I am Irish and Italian. That means, among other things, that while other people eat fatty foods and binge drink to deal with stressful problems, for me it is a celebration of cultural heritage. That means that I have to find some other way to deal with life's problems. I tend to poke fun at it. At everything. Nothing is off limits. Man trampled to death. Hilarious! House goes on fire? A laugh riot! This has led to a number of unusual side effects. First, when I complain about things that are genuinely of concern, people laugh. Second, when I joke about things in a way I consider to be absurd and just for laughs, I am taken seriously. Evidently my friends and family don't think I could seriously be worried about a toenail dropping off and having a bloody sock every night, but every oblique reference to suicidal tendencies is deadly serious. Probably that's a sane attitude on their part, but I'm hardly in any position to decide what is and is not sane at this point. At any rate, I've come to realize that people only seem to get noticed on the Internet when they do things that are staggeringly inappropriate or just plain awful, so I might as well start putting my “make it funny so it won't be scary” thoughts on sensitive subjects up so this squeaky wheel can get some grease. For this, the inaugural example of Deadbaby Flamebait (DBFB), we will be looking at a debilitating and family destroying brain disease, Alzheimer's.

Terry Pratchett, one of my favorite authors, has Alzheimer's disease. I'm sad about this, first on general principle, it sucks that it is happening, but second and far more intensely for the selfish reason. I'm not going to get to read any more Discworld Books. One wonders how Alzheimer's might manifest in his next book or two. I figure we can look forward to a 1,500 page tome filled with things like, “Before entering the room and taking the seat, he entered the room and took a seat, at which time he took a seat, after of course entering the room. Now that he had a room to enter, he did so, taking a seat after entering the room to take a seat. Then he...” and so on for another few hundred pages before degenerating to the sentence “Who are you and where are my pills?” a few hundred times. This naturally assumes that he is dictating the book. Either that or he thinks that the word processor is a nurse.

Of course, surely there is an upside to getting Alzheimer's disease. Once it is bad enough, you aren't the one suffering, your loved ones are. And you don't even know who they are, so what do you care. As the person with the disease, your whole life is an exciting string of adventures, magically finding yourself in new and interesting places and meeting really friendly, albeit strangely depressed, people. Heck, you'd spend the rest of your days shaking hands and saying, “Hey, there! Great to meet you! My name's Tom. Why all the tears?” You would never see another rerun. Leftovers are fresh and new. You'd only ever need one magazine. That's a heck of a silver lining.

For some, that may not be enough to outweigh the whole “lose any memory of what it means to be you” thing. Fortunately, I've got a few recommendations to make this disease better. Not cure it, of course. I'm no neurochemist. Just improve. First off, lose the name. Alzheimer's? Come ON now. You are never going to gain awareness of a disease by giving it a name THAT hard to spell. It has the I before E rule wrong in it, for crying out loud. And if I was Dr. Alzheimer's, I really wouldn't want my name associated with regenerative dementia. I say, we make the obvious switch. Goodbye Alzheimer's, hello Old Timer's. That's what half of the people I know are calling it anyway, so just make it official. KFC and FedEx did it. It is called marketing. Next, there have got to be better ways to deal with someone who wakes up in their own home thinking it is a strange new place. Maybe the caregivers of Alzheimer's patients should make their beds look like time machines or cryo-chambers. Then you can just tell them, “Oh, it has been 1000 years, so of course you wouldn't know us. I'm your descendant!” Maybe give them a little bonus, “You are king of the world now! What would you have of me, O' exalted liege?” Every day another sci-fi adventure!

Well, that'll do it for this installment of DBFB. Despite the fact that everything I said is a joke, and I introduced it and am concluding it as such, I bet this is the one and only thing I get feedback on. Well, let's get those torches and pitchforks lit. And don't forget to join us next week, when I actually address our namesake. DEAD BABIES!