Oh Humanity

I am sick and tired of humans. The end.

No, but seriously, how can one species manage to be so incredibly dim witted, and fuck up so often when they haven't even been around very long?

Let's start with politics. Today the news told me that Barack Obama will be speaking in a stadium that holds 76, 000 people. If 76, 000 people were to show up, that's 76,000 people who are delusional enough to think that their vote counts, to think that driving the speed limit at all times is going to save enough gas to keep this civilization afloat, people who think one black man can change the world (and sure, I am all for diversity in this godforsaken government, but there were plenty of black men and women before Mr. Obama that only scratched the surface, as a whole, the world thrives on racism...) 76,000 people for the more liberal vote. jesus imagine how many are on the other side? I'm sick of this.

Children. Another thing the news told me today was that children can't only play with electronic toys for the rest of their development. And may I say duh? Everything, which we all know by now, is run by money. Parents give birth to kids and from the time momma pops em out, the majority of parents spend the rest of their lives worrying about their kid's college funds or some such nonsense. So big manufacturers make smarty pants toys. Electronic books that talk and make noise while your toddler looks at pictures, miniature laptop computers with word games and numbers and puzzles, they have video games that mom says "finish playing before you have your dinner!", there are computer games, dvd's, fake cell phones. Getting little Timmy ready for college was no problem, we started when he was in utero. These parents plop their kid down in front of some cancer causing toy and convince themselves that their kids will be smarter than the rest because they have the best educational recreation on the block, meanwhile mom finishes her three way call business meeting then uses her elliptical trainer, while dad can stay late at the office. These kids get to have leap frog, fisher price, and the discovery channel kicking out microchip after microchip of fun education to babysit your little pookie. These kids have worst allergies than ever and are fatter than ever too.
What ever happened to playing out in the yard? I'm smart as hell and I spent a huge portion of my childhood munching on dried leaves and hitting the tree in our front yard with a wiffleball bat. But seriously, when we were young everyone met up in someones back yard and decided on a game. Then all the kids would play until it got dark. When I had to stay in my own yard we played spaceship, witches, cooks, prairie times, and dogs. We rode our bikes around the neighborhood, played in the woods, and made a scarecrow every autumn.
It sickens me that parents need to be told that their kids will only benefit certain ways from all these technologically advanced "games". Like sure, they'll have extensive vocabularies, good computer skills, and be ahead of the game come first grade, but they'll also lack any social skills necessary to make a healthy human being. sucks for this generation.

Lastly I'd like to rant about humans butting into nature's course (as always) and our need to control all living things. National Geographic is a great read for me. I learn a little more about things I already knew, I learn completely new things, and on top of that I get to look at incredibly photography. Elephants. I learned long ago that elephants are deeply emotionally advanced creatures who have very complex relationships with one another. There has been an ongoing battle to protect elephants from poachers who seek their ivory tusks. But now, even wildlife management and elephant protection groups are considering re-allowing culling of elephants. This is where they go into an area where the elephant population is becoming too large and they seek out families of elephants to murder. Usually this is done by a team flying over the family and first shooting the matriarch on the group straight through the top of her head and killing her, then picking off her calves and any other adult females. (sometimes the culled elephants are taken to factories where they are turned into canned and dried meats, of course after their tusks have been stolen) Now why would anyone do this to such sensitive and amazing creatures, let alone ones that have been struggling to stay protected for so long? They answer is that some conservationists in these areas claim that there is not enough biodiversity. That the elephants are wreaking havoc on the landscape, therefore making it hard for some other species to find adequate food and shelter.
Every week I go to a place where I help repair injured birds and then re-release them. I am trying to ensure the survival of species who humans have done much damage to. The ones that are too weak, we let nature have her way with. We try not to harm what is natural any more than it has been. But these measures are extreme. If you want to be that in control of non human animal populations, it's called a zoo. And the animals are better off dying of dehydration than being shot in the tops of their heads. To make even more human like, they are waiting to begin culling again , after it's been banned since '95, until after the soccer championships are held in Africa to keep their hands clean before a monetary event takes place.

I hate us.

I've been reading a lot of comics. John lent me the first two books of Y: The Last Man. It's pretty crazy and I find myself periodically siding with the amazons :