Well, the idea that, for some reason, was compelling enough to prevent me from sleeping in until a reasonable hour was as follows: Nighthawks, but with country hicks instead of disaffected city dwellers. It would be called Nighthicks.

Good morning, everyone.

-Shark

One time nine years ago someone removed a
Card from my bank account it was really
I don’t know it was dumb the next morning
I ate cold coffee for breakfast and dinner

“We’re on to Steve Destruction”

Absent-mindedly Steve pretended like
Well he pretended like he was going to download that album but then he just
Turned in an essay on Egyptian pottery
It
Was all buried with him his spoons his aftermath his
Notebooks

We’re on to him

“Delicate Sobriquet, Tongue-Filled Night”

Stop hassling your aftermath she said
I’m all but empty under this
Hasty moon

“Steelheads”

My path to lunch is
Well
It’s filed with sidewalks I’ve
Lost my own vision of what a meat-filled sandwich
Should taste like I feel like it should taste like
Me pretending to fish in a river

“Your … Um … Your Acid’s on the Sidewalk”

This is like your mom it’s really important it’s
About your acid that’s on the sidewalk:
See the whole world just wants to walk home
The whole world doesn’t want to be your
Um
Image of yourself in tights

Wake up tomorrow morning
Rinse off the aftermath and turn your living room into
A turnstile den:
Only then will you eat noodles alone.

-Shark

-Shark

———- Chelovek s kino-apparatom (Man with a Movie Camera) (Dziga Vertov, 1929)———-

7/18/10 @ 2:01 p.m.: Waiting on line to see a bad movie for the fourth time in as many days. Weird.

7/18/10 @ 2:09 p.m.: Next to the cookie shop, which is always full with people buying three-dollar cookies, is a regular restaurant that never has anyone in it, even though there are 80,000 people out here waiting on line. The future of the human race is cookies.

7/18/10 @ 2:12 p.m.: Today is the last day of the film fest. I have to say that even though every one of these movies has sucked, I’m feeling a bit sad right now. Redolent smells evoke memories more strongly than any other sense. Proust said that. The smell of hot cookies will always remind me of the afternoon sun outside of the Castro Theater. I said that. Waiting here on line with Hip E. and Mrs. T, I have this distinct premonition that sometime in the future– when life seems limited in some way– I will look back on this moment and wrap myself in its warmness. Is there anything more affirming than enjoying something beautiful with your friends? Do you think that the Abbe Faria from The Count of Monte Cristo enjoyed charting the course of the sun or writing the history of Italian unification in his cell, with the knowledge that, quite possibly, he would never find anyone with whom to share his work? Sometimes you feel like you are the only one that thinks in a certain way. For instance, when I see an idiot family, attired in fanny packs and overpriced merchandise from the idiot Creationist store, walk past me and, with drooling aplomb, take a picture of me and smile in affirmation of their (to me) alien ideas, I feel alone. Like at the first two days of this silent film festival. Watching an old John Ford movie with 10,000 Indian attacks, watching an obscure silent film from Italy–I was in a theater full of people yet I felt totally alone. When The Dee-pa arrived on Saturday, it was a breath of wonderful air upon a stagnant landscape. Having her with me at the movie about the skank, and having Hip E. and Mrs. T here with me at Man with a Movie Sun, or whatever, not only affirms everything that is happening today, but baths this whole vacation in the radiance of friendship and enjoyment. I love my friends, I love movies, and I love the world and the strange conglomeration of events that allow it to exist for me to enjoy it. Tomorrow I will return to the museum.

7/18/10 @ 3:35 p.m.: Titties at the 45-minute mark! I repeat: titties!

7/18/10 @ 3:39 p.m.: Man, the orchestra is intense for this one. They just “played” 3 minutes of ambulance sirens.

7/18/10 @ 3:51 p.m.: So I’ve concluded that this movie is about nothing. It’s the Seinfeld of bad silent movies.

7/18/10 @ 3:58 p.m.: Footage-of-a-machine-spinning-something counter now at 70.

7/18/10 @ 3:44 p.m.: Oh and that’s it. Wow. Didn’t see that ending coming because THERE WAS NOTHING TO END. Unlike this weekend. Which, as discussed above, is now coming to an end. Fuck me.

-Triceratops with a Saddle

——— Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (Diary of a Lost Girl) (G.W. Pabst, 1929) ———-

7/17/10 @ 5:45pm: Never seen so many scarves in my whole life. They’re really coming out of the woodwork.

7/17/10 @ 5:55pm: Nudists out in full effect next to the line. Great tans on these gay nudists. I mean, underside of the cack tanned and everything. That’s right, there’s was actually a line for this one. This movie apparently stars a lascivious starlet named Louise Brooks. The nerds seem intrigued. They know there’s no banging in these movies, right?

