The greatest struggle facing our country today: “[I]n a nation overrun with frozen latte drinks, shockingly few people know how to make a respectable iced coffee at home. And with good reason: It’s hard to get it right. Simply refrigerating a pot of hot coffee will certainly produce cold coffee, but you probably won’t want to drink it.”

In a victory for subjectivism, the rap music magazine The Source and mostly-rock music website Pitchfork have both awarded Texas rap legend Bun B’s new album Trill O.G. a quantitative rating of 5 in their record review sections. But the two ratings mean very different things, as a 5 is The Source’s highest rating, while Pitchfork’s scale goes up to 10.

A 5-mics rating in The Source was once (and maybe still?) a highly coveted certification of “classic” status from the publication known as “the hip-hop bible.” And Pitchfork is very important to white nerds. So which is it, who to trust? I don’t know. Though Bun B is a great favorite of mine, I haven’t gotten the album yet. It came out the same day last week as the new Arcade Fire album, and I try not to spend my entire salary (ha ha ha!) at iTunes. I do very much like the song “Let ’Em Know,” which was produced by DJ Premier. But that appreciation is not universal. Andrew Noz was highly critical of the song (and people who like it) in a thoughtful and nicely written post at the rap site Cocaine Blunts.

“This song will sit comfortably on a full length of adequate Bun B records where he rhymes ‘candy car’ with ‘sippin barre’ at least twice, and then it will be added to the recent discography of respectable but forgettable DJ Premier records with a scratched hook and the same drums he has been using since 1998.”

Noz also cited The Awl in his post, and recommended that it stop covering rap music, which hurt my feelings. But that’s okay. In another victory for subjectivism, Noz apparently thinks the Roots’ MC Black Thought is really great. I have always found Black Thought’s rhymes to be very, very boring. So, yes, people disagree. But I would never say that Noz should stop covering rap music. Or that he should not do posts about bear videos or write public apologies. In fact, I think he should!

Who is Timothy McNulty? He is the greatest writer of our time, and he works at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. LISTEN TO THIS STORY SING, PEOPLE. “Preparing for his day in court, Gary Guy Mathews took off his red dog collar and left his squeaky toy at home. It is now up to a judge whether he will wake up one day as Boomer the Dog and find his furry dreams come true.” Is that not enough for you? Well, read on. “Early this year he began the process of legally changing his name to Boomer The Dog, noting many of his friends already called him that: one of his exhibits in a hearing Tuesday before Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge Robert W. Folino was a letter addressed to his adopted name from a friend named Hobnose Bordercollie.” I LOVE AMERICA, WHERE DREAMS COME TRUE, AND I LOVE THIS STORY. In your face, Muslim terrorists! We will let the dogs out! Also? “Here’s Boomer”? The best TV show opening sequence ever.

It’s even better with the German subtitles!

In this episode, Boomer steals a black man’s wallet.

With the 2012 London Olympics drawing ever closer, Britain’s national tourism agency wants to make sure that the tradespeople of Knifecrime Island show their least stabby faces to international visitors. To that end, VistiBritain has provided a helpful list of foreign characteristics aimed at avoiding offense. They’re all pretty great, but if I had to pick just five it would be these.

• “A smiling Japanese person is not necessarily happy.”

• “Be careful how you pour wine for an Argentinian.”

• “When meeting Mexicans it is best not to discuss poverty, illegal aliens, earthquakes or their 1845–6 war with America.”

• “Despite stereotypes, Poles are not large consumers of alcohol and excessive drinking is frowned upon.”

• “Canadians may take offence if labeled American. Some Canadians get so annoyed about being mistaken for US citizens they identify themselves by wearing a maple leaf as pin badge or as a symbol on their clothing.”

You will, of course, have your own favorites. A wide variety of obscene gestures are also identified, so you might want to clip and save this one.

The New York Times magazine moves from narcissist to narcissist! Now that horrible photo on this coming Sunday’s mag is of a frightening-looking Andrew Cuomo. There’s this gambit early on in the profile: “When you spend time with Andrew Cuomo, it can be easy to forget that a little more than two election cycles ago his personal life was in shambles and his political career appeared to be over.” Not that easy, apparently! And it’s littered with nuggets like this. “When HUD’s inspector general, Susan Gaffney, criticized some of Cuomo’s management decisions, his office, according to a departmental-harassment claim she filed, started a smear campaign to destroy her credibility. ‘The question isn’t just has Andrew Cuomo learned the lessons of Eliot Spitzer?’ as one state assemblyman put it to me. ‘It’s also has he tamed his inner beast?’” Who knows! All I walk away remembering pretty much is that Andrew Mark Cuomo used to drive a Jaguar with the license plate “AMC ESQ.”

