YOU'RE WRONG
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
Take a tube of toothpaste, unscrew the cap, put the tube on the floor. Now press with your heel on the closed crimped end of the tube. Keeping your heel down, quickly push on the body of the tube with the ball of your foot. Watch the force and consistency of the toothpaste as it squirts out over the floor. It was with that same force and consistency that the shit squirted out of my asshole after a particularly vicious night of cheap Mexican food and cheaper beer.
I could feel it move inch by inch through my large intestine, like being fist fucked from inside-- until it squirted with you-know-what force and consistency into the toilet. I couldn't sit up straight on the seat, but had to fold over-- my arms pressed tightly against my stomach. For the quadrillionth time, I promised the Lord to quit drinking if she would only take away the pain. I guess she didn't believe me anymore.
Gradually, I squirted myself dry and sat up with the most joyous relief. Leaning back, closing my eyes, I sighed with the ecstatic loss of pain. In temporary heaven, it took a few seconds to realize that my painful spray had caught the back of the toilet seat and was now smearing itself over my bare butt.
I told this story to Mench Meier-- a naive, but well-meaning pal of mine. He stopped me there.
"It's a beautiful metaphor." He said.
"Metaphor shmetaphor," I said, "my ass was caked with my own shit!"
"That's what I mean," said Mench, "You are a metaphor for all of humanity. We are covering ourselves with our own shit. The air, the water, the soil-- all filled with our shit. The earth is being strangled with our shit."
Then he started in on the snail darter. I'm not exactly sure of the facts, but I'll tell you what I think happened. The snail darter is this weird, useless fish that lives someplace where they wanted to build a dam. The dam never got built, because these fish would've become extinct. Or-- maybe the dam DID get built and the fish became extinct. I'm not sure. In any case, Mench Meier wasn't too pleased about the situation. I disagreed.
"You want to deprive thousands of people of cheap electricity because a fish nobody heard of would become extinct?" I asked.
Mench started telling me about all the things like the Dodo bird that have become extinct since people were around. I reminded him that many more species went extinct before there were humans.
"It's just lucky you guys weren't around earlier." I said. "I could just see the SAVE THE BRONTOSAURUS, petitions. Greenpeace would blockade the tarpits. How about a chant:
"VERBATIM ON EVOLUTION PUT THE STOPS
HELP US SAVE TRICERATOPS"
"That's not fair," said Mench. "Those dinosaurs were part of an evolutionary cycle. It wasn't man's fault that they died out."
"You mean we're not part of evolution?" I said, "Our brains didn't evolve? How about our hands with the famous thumb bones? How is humans' building the Empire State Building different from a robin building a nest or a bees building a hive? Animals do what they do, based on their limbs, muscles and brains. We do the same. We don't violate evolutionary laws. We're part of them."
Mench Meier disagreed. He said that we had developed brains and we should know better. Other animals build nests and do horrible things like eat meat because they can't help it. We are better because we have a choice and can choose not to do bad things.
"Why shouldn't we use the other animals to serve our needs then?" I asked, "Why not let them feed, and clothe us? My pal Julien had this plan to capture lots of whales and put them in a giant tank. They would swim around like a hamster in a roller cage. They would make waves and the waves could run generators to make electricity. When they died, we could eat them. What's wrong with that?"
"That's specist!" shouted Mench, practically falling out of his chair. "Why are humans any better than any other animal?"
I tried to explain that Mench himself had just said the we were superior because of our brains and God-know-what-else. HE was the one who said that we were not like other species.
"Seems like you want it both ways," I said, "If we are superior enough to chose not to eat meat or wear fur, then we are superior enough to rule over the other animals. On the other hand, if we are the equal of other creatures. . . that is if we're just another species doing what we do naturally, than for us to club baby seals is no less immoral than a shark chewing on a live minnow."
"We're superior enough to know we're equal," said Mench.
I shook my head and made a face. "You guys say that drug testing on animals doesn't work." I told him. "You say that what may be dangerous for animals may be safe for humans and visa versa. You say you can't relate the two. Well, what does that mean? It can only mean that humans are NOT animals, but a species apart. And since we are a different species, and since we now rule over the other species, that must make us a superior species."
"Ok, we're superior enough to destroy our own habitat and know that we're doing it." He said. "We're also superior enough to know how to stop it if we want to. . . Do you use deodorant?"
I sniffed my armpits, suddenly thinking I was nasally offensive without realizing it.
"Sure I do," I said.
That's when he told me about the hole.
"Don't you know there's a hole in the ozone layer?" he asked.
I made another face.
