What’s the Goddamn Point, Anyway?

You know, you try hard. You buy organic milk for the kid, try to come home early from work, don’t get angry when your wife says she’s tired. You put up with anti-crotchfruit loonies on one side and raging breeders on the other. You save money, get life insurance, start a college fund. You don’t bang the secretary—or the maid. You convince your company to offer a week or two of paid paternity leave. You wonder how your dad coped with all this crap, or if he coped with it, and if he could’ve been better, making you better. You start wearing cardigans. You designate one pair of pants as the baby-vomit pants. You don’t drink so much, at least until the kids have gone to bed. You fall asleep at 10 o’clock anyway, well before the Scotch glass is empty. You read parenting books on the toilet. You start a fucking dadblog.

And then this happens:

OTTAWA — Richard Préfontaine and his wife, Lynne Charbonneau, were watching a playoff hockey game with their two daughters on Monday night when the ground beneath their house gave way suddenly and without warning.

The house’s bright green metal roof was all that was visible the next day in a vast mud crater near the village of St. Jude, Quebec, about 50 miles northeast of Montreal. The landslide created a hole 100 feet deep, 300 yards wide and a third of a mile long.

The family’s remains were found huddled together on a couch by the television, with rescuers discovering only their golden retriever, tied to a tree, alive.

In other words, ditch the crib—which’ll probably suffocate the baby, you jerk—and tie your kids to the oak tree in the yard. Oh, and keep up the life-insurance payments, because even if your home isn’t consumed by a freak landslide, you’re going to die anyway.