The Daily News notes that American Hero Steven Slater is being represented by a Legal Aid attorney? No offense to the wonderful, terrific American Heroes who work at the Legal Aid Society-and each of them is deserving of quadruple their salary and a sunroom in heaven-but you know they get a little busy with crazy case loads. That being said, it shouldn’t be hard for him to cop a little plea on his class D felony charge and get some probation. (He’s not the first maniac to pitch a fit in the county of Queens, after all.) But is Steven Slater our first celebu-criminal without a fancy Manhattan pro bono attorney? Between that and his Astoria gym-working boyfriend Ken, he’s the best thing to happen to Queens since Fran Drescher was on TV. For those keeping track: the Steven Slater Facebook fan page is now 103,749 strong.

The folks at Taiwan’s Apple Action News-who clearly know what floats the Internets’ boats-have brought their CGI expertise to the Steven Slater story, expanding on their earlier version to include the latest details of the JetBlue flight attendant’s epic departure. There’s some suggestive boyfriend action in this one! Anyway, I was thinking about this last night: As much as I love this story-because how could you not, it has everything-is the huge amount of attention we’re paying to it, in some strange act of the collective unconscious, summoning up the next terror attack? I mean, is this going to be 2010’s Summer of the Shark Attack? Ah, you know what? Probably not. Let’s all just sit back and enjoy.

Disclosure! I will begin by stating that, at the age 31, I currently have no children. Which, in and of itself, will be a driver for many parents to click the “BACK” button on their browsers while muttering that I have nothing resembling a fucking clue about this topic. Click away, self-righteous parents! No doubt you have a poop-flinging banshee destroying your living room at this very moment. Go handle your business. No hard feelings.

Despite not having children, I think about them. A lot. In recent years, the full teeming strength of my biology has been consumed with a single, driving goal: to produce babies. And now that I’ve met the man with whom I will gladly (but not immediately! Don’t freak out, babe!) have said babies, the topic has become even more germane.

Unfortunately, thanks to an entire body of pop-literature, magazine articles, and semi-accurate science, I am also aware that having children will not make me particularly happy. Or, more specifically, it may very well leech every iota of joy from my existence. (But I’ll never regret it! Never! No regrets! Wouldn’t trade it for the WORLD!)

Yes, according to myriad sources, having children is the quickest path down the proverbial Slip N’ Slide into abject misery. No sleep! No freedom! The complete loss of a halcyon lifestyle that we (“we” in this case meaning predominantly “white middle-to-upper-middle-class professionals with college degrees and subscriptions to New York magazine”) enjoy with vigor. Gone are the boozy weekend brunches and “Mad Men” marathons and bi-weekly pilgrimages to Bruni Sifton-ranked restaurants. Banished are the freedoms and comforts and indulgences of modern life.

And the expense! Let’s not forget the expense! It will cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars to raise just one offspring — money that may (gasp) be incentivizing us not to procreate, money that could have been spent on innumerable bounty, like unnecessary Apple products or Brooklyn Heights co-ops or yacht upgrades. Or simply not earned at all, as we enjoy the budding “free time is the new wealth” economy embraced by our generation. Between, ineffective tax breaks for parents and rising inflation, potential breeders are all in danger of seeing their finances slashed and burned by the gestation of a fetus.

Get pregnant, and suddenly so many funds must be procured! Careers and spending habits may be questioned! Mate-gaming may be necessary! All sorts of problems arise that can only be solved by 1) relocating to a developing country, 2) marrying rich or 3) dropping the idea that a child must be a manifestation of upper-middle class angst.

There’s also the enviro-guilt of reproduction. What a carbon footprint it will have! What a tax on our already-gasping planet! You could commute to Taiwan on a weekly basis for the rest of your career, and your carbon output still wouldn’t approach the environmental assault of plunking another human being down on the earth.

And of course there’s the myopic drudgery of caring for said human being, who at the outset cannot see to its most basic needs. Feeding, wiping, washing and burping will replace the serenity of guzzling Starbucks and reading the Arts & Leisure section. Yes, we can all pretty much agree that no one has ever really liked caring for babies-and now in the age of post-gender co-parenting (right?), we can all recognize just how much it blows to spend your hours changing diapers when you could be reading blogs and imbibing organic cocktails.

Plus there’s the ballooning need for validation. So much validation sought in parenthood! That desperate desire to hear that you’re “doing it right.” Therein lies the true misery-that all of this sleep deprivation and poop-scooping and Disney-watching will be “for nothing” if we mess up (which we inevitably do, and then heap on truckloads of guilt that we could have “done it all differently”). Parents could save themselves some serious grief by not thinking of children as outlets for personal outcome-if I do X, Y will happen-and accepting that when it comes to the survival and development of human beings, whether or not you’re fully satisfied with your child’s SAT scores is a bit irrelevant.

