Ummm...

Sorry folks, I've got nothing for ya today. I'm up to my neck in grad school research, and am working my ass off in an effort to get my writing to not suck so I can apply to schools and not get laughed at by the admissions committees.

Things That Make Me Want to Punch a Kitty

If you pay any attention to modern media, you face a daily deluge of idiocy that I fear our society may be growing numb to. Every self-proclaimed “expert” gets an op-ed piece or five minutes of air-time to preach on some supremely important cause, prophesize about our inevitable demise, or take umbrage at some perceived affront.

The latest example I submit to you comes from the op-ed pages of the esteemed New York Times. Our expert for the day, Steve Ross, is the “supervisor of behavioral and cognitive research at the Lester Fisher Center for the Study and Conservation of Apes at the Lincoln Park Zoo” (this wording is taken directly from the article, and makes it impossible to discern whether Mr. Ross and the Lester Fisher Center’s mission is concerned with the study and conservation of apes as a species (and the center happens to be located at the Lincoln Park Zoo), or merely with the study and conservation of the apes housed at the Lincoln Park Zoo. In my humble opinion (I concede I’m not an expert), if they’re having conservation problems at the Lincoln Park Zoo it may be a terrible zoo, and perhaps the animals would be better off in the wild.)

This little ambiguity aside, the aforementioned op-ed is perhaps the most…what’s the word I’m looking for…inane thing I’ve ever read. At first it didn’t even occur to me to take it seriously. I forgot where I was on the WWW and assumed I had somehow stumbled upon The Onion. But then I realized that Mr. Ross was serious. And this article was written to be read seriously. And it had been deemed serious enough by the NY Times, a traditionally serious publication, to consume valuable real estate on its pages.

They can’t be serious.

Read it for yourself here http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/opinion/21ross.html?th&emc=th and form your own opinion, but for those of you with actual things to do, or those reluctant to fill limited brain space with absurdity, I’ll sum up: In Chimps Aren’t Chumps, Mr. Ross finally takes a stance against that greatest of all evils: dressing Chimpanzees like people. That’s right, CareerBuilder.com, PG Tips Tea and producers of Ed (though they ought to apologize for a number of offenses beyond chimp exploitation), you people are monsters. My eyes have been opened to a new wickedness threatening the very fabric of society. Yes people are starving, being slaughtered in wars, sold into slavery. But these chimpanzees are wearing hats, sunglasses; are being put in humorous, personifistic situations for a cheap laugh (or more poignantly, to ask the age old question: what if people were monkeys? Or monkeys people? Oh the humanity…). It makes me sick. And if you’ve ever sent a Monk-e-mail, welcome to my shit list (kidding, I love ‘em. Please send more to grueri@bethel.edu).

Alright, I’m not being fair. Mr. Ross is looking to make an important point: chimpanzees are still an endangered species and people often forget this fact because commercials make their lives look so comfortable. They are intelligent, thoughtful creatures that should be afforded a degree of respect.
Perhaps I’ve keyed in on Mr. Ross because his sincerity on this (to me laughable) issue makes him an easy target. He’s vulnerable, there’s a chink in the armor, I can smell blood in the water (insert your own predator/prey metaphor). But his belief that chimps dressed as people are a major problem shows that he’s woefully out of touch with the real world.

And here’s the real kicker: Mr. Ross is hoping to protect chimpanzees from being dressed up in business attire and forced to sit in cubicles. It’s inhumane! It’s degrading! It’s beyond cruel! But I dress in business attire…and I sit in a cubicle. So who’s the real chimp (or chump?)

Mr. Ross believes that chimps deserve rights. They’re not that far removed from humans (on an evolutionary scale, a debate I’m not looking to start here) and should be granted certain civil liberties. But, not to be an unsympathetic bastard, if chimps deserve the same rights as me they also deserve the same responsibilities. If I can’t pick bugs and throw feces all day long, neither can they. Hear that, chimps of the world? Get a job. Maybe in advertising…

Now, my favorite passage: “Would we condone putting funny clothes on human children so that we could laugh at the way they look like subhuman buffoons?”