7/17/10 @ 6:05pm: While waiting in line, met up with The Dee-pa, a delightful young woman that I met in Hayes Valley last night. We talked briefly about the hotness of this Louise Brooks skank before the line started moving.

7/17/10 @ 6:15pm: Remarking with The Dee-pa on the idiocy of paying 3 dollars for a cookie just because it’s hot. I mean, it isn’t that hard to warm up a cookie. Nonetheless, we were glad we weren’t in line in front of the cookie store because that smell is party damn good.

7/17/10 @ 7:20pm Sex with unctuous pharmacist results in baby at the 15-minute mark. Garth, that was a haiku.

7/17/10 @ 7:35pm: Watching a guy milk a cow at the 30-minute mark. I thought this movie was about a hot skank?

7/17/10 @ 7:54pm: Monkey casket at the 49-minute mark. Contains dead baby.

7/17/10 @ 8:15pm: This chick faints when she wants to have sex. Second time now. This movie might actually be about roofies.

7/17/10 @ 8:35pm: SPOILER ALERT: Young skank becomes prostie. Just saved you 17 dollars and an expensive cookie (probably).

-Triceratops with a Saddle

———- Rotaie (Mario Camerini, 1929) ————

7/16/10 @ 5:45pm: Today’s 6pm feature is an Italian movie called Rotaie. Hopefully “Rotaie” is not Italian for “Indian raids on railway cars.” I got more than enough of those yesterday evening, and that was with me sleeping through at least two of them.

7/16/10 @ 5:45pm: Big line at the expensive cookie stand …. cookies for $2.50 going fast! I expect better from you non-Creationists.

7/16/10 @ 6:10pm: We’re underway. “Rotaie” means “rails” — Dear Dawkins more trains…

7/16/10 @ 6:27pm: I’ve seen clips on the youtube of this director’s 1955 version of The Odyssey, starring Kirk Douglas. It looked pretty good, especially the Circe and Sirens scenes. Unfortunately, I am informed by Allmovie.com that Camerini’s version “pales in comparison to the high-tech, all-star 1997 TV miniseries version.” Oh snap!

7/16/10 @ 6:35pm: Ooh, quick-cut editing to convey the hectic pace of the big city… I’m going to guess that this tactic will be used in later movies.

7/16/10 @ 6:45pm: Love story reaching very high levels of sappiness, for which, as a dinosaur, I have very low tolerance. Just bang already. Wait, is there going to be no banging in these silent movies? Waiter!

7/16/10 @ 6:55pm: Okay, we get it, the city’s hectic, I know: I accidentally took six buses to get here.

7/16/10 @ 7:10pm: It just sunk in that there’s not going to be any banging.

7/16/10 @ 7:25 pm: A nerd next to me just whispered that the interior scenes remind him of “Murnau.” Does “Murnau” mean “sleeping” by any chance? If so, I agree.

7/16/10 @ 7:38pm: SPOILER ALERT: The lovers turn into yuppies. Just saved you two hours.

7/16/10 @ 7:49pm: Well the movie’s over. Thankfully.

7/16/10 @ 7:53pm: It’s a madhouse here outside of the theater and by that I mean that there are actually people here. People awaiting some movie called Metropolis. Appears to be about robots. It’s sold out too. Weird. Anyway, lot of scarves for some reason. Not sure what it is about the Metropolis that brings out people in scarves, but yeah lot’s of scarves here. And nerds too, obviously. Which: let’s just impose a standing comment that, unless I specify otherwise, this place is crawling with nerds at all times.

-Triceratops with a Saddle

——- The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924) ———

7/17/10 @ 7:15pm: The nerds have been camping out all night to see the opening film of the festival, John Ford’s The Iron Horse. Just kidding, there’s hardly anyone here. But the people that are here are definitely nerds.

7/17/10 @ 7:15pm: If you want to read some of my past posts on this blog, they can be found here. I also posted on the old Jo-tel blog, but who knows where the hell those posts are.

7/17/10 @ 7:35pm: Pre-film festivities include: lots of nerds walking around, Dennis James on the “Mighty Wurlitzer”. (Sounds like shit.)

7/17/10 @ 7:43pm: Three minutes into the movie, so far: credits, four introductory title cards, and one scene of herding sheep. Is it too late to sell my festival pass for a plane ticket back to the Creationist Museum?

7/17/10 @ 7:58pm: Wondering why I’m in a movie theater watching a movie with Abraham Lincoln in it instead of at a bar drinking alcohol. Oh by the way, this movie has Abraham Lincoln in it.

