I have done some pretty kick ass writing in my time here at Soldier of Fortune magazine. I have written a four-part feature on the education budget, I have written a highly praised and very commended review of the Bananarama reunion gig in Fiji, and I have fallen asleep on caffeine and Mafiosi-grade amphetamines during Eye On Exec meetings.
Naturally, I have slept with the editor (we just cuddled though).
But I have never written about the smacking issue. Until that sentence you just read. And all that I wrote was that I didn’t write anything about it. But that all changes in this sentence. I mean this one. I mean this one. I mean the next one. Yeah, this one.
People, I fully agree with the National party’s policy of spending nine million dollars on smack. I will definitely be using my party vote to vote for a huge party.
But what do you, the common everyday suit-and-tie blue collar smack user on the street think? What’s it like down there in boring-land? So your kids are acting up again, eh? And you want John Key to give you some of his smack so you can finally relax? Well think again, buddy, and come to the same conclusion, or a different one. I’m not too worried.
So here we are all high and mighty judging the parents. Well just who are you to judge? Yeah, that’s right, I’m judging you. Have you experienced the pain of childbirth? Do you even know or care about it? I’m very serious now. When you’re having a baby, you have to get up—at ANY time of the day or night—and drive your Mrs to a hospital, then you have to sit in a crappy waiting room reading tabloid magazines for hours. If it’s early in the morning, you know there won’t be anything good on the waiting room TV. This is the harsh agony of just the beginnings of child-rearing, and is now forcing many dads into a life of heavy smack use. So what can we, the people, do to help children whose parents are giving them smack? I, for one, am sitting here typing this thing. You are reading it. Obviously, you could be doing something a bit more useful than that, like buying my new smacking book. What I have here is after-typing from my latest bestseller, that will hit stores soon. Yes, even a drunk, bored, semi-domesticated, alcoholic student, who doesn’t even take care of any of his children, can cash in on the smacking fad, and win the nine million dollars.
The front cover of my book will feature a photo of me all muscled up after a stint on steroids and Human Growth Hormone wearing my Rambo costume, standing victorious atop a huge mound of smacked babies, carrying a mighty ancient Nordic baby-smacking vacuum cleaner nozzle in one hand. The back cover will inform potential victims of my literary might and accomplishments; it’s my standard blurb:
‘Guy Armstrong was born in Portland, Maine, in 1947, and quickly began thrashing out the parenting self-help books in the new age horror section. His first novel, Cartie, taught dads how to ruin the brakes on children’s go karts, and was followed by a string of bestsellers including guides as diverse as Tit—about breastfeeding in silicon valley, and Mitteny—about keeping fingers and toes warm. These were followed by a critically acclaimed burglary guide, The Shimmying. He lives in Bangor, Petone, Maine, and Derry, with grumpy bogans, a cat garden, and a very slow internet connection. He spends every day ROTFLHAO.’
Let me give you a basic synopsis of the book: In the first chapter, Derek finds out that she is really a her, and is sleeping with Susan, his psychiatrist, who is having an affair with the poolboy and the gardener. Chapter two has Rodney finding out that the aliens are peace-loving and reasonably hygienic—but oh no, Rodders! Watch out for those cloning vats! Then Melissa falls into a plasma hyperdrive with hilarious results. In chapter three, Joe smacks the palm of Derek’s hand with his butt, and we’re away!
I based the book on personal experience, and what I read about getting into Oprah’s book club. I want to help you, the parent, be exceptionally reasonable and mature regarding this issue, so that both you,and whoever’s kid it was that you hit learn a valuable life lesson. Experience: it’s the commodity I just can’t refund.
Now: the National government wants us to not only hit our kids, but to enjoy it, and make it look cool enough to go in a movie, or at least a Flight of the Conchords episode, with Murray applying to the NZ government for an Overseas Smacking Permit to smuggle Germaine and Brett some top-quality smack. This is why I have invented the Emergency Armstrong-Bradford Guitar Hero Smacking Abuse Friday Night Drinking Kit. To make your own one you will need a mate with guitar hero, medicinal marijuana, medicinal whisky, medicinal brandy, medicinal gin, medicinal absinthe, medicinal guinness, an illegal download of the new Slayer album, and some unwanted children (these can be readily found in Manner’s Mall). The booze helps with maximum Slayer absorption, and no doubt your mate has drunk it all by now. So sell the kid into slavery, and buy more! Success! You no longer have a kid the government is selling smack to, and you’re going to get wasted and play some hero!
Madams and Sirs, Lascarious Lachrymal Ladies in Lactogenesis and Languidly Larryish Larrikins, please toast my tootsies over an industrial-sized jar of frothing forget-me-nots in Pilsborough, Manchestertown if you are offended by these musings. Know that I love each and every one of you with all my deepest hearty lobingtons, and yearn to frolick with each of you all over everyone else, in a sexy cacophony while my parents watch, and spank all four of each other. Kindly pluck my fingernails out and compel me to suck treacle with champagne-liver pâte from your legpits if you think me offensive, but I must, I absolutely must waste as much time as possible before I get to the issue, because my analysis of it is so incredibly vapid I could have just photocopied a sheet of glad wrap onto this page, and you’d be almost as well informed. Bragging and over-confidence aside, let’s look at the issues here:
You’re a dick. Ha ha! SMACK! BOOYAH!