Berlin, 25.02.01 More thoughts about sex and babies (it's been driven home to us rather forcefully that one does lead to the other). Link o' the day: German advertizing. These billboards are everywhere, one on every block, practically. Even by German standards they are a bit over the top. (Yes, the caption is "Park and Ride?") I think it's for some spin-off version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" on RTL2, which is the Fox of German TV, only with nudity. Today is the first anniversary of the day we decided to have Madeleine. More important than her birthday, but she won't know that. One year ago we went for a long walk on a warm sunny day and made our difficult decison. During that long day's excursion we took a tram up to Hohenschönhausen and watched a speedskating event. Today I went up again to cheer on a friend in the same event, only I had my daughter with me. She slept blissfully in the Kinderwagen. And the weather was much nastier, cold with snow and ice on the ground. But back to the domestic narrative... Annette is developing a greater tolerance for my odd behaviour with Madeleine. Now that I have demonstrated my sincere affection, I can invent slightly horrid songs and sign them to her with less fear of retribution. Particularly now, before she has a clue what I'm saying. But Annette's tolerance has its limits. She was a little annoyed yesterday when I began singing "You Can Wear Boots And Date Girls" to the poor child. She can date whoever she wants, quoth mother, but you shouldn't pressure her into being gay just because it's contrarian. But think of the advantages, I said, no asshole boyfriends and no accidental teen pregnancies. Beyond that, things are going pretty well at home. Except for an irksome propensity to spit partially digested milk at everyone who crosses her path, Maddy has been quite sweet of late. Last week I bought a "Rody", a small inflated rubber horse upon which children are bounced into submission. Pictures will eventually follow, once I am organized. And we took delivery of a crib, which made everyone sleep better (she'd been in the bed with us since we realized she'd outgrown the borrowed pram). Despite my commitment to keeping sexual language out of the parenthood business, it creeps back in. Case number one, a song sung by me after the little milk-stained wretch dropped into a deep coma while being bounced on the exercise ball: Your Dad put you to sleep! Your Dad put you to sleep! Your Mother tried and failed, she couldn't do the job! Your Dad put you to sleep and earned a nice... [at this point Annette figured out where it was leading and cut me off] I see nothing wrong with a program of incentives and rewards, personally. Case number two, a song begun by Annette, finished by me: You're going for a walk with your Dad, with your Dad! You're going for a walk, With the parent with the cock. Oh yes you're going for a walk with your dad! I'm rather proud of that one. Case number three: SCENE: Bathroom. SCOTT is in the shower. ANNETTE is changing the baby's daiper. MADELEINE is playing with her feet, naked from the waist down. ANNETTE (singing to the baby): Grab your toes! Grab your toes! SCOTT (from behind the shower curtain, singing the same melody): Assume a most indecent pose! ANNETTE (yelling): JESUS CHRIST! For the last time: SEX - BABY - BAD!! NO!!! Continuing on this disturbing theme, it occurs to me that this web page contains several instances of the phrase "baby porn". God knows what sort of perverse search engine hits it will soon receive. I really don't care to speculate. But then it got me thinking, what is "baby porn" exactly? What would happen if you took a 4-month old baby and photographed it wearing, say, little fishnet stockings, a garter belt and a latex bustier? I am NOT proposing to do this, I'm just working through the consequences as a thought experiment. First off, you'd probably find your ass in jail if you used a normal camera and sent the film to Wal-Mart for processing. Paedophilia and child pornography are creepy, creepy things, no question there. Bad, bad things. But as far as I can tell, infants don't appear to be terribly sentient, so it's hard to imagine them suffering any lasting psychological trauma from being dressed up in lingerie and photographed. It's certainly no worse than being dressed up in humiliating Halloween costumes and photographed. Yet the whole idea really fucks with certain taboos. It's completely victimless, but it makes you very, very uncomfortable. (Whereas the scene with Gene Wilder and the lingerie-clad sheep in Woody Allen's Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex is just plain funny.) Even stranger, actually writing about this idea could be construed as a criminal offence in Canada, although things may be a little saner now that the Supreme Court ruling on the Sharpe case seems to have removed the most offensive "thought crime" provisions of the child pornography law. (Theoretically, one could have been jailed for possession of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, as Miss Capulet - or is that Miss Montague, I can never remember - is clearly under 18.) Anyway, just my odd thought for the day.