№ 636: Nature Calls

Louisiana declares state of emergency as storm develops into hurricane

New Orleans is already experiencing flooding and Mississippi River is forecast to reach tops of levees by Friday

The latest dire forecasts come as the city was already reeling from flash flooding on Wednesday morning. Garbage containers tilted on their sides and pieces of wood floated down rain-swollen streets in a number of neighborhoods.

REALITY CHECK (July 10)

Yes it is pretty, but let us be clear:

New Orleans really shouldn't be there.

Like California, it is in the wrong place

and Mother Nature will, in time, erase it.

Nothing to do with music or sinning

or fruit or software, there is no winning

when people insist on trying to live

where they should not, something must give.

Be it the levee or the earth 'neath your feet,

if you fight Mother Nature, she will defeat you.

№ 630: Natural Disaster

REALITY CHECK (July 2)

Mother Nature viewed in her totality

clearly has little time for morality.

Less than little. From day number one,

the lady's made clear that she has none.

Not one bloody second, not even a milli-,

in Nature morality’s existentially silly

and wasteful and makes zero sense.

How Nature rolls is expedience.

Expedience AND opportunity

for individuals or a species community.

As it is now, will be, was in beginning,
the only thing Nature cares for is winning.

№ 528: A Denaturing Agent

Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'

“Unless we change our ways of producing food, insects as a whole will go down the path of extinction in a few decades....The repercussions this will have for the planet’s ecosystems are catastrophic to say the least.”

Computer viruses,

lab-made diseases,

atom bombs, missiles,

blockchain currencies-es —

though these would

make future grim,

they are not what 

will do us in.

It never was

in our best interest

to set about

to slaughter all insects.

Creepy crawlies

make nature “tic”.

If they disappear,

we'll follow quick.

Nature's bargain with them

is strict and contractual.

We bring in things

entirely unnatural.

She prefers insects,

in whom she trusts.

Humans to her

are superfluous.

Here in THE CITY

as THE END approaches

I take comfort knowing

we'll still have roaches.

And rats.

And probably pigeons.

And, if it comes to that,

Judeo-Christian religion.

These must be viewed

not as albatrosses,

but as payback

for all other losses.

As much as I'd love to

it is im-pon-sib-le

to honestly say

religion's responsible.

(“Religion” and “honestly” in a

non-negative sentence?

A non sequitur

or non compos mentis?)

We're forever offside

on lines of scrimmage.

Is this because

we're made in God's image?

Or is it, perhaps,

with age God got sloppier?

Or someone has messed

with His Heavenly Copier?

Could it be, here's a thought

that's liable to scare MAN:

up in heaven the devil's

the Xerox repair man.

№ 467: Sustainability Overruled!

Foreign Policy: Why Growth Can’t Be Green (Bypass subscription stuff to read article)

New evidence suggests that green growth isn’t the panacea everyone has been hoping for. In fact, it isn’t even possible.

BUT. . .if we really try,
surely we can
come up with something.
We are God's plan!

If God's people can't,
perhaps scientists
can make sure the species
will somehow persist.

After all,
we are the point.
Why God (or Nature)
created this joint.

It couldn't be,
in any event,
that Nature thinks us
irrelevant.

Are we not blessed?
(Or, at worst, Earth's curse?)
Are we NOT the reason
for the Universe?!

You don't mean however much
some of us rant,
we won't save the planet
because we can't?

DAMN!

№ 377: Vehemently In Favor

Medium: “May We Live Long and Die Out”
A global movement to extinguish the human race
. . .VHEMT (pronounced “vehement”) for short — a worldwide crusade of at least 9,000 people who have voluntarily decided not to have children. The idea behind VHEMT is that Homo sapiens have caused so much damage to the planet already that the only thing that can restore the balance is for humanity to go extinct, and the only humane way to do that is by refusing to procreate.

. . .The ideal world population is somewhere between 1.5 billion to 2 billion, according to a study published by three Stanford ecologists in 1994.

Let us ponder the question, putting it thus:

Would the world be better without all of us?

Of course, we’re a major source of pollution.

Our extinction might offer a partial solution.

But if we were fewer and not quite so dense

might not that be enough recompense

for the messes forever we're making and hence

some could live on if two-thirds were gone?

That does make some sense.

However, if history is something to go on. . .

AND what of our Ponzi economy

which works when everything's growing?

Fewer consumers mean few workers,

fewer jobs. (And fewer shirkers.)

Nice idea, though, this VHEMT.

Pity it comes with shoes of cement.

Presuming, as do all notions human,

what we do makes a diff and also assuming

we can duct tape damages caused

and do what we do with nary a pause,

ignoring that we are but Nature's phlegm,

’til she clears her throat with a mighty, “Ahem!”,

restoring the world without MEN (or WOMEN), Amen!

See also: 
Nautilus: Is Fixing the Climate Incompatible with American Ideals?
Welcome to the Anthropocene. This greeting is belated, of course. We have all been here the whole 
of our lives, without knowing it for most of our days. The Anthropocene is a span of geological and evolutionary time (technically, an epoch) during which humans have had an outsized role in transforming the natural world, most of that time without knowledge and awareness of the consequences of their actions. Those who use the term argue about when the epoch begins. Does it start with the Industrial Revolution, late in the 18th century, hastening around 1850? Or does it make sense to push the date back in time to the first appearances of agriculture in scattered populations, as much as 10,000 years before the present, or even earlier?