7/17/10 @ 8:10pm: You know one thing that’s hard to convey in these silent movies? Talking. Hard to really capture a good conversation with the occasional title card.

7/17/10 @ 8:19pm: Ha! Early version of the Wayne’s World “…NOT!” employed by Irish immigrant railroad worker at the 39-minute mark!

7/17/10 @ 8:23pm: Lawsuit of “Ah Fat Wang v. Union Railroad” referenced in title card at the 43-minute mark!! Wonder if Ah Fat Wang knows that this movie sucks him.

7/17/10 @ 8:43pm: First Indian raid of the film. Indians lose.

7/17/10 @ 8:50pm: The previous version of this movie that I saw at, um … at the Creationist Museum … was tinted. Have to say the non-tinted version looks great.

7/17/10 @ 9:18 pm: Indian attack counter now at 2.

7/17/10 @ 9:22pm: I’m rooting for the Indians at this point.

7/17/10 @ 9:22pm: SPOILER ALERT: The two-fingered, pale-faced Indian renegade is the railroad engineer dude. I just saved you 2 hours and 30 minutes, not including Wurlitzer music.

7/17/10 @ 9:45pm: Indian attack counter now at 3.

7/17/10 @ 9:55pm: Goddammit I’m still watching this movie.

7/17/10 @ 10:15pm: Show’s over, walking out. Even the nerds look dazed.

-Triceratops with a Saddle

In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its…..mutant fish hands… and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made this. Retard frog-sqirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a… monkey-fish-frog… And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey… and that made you! So there you go! You’re the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!

-Thrill

Sometimes I honestly think we should just let the human race die.

Hip E.:

It’s up to other forms of intelligence to make that decision. Suicide is generally immoral.

Shark:

In theory, I disagree with the Catholic Church in that regard. In theory, if you could chart out the happiness and sadness of your whole life, and the sadness was cumulatively higher over the course of your life that the happiness and if, at the age of 18, you were alerted to that fact, I think you would be justified in killing yourself. However, because that knowledge is not possible, I would never recommend or endorse suicide, except in cases of terminal illness.

As for death of the human race generally, it is obvious that humanity is doing damage to the world and, as consideration for this, we creating a lot of stuff that is only amusing us (art, politics, sports). If we died as a species, the world would be a better place. Of course, there are biological impeti spurring us to procreate and dominate the word, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t out think those basic survival instincts and cultivate what I’ll call “beneficent de-evolution”. This would entail outlawing child birth and letting the human race gracefully die.

Johnny D:

I disagree with this statement. I think that the human race is one of the most objectively interesting things to happen to the earth, if interestingness is measured by complexity. The human race has a ways to go, but death of the human race would be giving up and admitting defeat. I think it would be a universal loss, much the way the extinction of any species is. Stop being so morose Shark.

Shark:

At this point, there is no evidence that (a) another species of sentient beings exists in the universe, (b) that that species has the capacity to travel to Earth to observe humanity, or (c) that, even if so, that they appreciate human complexity (as opposed to other, say, simple life forms). Compare that to the obvious destruction that we are inflicting on the Earth and other species.

p.s. We throw trash into space.

PETE:

Don’t be so suburban, Shark

Hip E.:

I agree with Johnny D. Shark, I really wish I had time to go off into a Network trance and explore this issue in a lengthy email. But yeah, the notion of Good vs Bad that you seem to be working from is unique and bizarre.

– Aside: I just spent 10 minutes reminiscing about how I learned the word Abattoir from the Simpsons episode where Homer gets the Build Your Vocabulary tape –

But yeah. It seems like you are setting up “harming other species” as the only bad thing, and not considering the development of science, technology, culture, etc to be good things. Are you saying the “State of Nature” is the ideal? I would like to go off on this for days on end but can’t right now, but can I just point out that Oxygen was horrific lethal toxic waste for hundreds of millions if not billions of years before life forms developed that could exploit it as a nutrient. Should oxygen-spewing plants have “gracefully died out” out of some kind of cosmic morality a million years before oxygen-eating consumers evolved? No. That’s loser talk.

IF humans manage to eradicate ALL LIFE on Earth, then I think we can safely say that humans turned out to be “Bad” and “should have” committed species suicide. But I also think that eradicating all life on Earth would only be SLIGHTLY worse than eradicating only Humans, because I think humans are the most incredible, amazing, Good thing that life on Earth has happened to produce. The fact that we have the power to eradicate so many other species is maybe Bad, definitely Interesting as hell. The fact that we have the power to restrain that and try not to is Good and Interesting as all get out.