Plus there’s the risk that parenting will run up a misery tab later in life. There’s the inevitably assholery of the child’s teenage years, and then, as anyone who’s ever read a Philip Roth novel can attest, there’s the not-insubstantial chance that your child might grow up to be an irredeemable jerk.

Yes, there are myriad reasons not to progenerate. And yet billions of us keep on doing it. And those of us reading and writing articles like this are, more often than not, doing it willingly. Why? The mere biological imperative isn’t enough to explain it.

One reason to have children is that there isn’t necessarily a reason. That producing and caring for a child is outside the parameters of the “reasonable,” consequence-driven, cause-and-effect logic in which we live the rest of life. There’s not really an “end” to becoming a parent-in fact, one key mistake people make is expecting parenthood to solve all the questions of purpose and identity that plague the Westernized post-individualism mind.

Like it or not, children won’t answer any existential “Who am I? Why am I here?” questions. You may find temporary purpose in the day-to-day of wiping tushes and dishing out peas-but not meaning. Nor will your kids fill the hole of inadequacies leftover from your own childhood-didn’t get into Harvard when you applied? Perhaps your children will! Better order $700 of Baby Einstein products, stat.

Still, even beyond the suspension of reason, there lies a deeper truth: Somewhere in the froth of neuroses and judgments and doctrines about modern middle class parenting (and parenting in general), there is a transcendent peace, a unique opportunity to engage in humanity as a whole.

We don’t remember our own babyhood. Somewhere in the congealed mass of stories and half-truths that make up the human memory, we forget our transformation from squalling infants to the semi-mature beings we are now. We know this metamorphosis happened-largely, we no longer pee into diapers or shove olive pits up our noses. But the minutiae of the change are lost to us forever.

Parenting doesn’t just re-immerse you in this transformation: It gives you a front row seat to the daily revelations of forming and shaping a life. Yesterday, this tiny being had no concept of trees; today, she’s speaking the word and grabbing leaves. This morning, a two-year-old realized that other children are not simply a manifestation of his own id and superego, but separate individuals with their own needs. It’s the entire human experience boiled into its essential elements-there is no fear or angst or worry in babyhood, no status-envy, no sense of not being loved, no nagging inner monologue constantly informing you of your inferiority to everyone else. There is only possibility, a blank canvas of soul and insight and the full spectrum of chaotic and sacred emotions that make up the human experience. All there for your personal marveling.

Not compelling enough for you? Well, there’s not much more to offer. Having a child isn’t a panacea, or a means to an end, or even an end itself-it’s more a gateway to fuller participation in humanity. Our lives are terminal; human life is not. Children are what they are, and nothing more. There’s no overarching moral imperative or greater spiritual truth to it (sorry, Ross Douthat).

You’ll always risk the chance that your baby will grow up to be an asshole, or that your spouse will leave you after seeing your stretch marks, or that you’ll go broke on SAT tutors and squash lessons. Maybe those things weren’t going to provide you with happiness/meaning/purpose anyway. Simply play a bigger game-enjoy your participation in the continuation of the species. What these baby-struck parents are really gazing at in wonderment is the capacity of the human race to grow and evolve-all playing out right there in their living rooms.

It’s just about the only thing that gives us hope that adults can grow and evolve the same way. After all, we’re really just big children.

Melissa Lafsky usually writes about horror movies here.
Photo from Flickr by Gabi Menashe.

TMZ, reporting that LeBron James hired an Orthodox rabbi to offer spiritual counsel for a “big merchandising meeting,” notes: “It’s been a big summer for the Jews-with Amar’e Stoudemire meeting with rabbis in Israel … and Shaq learning Hebrew. It’s only a matter of time before they start poppin’ Manischewitz in the clubs!” TOTALLY! Is it too late to call it the Summer of Jews? Because I think that one may have legs! Long, basketball-playing, club-going legs!

“Just days after announcing his intention to run for president of Haiti, Wyclef Jean stopped by the Rolling Stone offices to discuss this ‘new chapter’ in his life.” Isn’t it so weird that people keep writing about why it’s such a horrible idea? (Psst: Jean doesn’t speak French and also doesn’t do that well in Creole apparently.) In any event, there are 33 other candidates (including one other musician) who have filed to run for President as well! Including a former (two-time) prime minister and a former first lady! And a former ambassador to the U.S…. who is also Wyclef’s uncle. Awkward. To look on the bright side, this is having a net positive effect of keeping Haiti in the U.S. news.