as I grow closer and closer to hip-breaking metamusil-drinking uber-spinster age, no matter how much I might eventually regret getting to my deathbed with no one to inherit my stuffed pig collection, I will never regret dragging another human being into this world simply to tie someone else to me.

Although, it would be nice to have someone to bequeath my ugly teapot collection to….

Any takers?!

Oh sigh. Another Monday, another eight motherfucking hours of sitting on my rapidly expanding arse staring at Google news waiting for the headlines to change.

So far, there’s still a Boy Scout lost in the wilderness of Utah or something — guess there goes his orienteering badge.

Tom Cruise got squirted with water by some Brit talk show stooges and got all pissed off — puhleeze, little Itty Bitty Tommy isn’t already all wet for running around like some squiqqle of linguine on speed barking about allegedly fucking some B actress … who has no penis … he swears …. and it’s not like he’s hot for penis … or anything …

Ooh, it just switched again. Hmm. Leonardo DiCaprio got hit in the head with a bottle. Don’t think ol Lenny has any idea how many times he’s actually had bottles thrown at his head, but it’s mostly because the pain of a plastic Diet Coke hitting the scrim of a movie screen isn’t quite the same, now is it?

Ooh, so, the Dutch or the Danes or some tall, georgous race of people have cloned human embryos. Quite frankly, if anyone’s going to be cloning themselves, I’m all for the Scandinavian hotties. Over on this side of the pond who knows what you’ll wind up with — evangelicals, trailer trash, Jenna or Barbara Bush’s demon spawn….

Quite frankly, I’m bored with it all. Perhaps I’m desensitized, but I could care less.

It’s too much, the world is crashing and burning, babies are dying and being born in CostCo-size quantities, Japan wants to kill more whales and a whole bunch of other people want to save them while in between, the whales just want to swim around and eat little, teeny tiny plankton.

Mmmm…. plankton…. Whales don’t get all existential. They don’t wonder why we’re here, what it’s all about, where we’re going. They just float, and hang out, and strain little animals through their gums. Not too shabby an existence.

Maybe from now I make myself more like a whale…. Well, not really more like a whale: I’m still vegan, no need to start referring to me as “killer whale” or anything. I’m still going to the gym — that’s not exactly what I meant.

But, maybe sometimes you gotta’ float.

Or perhaps Google news is actually a brain sucking mechanism akin to the proverbial existential zen-like float, offering you the chance to “customize your news” so they can feed you more global bullshit from the bottomfeeding harbingers of baddest news ever, the media, thus lulling you into a coma feeling better that no matter how terrible your life is at least you’re not lost in the wilderness, eaten by a shark, cloned, maimed, squirted or on trial for being a murderer/perv/ or both….

Oh wait…. mmmm… plankton…….

This is probably one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read: the account of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan . The piece is based on a report, smuggled to the Times, regarding two detainees who died in 2002.

The details make me wonder why it is we even bother, as humans, to attempt to better ourselves when such abhorrent behavior is allowed, even encouraged, to exist anywhere on this earth:

“At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.”

Seems Bagram is where prisoners start their long and, literally torturous, journey through the U.S. system, with many heading on to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Bush Administration decided the Taliban do not deserve the rights accorded by the Geneva Conventions.

This is what we have become.

“One of the coroners later translated the assessment at a pre-trial hearing for Specialist Brand, saying the tissue in the young man’s legs “had basically been pulpified.”

“I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus,” added Lt. Col. Elizabeth Rouse, the coroner, and a major at that time.”

I could quote from it, but it really must be read in its entirety.

Everyone must read this. How long will our complacency allow this?

No really, I’m not dead. I swear. Nor undead. Fear not… in fact, the truth, the awful, hideous truth behind my electronic absence is as mundane as can be: the TV.

I’ve allowed myself to be sucked into the void for days now, just watching, vegetating, bonding with my Friends.

Allow me to explain my transgressions:

Work sucks.

Having no work sucks more.

Having no work, knowing you need work, having no money and attempting to bide the time while a tsunami-sized wave of depression washes over you, forcing you to ruminate on the fact that yes, you do indeed have lots of skills and education, yet the dude down the street drying off cars at the drive through car wash has more disposable income than you, and possibly far less stress, can kill any sort of urges – creative or otherwise – that might attempt to manifest themselves in your cerebellum.

Thus, I have taken up temporary residence on the ground floor and parked myself on the couch, in front of the tube, while attempting to get through a book my ex-roomie Lydia suggested to me: What Should I Do With My Life?

Of course, in my poverty-stricken state, I well could not afford to run down to Borders and purchase such a frivolous waste of paper when the question I need to be asking is What Corner Should I Stand On To Make Enough To Pay The Rent?

Ironically, though, I’ve had it in my possession – a leftover from my newspaper-editor-free-deluge-of –crap-in-the-mail-on-a-daily-basis days. So, I’ve drug it out, cracked it open… and learned nothing except I cannot fill out the book meme, as Mags requested, as, well, I’m an idiot and do not read books.

But, hey, Will & Grace don’t seem to mind…

I should confess, however, that I am actually working as a temp, which is somewhat entertaining. Especially today, when I was asked to photocopy a bunch of things. I smiled, said sure, and laughed all the way to the copy room at the fact that the woman who handed me the stuff has no idea the company’s paying an outrageous sum of money, the cost of a good pair of shoes, per hour for me to walk down the hall and press “Start” for her.

