Now that UW lecturer and 9/11 conspiracy theorist Kevin Barrett is well into minute 14 of his 15 minutes of fame, I just wanted to pose some questions while the issue is still alive. For those of you visiting family on the moon for the last two weeks, Barrett is part of a cabal of crazy people who think Dick Cheney planned the destruction of the Twin Towers to start an international war.

1. Which is the more plausible theory – Barrett’s “inside job” theory, or the theory that Barrett is actually a Karl Rove plant designed to make the Bush Administration look competent? Think about it – Rove puts a couple of struggling actors on the White House payroll, arms them with some fake resumes and they go around talking up this theory? This, in turn, forces the administration’s enemies to defend this lunacy, which makes them radioactive. It’s genius. That is a hundred times more plausible than Barrett’s theory, which has helped…the very people that he’s accusing of mass murder. Can I get a job at the UW now?

2. George W. Bush would have been justified starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with or without the attack on 9/11 (my opinion, but Bill Clinton agrees with me). Why, then, would he need to cook up the 9/11attack? Was it sweeps month? Couldn\’t Bush just have said Saddam stole Barbaro?

3. This week’s Isthmus details Barrett’s overt and virulent anti-Semitism. The Left is always on high alert for racial insensitivity, yet it seems anti-Semites seem to have settled into Liberalism quite comfortably. Are there any ethical Democrats willing to condemn his clear hatred of Jews?

4. Barrett has rejected as “ridiculous” the notion that “19 guys with box cutters” could bring down the twin towers. Someone might want to mention to him the small issue of the TWO GIANT PLANES that hit the towers. It’s not as if Mohammed Atta stood outside the World Trade Center throwing plastic knives at the windows.

5. A group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists – and I am not kidding – actually believe that no plane ever hit the Pentagon and that United Flight 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania) never existed. They believe that both these occurrences are FAA cover-ups. Wouldn’t this be a fairly easy theory to disprove? Do the families of the victims still think that after five years their loved ones are still at Blockbuster, trying to hunt down a copy of “Ocean’s 11?”

6. The oddest take on the whole Barrett episode has come from Capital Times columnist John Nichols in this week’s Isthmus, when he takes a shot at Bush and Cheney for not having the “intellectual capacity,” or the “political cunning” to pull off an inside job. Is that an insult? Are Bush supporters supposed to say, “No way – he totally could have plotted the deaths of 3,000 Americans to serve a political purpose.”

And is Nichols saying he’s smarter than Bush and Cheney? Is he bragging that he could have planned the attack? In order to say someone lacks \”intellectual capacity,\” wouldn’t you have to know what you are accusing them of not knowing? If you didn\’t know what you accuse them of not knowing, how did you know they didn\’t know it? Don\’t try this type of deep philosophy at home, people. Leave it to the experts. I think I just sprained my hippocampus.

7. Barrett consistently cites a Zogby poll that says 42% of Americans think the 9/11 Commission report “concealed” or “refused to investigate” critical information about the attacks. If I think it was a fraud that Jamie Gorelick’s role in creating a wall between intelligence agencies wasn’t addressed, does that put me in the 42%? I am 73% sure it does.

And if 42% of Americans are conspiracy theorists, that means at least 4 out of 10 Muppets are in on it. I\’ve always been suspicious of that damn Count. A little beady-eyed for my tastes. I was wondering why the topic on \”Elmo\’s World\” today was \”Thermite Explosives.\”

8. How on earth can you possibly do a poll on what Americans think about the details of the 9/11 Commission Report? What percentage of Americans have read the report and can make an accurate assessment of its contents? 1%? You could get 20% of Americans to agree that Taylor Hicks is a secret al-Qaeda operative if you phrased the question correctly. McAdams, help me out here.

9. Can we set up a dating service for Embarrassing State Employees? A 900 number where walking taxpayer waste can connect up for some hot lovin\’? Seriously, we need to get Barrett together with the Prison Witch Chaplain from a few years ago. A match made in Heaven. Or… the flames of Hell, or whatever they believe in. If we can pair these delusional people up together, we can put them on the same health plan and save the state money. I demand this be made part of the next TABOR.