No. 226: If I Were A Mayfly

Nature's perfection:

the adult mayfly.

In one day they mate,
lay eggs and die.

Unlike us,
who live many seasons
being ridiculous,
searching for reasons,
wasting time
pursuing rhyme.

Someday, perhaps 

someone wiser than I

may turn me 

into a mayfly,
avoiding annoying
juvenile stages,
bypassing normal
hormonal rages.

Youth, I believe,

is never good

and even a mayfly may have
an unhappy childhood.

No. CLXXXI: In Sum, Loathsome, Lose Some, Lonesome

OUR SONG

MANKIND is the Crown of Creation.
Sing cogito.
Sing ergo.
Sing sum.
(De-dum.)
Sing cogito ergo sum.

We are users of tools.
We are makers of rules.
We're superbly supreme.
We're AUS-PIC-IOUS!
We're founders of schools,
we're burners of fuels,
Mother Nature must follow our wishes.
(De-dum.)
Nature must follow our wishes.

Dear Mother N.:
NOT your concern we rape, pillage, burn.
Anyway that was – when? – “all our yesterdays”?
What's it to you if our too, too brief candles
have lighted the way for handfuls of vandals
to loot and freeboot,
in ALL ways pollute
this exploitable planet you handed us?
Corroding, corrupting, destroying, disrupting,
always “shocked, shocked” where this landed us!
(De-dum.)
Well, some are “shocked, shocked” where this landed us.

Yes, it's a “shame”, but are we to blame
when “man-made” calamities strike us?
Just trying to tame you, you bitch of a dame, you.
Moreover, we want you to like us.
(De-dum.)
On Facebook^® we need you to “like” us!

But,
you send us diseases!
Sniffles.
Sneezes!
If it please you an ice age may freeze us.
(De-dum.)
Very unpleasing, is ice age freezing.
(De-dum, de-dum, de-dum.)

May we ask?
Do you never tire of lightning? Wild fire?
On a day fine and balmy, do we need a tsunami?
For pity's sake, not another earthquake?
Mayn't we say no to your next volcano?
If it must rain in Spain, do we need hurricanes?
(De-dum, de-dum, de-dum.)

Furthermore,
what's all THAT about – killing heat, frequent drought?
You need to examine your fondness for famine.
You violate all standards of decency
by increasing thunder storm frequency.
Please, no more of your thrill rides,
your landslides and mudslides on hillsides.
Do you think you could bail on more snow and hail storms?
(De-dum, de-dum, de-dum.)

AND
whyfor a tornado? To test our bravado?
If we’re stuck in the mud, why send us a flood?
We’re tossed like balloons by cyclones and typhoons.
Whenever we get a leg up, you go and set a new plague up.
It was alarming when we took up farming, your response was locusts.
HOW Charming!
It could, decidedly, enhance our chances, if only you would stanch avalanches.
Why every day MORE from your “bounty”-filled store?
Tomorrow?
Slight chance of a meteor?
(De-dum.)
Tomorrow: a chance of a meteor.

SO...
MANKIND versus Nature, Nature v. MAN,
was never the gist, was never the plan?
You were here from the beginning.
We were put in – in a late inning!
Never protagonist in the story,
more antagonist-congratulatory,
after a tentative, very late start,
we rewrote, recast, expanded our part
in retrospect in ways too myopic
(enthralled as we are by all things anthropic),
failing to reckon our place in the scrum,
ever unable to see what's to come,
mistakenly saying “I. . .umm. . .think. So I. . .umm. . .am?”,
when truth is we think, SO we're dumb. (DAMN!)
Believing, always, we know what to expect,
we perceive, as usual, we have effect.
So, ever clever, ever so smart,
we invent a button and call it “RESTART”.
Mating with our computing machines,
will make us immortal! (Whatever that means.)
THE SING-U-LAR-IT-Y! 

(Rhymes with hilarity.)
Replace Homo Sapiens bio-illogical cogito DUMB
with an electronical cogito hum.
Robot appliances we will become!
God help us, everyone.
(De-dum, de-dum, de-dum.)

BatteriesNotIncluded.
ProhibitedWhereVoid.

No. CLXIX: A One-percentish* Lament

To enjoy your life you have to be willing

to admit that your life is all about killing

animals, plants — all things delicious —

caring only that they are nutritious.

If we want to live,

something else has to give:

all other species.

Large and small beasties†

die for our gain —

LIFE is pure pain

atop the food chain.

——————————

*Human beings constitute .00018 percent of Earth’s non-marine biomass. — Wired, October 31, 2011

†"...the question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" — JeremyBentham

____________________________________________________________________________________________

CORRECTION: Last Friday's Daily Doggerel, No. CLXII, Gimme That (VERY) Ol' Time Religion, contained a typo: "perbation" should have read "perturbation". Theatrical Cement Company regrets whatever perbation this error may have caused our reader(s). Corrected text.

No. CXLVIII.i: EXTRA! Question

If Nature's not pissed at Trump's Dreamer embargo
why's she drawing a bead on Mar A Lago?

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