CONVENIENT TRUTH, the sequel.

 

Bob is an eco-warrior with no equal. He drives a hybrid car, he recycles, he saves energy, he does everything that is recommended by the green revolution that is sweeping the globe. Bob would like to drive big and fast cars, he would love to leave his TV on the whole night, but that would be hazardous to the planet. So he sacrifices a little so the planet can be saved. Bob won’t stop until he saves the planet.

 

Bob, if he was to stand alone, would have a carbon footprint smaller than most. Unfortunately, Bob does not stand alone; you see our Bob is married with 5 children and one on the way. If only Bob knew that all the sacrifices he has taken are negated 6 times over by the fact that he is responsible for burdening the planet with 6 more carbon footprints, probably most if not all lacking Bob’s commitment to go to war for the planet, perhaps he would realise the futility of his battles.

 

The problem with the planet, the key to defeating global warming does not lie in the small sacrifices championed by the green revolution. Driving hybrid vehicles and reducing electricity consumption will not save the species; it will only delay the inevitable global warming. It is time we faced the real problem, our run away population.

 

It seems to me that we have one of two options.

 

The unrealistic option is to reduce the human population or check its growth.

Short of a catastrophe a couple of rungs lower than the biblical flood, there is little hope that the planet’s runaway population will be brought under control. The reality remains that the human race has to be trimmed to be better accommodated by the earth’s resources, but in reality the opposite is happening. Not only do we have no hope in reducing our numbers, we are also failing miserably to check our growth. The global population is expanding at an alarming rate.

 

The more realistic option is to do nothing!

Even if we did have the capacity to trim our numbers, how would we decide who is to go? Fortunately for us, we don’t have to decide; we can leave nature to handle that for us through natural selection. The idea is to let global warming take its course and trim our population for us and hope that a few of us adapt fast enough to survive in the new environment to propagate the species.

 

Yes, let poor old Bob drive that big gas guzzler, let him fall asleep in front of his TV without worrying about the damage he has inflicted on the planet, let us all buy sunscreen and wait it out, let’s do nada, zilch! Our options can not get more convenient than that.

A CONVENIENT TRUTH

 

Al and his ilk will have us believe that this great, green rock that we ride so ungratefully round the sun is in some type of imminent danger. It is the rising temperature, they say, human activity is knocking mother earth to her knees.

 

Now, I don’t contest that human industrial and agricultural activity is pumping more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and as a result skyrocketing the earth’s fever; what I don’t get is how that kills the planet.

 

The reality is that temperature change is nothing new to the planet. The earth is in constant flux, a flux generated by a wonderfully complex symbiotic relationship where changes in the planet are both a result and cause of changes in its organisms; both nudge and prompt each other to change in a complicated chicken and egg dance. The planet’s atmosphere is influenced by its organisms to behave like a schizophrenic kitchen electronic that swings from thinking it is a freezer to an oven and these changes in turn force its organisms to change and adapt to the new environments or die. The planet is obviously in oven mood right now (prompted by human activity) and no doubt will one day swing back to freezer mood. The question is ‘will we still be here, will we adapt or die?’

 

The planet is not in any danger; we are! This great seemingly selfless fight to save the planet, this great go green movement that is sweeping the globe is in reality a great selfish fight for self preservation. We are not fighting to save our planet, as Al would have us believe, we are fighting to save ourselves.

 

Up to date, no species has adapted better to its environment than man has and as a result no species has had a greater influence on the environment. Our successes in adaptation have led our numbers to skyrocket. The real reason why there is a strain on our natural resources is because we are simply too many (there, I have said it). The more people there are on the planet, the greater the need for industrial and agricultural activities to accommodate them which in turn leads to more greenhouse gasses. In short; because of our great success in influencing our environment, we have managed to poison it against us. Our activity is causing the environment to change to one which is not conducive to human life to check our growth (true to our symbiotic dance with mother earth).

 

The green movement, championed by people like Al, have attempted to stop this change. This is their strategy, this is how we save the planet; by arresting its natural process, by attempting to stop or slow down its flux, a flux that we prompted. Cutback on industrial and agricultural pollution, lower greenhouse emissions and then maybe we can arrest the warming. But there within lies the sweetest irony.