I think most suicides are wrong, because people are depressed for various reasons, many of them strongly chemical, most of them extremely short-sighted, deluded and confused. I think most suicides would have done better to try to get medical help. I think most people who thought seriously about it and didn’t do it look back and are glad they didn’t. I think it is a moral crime against other living people that spreads sadness, hopelessness, depression, and helps lead to other suicides.

Of course there are valid reasons to commit suicide in some cases – mostly old age, terminal illness, permanent dimentia, being an unwanted fetus, etc. But they are the exception to the rule.

For the human race to commit species suicide (an insane idea one trillion times more Evil than the Holocaust and Tyler Perry put together – the most INHUMAN, INHUMANE, TYRANNICAL, FASCIST idea ever debated?) would be like a 17-year-old kid who got drunk and while blacked out got in a car and ran over a dog and then realized it in the morning, and decided to kill himself, only he’s a really smart kid who was going to go to MIT or become a really good real estate developer rights lawyer. The kid should not kill himself. He should apologize, drink less, study hard, and invent nuclear fusion.

Hip E.:

Oddly enough, right after I wrote this I put on the Bowerbirds album and the 2nd song is the only one I know, “In Our Talons,” which is probably in my top 10 most played songs this year, but the lyrics to which I don’t know At All. Well, here they are:

And the warblers sing: deet-deet-deet
And the sparrows sing: deet-deet-deet
Through the wheels, through the wheels on the interstate,
And hear no refrain.

And the beetles creep (deet-deet-deet!)
On the crippled trees, (deet-deet-deet!)
And they look down to where the soil must have been, wondering.
And no, you’re not alone. No, my cousins, you’re not alone.
You’re in our talons now, and we’re never letting go.

And the branches bend (deet-deet-deet!)
To the growing sea. (deet-deet-deet!)
And they ask, and they ask it to spread their seeds,
For they know they’re drowning.

And no, you’re not alone. No, my cousins, you’re not alone.
You’re in our talons now, and we’re never letting go.
You’re in our headlights, frozen, and no, were not stopping.
You may not believe, but even we were scared at first.
It takes a lot of nerve to destroy this wondrous earth.
We’re only human; this at least we’ve learned

PETE:

Also, one further point: Even if we were to eradicate all life on Earth, our chemical soupy oceans would most likely get to abiogenesizing some microbes at some point a few hundred million years from now, which would evolve once again into a broad kingdom of niche-filling animals. In another couple billions of years, we might be back to where we started, with one species to rule them all. A couple thousand years after that, we’d have some reptilian Pythagoras measuring shadows and the angle of the sun. Another millennium, and a new Oppenheimer would be harnessing the power of the atom to decimate the bellicose leporidae people of Ansalon. Only then, the sun will be entering it’s red giant phase and begin the process of swallowing the Earth and boiling our oceans away. It will suck.

As far as we know, humans are the best chance the universe has to reveal it’s secrets to future inhabitants. Pretty short-sighted to kill us all of just because we yell at dogs to get off the couch.

Turd Ferguson:

In the beginning, we were all fish. Okay? Swimming around in the water. And then one day a couple of fish had a retard baby, and the retard baby was different, so it got to live. So Retard Fish goes on to make more retard babies, and then one day, a retard baby fish crawled out of the ocean with its…..mutant fish hands… and it had butt sex with a squirrel or something and made this. Retard frog-squirrel, and then *that* had a retard baby which was a… monkey-fish-frog… And then this monkey-fish-frog had butt sex with that monkey, and that monkey had a mutant retard baby that screwed another monkey… and that made you! So there you go! You’re the retarded offspring of five monkeys having butt sex with a fish-squirrel! Congratulations!

Shark:

None of your arguments have attacked the central point. You continue to taut the human race as “interesting” and “the best chance the universe has to reveal its secrets to future inhabitants”. “Interesting” to whom though? To us, and us only. So we are interesting to US, yet we do harmful to think to others OUTSIDE of us, for instance, global warming, ozone, oil spills. PETE, your very Sagan-esque comment is vague and makes no sense. But if you are saying that human culture will somehow survive humans and enlighten a future race of inhabitants, then I say: stick to sci-fi buddy, I’m talking in realities.

I still believe that if humans were not programmed with an innate, survival-based selfishness, we would realize that we are harming the Earth by existing and we are doing so for our benefit and our benefit only. It’s just that I am apparently the only one around here smart enough to out-think my biological programming.