Wisconsinite Luke Drury toured baseball games for a week in the Midwest and kept a journal for Sports Illustrated. The first three stops feature his native Fort Atkinson, Madison, and Milwaukee. Good reading – check it out.

Yesterday was the day that candidates had to turn in their signatures to the Elections Board, which really makes it the first day of the campaign season. Some things I noticed:

I was thinking it was strange that Dan Aude (88th Assembly District) would mention in the title of his press release that it was his second run at the seat. Isn’t he essentially announcing that the voters have already rejected him? But then, I saw this part of the release, and realized that we might be dealing with a totally different bird altogether:

When asked about the campaign he said, “ like Hannibal in the second Punic war with the Roman Empire, he too was out numbered in resources, but set a standard in battle tactics and strategy at Cannae” Aude was out spent by his incumbent opponent in 2004 by a ratio of 3 to 1. “ This will be our battle cry for leadership in the 88th Assembly District in 2006, AUDE FOR 88 CANNAE!”

Wow. Is it racist if we don’t hand out ballots printed in Latin at the polls?

Dave Magnum (2nd Congressional District) issued a release bragging that he turned in 2,000 signatures, and 1,744 of them were actually valid. Congratulations on announcing that 13% of your signatures were found invalid, Dave. Masterful.

Former Democratic State Treasurer candidate Robert Fyrst fired off a bitchy letter to Democratic Chair Joe Wineke, announcing his resignation as the party’s treasurer. Fyrst, as you may recall, was running for Treasurer until it was discovered that a creditor moved to foreclose on his Madison home after falling behind on his mortgage payments. According to Summit Credit Union, Fyrst missed four payments on his home. Lest you be wary of his ability to manage a $50 billion annual state budget, the dispute was later resolved.

Of course, in his letter, Fyrst says he dropped out of the race to “pursue another avenue.” Uh-huh. That \”avenue\” must have been code for \”extra shifts at Arby\’s.\”

From out of nowhere, Nick Voegeli of Sun Prairie announced he was running for Lieutenant Governor. In his release, Voegeli proudly brags that he got 42% of the vote when he ran for State Assembly two years ago. He says:

Voegeli received 42% of the vote in a district that has been voting about 38% Republican. “Thirteen thousand or so people in the 46th district voted for me in that race. I’m hopeful they’ll do so again.”

Of course, the same year Voegeli ran for Assembly in the 46th District and got 42% of the vote, George W. Bush received 44% of the vote in the 46th, while a GOP state senate candidate received 46% in the same district. Congressional Candidate Dave Magnum got 42.5%, while U.S. Senate candidate Tim Michels did actually get 38%. Details weren’t immediately available as to what planet Voegeli is from.

How great is it that Rep. Terri McCormick (8th Congressional District) can use the atrociousness of her campaign as a trick to get free press? Last week, when she announced that her campaign was making \”a major announcement,\” everyone assumed she was dropping out of the race. Instead, she released some pointless policy garbage. But it was because her campaign is on life support that people paid attention.

This is like campaign jujutsu – using the crappiness of your campaign as your greatest media attraction. Well done. Her next release will say she has \”a major announcement regarding the future of her campaign,\” and it will be about ethics or some other worthless crap.

I am thrilled that Republican State Senator Ted Kanavas has some guy named Stiffler running against him. No word on whether his mom is hot.

Assuming this is the same Andrew Stiffler, it appears that he and his wife are like the Pamela and Tommy Lee of Brookfield. Andrew has been arrested for simple battery against his wife (he plead guilty to disorderly conduct), and his wife later filed a restraining order against him. Stacey Ann Stiffler, on the other hand, also was convicted of disorderly conduct herself in 2004.

