Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh S***!

OK, so I know you must have seen this video. Also all over the place. I actually really like it, and I was touched by it. Not like I cried or anything. . . that was just alergies.



Its a good video, no? Touching and all of that. Good tear-jerker stuff for shows like The View and The Today Show.

Well, this video has got me thinking. You know that somewhere in the vast expanses of human stupidity, somebody is watching that video and thinking to themselves: Yeah! I think I should get a wild predatory animal and raise it, too! Then I could be a YouTube all-star!

Yeah, umm: no. I predict that in 5 years we are going to be seeing a whole new set of YouTube videos with titles like: Grizzly Bear Loves Previous Owners. . . To Death. or maybe: Pets Gone Wild: Cougar Maims Couple.

I am sorry to be so pessimistic, but that is just the way people are. Someone is going to see this video, remember a childhood dream they had of owning their very own Bengal Tiger, and they are going to go on the black market and buy one. After a few years of fun, the cute fuzzy tiger will start eating neighborhood dogs, and they will have to release it to the wild. Then, remembering Christian the Friendly Lion, they are going to head back to the wilds of Burma, and trek through the jungle for a few days trying to find their long-lost friend. When they finally find him, they are going to just stand there while he approaches, maybe slap their thighs and say "come here, boy!" or something else in baby-talk, until the tiger gets right up to them, gives them a look that is a mix of expressions between "are you nuts" and "I wonder if you taste like chicken" then takes a lazy swat at them, killing them instantly, then carrying them off to a tree to be eaten as a midnight snack.

I mean seriously folks, these are WILD animals. You never know what a big cat is going to do. You never even know what a siamese cat is going to do, for that matter. Don't we remember Siegfried and Roy? That tiger just got excited and almost killed the only master it had ever known, and had never hunted a day in its life.

I think these two guys are very lucky. Lucky to have had such a wonderful experience raising a lion cub, but most of all, lucky to be alive after finding Christian again.

I think I will stick to dogs. And rabbits.

Back from the Dead

So here I am again, brought back from blogger death by the only two things that could have resurrected me: an actual request from an actual reader, and the fact that I have something I am proud to post.

Second things first: you have probably seen this already, since it is everywhere right now, but just in case you have not, take a look at the new Jib Jab video:

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I laughed my can off! The only thing that even gets close to the farcical nature of the presidential election is a farcical video. This one is a keeper. Loved it.

Here is something else I love, I have become a devoted fan:

I think this guy is a genius, not to mention the funniest man on the internet. I have not yet seen an episode that I could only watch once. Too funny.

OK, down to the gripe. Global Warming, please get out of the way of other problems we can change, if you don't mind.

Alright, some people are going to think I want the environment to die, or that I hate living things. Not at all. I happen to be a living thing. I don't dislike the environment at all (unless we are talking about the social environment of waiting in line for the bathroom at a major sports stadium). My problem is that Global Warming is hogging up nearly the whole political stage right now. This bothers me to no end. Why, do you ask? Alright, I'll tell you.

WE CAN'T DO A SINGLE THING ABOUT IT!! Of course we can all reduce our carbon footprints, use less fossil fuels, recycle more, eat more spinach, and give more hugs. Sure. But what we cannot do is remove the carbon we have already emitted. It is not the carbon of the future that is causing the problems of today. It is the carbon already in the air. In other words, if (big IF) global warming is a reality, then all we can do is try to reduce our future carbon output, and hold on for dear life while the repercussions of our past carbon output work their mischief in the atmosphere, bringing acid rain, rising ocean temperatures, shrinking ice caps and a new career for Al Gore.

We have no way of removing the emissions from the past from the atmosphere, and it seems to me that a lot is being done to explore alternative energy sources. So, aren't we doing exactly what we should be doing? Does it help anyone at all if the world pees its pants over something that has been in the process of building for 15o years? I can't see that it does.

Rather, I think global warming mania is a safe and popular topic for politicians to obscure the real problems of society that they could (and should) have addressed years ago. Social security? Bankrupt. Health Care? A luxury. Economy? Shot to crap. Security? Anyone's guess. Housing market? Abysmal. These are the things that politicians can fix, but as long as global warming hogs the spotlight, the suits on capital hill aren't feeling as much pressure to fix the societal ills they were hired to fix in the first place. 

What a sham! No wonder Republicans and Democrats, who can't even agree on the direction of up, both got on the band-wagon on this one. It keeps them both from having to actually come up with solutions to the problems that lie in their control. Instead, they just chant the Global Warming chant, pretend that ANYONE has a viable solution to this, and get away with driving the country into the ground and not doing anything to fix it. As long as they say the pretty global warming magic words, people are duped into thinking the politicos are actually doing something to help us.

Well I don't buy it. I don't buy the whole global warming premise in the first place. Humans just aren't that powerful. Two volcanic eruptions from the last decade put out more methane and carbonic compounds by mass into the atmosphere than all of humanity's pollution from all time, including the cooking fires of the cave men. Plus, methane has 4 times the green-house gas effect of carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide. No body talks about this crap, because it is heresy to the Church of Global Warming. In fact, I just read a study in Discover Magazine that states that the cattle in the world produce roughly as much methane gas as the cars in the world produce carbonic compounds. Hard to believe, but there are a lot of cows in the lonely places of the globe. So think of that - the cows produce as much methane as the cars produce CO2, and methane has 4 times the greenhouse effect as CO2. Doesn't that make cows to blame for the problem? Doesn't that make cows 4 times more detrimental to the environment than people?

I dunno what the solution is, but I know one thing - the first step to a solution is killing a whole bunch of those bovines. Steak, anyone?