Simon:

maybe shark already said this but either way — the development of science, technology and culture among other human creations is just to amuse ourselves from birth to death. if we weren’t here, none of that stuff would be here and it wouldn’t matter at all. does it matter that humans developed language which allowed us to express abstract ideas? yes, in the sense that it allowed us to dominate the earth by sharing knowledge … no, in the sense that the universe, let alone the earth, doesn’t give a shit and if humans are lucky enough to even be around in another 10,000 to 15,000 years when the next ice age comes there’s going to be same heinous shit going on as billions of people have to abandon their homes and migrate south from a 2 mile high wall of ice. think of the problems that will generate. humans are only here due to chance occurrences over millions and millions of years that probably forced a small population of proto-chimps out of the forest (as the forest was being destroyed due to climate change 15-20 million years ago) onto the savannah and the rest is history. when all is said and done and humans are gone due to consequences that the earth alone will take care of, what will all that science, technology and culture be worth to anyone or anything? some alien species will one day find it and revel in what the human species did? probably not. having said all that, i do like Sports Center, which seems to fill up a good portion of my time so yay to culture. and i do enjoy getting from point a to point b fairly fast in a car so yay science and technology. but humans are so fascinated which what humans do – it kind of sickens me. of course, what else is there really to do but disappear in the forest like Thoreau or sit under a tree like the Buddha. i’d rather watch Sports Center and drive to the store to buy beer.

Shark:

Hip: is the state of nature ideal? That’s too philosophical for a Thursday morning, but most likely no. Is the state of nature MORE ideal than the current state. Emphatically yes. The state of nature has an ozone layer.

Thrill:

Disagree in the strongest terms. I’d much prefer to figure out a way to return to homeostasis than to be living in a tree running from fucking lions and starving my ass off. And you know that you would, too. And if you truly think otherwise, man up, buy a ticket to Africa and give it a shot.

And while I wouldn’t necessarily agree with such a case, there’s a case to be made that this IS the state of nature, because what could truly be unnatural within of the laws of physics/science in general? Just because we’ve made tools to do things for us doesn’t mean it’s unnatural any more than, say, a chimp using a tool to get more ants for a snack. Our tools just happen to be more complex.

Simon:

Saving $1,000,000 plus to live off of in your golden, non-working years vs. hunt and gather for your food, probably die by 40, maybe having a full life. i think it might be a toss up as to which life is more difficult.

Thrill:

Simon, where does “difficult” come into it?

Turd Ferguson:

It is difficult reading all this b.s.

Shark:

Thrill: at no point did I agrue that humans to return to the state of nature, even if the state of nature is more “ideal”. What I’m saying is we should die off.

Hip E.:

State of Nature – human ancestors were once completely just one of the gang of species. In fact, we almost got offed several times. There was a point something like 70,000 years ago when our total population had dwindled to like 15,000 total humans. Shark, does it at all decrease your boner to realize that the human extinction that ALMOST happened then {Shark furiously wanks it, nearing climax} would have cause you to never have lived to be able to contemplate how GRAND and BENEFICENT it is that humans never killed off the Dodo {Shark’s boner disappears as all his ancestors poof out of existence and the place where his desk sits is overgrown with the wondrously moral vines, trees, beetles, and large sentient mammals that would have taken over had humans died out. P.S. there are no Dodos in this BETTER world, either, because some species of bacteria killed all the clams or whatever they eat back in bizarro 1820.)

What I’m saying is that for the purposes of this discussion, where Shark has instituted the classic Catholic “Humans / Nature” dichotomy, the state of the Earth just before humans started differentiating ourselves from everything else is equivalent to the state of the Earth just after we have “committed species suicide” by “not having any more babies.”

Simon:

Why are we talking about Shark’s boner again?

Hip E.:

Because Simon, You and Shark are mental retards. Humans are fascinated by what humans do, and what all other animals and plants and lifeforms do, and what rocks and dirt and water and gases and elements and energy do, and every other fucking thing. Nothing else is interested in ANYTHING other than duplicating its genes. What’s so fucking great about deer? Viruses, bacteria, slime mold, sea squirrels, scabies – in the vastness of the universe the only thing these things have to say for themselves in terms of being good or bad is that THEY EXIST, survive and reproduce themselves, spreading coherent information, reversing entropy in localized regions, unlike unicorns and rocks. Life on Earth is, as far as we know, the coolest thing in the entire universe. Information is here. Organization. Meaningful patterns. Humans arent’s special in that we were pooped out of the same mindless system that sharted mosquitos and athlete’s foot spores onto the briefs of the earth’s surface. But we are special in that we have the capacity to think about all this stuff, to reach far, far beyond ourselves, pumping out synergy and synthesizing information. It’s exciting, or scary, partly because we exist within a ridiculously small needle in the haystack of space-time, where “exciting” or “scary” have ever meant anything. Or “Good” or “Evil” for that matter.

Simon:

all i’m saying is the earth and/or biological/ecological population dynamic principles are going to win. it doesn’t matter that humans have the ability to understand and be fascinated. it doesn’t matter at all — we discover how things work under the same or similar innate/subconscious drive that makes an organism reproduce so that there are more of the same organisms. except that we can ask ourselves “why do we do this” or “how does this do that.”

