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And you thought having more than a dozen pairs of shoes made you a shallow, selfish person.

Consider Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, happily married since 1983 and living in Arkansas. Jim Bob is a real estate agent, and his wife, well, “homemaker” doesn’t exactly begin to capture the complexity of her career. “Automated Uterus” is more of an apt title, for you see, The Duggars have 16 children, including two sets of twins.

That’s not a family, that’s a litter.

But the Duggars are as happy as a brood that size can be, and are planning on having even more children, which they consider, “a blessing from the Lord.”

Tonight, your ovaries are mine!

The children, whose names pretentiously all start with the letter “J” are awaiting the completion of their 7000 square-foot house, where they will each get their very own 9’ X 9’ cage complete with water bottle and feeding tube. Actually, according to the article, they are to be housed “dormitory style, which I can only imagine means that they will sleep in bunk beds and use stacks of empty pizza boxes as nightstands.

Forget about the fact that your planet is already straining at the seams with the undisciplined progeny of history’s dumbest generation. Sixteen spoiled brats are but a drop in the bucket for the anthill you call home. But did these people contemplate the psychological damage that they are doing to their offspring (besides saddling them with asinine names) and to themselves? No of course not, because the “Lord” told to them to go forth and multiply. Ironic that the teachings that they follow by rote were theoretically penned by a deity who only had one son.

First off, take Mrs. Duggar, the Human Ovary. She was married at seventeen years old; meaning that she most probably has done absolutely nothing with her own life. No teenage girl idles away rainy afternoons doodling in her diary and daydreaming about spending the rest of her life throwing up every morning and receiving epidurals every nine months. Speaking of which, since the human gestation period is nine months, and Michelle Duggar had her first calf at 21, plus taking into account the two sets of twins, that means that she has spent 93% of her adult life pregnant. I’m sure that’s exactly what she envisioned the first time she played “house” as a seven-year-old.

Michelle Duggar, wishing she had gone to Prom with anyone but Jim Bob

Now consider the fact that the average cost of raising a child in America to age eighteen is a whopping $181,481. And that’s for one child. Assuming that the Lord is remiss in his blessings for the rest of their mating seasons, the Duggars will be responsible for $2,903,680 worth of diapers, glow in the dark Nikes, Pokemon cards, pasta meals shaped like cartoon characters, and home pregnancy tests for the girls. That’s not including the cost of braces, Karate lessons, or therapy for little Jinger (or the cost of the enormous quantity of tequila this couple must consume on a daily basis in order to make them decide to name their child “Jinger”). Jim Bob sells real estate in Arkansas, and even if he inks the deal on every single trailer sold in the state, it would still take him 35 years to earn that kind of money. And forget about the neccessities: if Jim Bob wanted to take his entire family to see some schmaltzy Disney movie, and buy them each a small popcorn and drink, it would cost him $230. I suppose they could either wait for the DVD or pray that the “Lord” will bless Mr. Duggar with a lottery jackpot or early heart attack.

Finally, think about the children themselves. A child should, at least in the early stages of life before the crushing, numbing shock of reality kicks in, believe that he or she is a special individual, a physical manifestation of his parent’s love. When you’re one of sixteen, and have a name alliterative to the rest of your siblings, how could you possibly feel like anything other than a serial numbered collectible? Those children are nothing more than the products of their parents’ selfish narcissism, and subsequently, will develop into bitter, hateful, maladjusted creatures with major emotional disorders.

A Freudian Analyst's Wet Dream

Or they’ll buy matching sequined jumpsuits and tour the country as the Jesus’ Jolly Joyful Jerkoffs. Then they’ll host SNL and thank their late father who will have died three years earlier from coronary thrombosis.

Except for Jinger. After a massive six-state manhunt he’ll be arrested in Wichita with fifteen headless bodies decomposing under his back porch. At trial, he’ll refer to the corpses as his “blessings from the Lord.”