So when Stiffler says he\’s \”fighting special interests,\” those special interests likely include \”women.\”

I think we can all agree that UW lecturer Kevin Barrett is nuts. We also can all agree that he is now the most publicized crazy person in the state, and is loving every minute of it. He\’s probably sitting back at his house, smoking a cigar and playing poker with Tim Osman, laughing his unsettling beard off. They are likely cooking up another conspiracy theory about how Dick Cheney is responsible for the horrific destruction of Star Jones\’ career.

The case against Barrett teaching at the UW is an easy one. He\’s obviously delusional, and the University is hemorrhaging as a result of his unfortunate hiring. While teams of bloggers have done excellent jobs dismantling his delirious rants, I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could make the case for Barrett. I did this exercise a while back for Jim Doyle when Georgia Thompson was indicted, and if I may humbly say so, I think he should have followed my advice.

So if I were the UW-Madison, my statement would look something (although a little more formal) like this:

Every workplace environment has people with unorthodox opinions who may harbor questionable conspiracy theories. It may be Willie in your office\’s mailroom, or it may be the president of your company. In the case of the UW System, which has over 40,000 employees, it could be a janitor, it could be a department head, or a softball coach. In the Kevin Barrett case, it happened to be a first year part-time lecturer.

Followers of the UW-Madison know well that Barrett\’s teachings on 9/11 aren\’t exactly the first conspiracy theories to be floated in the halls of the University. For decades, the UW has had a reputation for being a place where all theories are welcome, no matter how unconventional. Radical thinking is as much a part of the fabric of the UW-Madison as Bucky Badger is (rumor has it Bucky is a Holocaust denier). During the Vietnam era, some of the theories kicking around the UW\’s halls make Barrett\’s \”inside job\” theory sound like an Ann Coulter production.

Students in Barrett\’s class are adults who are free to either challenge his views, or research them further. Needless to say, after the media coverage of Barrett\’s views, no student will walk into his class without knowing what they are getting into. Vice President Dick Cheney actually credited the radical thinkers at UW-Madison with helping him become a better conservative while a grad student there, as he constantly worked to disprove many of the campus theories of the time.

Firing Barrett at this time for his views wouldn\’t be wise for the University. Recently, the UW-Madison took swift action against a Dean who was accused of improper conduct after much pressure from politicians. Now the University is embroiled in endless expensive legal wrangling to justify the firing, and it is entirely possible that a court will rule that he must be reinstated at his original salary. We will continue to monitor Barrett\’s curriculum to make sure his students are presented an opportunity to challenge any assertions or opinions expressed in his class.

There is no doubt that Kevin Barrett\’s views are controversial. But the UW cannot set the precedent of \”human resources by press release.\” The idea that taxpayers are paying for Barrett is misleading, as tax money continues to constitute less than 20% of the total UW budget. Barrett is primarily funded by tuition money – tuition paid for by students that are free to take his class or to decide not to take his class.

Someday, there will be a professor or lecturer that espouses unpopular conservative views, and the faculty may apply pressure to have that person removed. In that case, as in the Barrett case, we will stand up for the right of our faculty to challenge their students to either prove or disprove the theories to which they are exposed. We will continue to support our employees, regardless of their personal opinions – unless they are Chicago Bears fans, in which case they will be immediately dismissed.

I\’m not sure if I\’m even buying it, but I gave it a shot, purely out of boredom. In my next post, watch me defend orange juice against misleading claims of being \”low pulp.\”

Thanks to this lawsuit, Allen Heckard will no longer be mistaken for someone who isn\’t a complete moron.

You see, Heckard has lived a tough life – he is often mistaken for Michael Jordan, despite being six inches shorter than Jordan himself. And because at least one person a day thinks that Michael Jordan has shrunk six inches and lives in Northeast Portland, Heckard feels harrassed when they are mistaken for each other. Thus, he has done what any thinking person would do – sue Jordan and Nike for $832 million because of the pain and suffering he has endured due to looking like Mike.

And what has Heckard done to make sure this horrible injustice never occurs again? Well, he… wears his pair of Air Jordans around.

