Tuesday, January 22nd, 2013: 6:26pm

I suppose I should take this as a learning experience for when I decide to live-blog events that don’t stick to any kind of set schedule. When you’re sitting in your apartment, trying to work, and occasionally talking to customers on the phone to the constant melodious noise of a pregnant woman screaming and cursing through the wall in both in English and Parseltongue, the jokes pretty much write themselves. You don’t even need to try, there’s just something inherently funny about being on the phone with a customer who is frothing with rage and suddenly they pause and ask you what that horrible banshee scream is from the background. “Don’t worry about it,” I would say, pausing for dramatic effect, “my neighbor’s having a baby.”

At that point he would probably ask the question on anyone’s mind, and I would be forced into a sudden decision: do I want to tell the truth about working from home, or make up an elaborate lie about working in an actual call center where a pregnant woman suddenly had to give birth and she’s on the floor in her cubicle about 25 yards away, popping out her kid while a mesmerized team lead tries to coach her through it, shouting things like “Take ownership!” and “More uterus control!”

Anyway, with Lars Ulrich stubbornly clinging to his present location, I thought I would take a few moments to talk about inducing labor. I’ve already mentioned walking, of course, but there are a few other methods I haven’t gotten into. Doctors, of course, say none of them are proven and it’s dubious whether any of them are actual reliable methods for inducing labor and don’t just suffer from confirmation bias.

One that the expectant mother is already trying is eating spicy food, which supposedly helps. I’m a little unsure. It sounds suspicious and it seems to me that if you’re going to go through childbirth you may not want a bellyful of spicy food churning around and you definitely don’t want the taco shits. At any rate, there are a few others, listed in order of increasing awkwardness.

• Acupuncture

Whoever decided to stick large needles into the bodies of pregnant women is a braver man than I.

• Nipple stimulation

Supposedly this tricks your body into thinking you’re breastfeeding which makes your uterus wonder what sort of demon spawn is still living inside it so it starts contracting or something along those lines. I really just wonder how exactly that goes. Does the expectant mother just excuse herself to go and stimulate her nipples? Does she make her baby daddy do it? Do hospitals have a nipple stimulating machine? I don’t know, but I’m genuinely curious about this.

• Sexual intercourse

This, of course, is the holy grail of labor inducement. If you’re lucky, your baby daddy has a pregnancy fetish and you already have to fend him off with a broomstick, otherwise it’s probably going to be some pretty terrible sex. Either way, it sounds like a terribly awkward thing to have happen, especially if you’re already late and people are already present.

For example, let’s say your mom is around to help out, but things aren’t happening, so eventually she brings up the fact that, you know, switching to Business Time might speed things up. Then you have to collect your baby daddy and awkwardly waddle off towards the bedroom, trying desperately not to make eye contact with your mother and desperately praying she doesn’t frequent WebMD and won’t mention that

it’s important for the man to ejaculate inside the vagina. “This ejaculate contains prostaglandins which stimulate the cervix … possibly leading to contractions.”

because those are words your mother should never, ever say to you.

I guess what I’m saying is that if there isn’t any progress in the near future I am going to put The Lonely Island’s “I Just Had Sex” on repeat and point my subwoofer against the wall.