 

If our fight is successful, we would have, once again, managed quite successfully to influence our environment; we would have made it, once again, more conducive for our existence. A conducive environment means we will prosper even better which in turn will mean that our numbers, the size of our population, will only get bigger and we will be right back where we started. More numbers mean more agricultural and industrial activity (the increase in numbers will offset our cutbacks), which in turn means more greenhouse gasses which means planet earth goes into oven mood.

 

Yes, the great irony of the green movement is the more we succeed, the more we fail.

Where does happiness reside?

In sun filled days of my youth

The far and distant place where I grew up

In melodies of beautiful tunes

Flickering in and out of my conscious mind

In careless hours spent with my siblings

In a feverish daze curled up in my mother’s arms

My own childhood laughter

In a place I refuse to let go

It is in the memory of yesterday

But only in the hope for tomorrow

In the bliss of ignorance

Coz there is none in knowing it all

I now know where happiness resides

Only in my nostalgic mind.

Barack and Hillary tickle a dead Greek

 

The two are preening and jostling for our attention

They say;

 

‘I am an outsider, I am cool like that.’

‘I was cheated on; publicly.’

‘I smoked weed and experimented with coke.’

‘I chug beers and throw back shots with Pennsylvania miners.’

‘I flow poetic.’

‘I dodged sniper bullets in Kosovo.’

‘I am a black man.’

‘I am your kryptonite, a white woman.’

 

Trying to be the cool kids in high school,

They think;

 

‘You aint shit.’

‘“Aint” is not a word.’

‘You are elitist.’

‘You are bitter.’

‘You are words and no substance.’

‘No substance? You are the blond.’

‘You nigger.’

‘You bitch.’

 

And we can’t turn away, propped in front of our TV’s, listening to anyone on the telly or anyone with a guitar, anyone to tell us whom to choose. We watch the greatest contest ever; fixated.

 

All of us, except one dead Greek.

One dead Greek probably called Democrus or something to that effect.

One dead Greek who spends his eternal days laughing in his grave.

One dead Greek who laughs at the cool kids, Barry O “the poet” and Hill C “the bullet dodger’, but most of all, one dead Greek who laughs at us.

 

Because you see, Democrus is the greatest prankster of all time, the greatest trickster who ever lived. And his greatest trick is making us believe that the most popular is the most capable.

 

Oh, how he laughs.   

The farmer, the vegan, a dead chicken and a fly named Roscoe.

The chicken had been trussed and diced, tossed and scorched, salted and peppered and laid on a bed of boiled rice that had been shoved in front of the gruff farmer. The two, destined to be one – at least temporarily until the farmer had to go to the loo, were the silent protagonists at the lunch. The noisy element were quite obvious; the vegan, who seemed incapable of be stilling her tongue and Roscoe, who buzzed with intent over the burnt birds carcass – no doubt a compromise, because he would have much rather a go at the bird after it had been separated from the farmer in the loo.

‘How can you eat that, do you know what that chicken has been through’ the vegan inquired with genuine horror.

The farmer knew, after all he had bred the chicken for this very role. Nevertheless he kept his peace and proceeded to rip a limb of the carcass, an act that was met by a loud howl and fluid release from the vegan’s saline globes.

‘How would you like it, if someone cooked and ate you’ she inquired in between her tears. The farmer was unresponsive; he was blessed with that most blessed of superpowers, the ability to completely shut out annoying, whinging vegans. He continued to devour the bird.

She would have reached for his plate then and there and tossed it to the heavens, imploring the flame broiled bird to take flight, but Roscoe, growing in confidence at the sight of the fast disappearing bird, chose this time to fly a little closer and increase his nuisance.

The vegan lacked the farmers steely disposition and was clearly bothered by the irritancy of the noisy diptera, bothered enough to be distracted from her animal rights tantrum.

With her teary eyes and mind focussed on the insect, she sneaked her left hand gently to her reading material, a periodical on animal rights, rolled it up into a club and waited menacingly. Roscoe, unaware of the danger landed on the table to catch his breath, before another attempt at the chicken.

He was to fly no more; the publication that exalted kindness to non human living things came crashing down on him spreading his guts all over the table.

‘Got him’ she said proudly to herself.

