Question: Do North Manly men have bigger beards than Manly men?
Bonus Question: Do the men in Manly Vale hide their beards behind veils?
Extra Bonus Question: If a man wears a veil, is he still manly?
One Last Question: With what is the Manly Reservoir filled?
“If some rogue virus wiped out every single mammal on the planet, life on earth would proceed, largely unaffected by the loss. But if the bacteria disappeared overnight, all life on the planet would be extinguished within a matter of years.” – Steven Johson, The Ghost Map
If you are a mammal reading this, it doesn’t do much for your ego, does it? We mammals don’t like being slighted like that, do we?
In the sentence preceding the above quote, Johnson says:
“Most of [the] recycling work, in both remote tropical rain forests and urban centers, takes place at the microbial level. Without the bacteria-driven processes of decomposition, the earth would have been overrun by offal and carcasses eons ago, and the life-sustaining envelope of the earth’s atmosphere would be closer to the uninhabitable, acidic surface of Venus.”
That would be offal of awful proportions indeed!
I love the word “microbial.” It’s stately in a primitive, possibly primordial, way.
“My, Crobial… How thou hast existed from eons past! How thou wilt triumph for eons to come! How thou ruleth over the self-important, self-aware, hot-blooded mammals! Without thee, oh, Crobial, they are mere mountains of carcasses, so much offal offered up to unstoppable Evolution!”
I just made the mammals feel worse, didn’t I? I’m sorry. It is rather humbling to know that we mammals could not exist without the plethora of microorganisms that surround us, live on us, live in us. It’s also humbling to know that if a rogue virus does wipe us all out one day, the microbes will clean up our remains, recycle us, and thrive. Something to look forward to.
Carry on, mammals!
I am currently reading Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. This passage was so good I’m going to post the whole thing:
Billy looked at the clock on the gas stove. He had an hour to kill before the saucer [flying] came. He went into the living room, swinging the bottle [champagne] like a dinner bell, turned on the television. He came slightly unstuck in time, saw the late movie backwards, then forwards again. It was a movie about American bombers in the Second World War and the gallant men who flew them. Seen backwards by Billy, the story went like this:
American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.
The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted them into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. the minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.
Sabina Rose O’Donnell was 21 years old. She was a pretty girl who worked as a waitress in a restaurant my son frequents. Notice I said she “was” a pretty girl. Some asshole murdered her this past Tuesday night.
I take that back. Some ASSHOLE “destroyed” her in the middle of a hot, dark, Philadelphia night. He, mostly likely a “he,” didn’t just kill her. It was a “savage and brutal” affair. He forcefully dragged her to an empty lot behind her apartment. He smashed her face with a blunt object, her pretty happy face. Police say there was evidence that he raped her. He robbed her. Contents of her purse were found strewn about the lot near her naked lifeless body. Her purse was found on the curb at the intersection nearby. Her wallet was empty. The monster strangled her with a piece of her own clothing. Some beast of an asshole slaughtered this poor woman. He is still alive somewhere.
What in God’s name possesses people to do shit like this?? I don’t understand it. It was probably some crazed crack-head whose addiction-addled brain was beyond lunacy in his selfish quest for another fix. Sabina was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Sabina herself became merely one more fix for this monster’s savage and unquenchable lust. It was more than just a crime. It was hideousness in its lowest form.
Why am I writing about this murder? One of how many dozens that take place in Philadelphia? My reason: Sabina’s murder happened just two blocks from where my son lives. I have been there. My feet have walked those streets and my eyes have seen the area in which Sabina lived and, sadly, died. On her last day, she shared drinks with friends at El Camino Real, a Tex-Mex restaurant where my son and I, along with his girlfriend and my youngest daughter, not long ago shared a meal of wonderful pulled pork BBQ sandwiches, sangria and margaritas. Sabina spent some of her last moments within those very walls, among friends. Then she died alone. Neither I, nor my son, nor Sabina’s friends were there to save her. She died in the clutches of a monstrous asshole in a dark empty lot. How many are the times I have driven in that two block area late at night after driving my son home! If only it had been on one of those nights that this savage attempted to attack her. I, the same as anyone of you reading my words, would have given my all to intervene so that she would still be smiling today. Rest in peace, Sabina. Rest in peace.
Further details on Sabina’s murder can be found here: Northern Liberties waitress, 21, found slain
(Originally posted on the website Heron Flight)
When Little Billy is bad, he gets a time out.
But Mommy…
…takes a time out and THEN she gets bad.
Mommy gets naughty.
Mommy drinks like a sailor and Mommy lets ALL the sailors dock in her port.
Mommy is dirty.