I Am Stupid People

When I was 21, I moved from Massachusetts to Key West, Florida.  I had just graduated from a college that was located in a miserable, frozen wasteland where, on particularly chilly days, one could get frostbite on one's lungs just from breathing.  Despite the fact that this place was clearly not fit for human habitation, I lived there for four years, and when I was done, I immediately moved to a tropical island, informing anyone who would listen that I was swearing off winter forever and that "only stupid people live in places where there's bad weather."


As soon as I got to Key West, I made a grand showing of throwing away my windshield scraper.  Friends watched and took pictures as I chucked the scraper into a dumpster, boldly declaring that I would never again need such a revolting object in my life.

Key West was a lovely place to live.  A typical weekend day, even in January, involved walking to Dunkin Donuts for a bagel and iced coffee, strolling to the beach, swimming and tanning for hours, and then wandering to a bar to drink Coronas until sunset.  My favorite bar, which unfortunately no longer exists, was called Gato Gordo.  They had televisions mounted above the bar, and during the winter months they aired only the Weather Channel so that patrons could laugh evilly and self-righteously as they watched the crappy weather that everyone else in the country was experiencing.  I did that a lot.


After living in a variety of locales around the country, I believe that weather makes the people.  Harsh, extreme weather patterns create an angry, rigid populace.  Sunny, warm weather creates people who are so mellow and complacent that they sometimes seem cognitively impaired.  [As a friend from New York said to me when I moved to California:  "Please don't become one of those people who's like - yeah, my mom just died, but it's all good."]


In the Pacific Northwest, weather patterns create characters like this:

and this:

and folks who can't bring themselves to get out of bed in the morning.


This winter was a particularly cold one here in Oregon, and I found myself needing a windshield scraper several times during the month of December.  However, I couldn't bring myself to purchase one, given the ritualistic disposal of my last one 15 years ago and my declaration about stupid people.  Therefore, whenever I discovered a frozen car in the morning, I used my driver's license and fingernails to painstakingly clear my windshield and side mirrors.  It was pathetic.  I disclosed this embarrassing information to my mother, and, come Christmas morning, I discovered a brand new windshield scraper wrapped and placed lovingly in my stocking.  


So now I have a goddamned windshield scraper again, which means that, by my own definition, I am a stupid person.  The scraper certainly comes in handy, and I have crankily used it several times over the past few months.  However, I cannot wait until I reach another point in my life when I can throw it away with confidence.


Since I can't think of a way to end this post, I'll just end it by saying...who the fuck cares who Ashton Kutcher's new girlfriend is?  Is there a way to block Yahoo's entertainment "news"?  Because it fills me with rage.


That is all.

If Trees Had Thumbs

What're YOU lookin' at?

I just performed a Google Image search for "if trees had thumbs," and the sea of randomness that awaited me was quite astounding.  Based on the results I received, I think I might've made Google have a brain aneurism.  The first picture was a cat lying on a bed.  The second was a dog lying on a bed.  The seventh was a creature with the body of a human and the head of a cat, playing a video game.  Next came an image of two creatures, one with a woman's body and a cat's head, and the other with a man's body and a dog's head, sprawled out on a boardroom table having a thumb war.  I don't know what I was expecting when I ran that particular search...but certainly not any of that.


Lately I've been thinking about what the world would be like if other life forms protested things the way humans do.  What got me pondering this question was the recent initiative to slaughter massive numbers of barred owls to make room for more spotted owls.  Now, if I were a barred owl and also happened to have a large frontal lobe, opposable thumbs, and access to the news, I would totally make little signs with slogans like:


Down With Haters!  Barreds Are Owls, Too! 
Stop The Slaughter!  End Spotted Privilege!

Or I would just zap them with my death ray eyes.

I think we would encounter a lot of this type of activity if other life forms possessed the handy combo of large frontal lobe + opposable thumb (+ access to markers and poster board, I suppose).  Lionesses, for example, would finally have a platform to protest the bullshit treatment they receive from male lions.  We might see signs all over the Sahara with messages like:


I Kill It = I Eat First!
Lionesses Against Sex Biting
Stop Killing Our Cubs, You Crazy Fucks!

I've had it - I'm just gonna rip out your tongue.

Grass could protest the genocidal behavior of weeds.  Krill could protest their defenseless slaughter by whales.  Sweet little creatures like impala could protest everything, because pretty much all they do is wander around waiting to get eaten.  And dogs and cats could just protest the shit out of each other.  They'd be our new bipartisan rivalry.


But I think trees would have the most reasons for full-scale revolt.  Poor trees.  They don't do anything but grow placidly, offer serenity, clean our air, and produce oxygen, and they get treated like crap.  They're chopped to bits, polluted, carved in, tagged, peed on, and occasionally occupied by patchouli-smelling weirdos.

Could someone please get this stinky hippie off me?

Poor trees.  I think if trees had thumbs, it would prove even more devastating for humanity than a cat-woman, dog-man boardroom thumb war.  They would totally kick our asses, and then we'd have to say that we got our asses kicked by trees.  And that would be really embarrassing.