Hip E.:

It matters though. It matters that birds have wings. It matters that fish have gills. We have huge brains and the ability to accumulate and transmit cultural information through time. It’s our way of getting in where we fit in. I’m certainly not saying humans will live forever, I’m saying there is nothing inherently bad about our existence and we should not advocate our own eradication.Completely agree.

We are part of Nature. I agree we should, through our complex systems of society and economics and government and technology, try not to eradicate all other forms of life. But I think the reason we should do this is also largely for our own good. That is, “selfish” on the species level. Which, again, species don’t think as units.

Johnny D:

Like I’ve said the development of science, technology and art are ways
of maximizing complexity and minimizing entropy. I think that the
human race is wonderful. I am alive and I would like to continue to
live and amuse myself. Our wastefulness of oil confounds this theory,
but that’s why it needs to end and we need to move beyond it as a
race.

Turd Ferguson:

You guys, life is weird.

Shark:

I think that the human race is wonderful. I am alive and I would like to continue to live and amuse myself.

This proves my point– it’s a selfish reason. You think the pelican, coated in oil cares is are amusing yourself with human technology. Ultimately, I have no confidence that humans can pull off an existence that is not harmful to the Earth. Once we fix the oil leaks and wean ourselves of the thing that Hip E. is working on a report to refine better, it will be undoubtedly be something else. The fact that no one except China is proactively doing anything to curb the horrors of population growth, indicates that things will probably get worse, not better.

Also, please do not misunderstand: as I said earlier, I am not advocating suicide. I am merely advocating an end to all human procreation.

Turd Ferguson:

Thanks again for the baby outfit Shark.

PETE:

Shark, your self-congratulatory narcissism is making me feel like you
are correct on one point: don’t have kids.

What is your central point, Shark? That a mass suicide would be best
for … what? The other animals on Earth? In what respect? The
disparate collections of chemical compounds that comprise Earth’s
inanimate surface? In what fucking respect? Or the universe as a
whole? In what respect? Those are your three possibilities; a
combination of the three — although I would point out that if
possibility 2 enters into your thinking at all, you are a dumb shit.

I’m sort of sick of having to explain the most basic tenets of
evolutionary biology to you. Maybe borrow some books from Hip E. But
suffice to say, 99% of all the species on Earth that have ever existed
have gone extinct. Oh! The cruelty of predators, parasites, the
unfeeling tectonic plates, the evil bollides! If only we could return
to the state of nature! Then certain favored animal species would have
a few extra thousand years to walk about dumbly and eat and fuck
before they were finally taken out or evolved into a new species by
selection pressures.

Your argument seems to assume that if we die off, evolution will
somehow stop, and all the animals will reclaim our cities and dance
and sing. My Sagan-esque science fiction is in fact the odds-on
favorite, details aside (it could be the rabbit people that first
split the atom), for what would happen were humans, humans and
primates, primates and teleosts, or any combination of life up to and
including all life, to be wiped out.

So there my response to possibility 1: The animals will be no better
off. Maybe for a few years certain animals would be better off, but
for the whole of evolutionary history — including now — things have
gone a certain way. I don’t anticipate us leaving to have too much of
an effect, other than maybe in 1000 years a new species of horse
develops that lives exclusively in abandoned skyscrapers. But they,
like every other species ever ever, will eventually go extinct for
some reason.

As to possibility 3, given that the possibilities are a) leaving
behind knowledge and culture that could possibly be useful were we to
ever make contact with extraterrestrial life OR were some other
species to develop human-level intelligence on Earth or b) not doing
that, I would think the answer would be quite obviously a.

P.S. We banned CFCs 40 years ago and the depletion in the ozone layer
has slowed accordingly. Maybe next time you want to make an argument,
try some evidence that isn’t contemporaneous with Vanilla Ice’s chart
dominance.

Shark:

Yeah, we’re almost almost back to half-fixing one area of the planet that we’ve destroyed. PETE, can your argument possibly be that we have not and will not do any damage to the planet that we cannot fix?

As for your rest, I understand your points that the effect of us dying off would be ephemeral and possibly minor. But it wouldn’t it definitely be an improvement, as far as planetary health.? So it really comes down to the impressing the aliens thing. Which reminds me, your main argument in favor of the human species is impressing the aliens.

Too bad the aliens are gonna be black oil.

Bain:

Pelicans and all other flora and fauna should stop reproducing, so as to prevent the possibility of eventually evolving to the point where they might be “killing the planet” like humans do. The only thing that should be moving on this motherfucker is molten lava.

