Homunculi, and How to Obtain Them

For the past few months, I have been obscenely and absurdly busy—too busy to fulfill all of my obligations to family, to friends, to work, and to myself. Recently, however, I may have stumbled across the solution to my problems with time management. A homunculus, for those of you who do not know, is a golem-like little facsimile of a person about a foot tall that serves as a loyal minion and a devoted friend. That sounds like just the ticket.
The first place I looked for a homunculus was the local pet shop, but all I found were depressed parakeets and feral ferrets. The Internet, however, is home to a wide variety of people trying to sell illegal and exotic pets. While I could find no wholesale homunculus breeders, I did note a number of possible recipes for homunculi that all seem more or less within my grasp.
The first one I think I will try will be that of the alchemist Paracelsus. His not-so-secret recipe directs one to fill a small bag with bones, sperm, skin fragments and hair. I already have such a bag lying around— so far so good. After assembling these sundries in a Ziploc baggie, one ought to bury the bag in horse manure for forty days. Again, no problem; this is Central Illinois. It's a pretty straightforward recipe, which is why I tend to doubt its worth. It seems too easy; if making homunculi were so simple, why haven't I seen more running around? Besides, after burying this little bag in manure, Paracelsus's directions become just a little bit fuzzy. What do I do after forty days? What do I feed the homunculus? Can I get a microchip implanted in him in case he runs away?
Perhaps one of the alternative methods to obtaining a homunculus would be better. There's a very promising one that involves a mandrake plant, though it is quite a bit more difficult. Wikipedia reports that the Mandrake plant only grows where the semen ejaculated by hanged men falls to the ground. If this is true, the mandrake is probably pretty hard to come by, though I can imagine quite a few of them sprouting up near the rougher S&M clubs. Once one locates this elusive plant, however, there's a pretty complicated trick to harvesting it. To be effective, the mandrake root has to be plucked from the ground before dawn on a Friday morning by a black dog. Seriously. So, months before I even find this stupid plant, I have to find a black dog and train it as a careful and obedient gardener. This is beginning to seem like more trouble than it is worth. The last part, feeding the mandrake root with milk, honey, and/or blood is a snap, but, I do not have the time necessary to be hanging around autoerotic stranglers or even training a black dog. I'm a busy man, after all.
The third method outlined online was first recorded in the 18th century by Dr. David Christianus. He suggested taking an egg laid by a black hen, poking a tiny hole through the shell, and replacing a small portion of the egg white with human sperm before sealing the opening with virgin parchment. Then, because that whole procedure wasn't complicated enough, Dr. Christianus recommends burying the egg in dung on the first day of the March lunar cycle (in 2007, that will be March 19th) and waiting thirty days. On the plus side, Christianus' method is the only one I read that included Homunculus care directions. It would be an awful bother to have tracked down the egg of a black hen and personally inseminated it if my homunculus was just going to die. Christianus suggests a diet of lavender seeds and earthworms, a diet that seems as plausible as any other part of his instructions, but some questions still arise: How helpful can a homunculus be if it can't even gather its own lavender seeds and earthworms? Is it just going to be a stupid pet like a gerbil or a goldfish? Can he feed and clean up after my new black dog that I had to train or take care of my new black hen? Can he do laundry?
I don't want a homunculus that can't take care of itself. Naturally, I'll try to instill in my little friend good personal hygiene, respectable deportment, and the ability to communicate, but after that I expect a payoff for all of my effort. I don't think I'm wrong to have certain expectations of the little critter, especially, not after the trouble I've taken to bring the little guy into being.
In fact, the question of usefulness is of increasing concern. Can my homunculus act on my behalf in any scenario? He is my issue, created of my own DNA. Should I just have a child?
A child, actually would be even better. Never mind all of that crap about burying bags of fingernails and hair, I always see loads of children outside that school down the street. They seem to play all kinds of complicated games, why couldn’t I just pop over there and pick one out to come serve me? Naturally, I’d have to observe them for a while to figure out which are smart and which are stupid. I suppose that any child could be taught to vacuum the rug and match my socks, but I want one that knows how much starch to add to my shirts and can prepare my breakfast.
Most of all, it is important that my child be able to find his own lavender seeds and earthworms.
I’m a busy man, after all.