Gloom
I took a five minute nap last evening...
An Olmec? shaman in a fedora ripped out my intestinal tract and splayed it on the ground. He had a curved knife which he used to slice along the guts for about 10 inches. A inky black goo seeped out which was almost translucent and had real depth. It was the universe with stars and solar systems like a false color APOD image. It didn't hurt. He divined that the omen meant that we were going to be finding life on another planet really soon and everything would change. I felt like crying; it was beautiful and scary and sick.
This was probably inspired by a news story about earth-like planets being more common than once thought. I have always worried about humans finding life on another planet because everyone always talks of "intelligent life" on other planets. Who defines intelligence? Does intelligence mean being superiorly violent or capable of defending oneself? If astronauts ever found something and it didn't look human or speak with a humanoid language I imagine they would tranquilize it and put it on a dissecting table. Like in E.T. Is there a term for being the opposite of xenophobic? I have a phobia of things humans do to other living creatures. I have read lots of science fiction about cultures meeting and I find natural history to be even more revealing about how the first contact would turn out if the other beings were not immediately viewed as superior in their armaments. We would quickly find a way to abuse another species if we didn't have to obliterate it first.
Some random things I just learned: Wall Street in NYC was originally a slave trading arena The British developed the term concentration camp for their civilian detainees in the Boer War in South Africa.
Humans have supposedly been around this planet for 500,000 years, within the last 50 there have been some of the most monumental desecrations. I think every culture has people who forsee the end of their society or the end of the world but really with nukes and pollution and climate change we might be the lucky ones. Working in my job I read a lot of bad news. In terms of the environment most every group has to fight defensively. Like the Sierra Club just won a lawsuit stopping the Bushies from clearcutting parts of Sequioa National Forest (the tallest trees on earth and they can live 2,000 years). When we win things are saved for a matter of years, but when they win things are gone forever. Entropy rules this cosmic age.
This is why I never write in here; most of my thoughts are a real drag. I feel like Marvin the Paranoid Android sometimes or Eeyore.