Well, that’s it. I’m officially sick of parents offloading the responsibility for raising their children on electronic entertainment companies. The latest abomination in the war against tame, sub-softcore sexual references is some bullshit about porncasts… Now, I missed the boat on the whole podcast thing so I might not fully understand it, but as far as I can tell it’s audio publishing by the sort of egomaniacs who post inane drivel on so-called “blogs” (*cough*). Porncasts refer to podcasts where the subject matter is sexual. Should 8 year olds be listening to this? Probably not. Should Apple be responsible for the content of third party contributors? Fuck, no. Should you maybe peek over your little angel’s shoulder every once in a while when they’re online (as you get up to get another beer during the ad break – that’s a sensible interval)? Well jees, I think we have a solution.
You see, instead of leaving little Tommy to his own devices on the internet it might be an idea to raise him a little. Let him know you’re interested so he doesn’t become some pre-pubescent, porncast addicted delinquent. It might be an idea to implement a few filters while you’re at it. Now, I don’t agree with censorship at all – not one iota do I want to have my cultural experiences filtered through someone else’s obscenity threshold – but I’m 27 years old and the only one who uses this ‘net connection and I still have content filters. All I’m saying is, instead of letting cathode ray tubes raise your kid it might be an idea to sit down and talk to the little proto-you. You can’t just sit them down in front of the closest convenient screen while you get on with your life – you have responsibilities which preclude having a life and these responsibilities need to have things explained to them every once in a while. Hell, if you weren’t willing to give up everything for little sproggy then maybe you shouldn’t have spat him out, k?
But that’s not what pisses me off. The state of the next generation is not my concern… When you get to a certain age all kids are rotten and whether it’s true or not doesn’t really matter. The problem is your kids have a profound enough effect on my life already. Part of my wage pays for their education – this shit should be limited to those inconsiderate enough to be spewing new humans in the first place. Driving them around (and they go around a lot – school, sport, whatever) every day clogs up the air (and I already have asthma, Poolbeg and some stinky water treatment plant to deal with… and they’ve not even built the incinerator yet… Hey, guess what! It already smells like shit around here without it smelling like garbage too…) and the extra jeeps an the road frustrate honest people trying to get to work and make a contribution. And there’s a thing… all I need when I’m out walking in the morning is some half asleep Killiney dimwit (or even thousands of half asleep Killiney dimwits) blasting through my town in a vehicle designed for hunting mountain goats. I’m vulnerable enough crossing the road as it is without some punch-drunk parent careening towards me in a thing designed to hit me in the head. Honestly, I’ve watched these people… your average 19 year old Honda Civic owner is a veritable driving instructor when compared to some of the Ayrton Sennas belting around the town in the mornings. God damn, why do all the most prestigious, abusive schools have to be situated to take them past my house?
That’s not the half of it, though… Children annoy me. I mean really irritate the hell out of me. Your kids have the same effect as a dentist’s drill on my unanaesthetised jaw. “Well, why don’t you just avoid them?” I can’t. They’re everywhere. Everywhere! If I leave the house at the wrong time of day (close as I can figure it, about 3pm but it varies) I’m going home with a headache and my teeth ground down to the gumline… and that’s just during the good months (you know, autumn and winter). During the summer, when I’m trying my best to stay composed in terperatures of up to 25 fucking degrees, they’re just everywhere all day every day. I think the schools should hand out massive homework assignments for the summer holidays… something to keep their little minds working overtime for the 10-12 whatever weeks they’d usually be under my feet doing their best impressions of dog whistles.
Also, I gave up watching TV. Just plain quit. You know why? Because 24 hours a day it beams the dullest, blandest, most inoffensive, unamusing shit into people’s heads. Now, I can’t put all the blame for all of this on the children… some people are just letter-writing subnormals who wish to retain some child-like innocence long into their 80s. Sure, there’s the watershed there to make sure that everything on before your average bedtime (being about 1am these days) is safe and doesn’t allude to anything below the neck or above the feet… I could just give it up during those hours, but then there’s these “save the children” types. Every time someone says anything stronger than “nipple” on the box you get this small, smarmy army of letter writing freaks who have nothing better to do but complain about something on TV which offended them or might have been shown at an inappropriate time for children – even if it was on at 4am… You know, these people who don’t seem to know that they can just change the channel or even better, just turn the fucking thing off and read a book! Not The Bible, though… very violent, full of sex and nobody to complain to about it. “Think of the children!” No, fuck the children.
Fuck ‘em. Sick of them. Don’t want to hear about your children. You see, when I get home after a day of hearing, hearing about, being careful around, nearly being killed by and generally trying to avoid your children I like to sit down to something a bit ribald. Or violent. Or political. Or whatever… It’s my business. But now you want to take that away from me in case junior catches a peek while you’re not parenting them? Well, fine… I don’t think it matters any more because my entire head just exploded. I don’t care any more. Take it… Take the world and wrap it in cotton wool… just don’t come crying over here when junior is completely maladjusted and incapable of dealing with anything in life. I don’t want to know when there’s a generation of half-wits who don’t know how to fuck, fight or laugh. Please don’t tell me when there’s an employment crisis after a whole generation appears who can’t tie a knot but work well with velcro if they can watch an instructional video simultaneously because you know what I’ll say? “Fuck ‘em”.
Just a final note… Your children are stronger than you think. They lack a lot of the preconceptions you have which make it hard for you to accept things. They’ll see a corpse and get on with their day… “la la la!” Or they might hear a lot of words they don’t understand and file them away or better yet, ask you about them. They don’t need all the details, just something to fit it into their frame of reference. I remember when I was very young I heard about a rape on the news. “What’s a rape?” “It’s a very violent crime.” Enough for me… Got on with my day. The fact that I had some basic idea of what rape was didn’t fuck up my youth or my innocence… I believe I went out and played on the street that evening same as any other. Also, if you take any of this to heart or are offended by any of it then relax… you’re taking it too seriously.