In related news, I have begun legal proceedings myself, as the ladies are constantly telling me I look like a white Denzel.

Last week, the Green Bay Press Gazette decided to do a lengthy story about State Capitol goings-on during the summer. In the article, they quoted a homeless dude that apparently hangs out in the basement:

The biggest difference that Elliott Smith sees in the legislative off-session is that the basement cafeteria is less crowded.

Smith, originally from Texas but now homeless, says he seeks refuge in the Capitol in the daytime.

\”I come here like a lot of people do who are homeless,\” said Smith, 52. \”I like the quiet so I can think about what I want to do to stop being homeless.\”

So…. he sits around in the basement of the Capitol all day so he can think about how not to be homeless? Has it occurred during these intense soul-searching sessions that maybe it would help him to get off his ass and get a job? And remember, taxpaying visitors to the Capitol – keep it down. Elliot prefers smelling like Wild Turkey and three day old urine in a quiet and serene environment. If you see him face down on a bench in the Capitol basement, do not disturb him. He isn\’t passed out – he\’s merely exhausted from his rigorous mental workload, and likely on a lunch break.

And he\”seeks refuge?\” From what? Soap? Responsibility?

SIDE NOTE: Smith is not to be confused with the late/great singer Elliott Smith, who apparently committed suicide by stabbing himself in the heart. That, my friends, is how A MAN kills himself.

Apparently my wife equipped our home with some kind of lifesaving device that detects carbon dioxide and other dangerous gases within the home. Until the other night, I barely even noticed that the stupid thing was in our bedroom. Needless to say, my parents were less than concerned about noxious gas, as I had never seen one of those before in my life. Somehow, people have been able to live comfortably for thousands of years without one of these dopey things.

So, anyway, I\’m in our room the other night watching the Brewers and chowing down on some potato chips and dip. My daughter was sleeping comfortably. And let\’s just say I was feeling some… intestinal distress, accompanied perhaps by the occasional \”one cheek sneak.\” Don\’t judge me – you all do it.

As you can guess, suddenly alarms started going off in the house with flashing lights and loud sirens. I ran over to unplug the damn thing, but it had a battery that was secured by a screw, and I didn\’t happen to have a phillips head on me. I finally took it and threw it outside to keep it from piercing my eardrums. My daughter woke up and started crying, my wife thought the house was on fire, and I think the neighbors started gathering outside my house to see what the commotion was. It wouldn\’t have surprised me to see fire trucks and police cars race up to my house, with crowds of people crying and covering their faces. Men in Hazmat suits would cover my house with a giant bubble while the American Red Cross sets up trauma centers up and down the street.

So the question is…

Could I have set the thing off? Am I a walking DNR clean air violation? Someone has to know how those things work. Settle a bet for me. My wife thinks it was me, while I think there\’s no way that\’s how those things work.

SIDE NOTE: There\’s nothing worse than eating a half a bag of potato chips, then realizing after the fact that they were Olestra chips. At that point, you become a ticking time bomb. You just have to sit there and look at the clock for a half hour before the stomach pains start – you\’re a dead man walking. It\’s like the walk to the bathroom suddenly becomes The Green Mile.

Like many other bloggers out there, I routinely frequent The Drudge Report to find amusing stories. Drudge may actually be the largest blog in the country, read by millions of people per day.

I was a little surprised the other day when I went to Drudge and saw an advertisment from the Wisconsin Department of Tourism posted. Given the fact that it is a national blog, read by so many, I figure advertising on that site is pretty expensive. The closest I came to finding advertising rates was this rate card from a company called Intermarkets that apparently does all of Drudge\’s advertising brokering for the site. According to their list, an ad like that (the 120×600 skyscraper ad) costs $7.50 per CPM, whatever that means.

