The shitless, screamless, no-mess, no-fuss baby

Most people who see a video like this one have an instinctive "ewwwwww" reaction: "oh, that's creepy". There's something about an object that's described as "lifelike" - those embalmed-looking Madame Tussaud's waxwork figures, or the Victorian post-mortem "subjects" photographed sitting up with sculpted smiles  - that makes most of us feel a sinkhole open up in the pit of the abdomen.

These sweet little things are called Reborn dolls, a creepy name if there ever was one, evoking both recycling and born-again evangelism. For many women, mostly older women, they call forth feelings that we normally associate with a kicking, squalling, pooping, drooling, red-faced little spud that causes endless trouble because it requires constant care.

But if you "adopt" one of these (and the cost can be well into the thousands), the baby is surprisingly low-maintenance, or perhaps even NO-maintenance, for it doesn't cry or require changing or bathing or cuddling. No, the requirement for cuddling rests with the cuddler, who must be trying to fill some sort of inner emotional abyss in constructing and buying/selling these things (for things they are, complete with crusty little rashes and runny noses).

The obsession with collecting is beginning to spread into a mania for actually making these things, and Reborn kits are surprisingly easy to obtain on the internet. The woman in the video, who with her stony face and turned-down mouth looks extremely unhappy, turns out a complete Reborn doll per day - but, even more disturbingly, she doesn't sell them or even give them away. Her house has rooms packed full of them, 1800 in all, to the point that I don't see how she has time to rock and nurture them all. Though she insists she was only seeking "inspiration", the local maternity ward told her to stay away because she was giving patients the creeps.

The more I got into this subject, the more I was reminded of something infinitely more horrifying. Awhile ago I saw one of those semi-sensationalistic documentaries about World War II on the History Channel. I confess right now that I'm obsessed with that war and with the Nazis and their twisted ideology. Probably the most pathological idea they ever had was to breed babies.

The Lebensborn project was a means of producing a master race of full-blooded Aryans, many of them fathered by members of the SS and handed over by their young mothers as a duty to the Fatherland. In fact, surrendering a baby in this way was seen as an honor, with your child guaranteed the best possible education in the unassailable truths of Nazism. They'd learn that stiff-armed salute before they were two.

What gave me the shivers - and I haven't been able to find a picture or clip of this - was a very brief shot of babies - dozens of babies - scores of babies - some with diapers, many without. They lay kicking and squalling, squashed together on the flat surface of a giant table, with a few nurses moving around among them, maybe checking to see if they were still alive. But that's not the worst. In the foreground more babies were coming in, shoulder-to-shoulder and knee-to-knee. . . on a conveyor belt.

These babies were "product", something systematically mass-produced to carry on the horrors of the Reich. My personal view is that the Nazis feared that these children might feel something unacceptable - pangs of conscience, perhaps  - if they weren't indoctrinated  from their very first breath.

When I found these photos, they made my scalp prickle because everything seems so wholesome, so "normal". No doubt much of this normalcy was fabricated for the camera to reassure people that their lost babies were being properly cared for. The shot of nurses cuddling life-sized dolls made my hair stand on end. What is this bizarre photo all about?  Did they really think they could perfect their childrearing skills on an inanimate object?

I'm not for one minute saying these dollmaking women are Nazis, but they sure are strange. They're turning out what amounts to "product": inert replicas of babies, blobs of primal instinct made of latex and fabric, monuments to departed children or grandchildren, or maybe just something to fill an aching space inside.

I've felt it in unguarded moments, usually at the supermarket checkout line: a sudden pang when I see a newborn baby. Not only did my own children's infancy hurtle by in a blur, my grandchildren are growing up at an appalling rate, like those old Wonder Bread ads where the kid shoots up right before your eyes. I was in the delivery room when Caitlin was born, a compact little football swaddled in a green towel with almost unnaturally-bright, almond-shaped eyes. And now she's nearly nine. NINE - ye gods, I remember being nine! That was the year Kennedy was shot. The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show on my tenth birthday. So she's already in that phase of cynicism that I remember so well, sometimes causing my older (much older) siblings to cry out, "Oh, stop!"

I'm not in a rush to get one of these Reborn things, carefully weighted in head and body so that it "handles" just like a real baby. I'd rather get a puppy or a kitten, something that is at least alive. As a matter of fact, being very tired of shovelling shit and listening to earsplitting shrieks, I don't think I'll get another bird when Jasper dies. Didn't I do enough cleaning up shit when I looked after real babies?

But this is the perfect creation, the shitless, screamless baby, a baby that never changes, as if it has been dipped in wax or embedded in plexiglass. Frozen in time, it's always there as a comfort. The only problem is, it gives me the shivering creeps.

SPOT THE REAL BABY! One of these photos is a real baby (not counting the Caitlin newborn shot). Can you guess which one?

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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The Three Ages of Man: Car; Car;Car . . .