"No, really," he continued, "there's this hole way up in the atmosphere and it's caused by your using deodorant."
I walked over to the tiny window in my apartment. I pulled back the steel gate in front of it, opened the window, stuck my head out and looked up.
"I don't understand how my keeping my pits from being offensive makes a hole in the sky." I said. "Besides, I don't see any hole."
"You can't see it." He said, "It's way up high and it's a chemical hole. It's just a space where there's no ozone and their should be."
"So, this ozone, I guess it must be pretty important." I replied, always anxious to learn about new things. "Is it something you need to breathe-- like oxygen, maybe?"
"Nope," said Mench Meier, "it's a poison. If you breathe it, it will kill you."
I looked at him carefully. I watched for the bulging forehead vein, a twitch in the neck or any of the other telltale signs of mental illness.
I tried to speak calmly. "You mean you want me to stop using deodorant because there's an invisible hole thousands of miles above an invisible airmass, and what the hole should be filled with, is poison?"
Mench nodded.
I slowly edged toward a heavy bookend to arm myself in case he cracked completely.
"You don't understand," he said, "it's like a screen. Ozone is a poison when it's close to you, but way up in the sky it's like a screen. It keeps out the sun's harmful ultraviolet light."
Having seen the many suntan oil, Ambervision and Blueblocker TV commercials, I knew about the dangers of ultraviolet light. Although I could think of more important problems in the world than too deep a tan, at least I could see a shred of rationality amidst the madness.
"Okay," I conceded, "somehow the stuff in my deodorant can is travelling out my window and doing something when it gets past the lower levels of the atmosphere to make a hole in the ozone over my head. Is it a big hole? Does it cover all of Manhattan?"
"Oh no," said Mench, "it's not here. It's in the middle of the Pacific-- it's not over any landmass."
This time it was I who was about to loose it. I tried to put the pieces together in as rational a way as I could.
"Okay," I said through gritted teeth. "Let me get this straight. Using deodorant makes a spray that goes into the sky though the clouds and to the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Then these sprays from all over the sweet-smelling-armpit world congregate where there's no people, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and make an invisible hole in a poison part of the sky. This hole lets ultraviolet rays shine too heavily below. That means that the fish swimming in the Pacific underneath this hole will get too deep a tan. And for this I should give up using Right Guard. . . "
"That's right." said Mench.
I threw him out.
But that didn't get the thoughts out of my mind. The entire so-called ecological movement is a series of contradictions and outright lies. Some members, like Mench Meier-- mean well, but are naive and misguided. Most are simply misanthopes. The movement itself is at best "unnatural." At worse, it is destructive and could lead to disaster for humankind.
Of course I'm not talking about ALL aspects of the ecological movement. Although I hate beaches, I still think folks have a right to go to them without risking having their nipples involuntarily pierced by someone's old insulin needle. I'm not against treating raw sewage before dumping it into drinking water. I'm not against taking some of the poison out of the air. But there's a lot of folks who carry things a bit too far.
Take the EARTH FIRST crew. Vær so venlig! These wackoes are anti-immigration, and pro-AIDS. They think it would be nice to thin down human kind. Immigration, they say, would make America too crowded. People would move into the areas where animals live. They would use too much water. They might even wipe out a snail darter or two! Never mind that many of these people would starve if left in their home countries. Never mind that if they stay where they are, their lives would be worse off than the farm cattle the eco-folks care about so much. Let them suffer! It's good for the environment.
That's why EARTH FIRSTers like AIDS. It helps thin out the human race. It makes more room for elk. There are too many humans as it is, they say. These environmentalists hate people. They would rather see AIDS or another plague wipe out humanity than have humanity wipe out another species. That makes them as dangerous as hell-- and our enemy.
Now I want to explain why they're unnatural. In my discussion with Mench Meier, I talked about how, throughout world history, species have come and gone as a NATURAL part of the earth's evolution. One species replaces another, has dominion over the others and then either remains or disappears. How would it be any worse to run out of whales or leopards than it was to run out of mastodons? Nature moves that way.
A time may come when humans are replaced by other world rulers. We could die out like the dinosaur or live on for ever like the cockroach. Time will tell. I'll let God (or Nature or whatever) decide for herself what's going to happen. I'll do my little bit to help out folks like you and me. I like people. I'll leave humankind hating to the ecologists.
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Oh yeah, last month when I told you about my adventures in Cleveland, I forgot to mention the great band KNIFEDANCE who played before DOA. They were fun/scary hardcore and there was a guy in the band as old as I am! See 'em before he dies!
-end-