Someone might want to look into what the Department of Tourism is paying to advertise on the Drudge Report, of all places. Doesn\’t exactly seem like the most targeted of all audiences. Obviously, they will contend that advertising outside the state brings a high rate of return, as visitors come to Wisconsin and spend their money. Maybe I\’m an idiot and it\’s a fantastic bargain that Wisconsin is getting. Maybe they have some special regional advertising deals that are cheaper. But it seems awfully expensive to advertise on a national blog when 90% of our visitors come from Minnesota and Illinois.

Here\’s a screen capture:

I demand an international tribunal be convened to investigate Phil Garner\’s snubbing of Chris Capuano for the All-Star team in favor of one of his own less-deserving players. Rumor has it that Garner is hiding in a cave in suburban Houston. So naturally, we should invade New Mexico.

UPDATE: Capuano was named to the All Star team today to replace Tom Glavine. Clearly my hyperbolic lobbying worked. Next, I will compare Doug Melvin to Stalin because he refuses to trade Geoff Jenkins.

I honestly sat with my mouth agape for an hour looking at this Democratic Underground post that attempts to prove that 9/11 was an inside job. This genius takes a little cup of kerosene and lights it on fire to prove that it\’s not hot enough to melt his bunny rabbit cage, to show that explosives must have been planted in the Twin Towers to make them go down the way they did.

As long as he\’s disproving 9/11 conspiracy theories, he should attempt to disprove that jumping 100 stories out of a burning building really isn\’t bad at all. I could suggest some tall buildings he start with.

Via Owen and Jonah Goldberg

Some of you might remember this post from a few weeks back, where I poked fun at local news anchor Christa Dubill. I admit, I was a little nervous after posting it, since I really didn\’t know anything about her – I just really picked her completely at random.

A few days back, I got an e-mail from Christa, and she totally played along with the joke. And she clearly has a superior sense of humor. So I urge both my readers to scrap those other crappy Madison stations and watch Channel 27 news exclusively. They\’re the only ones that do any real investigative reporting anyway.

So cheers to Christa, the queen of Madison news.

Time to get your butt over to MLB.com to vote for the Major League All-Star teams. Voting ends this Thursday, and it\’s easy as can be. It\’s Voces de la Frontera\’s dream – no ID necessary, no proof of residence, and you can vote up to 25 times.

I may be violating some provision of McCain-Feingold here, but I strongly urge you to vote for Bill Hall for National League shortstop. There\’s an assortment of slop at NL SS, and JJ Hardy is listed as the Brewers\’ representative. Hall probably actually deserves to be the starting shortstop, but he\’s not even on the ballot, so you have to write him in. It won\’t make any difference, but consider it your Nader protest vote. If I can get my 8 readers to vote 25 times each, that\’s… well, I don\’t know how many that is, but it seems like a lot.

Oh, and vote for Carlos Lee, too. Or you could be like my uncle with downs\’ syndrome and just vote for all the Brewers. Now you know where Brady Clark\’s vote came from.

Daniel Suhr from the GOP3.com blog today makes a good attempt to identify state government programs to cut to help out with the $2.5 billion budget deficit.

Unfortunately, the programs he identifies don’t even amount to a drop in the bucket to help fix the deficit. He mentions a couple of Governor’s councils and the Department of Regulation and Licensing, which is funded primarily through licensing fees to professions they oversee. Eliminating the department wouldn’t save real taxpayers any money at all.

Very few people in the state really have an accurate picture of what the state budget looks like. Generally, people think that we can make up the budget deficit by not giving elected officials raises, or cutting down on their travel, or eliminating the Department of Natural Resources, or whatever.

For those of you interested in what the state general purpose budget look like, here’s a great document from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau that breaks everything out into categories for you. The general purpose budget programs are the most interesting, because they are the programs paid for through sales and income taxes that everyone pays. You’ll notice that the DNR, for example, is funded almost primarily through user fees like hunting and fishing licenses, whereas school aids are paid for exclusively through taxes everyone pays.