I was going to call this post "and we'll have fun, fun, fun. . . "

On the weekend, I went to my very first Car Show. I have no interest in cars whatsoever, except that once every few years, I stumble upon an antique car that literally takes my breath away. The last time it happened, it was a burgundy-and-cream Mercury Westergard from about 1940, one of those massive, bulbous cars with a sloping back and rear tires that barely showed. For some reason this automobile stopped me in my tracks.

Hoping for a similar find, I trudged through what seemed like miles of people's most cherished babies. Old guys had worked on these for years (and maybe a few young guys with tattoos and no job). It showed. Only a few came from pre-war times, and most had been souped up or otherwise tinkered with, the running boards removed, the engines jutting out unnaturally like tumors. This was too bad, because I love Harold Lloyd cars most of all.

So I was obsessed with a search for that 1940 Mercury, hoping it was owned by a local. I didn't find it, but 3/4 of the way through our hot trudge on a sultry August afternoon, I was stopped in my tracks.

I didn't know what it was, but it was stunning, the ultimate in beauty and grace, all wetly gleaming in chrome, cherry red and pristine white.

"It's a 1961 Corvette," my husband said. (He didn't need those little white cards behind the windshields to tell him the make and year of a car. Ever. In fact, he identified a few that were so exotic, it made my head spin.)

People sigh and drool over antique Corvettes. Now I know why. It looked kind of like a skin you'd slide into, erotic. There was no back seat. (The few '20s cars I saw had boxy carriage-like interiors, with roomy, plush, sloping back seats that seemed specifically designed for sex. They also had rumble seats in the back, completely separate and open to the elements, a perfect place to stash your mother-in-law. People were ingenious in those days.)

I don't know why this car held me transfixed. I'd post a picture of it, but I can't decide which one brings more tears to my eyes. Anyway, it led me to my usual wild goose chase for information, this time on the History of the Automobile.

If you ask people who invented the car, 95% of them will say, "Henry Ford." According to that impeccable source, Wikipedia, Ford came around about 200 years after the first experimental prototypes. These were wheezy little things with sewing machine engines, some even driven by steam. (This is why one of the above models has that Jiffy Pop thing attached to it, likely blowing the car along with hot air.)

Inventors were thinking in terms of "horseless carriages" for a long time, so wheels were huge and spoked, with hard rubber tires. About a thousand different people were working on the design, so I can't name any of them because it would be so incredibly boring.

I can't get this to cut and paste, but it's too good to leave out, so I'll transcribe it by hand (while trying to eat my peanut butter toast and drink Crystal Lite iced tea):

"By 1784, William Murdoch had built a working model of a steam carriage in Redruth, and in 1801 Richard Trevithick was running a full-sized vehicle on the road in Camborne. Such vehicles were in vogue for a time, and over the next decades such innovations as hand brakes, multi-speed transmissions, and better steering developed. Some were commercially successful in providing mass transit, until a backlash against these large speedy vehicles resulted in passing a law, the Locomotive Act, in 1865 requiring self-propelled vehicles on public roads in the United Kingdom be preceded by a man on foot waving a red flag and blowing a horn. This effectively killed road auto development in the UK for most of the rest of the 19th century, as inventors and engineers shifted their efforts to improvements in railway locomotives. The law was not repealed until 1896, although the need for the red flag was removed in 1878."

(Why is it that I can hear John Cleese saying, "And now for something completely different"?)

Anyway, enough of this fishy-sounding, probably concocted history written by a bunch of unemployed geeks who live on beer and Pringles. The process of developing the modern automobile was kind of like a steel mill where iron is melted down in a big blast furnace and spat out as ingots. Everybody poured something into the mix. Everyone stole from everyone else. Gradually, something cohered, solidified and emerged.

One of the first designers, back in about 1800, was named Benz. The names Daimler and Diesel came up as well. These were men, not things. This seems incredible to me, but there it is. Anyway, when the internal combustion engine was finally perfected somewhere around 1910, it was hailed as the greatest invention in the history of mankind.

No more horse dung! No more horses, period, except for the fast set who could afford polo ponies. Apart from the wheezy, rickety noises and familiar explosions, the car was deemed marvelous, and eventually, nearly everyone embraced it as a universally Good Thing.

Right. Until it began to poison the air and water to such a degree that our future survival is now very dicey indeed.

We're married to our cars. We conceive our children in them, we shine and wax them tenderly, and (especially) covet the ones we want and can't have. Some people's lives literally revolve around them. I couldn't give a shit, except when I see something like that sublime cherry-and-white '61 'Vette.

Oh OK, I'll try to find a picture already. I wanted to marry it, it was so beautiful. It exuded effortless grace and genius in design like few other material objects I've seen.

Maybe in another five years I'll see another one. Or not? I kind of wish they'd all go away. I'd have the horse shit back in a heartbeat.