Shark:

How do you expect the pelicans to reproduce when they’re covered in molten lava? Moot point.

PETE:

Too corrections to my earlier post:

1. that horse species would never get a chance to
develop because all our steel buildings will be gone by that point.

2. Also, as for the state of nature having an ozone layer: yes, but we
only care about the ozone layer because humans, with their hairless
bodies, don’t mix well with UV radiation, which causes us to have
cancers, which causes us to do things we don’t like to do like be sad
and spend money. The Ozone layer is a problem cause by humans, for
humans. If there were no humans, there would be an ozone layer, but it
also wouldn’t matter to anybody.

Also, not to state the obvious or anything, but if there weren’t
humans, we wouldn’t even know about the ozone layer, or that it was
being destroyed, or what was destroying it, or how to fix it.

Johnny D:

Moreover, shark, your argument is unrealistic. The human race will
not and will never stop procreating no matter how much a ruthless
totalitarian government tries to make us stop, for the reasons Pete
and Hipe mentioned. So why argue it? Its a stupid unproductive
stance.

Shark:

I would describe it as an INTERESTING, unproductive stance.

Shark:

I enjoyed today’s Network conversation. For the record, I still believe that the human race is doing irreparable damage to the Earth and it ecosystem, both of which would be better off if man universally agree to halt reproduction and let our species die via “benificent de-evolution”. However, a few interesting and compelling points were raised by opponents. To clarify though, I was not compelled by Hip E.’s blustery talk of ” ” in trying to argue for the value of the human. To me, all that stuff was just sound and fury. I heard nothing today to contradict the reality, as I perceive it, that the humanity for two basic things:

(1) for the sake of humanity itself
(2) to impress the aliens

Take away the latter, and you are left with the irreducible truth that if humans died off, no one and no-thing else would care. No one would miss roads, politics, philosophy, or Dadaism. As for the aliens, well, I am quite surprised that many of your think it such a high possibility not only that other life exists in the universe– I find that highly likely– but that said other life will visit the Earth at some point, and that the chances of this visitation are high enough that it can serve as a justification for the human race itself. Personally, I am inclined to think that if other species exist, it is unlikely they’ll even make it Earth. Regardless, it’s also entirely possible that, even if they did, they would be ruthless brutes that would immediately explode the planet and harvest its resources without giving a second thought to human accomplishments in chess and hang gliding.

But, again, a few points were compelling. First, PETE’s argument that the depletion of the ozone layer is only a big deal for humans, not animals. Regardless of whether that’s true or not, it broaches an interesting question: does human damage to the Earth matter if it only adversely affects humans? The answer I think is no, just like it doesn’t matter if you hit your own self in the head. I think this takes care of a lot of touchy feely environmentalist issues like: this river is ugly, this tree is coated in soot. But, ultimately, there are 177 pelicans in the gulf that are coated with oil right now that wouldn’t have been coated with oil if humans didn’t exists. Similarly, there are a lot of penguins that really wish that iceberg in the south pole was still there. So, nit picky arguments about the ozone layer aside, it is clear that the ecosystem matters to the extent that humans’ negative alteration of the Earth’s natural bounty adversely effects other living species.

But we are the ONLY animals that have the ability to out-think these ubiquitous, gene-based instincts. All other animals are forced to fight blindly for their survival, but if humans realize that their fight for survival is causing harm to the Earth and the animals on it, I would love to think that the human brain is capable of the next step in human evolution: de-evolving into extinction.

But ultimately, the most compelling counter, to me, was PETE’s argument that evolution would make damn sure that humans would be replaced, millions of years after we extinct ourselves, with another version of a dominant being. Hey, who knows, they could be worse. Query though: is it a foregone conclusion that another dinosaur or human-esque species would arise? Is there enough time before the sun engulfs us? Maybe humans really are so unique an occurrence that we would never happen again. If there is a possibly that humans would never be replaced with a like kind of species, then wouldn’t it be worth it to TRY to save to word for the animals and other living organisms? In other words, give extinction a chance!

This Network Moment was brought to you by Shark

So 200 miles south on the 101, I still didn’t know where we were going. When we arrived, my first impression was of a quirky Disneyland for yuppies. Patsy was reminded of the Enchanted Forest Motel as described in Nabokov’s Lolita, except that instead of a police convention, replete with Clare Quilty, there was a girl scout convention, replete with gaggles of junior high girls and their priggish overseers. Our room on the first night– well, I’m not sure I would call it a “room”, it more like “rooms”, since Patsy accidentally booked a double room– had a French theme, which consisted mostly of a few picture of idyllic Paris scenes, one of which featured pictorial lanterns that lit up when you turned on the lights. If you laid back on the bed and let your imagination run, you really felt like you were … um … in a room with a picture of France that had little lights on it. It didn’t change my life or anything. Now the toilet, which was a two-in-one toilet/bidet? That changed my life. And let’s face in, on a trip during which Patsy admonished me multiple times that I was not to inquire about the price of anything, I needed that bidet.