As you can see, 56.7% of the GPR budget for the next two years is made up of aids to local governments. This is a major problem with the framework of Wisconsin government – if the Legislature were to cut any of that aid, it would be made up by local governments (cities, towns, school districts), in the form of higher property taxes. So by showing some fiscal restraint, the state would in effect be raising the most hated tax in the state. In this sense, almost 60% of the GPR budget is off the table when cuts need to be made, since state lawmakers don’t want to be stuck with the stigma of raising property taxes.

Another 19.7% of the GPR budget goes to aids to individuals, with Medical Assistance (11.8%) making up the lion’s share of that appropriation. While it is certainly possible to cut money from these programs, it hasn’t proven to be politically popular to do so. Threatening Grandma’s Medicaid isn’t exactly a recipe for electoral success.

That leaves 23.6% of the budget remaining to make real cuts. Amid this category are things like the UW System (7.3%) and the Department of Corrections (6%). The UW has been cut over the last two budgets, and cutting Corrections could mean more criminals on the streets. This really leaves a sliver of state government that it would really be possible to cut without consequences at the ballot box, as elected officials haven’t shown the fortitude to go in and make fundamental changes in other areas.

Conservatives will always complain that their elected officials don’t want to make the tough choices to keep taxes and spending down. They may be forgetting ex-Governor Scott McCallum.

When McCallum took over in 2001, he was handed an enormous budget shortfall. In his proposed budget adjustment bill in early 2002, he made up for some of that shortfall by using tobacco settlement funds to plug the hole. However, McCallum actually did exactly what conservatives are looking for – he stuck his neck out and proposed ending a large state program.

In his budget adjustment bill, McCallum proposed phasing out the shared revenue program, which sends state taxpayer money back to local governments (7.3% of the current GPR budget). Recognizing that local elected officials would simply raise taxes to make up for the lost aid, he also proposed a freeze on property tax levies. With this budget proposal, McCallum showed he was willing to take on the spending lobby and shake up the business as usual in the Capitol.

In the 2002 election, McCallum was hammered by local officials for proposing to cut off their aid. Many local officials who leaned Republican couldn’t stomach voting for McCallum because of his bold initiative. Aided by Libertarian Ed Thompson’s entrance into the race, Jim Doyle beat the unpopular McCallum.

McCallum may have been a bad candidate. He made a tragic mistake by taking some of the money he saved by eliminating shared revenue and putting it towards public schools, thinking that the teachers’ union would look more favorably on his candidacy (they did not). But for all the negatives associated with his brief tenure as governor, he deserves credit for doing something that nobody has the guts to do now – he made a real proposal to cut a $1 billion annual state program, which would have fundamentally changed the framework of state government.

Unfortunately, because of this bold initiative, McCallum alienated a lot of local officials that went back to their constituents to complain of cuts to police and fire service. In the end, doing the right thing certainly contributed to him losing his job – and the Legislature noticed.

The way the state funds local governments is a complex, confusing mess. When a property taxpayer wants to complain about their taxes, they don\’t know who to blame. The local officials say they\’re not getting enough money from the state. The state says the locals are spending too much, and the locals are the ones that ultimately set the property tax levies. The two levels of government are constantly pointing to each other, and there\’s no accountability.

The government that raises the tax should be the government that spends the tax. That way, governments are more directly accountable for their decisions. Wisconsin needs to pick up on McCallum\’s lead and wean local governments off of state tax money. If that means giving the locals more options to raise local revenue, then so be it. At least people would be able to walk into their alderman\’s office or show up at a school board meeting to protest their tax level, rather than having to navigate a complex bureaucracy to figure out exactly why their taxes are so high.

My best friend’s wife just had a baby girl. I had a great time talking to him on the phone about becoming a daddy for the first time, because a lot of our childbirth experiences were virtually identical. I had wanted to do a post about what becoming a daddy for the first time is like, but they had the kid before I got around to doing it. I’ve seen a lot of articles about what childbirth is like for women, but few about what it’s like for men. So here it is.