Ah, yes, the master’s degree means your temp agency makes a bigger profit on your coffee pouring skills…

But, back to the important stuff. The quest: it goes on, and on, and on, and quite frankly, I do not want to have to go through arthritis, menopause or a broken hip while still looking for the proverbial thing I want to do when I grow up.

I swear it’s the one steps forward two steps back rule, and at the rate I’m going I’ll be taking the SATs again before too long.

However, I’m getting closer, a combination of reasons, a bunch of stars aligning, and maybe, just maybe, a little bit to do with the stupid book forcing me to remember why and how I started on this crazy so-called non-traditional journey in the first place, how I’d always imagined myself when “I got older” (ah yes, that phrase is starting to get as outdated as my wardrobe and should probably be replaced with “no time like the present”), what I wanted to do, what I love to do, and how I can make it all work without uttering the dreaded BFA-holding worker bee line, “You want fries with that?”

I am terrible.

I have a problem, something deep seated and so fully entrenched in my psyche as to be fused, as one… blah blah angst blah….

Okay. Truth is: I procrastinate.

‘Yeah, sure, everyone does,’ you may be thinking, nonplussed.

It gets worse.

I’m procrastinating writing. Writing! The thing that I do for a living. That writing.

Which is also rather ironic in that I am the maniac who can bang out the electronic equivalent of a magnum opus in the time it takes Britney Spears to get preggers, leaving countless email recipients reaching for the Tylenol, or vodka, or both (but please people, if it’s both stick to Ibuprofen – acetaminophen turns livers to dust) while shaking their heads wondering if I inject methamphetamines directly into my eyeballs.

I do not.

I do, however, type as fast as I think, and while at many times in my long and storied life this has gotten me into trouble when the ‘send’ button is a mere click away, the minimal amount of actual speaking I do in my day-to-day existence is taken onto the page. Fast.

Except for right now…

Yet, seeing as it’s not yet the 11th hour (I just filed for extensions on my taxes – ha ha! Four more months to procrastinate on that one. Score….ish…. I could use that money….) I’m going to celebrate this lovely, breezy spring day by rolling around for several hours on my bike… Thinking, of course, of what I’ll eventually have no choice but to write….

I swear.

Open bottle of merlot in hand, world renowned writer, journalist and all-around aging badass E.S.B. announced to the world that she was unceremoniously sacked from her position as development associate at —— Inc. as of April 1, 2005.

“I thought it might be an April Fool’s joke,” she explained at a press conference on Wednesday, April 6, at the Netherhouse, her Philadelphia residence. “Unfortunately, the workaholic sticks in the mud who hired me have neither the time for nor the understanding of a sense of humor.”

With that, the writer vowed her rocky journey from chain smoking art school darling to legitimate worker bee would continue on, despite this latest setback.

“I think this might be one of those defining moments, the kind that make talking heads like Katie Couric go into convulsions of ecstasy,” she explained over Yuengling at local West Philly watering hole Dahlak.

“You know, the kind where you get to lean in all serious-like and say, with wide-eyed earnestness, ‘It was at that moment, with nothing more than a bunch of degrees from really expensive private schools and thousands of dollars in student loans to my name, I had to make a choice…

“’I had to decide whether to take the proverbial path less followed, or just find another job. And, well, Katie, I had to follow my heart, my soul down the path to worldwide fame, and, no, I’ve never looked back.’”

When asked what’s next for this cheerleading captain turned bike messenger turned hellraiser, the answer is less clear. “Money’s definitely a consideration, especially since I was the third person to be fired at —— a week before hitting the 3 month mark and thus missing out on unemployment. But, I also have to think of where I want to be in one, five, 10 years, and, honestly, I’m not getting any younger, and the path to world domination does certainly seem to be getting longer!

“For now, though, I’m polishing my resume, sending out e-mails in the hopes that either a job, sympathy or free food will come out of it, and enjoying this crazy city I live in.”

And, in the interim, she’s keeping busy working on her debut novel, “Yes, I Have Done All That (And You Could Too If You Weren’t So Afraid of Change)” which promises to give that overstuffed blowhard Dr. Phil a run for his opinionated money.

I am very goal driven. I swear, if I don’t have a goal to work toward, I’m useless.

It’s a sad situation, but, thankfully I’ve realized this, before I’m old and gray and laying on my death bed, thinking, “Oh shit…. I haven’t done anything!”

My brother convinced me to run the Utica Boilermaker with him this year — it’s 15K – 9.6 miles. Not too long, not too short, and in the middle of summer, so it’s like hell (and, well, so is Utica so i guess it makes sense… Spent two years there, when we were looking at the first apartment we moved into the big selling point was that it was on the third floor, and crossfire doesn’t usually travel that high).

But, then, I got thinking: why not another marathon? I mean, 9.6 miles…. 26.2. Once you get going, it’s just a matter of keeping going. Not that bad, right? (It’s like childbirth, i think: you just remember the good parts, and don’t remind yourself that invariably you get to the point where you’re sobbing, making deals with god that if he/she makes the hurting stop and gets you through it you’ll adopt a third world orphan or something…)

So, how many weeks do I have to train? I’m totally on it! First step: put an end to the rock’n’roll lifestyle…

Let me just put down my wine and write that down….