It's all this ticks fault
I was watering the plants this morning when I noticed a small black tick laying on my shin. I wasn't sure if it was sexually excited by the notion of my shin, but it was on there drooling like a horny dog. I hated it. I hated having it on me. Actually, I hate all bugs. I hate all the flies, all the hornets, all the spiders, etc. I don't mind it when they are in their world, I just hate them when they encroach on mine. e.g. Crawling on me or my food.
Kill them all! Kill them and let the bug gods sort them out. It's not that they wouldn't be replaced almost instantanously and really, who would care that they were gone? Are there spider babies that need their mother? Don't the spider babies eat their mother? Or was that just in a movie? Whatever they do... KILL THEM ALL!!!
After my tick problem was resolved, I went and sat down on the porch for my morning coffee and cigarette. While I was sitting there watching the hot sun cook the earth and all the flowers that I had just spent an hour watering, I realized that ticks are the reason for human evolution. It's all the tick's fault. All the houses, medicine, television and Texas. I shall explain, because I can hear the "he's lost his mind" switches going off in your heads.
Let's go back a bit. A long bit. No, an even longer bit. Let's just go back to the beginning of bits. When we were cavemen. (or if you are religious, in the garden) Bugs didn't mean much to us. We were just another warm blooded animal getting it's fair share of attention from them and we could have cared less. We MAY have cared, but probably not as much as you think. We were, if you remember, pretty excited by clouds and shiny rocks back then, not the mental giants like we are today... (meteorologists, gemologists, Spainards and old Jewish women aside) There wasn't a lot of bathing then, so I can't imagine that bugs actually bothered us after the first, oh let's say, four years of it. We got used to them. WELL! Somewhere along the way, some cave-person, decided that they had had enough of bugs on the food, in the hair, on the face and they decide to do something about it and voila, The first fly swatter, which looked more like a club, but it was still very effective. The pestilent nature of our surroundings and our increasing need for comfort finally drove us to work the problem and create a new way of living our lives. The "cavens, cavers, cavies.." whatever... wanted a more comfortable life and they found one. This started a pattern of discovery that still exists with us today, years after the "garden years" have ended.
Bugs are so bothersome that we needed to figure out ways to avoid them or kill them, and that motivated some individuals to action. It's that same motivation that moves us around the globe(cars, planes, trains, bikes, skis), entertains us in the evenings,(television, romance novels, internet) cures our coughs(robotussin, halls, mentholateum), illuminates our sport stadiums, kills our enemies(guns, spears, arrows, atlatles, missiles) and fills our bibles.
As the saying goes, the mother of invention is necessity. That may be true. But I still think that the father is laziness. And he carries the dominant gene. Our great( to the 1000 power) grand parents used these nagging feeling of bugs on our skin to make our world the way it is today. We would still be in the garden today if our relatives hadn't wanted a life free of ticks, fleas, bees, ants, wasps, spiders and flies. We would be naked in a garden of life right now with no worries. No death. No bathrooms. No television. No... Privacy?
Oooooooooooooh no! I FORGOT! We must have privacy! We need to invent a way to have our own space. And it should be free of not only bugs, but other people, who are just as bad as bugs! We must have space to be the little curious freak that we secretly are. We need a private, hidden laboratory to conduct our little experiments. (blogspot is such a laboratory) And we need the privacy to form our opinions without the influence of others. In "the garden" they used to call that place, "the shakermoan bush", so named because there was always a man, a woman or both, going over there and when they did, the bush would shake, there would be a moan and it would stop shaking. They would reappear and other people would go over there behind it. "It's a great bush" they all used to say. Later they would include it in their bible as the place where god spoke to Moses. They changed the dialogue a bit, excluded were the "hey, fuck off, we're busy" and "do you like that, huh? do you like that there?". But the "God, god, god, set me free" part was left in.
Those damn ticks, blessed are they because they led the way. Where would we be without them?
Kill them all! Kill them and let the bug gods sort them out. It's not that they wouldn't be replaced almost instantanously and really, who would care that they were gone? Are there spider babies that need their mother? Don't the spider babies eat their mother? Or was that just in a movie? Whatever they do... KILL THEM ALL!!!
After my tick problem was resolved, I went and sat down on the porch for my morning coffee and cigarette. While I was sitting there watching the hot sun cook the earth and all the flowers that I had just spent an hour watering, I realized that ticks are the reason for human evolution. It's all the tick's fault. All the houses, medicine, television and Texas. I shall explain, because I can hear the "he's lost his mind" switches going off in your heads.
Let's go back a bit. A long bit. No, an even longer bit. Let's just go back to the beginning of bits. When we were cavemen. (or if you are religious, in the garden) Bugs didn't mean much to us. We were just another warm blooded animal getting it's fair share of attention from them and we could have cared less. We MAY have cared, but probably not as much as you think. We were, if you remember, pretty excited by clouds and shiny rocks back then, not the mental giants like we are today... (meteorologists, gemologists, Spainards and old Jewish women aside) There wasn't a lot of bathing then, so I can't imagine that bugs actually bothered us after the first, oh let's say, four years of it. We got used to them. WELL! Somewhere along the way, some cave-person, decided that they had had enough of bugs on the food, in the hair, on the face and they decide to do something about it and voila, The first fly swatter, which looked more like a club, but it was still very effective. The pestilent nature of our surroundings and our increasing need for comfort finally drove us to work the problem and create a new way of living our lives. The "cavens, cavers, cavies.." whatever... wanted a more comfortable life and they found one. This started a pattern of discovery that still exists with us today, years after the "garden years" have ended.
Bugs are so bothersome that we needed to figure out ways to avoid them or kill them, and that motivated some individuals to action. It's that same motivation that moves us around the globe(cars, planes, trains, bikes, skis), entertains us in the evenings,(television, romance novels, internet) cures our coughs(robotussin, halls, mentholateum), illuminates our sport stadiums, kills our enemies(guns, spears, arrows, atlatles, missiles) and fills our bibles.
As the saying goes, the mother of invention is necessity. That may be true. But I still think that the father is laziness. And he carries the dominant gene. Our great( to the 1000 power) grand parents used these nagging feeling of bugs on our skin to make our world the way it is today. We would still be in the garden today if our relatives hadn't wanted a life free of ticks, fleas, bees, ants, wasps, spiders and flies. We would be naked in a garden of life right now with no worries. No death. No bathrooms. No television. No... Privacy?
Oooooooooooooh no! I FORGOT! We must have privacy! We need to invent a way to have our own space. And it should be free of not only bugs, but other people, who are just as bad as bugs! We must have space to be the little curious freak that we secretly are. We need a private, hidden laboratory to conduct our little experiments. (blogspot is such a laboratory) And we need the privacy to form our opinions without the influence of others. In "the garden" they used to call that place, "the shakermoan bush", so named because there was always a man, a woman or both, going over there and when they did, the bush would shake, there would be a moan and it would stop shaking. They would reappear and other people would go over there behind it. "It's a great bush" they all used to say. Later they would include it in their bible as the place where god spoke to Moses. They changed the dialogue a bit, excluded were the "hey, fuck off, we're busy" and "do you like that, huh? do you like that there?". But the "God, god, god, set me free" part was left in.
Those damn ticks, blessed are they because they led the way. Where would we be without them?
posted by Daniel Loomis | 9:51 AM
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