All the time leading up to the birth of the child is spent focused on the mother’s needs. They learn what to buy, how to breathe, what to pack for the hospital, how to nurse, etc. I actually decided to go for the Husband of the Year Award and show up to the breastfeeding classes, just to support my wife. When I walked out of the room after the class, I was clutching my chest because my nipples hurt so much just from watching the breastfeeding movies. If men had to breastfeed, the human race would have died off about a hundred thousand years ago and a pterodactyl would be sitting at your desk doing your job right now.

As much as you prepare for the actual moment you have to go to the hospital, you will completely lose your mind when it happens. You scramble around the house like a hamster on Red Bull to get your bags together and thrown into the car. The only upside is that you get to drive like a complete maniac on the way to the hospital, just like they do on TV – my driving was so bad, I’m surprised the baby didn’t jump out to tell me to slow down (nothing more irritating than a nagging inter-uterine driver).

When you get to the hospital, they will put you in a little waiting room where they do a preliminary check to make sure you’re really having a baby and you’re not just there pulling an elaborate ruse to get the free mini-Pepsis from the OB snack bar. After they check the mother out, they will tell you that there’s a chance that despite your rush to get to the hospital, the baby may not be ready to come out and you may have to go home for a few hours. At that point, you will tell them that you are leaving the hospital with a baby, whether it’s yours or someone else’s.

Soon, they put your wife on drugs to try to induce the child to come out. This is far more effective than your idea of dangling two free Packer tickets down between her legs. Now is the time to take pictures, as within hours she will have convinced the staff at the hospital that you are an active al-Qaeda operative. Once the contractions start, you and your wife will enter an entirely new phase of your relationship. For details, see any Bill Cosby standup routine from the last 30 years.

Obviously, during this time your wife is in extraordinary pain, and any man that suggests otherwise is secretly shipped off to a remote internment camp for insensitive men and never heard from again. But you will feel a deep sense of utter helplessness, and it’s hard. Standing before you is the person you care most about in the entire world in extreme pain – and the most you can do is offer her the occasional ice cube. Jokes are not appreciated. The only thing that would possibly make her feel better would be the sight of a pack of rabid dingoes attacking your crotch.

During the entire night, hospital staff is running in and checking your wife’s progress. There are doctors, nurses, interns, and other staff that have an all-access pass to her womb. It won’t surprise you a bit to find out that some guy examining your wife’s cervix is the Pepsi machine mechanic just coming in to see if everything was alright.

Finally, it’s time for an epidural, which will numb her from mid chest down and completely change the trajectory of the evening. For one, you will find out that your relationship may not be as strong as you thought after she proposes on the spot to the anesthesiologist. She will treat this guy like he’s George Clooney handing her an Ann Taylor credit card with no limit. You instantly become the fifth most important person in the room (behind the doctor, your wife, the baby, and the soft drink mechanic, who won’t leave for some reason).

Finally, it comes time to push the baby out. You rush to your wife’s side and grab her hand, reminding her to breathe. She’s pushing as hard as she can, swearing that she can’t push any more. If you had half this much determination, you’d be running your company instead of sitting on your butt reading anonymous blogs all day. For some reason, you bend your knees and get in an athletic crouch, not unlike how your little league coach told you to stand when you played shortstop (it may also be helpful to wear a cup to protect yourself in this situation, too). This may make you feel like you’re helping, but really has nothing to do with whether the baby is coming out or not.

When the baby refuses to come out, the doctor will ask you to grab your wife’s leg and pull it back to get her in a better position. You jump right in, not realizing that this isn’t exactly what you signed up for when you joined your health plan. Later, you will ask the doctor for a discount since you had to do some of the work yourself. Seriously – if I’m getting a new muffler and have to bring my own screwdriver, it better not be full price.

And finally, within a split second, your life will change forever. You’ll hear the most important sound you’ll ever hear – that of your child crying. You’ll be in such shock, that you won’t even notice when the doctor asks you if you want to cut the umbilical cord, and you actually do it – despite being completely grossed out by the concept an hour earlier.