She wiped Roscoe’s guts from the magazine with a napkin and basked briefly in the euphoria of her speed of hand. When it was gone and the happiness of ridding herself of the flying and buzzing distraction abased, she refocused on the cruel farmer.

‘You are a terrible man, an animal murderer!’ with that declaration she stood up and made a dramatic exit, no doubt to fight another battle on behalf of all living things.

The farmer, unaffected and unreached, continued nourishing himself.

Roscoe lay dying, a cruel, painful death.

 

Trapped in a Dream

I am trapped in my dream

In a land of nauseating beauty

Where beaked creatures touch the sky

Soaring high above

Daring the angels to play tag

With life growing from dirt

Bursting forth with shimmering radiance

Assaulting my eyes with brilliance

Enough to lure a poet’s attention

 

I am trapped in a dream

Perhaps it is a nightmare

Because I see no angels

Just creatures like me

Weaving death and destruction

They dwell in god’s house

Yet they search for heaven

Hearts blackened by greed

Souls sold to the devil for epidemics and disease

 

I am trapped in a dream

But not for long now

Because it is getting dark

And soon I must rest

When the lights are out

I will retire to my bed

I will escape my dream

In blissful sleep, then I will live

Till morning when I must wake and dream

WEDDINGS, I LOVE WEDDING PARTIES

No relation except friendship, but the evidence said otherwise. I could have bet my sanity, which I held onto desperately on account of the din the 3 evocated, that they where kin, descended from some banshee whom burden bore a melancholy so severe that she abandoned her providence to spawn and spread the misery around.

I, timing my query as best as I could in a priceless lull in the hooting and hollering, inquired into the root of the hubbub and was rewarded with a stubby little finger, with a small, shinny rock attached to it by ways of a metallic band, being shoved into my face. Dangerously close, the danger being that even at that proximity I had to strain to see it, a task that was made less dangerous by the fact that from time to time the rock caught the light and bounced it around, as shinny things are ought to do.

‘Ah! You have a shinny pebble on your finger,’ I exclaimed ‘very clever the way you have attached it to your digit.’ I said with utmost sincerity, knowing that all 3 where quite simple and a feat like wearing a ring would merit celebration if indeed it was achieved with no assistance.

‘No silly; He proposed,’ said the most disagreeable of the lot and once again I was enveloped in a cacophony of shrills cued by this triumphant declaration.

I thanked God for the little grain, because it gave me the opportunity to observe beauty, an opportunity I had hitherto been denied by the presence of the 3.

I, after bidding my time once again for the banshees to run out of breathe, inquired why an apparently blind man’s proposal would evoke so much hollering.

‘You have been cohabiting with this man for the last 4 years, you have two children by him already; the only thing that has changed is that he mortgaged your home to buy you that speck of ground that you wear on your finger; why the screaming?’ I asked, while inwardly it occurred to me that as well as being blind the groom to be was a consummate fool.

My inquiry must have dragged them to the depth of their shallow minds, because they pondered the question as Sir Isaac Newton, no doubt, once pondered the nature of gravity. A welcome relieve, because it brought temporarily reprieve from their clamour.

Eventually the bow legged one, in a tone laden with uncertainty, as if her unmerciful primary school teacher would leap out of her history and chide her for giving the wrong answer once again, whispered, barely audibly in an inquiring tone, ‘coz there is going to be a party?’

 

Thank God for stupid people, they are “the little boy” in our “emperor has no clothes” world.

For if you remove the unmerited emotional hullabaloo associated with weddings, all you have left is a contract, a contract formalising your commitment to go against mammalian nature and to mate with only one person for the rest of your days.

As if believing that a formal, legally binding contract is not enough to deter you from adhering to nature’s intent, it is signed in the presence of God, a God who is omnipresent, but apparently more so in those buildings you frequent periodically; buildings decorated with crosses, crescents or what a view depending on which part of the world your ancestors hailed from or which smooth talking orator has you under his influence – a man whose word you take with blind faith, but would be hesitant to leave alone with your kid, but I digress.

So the bow legged one was right, for probably the first time in her life. On the day you surrender your natural rights to human and supposedly divine law alike, there is nothing to celebrate, the only thing to shout about, the only reason to be happy is the temporary distraction of an impending party. You say wedding party, I say consolation party.