my best friend is going to be the father of a lesbian couple's child in about a month. he has the baby shower to go to this weekend, so we stopped by a store to pick up a gift for the shower. let me tell you; baby things have come a long way. first of all, john lennon seems to be this unstoppable force in baby goods; sort of the martha stewart of the infant set. nice that he can keep entertaining america's youth, even after being dead for all these years. also, the technology is amazing. everything seems to vibrate, rock, play music, or otherwise relieve you of the burden of parenthood. there was one cradle/bassinet thing that caught my eye; it had a record and playback feature so you could record your own voice (presumably saying something soothing like "don't worry... mommy is right here in the room, not downstairs having sex with the mailman"), which would play back intermingled with strains of lennon's "imagine". ryan and i had a good time putting our own messages on it and playing them back. "you don't know who your daddy is." "you have two mommies" "you were conceived with porn" etc.