Yes, we would. It’s called Halloween.

Thanks for reading.

P.S. I’m considering making “Things That Make Me Want to Punch a Kitty” a recurring series. Thoughts?

Love or Something Like It

The closest I’ve ever been;
we met for drinks, a friend of a friend.
I took her hand (she had incredible skin),
said my name is, yours is?
I made her laugh; she drank like a man (gin).
I admired her shimmering smile, mine more a grin.
Again I took her hand (was this too fast?),
we talked about the present, past.
The table hid our knees, in secret brushing.
Our eyes met, my god, so cliché, both blushing.
I pondered War and Peace, she didn’t get it.
Well…that was quick.
My fickleness an unrelenting spring,
falling in and out of love: the damndest thing.

Beijing Infested with Overgrown, Martial Arts Loving Reptiles

Government officials have confirmed reports that an infestation of large, Renaissance-influenced and English-speaking turtles has been wreaking havoc on China’s largest city and site of the 2008 Summer Olympics, emerging from city sewers to decimate the pizza supply, stalk young female journalists and unleash so called “Turtle Power” on unsuspecting citizens.

This outbreak serves yet another blow to the great nation of China, hoping that the 2008 games would serve as its grand introduction as a major player on the international stage. The latest disaster in a series of unforeseen, purely coincidental environmental setbacks, the turtle debacle follows closely on the heels of rumors that the world’s top marathoners would decline to participate due to dangerous levels of air pollution and an invasion of unsightly green algae sludge floating atop the Yellow Sea.

The mutant turtles, according to eyewitnesses, are adolescent in demeanor, demonstrating a penchant for silly antics and catch phrases such as “cowabunga,” and wear colored eye bands, presumably to tell one another apart. They are highly skilled in the martial arts, well armed, and should be considered extremely dangerous. It is believed they are led by an equally oversized, wise beyond his years rat, though reports of the creature could not be confirmed.

Chinese scientists have yet to ascertain the origin of the turtles, though they speculate the mutation was caused by some sort of ooze, the chemical composition of which is a secret. They do emphasize, however, that the presence of these “teenage mutant ninja turtles” is only loosely related to China’s atrocious pollution problem.

Thanks for reading.

Gone Baby Gone

Sorry all, no new post this week. I'm heading to the Black Hills to visit Werd Yelof for the 4th. Have a great weekend!

Thanks for reading.

P.S. anyone want to take a stab at PCorc's Barack Obama questions? Anybody? Bueller? To be honest, now that he's gone back on his word on public financing, I'm getting ready to write him off. Not that it's a huge issue, and I recognize that by foregoing public financing he has a huge fundraising advantage, but it's a matter of principle. He claimed he was a supporter of public financing, and that he was going to work with his opponent to reform the system. I'm personally a huge fan of public financing because it limits the amount of money these people can spend on their campaigns. I think it's sick that our economy is in the dumps, people are starving globally because of soaring food prices, it costs $60 to fill up my car (which makes me want to cry), and these people are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on commercials, buttons and billboards. What's wrong with us?

Obama's right to say that the system is broken, but I say the fix is to give each candidate $50 million to start (still a ridiculous sum, but it's a start), and any dollar spent over that amount results in a disqualification. All of a sudden political races are focused on issues, not star power fundraising and lobbyist donations. Policitians will actually have to focus on the people they represent. Imagine...

The solution is not, as Obama would have us believe, to give candidates the right to spend convievably limitless sums of money. I don't really care if you can raise and blow $500 million in the 6 months before election day. It's a question of should you. All things considered, wouldn't a demonstration of fiscal restraint be wise?

This was a severe lapse in integrity for Obama and I'm having a tough time moving past it (especially when my initially high hopes and expectations are taken into account). But don't get too smug, McCainanites...he's no peach. We don't need me to air his dirty laundry to prove he has no soul, but that doesn't mean I won't.

Truthfully, I'm starting to have slightly disconcerting doubts about the viability of democracy. Winston Churchill once said "democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." But I propose a new political philosophy: Intellectual Oligarchy. More on this to come...