The Law of the Conservation of Crap

Photo of Planet Earth by Flicker user DonkeyHotey under CC Attribution License. "My Daily Poo": Photo of toilet bowl by Billy Danner on his page at dailyscat dot blogspot dot com dot au. Animation by masterymistery.

Most critters including humans get their get-up-and-go from the stuff they eat and drink. And they get stuff to eat and drink by using their get-up-and-go to hunt or fish or harvest crops or stroll to the nearest McDonalds.

Scientists say you can’t create or destroy get-up-and-go. You can only change it into a different form of get-up-and-go, or into stuff.

Likewise, they say you can’t create or destroy stuff, you can only change it into other stuff or into get-up-and-go. For example, you can’t destroy a Big Mac, you can only change it into stuff.

By now you’re thinking this post is just a load of reprocessed burger. You’re probably snarling into your thickshake, “who says you can't make new stuff or get rid of existing stuff?”

“Says the Law!”

“What frickin’ law?”

A sermon on vermin

MEDEA, lithograph by Alfons Mucha (1860–1939). At the feet of the sorceress are her children, whom she has murdered to spite her ex-lover Jason (he of the golden fleece!)

With a slap of your hand you kill the mosquito that alights on you for a quick meal. With a stomp of your foot you squash dead a cockroach too slow at scurrying away. With a deadly feather-duster or vacuum cleaner you destroy the spiders and their elegant webs painstakingly woven in the nooks and crannies of your home. For no good reason other than to test the speed of your reflexes, you grab and clutch to death a tiny, inoffensive midge flying through the air. With an ozone-friendly insecticide you murder dozens of ants clearing away the debris on your kitchen floor. Humming a merry tune, you place a deadly mousetrap in your pantry cupboard.

You think of yourself as a person with at least one foot on the path to enlightenment. You rationalise the killing as being acceptable considering the nature and insignificance of the victims.

Yet the cockroach is to you as you are to the sentient entity known as Everything, aka Reality. The ant knows you as well as you know Everything. The mouse in the mousetrap understands its agony as well as you understand the trials and tribulations that Reality inflicts upon you. Do you want Everything to treat you as you treat those you believe are “lower” forms of life?

Actually, the sentient entity known as Reality doesn’t always treat humans in ways that humans would describe as “gentle” or “loving” or “respectful”. Let’s not forget that every thing is as much a part of Everything as anything, which is why Everything treats every thing equally. The so-called “acts of Everything”, including droughts, hurricanes, tsunamis and earthquakes, continue to cause misery and death to humans, cockroaches, ants and mice indiscriminately.

What makes humans a “higher” form of life than, say, mice? It’s true that mice don’t build cathedrals as well as humans do. But humans don’t scurry or gnaw or reproduce as well as mice do. In what way is cathedral-building a worthier activity than gnawing, or reproducing for that matter?

Homo the sap pronks no more

Once upon a fatuous time, when dark desires eloped with virgin pixies, and antelopes no longer pronked stotted or sprinked upon the veldt... when no more cantaloupes in fruity embrace with swarthy greengrocers did entwine... when all the zombies in the world laid end to end---an undead chain twenty six thousand miles long---did girt the Earth, and werewolves with gingivitis growled and grimaced in a hundred thousand dentists' chairs across the land...

'Twas a time of sorrow, when all was lost or drawn and braggarts and liars and con-persons were the order of the day... A sorry time, I say, a sad and sordid time, when durance oppressive pressed and weighed upon the minds of most such that those on whom the pressure was the least, enslaved their fellow-jerkwads, thus kindly hastening the end...

In those times, in those ways, at that cost, a specious species egregiously declined; the will of the sapient ones was sapped, and personkind into the All was gathered, once and for all. Thank Christ!

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Malicious Damage

At 01:45 hours plain-clothed Transit Officers from the Asset Protection Taskforce patrolling Run 5990 observed two male juveniles applying graffiti to the vestibule interior of Carriage 858. Officers detained the offenders and de-trained at South Dowling Station requesting police attendance.

The older juvenile, T. requested that his parents be contacted. The younger juvenile, D. stated he could not provide an address and would be unwilling to accompany his parents.

Police attended and cautioned the offenders re Malicious Damage and Draw/Write/Affix Character on Crown Property.

The parents of both offenders arrived on the scene.

Police advised that both offenders due to their age would not be issued with an Infringement Notice. Police issued both offenders an Official Caution. Upon receiving the Caution T. was released into the custody of his parents. However D. took flight from the scene and egressed through an unlocked security gate onto the track.

The driver of the late-running 04:25 applied the emergency brake but was unable to draw to a halt in a period of time of sufficient duration. Details were recorded in the Incident Ledger according to Protocol 23 s. 1-2.

The parents were assisted by Officers and Police at the Scene.

end of the assholes

Once upon a planet named Zurb was a species of lifeform with a complex culture and sophisticated civilisation based on advanced technology.

The Zurbs, as they called themselves, were proud of their culture and civilisation and especially proud of their technology. They had devices and contraptions of every shape and size and nature; inventions and innovations of awe-inspiring cleverness. Their civilisation was so sophisticated and required so much energy to keep it going that they constructed a gigantic Kardashev Device* around their entire home galaxy, to capture every last pulse and flicker of energy from all the stars and black holes and comets and oilfields in the Galaxy.

“Growth at all costs,” their politicians and economists would say, “it’s a fundamental Zurbian right, the Great and Sacred Zurbian Dream”. ...