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In This Issue

• The Monkey Election College
• The Goshen, CT County Fair
• Freak Babies: Gotta Catch 'Em All
• Interview with author Louis Silverstein
• Animals, Placentae and You
• Letters to the Feditor
• 114th Street Rat Rock Exploration
• Bodacious the Rebel Bull
• Fed Arts Review: Columbia Unbecoming
• Mary Had a Little Lamb... with Potatoes
• John Jay Pet Deathmatch
• A Letter to the Columbia Gospel Choir
• DARE: 8 Ways to Say No
• Ice Bitch Comic
• Guide to Naming Suburban Housing Developments
• THEY WATCH

Matt Holden

Deforma-babies, you make our dreams come true!

Something is missing from my life: I'm twenty years old, and still childless. Yes, my biological clock has begun ticking. Of course if I were preggers, things wouldn't look so good for the little guy, being as I'm on the birth control pill and all. But on the other hand-and maybe this is just the result of watching Tod Browning's Freaks repeatedly, or too many rum and cokes-I'm beginning to think that what I really need in my life is a deformed, freak-baby!

Why, exactly, have I decided to turn my uterus into a factory for sideshow atrocities?" you may ask. Well, as a college co-ed, I've learned that taking care of living creatures is hard. The things I've had in my care-which range from a dime-sized pet turtle to a piss drunk roommate-usually don't last the night. With a freak baby, I'd be considered a good mommy just for not desperately trying to stuff it into a dumpster. Plus, if I get really tired of it, I can always make a little beer money by selling it to a traveling sideshow.

And after all, deformed things have their appeal once you get used to the tails and scales. What's cuter than a heart-warming, adorable puppy? A heart-warming, adorable puppy with only three legs! And what's cuter than an adorable three-legged puppy? A three legged puppy that can only pull itself around in circles whimpering. Aww, crippled things!

Now to set about producing a freak baby. In selecting a desired deformity, one should consider the use of drugs with serious birth defects-seriously cute, that is! For starters, we have Thalidomide-a drug given to pregnant women in the 50s and 60s to reduce morning sickness. The results? Babies with shortened arms or legs, or in some lucky cases, flippers! I consider this an absolutely foolproof approach. It eliminates the two things I hate most: vomiting and normal babies. The advantages of a flipper-baby? Vehicle by which to pass on my genes, an extra kidney, and a super-cool bubble bath toy, all in one!

Other possible drug-induced freakishness includes babies born without arms or legs, or as I refer to them, torso-babies. Advantages? They make wonderful doorstops. And since they don't have extremities, they won't go removing themselves from the gene pool by sticking their fingers into electrical sockets or falling down a flight of stairs.

Want a more hands-on approach to creating freaks? There's always botched-abortion-baby. (I think the name speaks for itself.) This method allows you to exercise your right to choose and your need to silence the ticking of your biological clock, in half the amount of time needed for a regular baby. Of course, there's always the possibility that botched-abortion baby will forever harbor a grudge against you for being ripped untimely from your womb and try to strangle you in your sleep while your pissed off roommate ignores you by pretending to be passed out-but isn't that just one of the challenges of parenting in this day and age?

Once in a while, nature does your work for you, by playing a cruel trick on your unborn baby. If it's born with a condition known as Harlequin Fetus Syndrome, you're in luck! Babies born this way have a bizarre scaly look to them, leading me to dub them inside-out babies. They've also got facial abnormalities, cracks where they would have normal skin folds, and constant pain their entire lives. But what to do when the moaning and screaming of your visual accessory to endless dead baby jokes begins to wear on you? No worries-these babies die within forty-eight hours, absolving you of any real responsibility.

There are countless other kinds of deformed babies that warrant consideration. Babies with tails, preferably prehensile in nature (because tail pulling's just fun); Siamese twin babies (because there are two of them); and babies that actually enjoy listening to Raffi all make for adorable little freaks. And for you kids out there who consider yourself hip to the drug scene, the possibilities for deformation are endless-you can try everything from Fetal Alcohol Syndrome to crack babies! For the rest of you, I suggest you experiment: bleach, paint fumes, and even caffeine may yield interesting results.

Now I'm sure some of you bleeding hearts will say this is frightening, perhaps bandying about the words "reverse eugenics." But to you naysayers, I simply respond: having a baby with too many appendages is hella cool. I'm off to increase Columbia's freak population!