Soon after arriving we hit the pool, with bar beers in hand. The “bartender” looked like he was about a day over 18 and, according, to Patsy, did not know how to make a “vodka soda” and, once told how, did not know that it was actually “not okay” to use blueberry vodka when the regular vodka ran out when making one. After about 30 minutes at the pool, the girl scouts arrived. Many descriptors come to mind but I’ll go with ’surreal.’ Soon, the troop made its way to the hot tub, where they created a catty swirl of jets and giggling. I feinted that I was going into the hot tub, so Patsy jumped up and stepped in. I then sat back down and watched as the group of girl scouts proceeded to go dead silent and stare at Patsy as she entered the hot tub. Perhaps it was her tattoos or maybe the fact that she was probably the only somewhat cool looking young person by the pool. Whatever it was, they were transfixed, and huddled on the opposite side of the pool until Patsy left. Later I went with her back to the hot tub, which, I found out was “heated” to approximately “cooling bath” temperature. We hung out with a few adult couples in there, including a beefcake Australian and his fake-breasted girlfriend and a nerdy business type that thought expensive sunglasses were all he needed to look cool.

That night we went back to our room and banged and then got ready to go to dinner. The restaurant was ornate to a garish fault and contained a well-behaved band playing Big Band music. The dinner was fun. I had a Manhattan, which is my new fancy drink of choice because it is more exciting than a vodka soda and not really sweet at all. We returned to our room, where Patsy indulged in a poop followed by an engagement of the bidet, whose commencement was met with a surprise scream. As we were both falling asleep, I gently turned on the loving strains of the last two minutes of the Lakers/Suns game followed by extensive TNT recap. Patsy was so excited about the Lakers’ victory that she fell immediately to sleep

The next day we went to Hearst Castle. On the bus rid up the hill, I thought about all the soul-searching that the State of California probably had to go through before accepting the I guess generous donation from the Hearst family. I mean, it definitely came with a bunch of strings attached like: “can’t talk shit about our dad” and “Orson Welles is not allowed to visit ever ever”, and likely took away California’s right to openly criticize Hearst’s tendentious and fleeting catering to the middle class, fabrication of the Spanish/American for his own profit, and whole-sale purchase of the then-fledgling actress Marion Davis (for further information regarding the foregoing, please see Kane, Citizen). But on the other hand, the place is cool and California’s making bones on it so whatever. Anyway, the best part about Hearst Castle is the indoor pool, which they smartly leave for the end of the tour. Basically it’s a tile room designed so that the floor and pool bottom are the starry night sky and the roof is the sea. One can almost lose themselves imagining the Hollywood stars of the day frolicking there late into night. Apparently Cary Grant once commented on the utility of the pool by saying it was a great way to “get to know someone a little better,” which is basically codeword for “bang starlets”

On the second night, instead of the French riviera, our room was a cave. When we came back to our cave, we watched Rear Window, which I believe to be Hitchcock’s best film, although who really cares, there’s a bunch of great ones. Just do me a favor and don’t miss out on The 39 Steps, which is, in my opinion, the best of his British films. I mean, there’s a scene in The 39 Steps where they have herring as a late night snack. Herring! [FN1]

And then that evening, as I was brushing my teeth in my rock sink, I got an idea for a short film. But due to Patsy’s being asleep I wasn’t able to film it until the next morning. Here it is:

We decided to drive up Highway 1 on the way home. That drive is inspirationally pretty; it makes Hearst Castle look like a Long John Silvers drive-through. [FN2] I used the inspiration upon returning home to drink two whiskey sodas and complete my adaptation of Twelfth Night. We will perform it in September.

-Shark
_____________________

FN1: http://www.intriguing.com/mp/_sounds/hg/herring.wav
FN2: All along the way I was forcing Patsy to admire the view. If I spied her out of the corner of my eye and she was not “enjoying the view” I would admonish her. She started to deploy canned responses, touting her breathless appreciation for the landscapes and views. “That’s more like it!” I thought.

germany is good so far. the germans are super nice! they’ve given me and some others our own nice area where we can all live together, and they even gave us awesome new jackets with this cool yellow design on the sleeve. we’re not allowed out sometimes, but i’m sure it’s just because they want to keep us safe from the dangerous german streets. i’ve heard we’ll be moving somewhere even better soon, and that the move will be on a train. i’m excited to see some more of the german countryside and to experience their famous rail system.

-Shark