A woman in my office became a grandmother on Friday. Except for that time she said she knew I lived in a bad neighborhood due to the high concentration of black people, she’s okay. Well. She does wear Sturgis t-shirts a lot (although according to my friend Huff, “you don’t attend Sturgis, it attends you!”), and she did once admit to DVR’ing TMZ every day. I don’t DVR TMZ for the same reason I don’t DVR Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives: waiting all day to get home and have someone yell at me for 30 minutes straight seems a little counter-productive. Also I don’t have a DVR.

Anyway.

She spent the first hour of her shift talking about it, which was fine because she’s not in my group. At one point of the story, she said that her daughter was ready to begin seriously pushing and the nurse stopped her, saying that the baby was in position but that if she wanted to wait a few minutes, they could make sure that the baby was born at 11:11 on 11/11/11. According to the woman in my office, her daughter declined this offer and had the baby a few minutes before 11:11.

Which I think was a sensible thing to do. I know that I haven’t experienced childbirth myself and therefore can’t possibly relate to it in any way other than as a person who was once in the room for the 6 hours before the main part of it happened, but I would think that if I were giving birth, I’d personally murder a nurse for suggesting that I prolong the most excruciatingly painful part of it just to make sure that my baby was born according to a convenient superstition.

Listen. If I am on my back in a hospital bed with my ass hanging off the edge, my legs strongarmed into my chest by strangers, and my ruined vagina just out there for anyone to see/prod/comment on, then my nurse had better not be concerned with making sure the baby is born on 11:11. Are we in a hospital or are we at Hogwarts? Are you Zoroaster now? Get the fuck out of the room and bring me someone with a background in real medicine.

If I am sick, hurt, or need an actual human person extracted from my groin, I want a professional. I want someone who knows things I don’t. I want a fucking genius in scrubs. I want someone who is smarter and better and calmer than me to be in charge. I’d also like to be able to expect this from my government, which is one reason* why the recent GOP debates are such a mindfuck.

Have you seen this circus? I mean, it’s more of a circus than a regular debate, and what’s really baffling is that no one seems to mind. Rick Perry and Herman Cain are fuckups of a colossal nature, both unable to recall their own policies and key points of American political history. Perry’s solution seems to be to pray (and execute an inmate) about it, while Herman Cain has got to be some elaborate performance piece. He is that fucking insane. Instead of acknowledging and correcting this batshit behavior, both seem to get away with shrugging it off. Har har shucks, we’re all just simple Americans! I’m just like you guys! No, motherfucker, you’re not. You’re at least 18 million dollars richer than me and I don’t even think you know your multiplication tables. And don’t talk to me like I’m proud to be simple. I can read. I don’t spend three months’ salary at Wal-Mart for Christmas. I watch PBS, motherfucker, what now?!

This epidemic of being proud to be stupid must be stopped. There is nothing noble in ignorance or intellectual simplicity. TMZ is not a real show. I don’t ever want to hear someone being described as “too smart for their own good” ever again.

*The other reasons are mostly about Republican candidates being conservative nutjob assholes who want to own my uterus and jail me for thought crime. Don’t argue with me. Read the paper.