An argument for hybrid vigor

I was looking at some historic pictures of different dog breeds, from late in the 19th century, and you know what? The characteristics that make those different kinds of dogs look like they do are much less pronounced than today’s examples of the same breeds. Today’s wrinkly dogs are wrinklier, the dwarfy ones are dwarfier, and so forth. And of course, they also tend to suffer all the sequelae of inbreeding: tumors and bad hips and respiratory difficulties and also sometimes bad brains. It’s a cruel experiment in eugenics and enforced racial purity, and nothing to be proud of, boys.

Compared To What

Right now the best we can hope for is terrible. Awful people are getting exactly what they want at the expense of perfectly decent folks who are getting screwed in ways that range from mildly annoying to absolutely horrific. Seems like everybody I know is stressing out like never before because of what feels like a gathering confluence of nightmare scenarios coming home to roost in a shitstorm of tortured similes and mixed metaphors. But I say don’t panic. And I say that not because things ain’t so bad but because they were never all that good to begin with.

Jung America

Did you used to read comic books? Remember Bizarro? He was like the shadow version of Superman; everything about him was the opposite of the Man of Steel. It was played for laughs and eventually they dreamed up a whole Bizarro World, where everything was a parody of mid-century middle-class American life. Like, the Bizarro dad would wear a frilly apron and wash dishes. Hilarious! Anyway, I’ve decided that this right here is Bizarro World, with everything backwards. In this world, the same government that can’t tell anyone to wear a face mask can force them to have a baby.

Life is like a metaphor

When you think about it, life is like a new pair of shoes. They’re uncomfortable at first and need breaking in. It’s an awkward phase. But after a while they both feel good and look good. You strut around looking snappy. Inevitably, after a time they start to become scuffed and worn, but at the same time they’re actually getting more comfortable. This is the best part, so you find yourself putting some effort into keeping them going. Early repairs yield promising results, but subsequent fixes are tenuous, transitory, and ultimately unsatisfactory. Finally they fall apart completely and that’s it.

Lives of the Philosophers, Pt. 9

Bertrand Russell looked exactly like you might imagine an English philosopher looking. No. Wait. I’ll go so far as to say that he looked exactly like a casting director might want a character actor to look as he cast about for someone to portray an English philosopher. I’ll even specify  a lazy and unimaginative casting director, unless that’s redundant. We are told that Bertrand Russell was extremely intelligent, yet he was married four times to four different people. On the other hand, he wrote “Anaxagoras maintained that snow is black, but no one believed him,” which is pretty dang brilliant.

Caste mark

When I read a crossword clue that said “Napa excursion” for eight letters, I immediately thought “parts run.” The correct answer was “wine tour.” I should have known; this was in the New York Times, which is not generally considered the news source of record for America’s grease monkeys and shade-tree mechanics, especially since the demise of the Saab, which company I believe made it a policy to exclusively employ philosophy PhDs or published poets in their service departments. Plus, their three-cylinder engine would actually run backwards if you hooked up the wires wrong. And adjusting the valves was challenging.

Well, duh

Here’s a science headline I just read: “Prehistoric people created art by firelight, new research reveals.” On reflection (teehee) I do not find this particularly illuminating (harhar). Our prehistoric Paleolithic ancestors created their cave art in caves, places which are notoriously dark. And although your average Neanderthal or Cro-Magnon had a lot of the same stuff as us (opposable thumbs, big brain case), they didn’t have light bulbs. In fact, when people needed light, something (wood, tallow, oil, paraffin, gas) had to be on fire right up until around the time my great-grandparents were born. (Unless they used their cellphones.)