You look around the room and see your wife’s blood, and you will be scared out of your mind. You’ll look at her and suddenly your entire relationship will flash before your eyes. In an instant, you’ll think of the night you met. You’ll think about your first date, when you stayed up all night laughing nervously, wondering if she really liked you or not. You’ll remember the night at the UW Memorial Union Terrace when you finally realized that this was the woman that you wanted to spend the rest of your life with, and how you proposed to her on that spot. She’ll be laying there with tears in her eyes, drenched in sweat and hair messed up, but at that instant, you will never have seen a woman so beautiful in your life.

You can\’t believe that any woman would ever have so much faith and trust in you that she would go through such excruciating pain to deliver a child. Fortunately, in case you forget that, you will be reminded of it approximately 8,345 times over the next twelve months. You thank the Lord that you could be there to witness the birth of this child, seeing as there\’s really only an even-money chance you were there for the conception.

You fumble around for your camera to try to get pictures. You start sobbing like Richard Simmons after meeting an 800 pound guy that has to be removed from his house with a crane. Your wife starts breast feeding the baby, and you try to get a picture of it without getting too much of the breast in the picture (your friends will be looking at these, after all). It is incredible that babies have the innate ability to breast feed right out of the womb – much like you were born with the uncanny ability to watch the Brewers, listen to music, and scratch yourself all at the same time.

Apparently unaware of your court record, the doctors hand your baby over to you. It is at this point precisely that you are overwhelmed with about 100 feelings simultaneously. You can’t believe this is all real, and that something so great could happen to you. I mean, you are the guy, after all, who used to throw lawn furniture off the top of your fraternity house to see if it would break. You’re the guy who would have girls drop you off three blocks away from your house after a date so they wouldn’t find out exactly where you lived. You’re the guy that used to get drunk and wash all the cars on your block at three o’clock in the morning, hoping some hot chick would appreciate the gesture.

And here in your hands is the greatest thing that God ever created. It feels like you are now the first person ever to figure out procreation – that nobody could have ever done this before. You can’t believe that somehow this actually sometimes occurs without the father being involved. Sure, you may be a sap, but it’s inconceivable to you that fathers leave and don’t come back, or don’t even know that one of their children is born at all.

It is at that point that suddenly you realize your life has a purpose. As listlessly as you may have lived your life, now you are responsible for another human being. Sure, it took you an extra year or two to finish college, and you may never have gotten the job you really wanted, but suddenly all of your personal ambitions and travails seem trivial. Your life is clear as day now – I have to take care of this baby, and do the best job I possibly can. And that’s it, really. Nothing else even comes close.

For years, you have been wondering whether anyone will ever remember you when you\’re gone. What have you ever done that\’s really affected anyone in any real way? You never wrote a hit screenplay, never played in the NBA, never volunteered at the Boys and Girls club. You\’re afraid that if you were to disappear, nobody would even know you were there at all. Now, all at once, you realize what your legacy will be – you know that by raising this kid to be a kind, generous, and hard working adult, you\’ve given the world the best possible gift you can.

What you don’t realize at the time, however, is the fact that you are no longer writing your own life story. Those days of going boozing with the boys? Done. Movies? What are those? You won’t ever eat in a restaurant again that doesn’t offer you the option of “Biggie Sizing.” You will soon come to recognize that you are now relegated to a bit part in your own autobiography. The seven pound, four ounce conspirator in your arms has now taken over as head writer of your life story. And you will never mind a bit.

The digital clock above you says 7:12 A.M. You’ve now been awake all night waiting for this moment. It’s time to catch what little sleep you can before your life starts all over again. You doze off thinking how great it is to be a dad. And wondering if you have to prove the baby\’s yours for the hospital to validate your parking ticket.

If you just happened not to speak English, and you just happened to be robbed by a guy wearing a bandana wrapped around his nose, and you just happened to take life saving advice from aerobics instructors, then this video is for you, my friend. You will not see anything funnier this week – that\’s my solid gold guarantee.

Via Dave Barry

As an aside, being rubbed by two men can cost you a lot in Japan.