Supernatural Tar Pit Tripping
By ice rivers
- 593 reads
I have no trouble taking the small evolutionary crawl backward from the dormant state of alligator behavior to the general intelligence or lack of same possessed by dinosaurs. If alligators space out a lot, imagine how much time dinosaurs spent spacing out. And they were around for three million years before we showed up which means that perhaps they were created in the image and likeness of God.
Three million years is a lot of filler.
Of course as Disney taught us, they came to an end at the LaBrea tar pits which even today is chock full of dinosaur bones. The dinosaurs were walking around, spacing out when they blundered into a gargantuan tar pit where they stood and spaced out for a while longer until they were stuck in tar but good. Even being stuck in the tar didn't bother the dinosaurs because hey, aren't we all stuck in the mud when we're spacing out. Every once in a while a spaced out stegosaurus would be rudely awakened by a T Rex that had also stumbled into the tar. Nothing more awakening than being stuck in a tar pit next to a gigantic carnivore who is trying to devour you. Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, the dinosaurs only other awakening from spacing out was hunger. Hunger ruined a lot of dinosaur mud pit space outs on their way to fossilhood in Los Angeles.
I never contemplated how stupid dinosaurs were until a couple of nights ago while watching "walking with Dinosaurs and the experts made a point of how spectacularly intelligent raptors were in comparison to other dinosaurs. I've heard this line of speculation before so the mere fact that it is repeated so often must mean that it's true. I started thinking that raptors were like dolphin style smart. In my book, dolphins are a hell of a lot smarter than gators. Flipper would have been an entirely different show if Flipper were an alligator.
Later in "Walking with Dinosaurs" in one of those important blurbs that geniuses throw on the screen immediately before a commercial, I learned that the "super intelligence" of raptors could be compared to the intelligence of ostriches today.
Whoa, Raptors were about as smart as ostriches which means that ostriches are one hell of a lot smarter than dinosaurs and raptors are a lot dumber than dolphins
I admit, a certain wisdom exists in spending a lot of time with your head buried in the ground and/or wildly running in fear but aside from that, ostriches don't strike me as particularly intellectual. If ostriches are the Advanced Placement/gifted/honors students in the dinosaur class, can you imagine what kind of paper wads the dinosaurs are throwing.
I don't know if you've ever been to an ostrich farm? I have.
On the ostrich farm, the ostrich farmers were going on about the nutrition and comparatively low cost of ostrich meat. While this was going on, the farmer's kids were in the background cooking ostrich burgers. Simultaneously an ostrich wandered over near me and I looked it right in the eye. As I'm looking eyeball to eyeball with a future ostrich burger, I'm not picking up a lot of vibes from the ostrich one way or another. Certainly nowhere near the vibes that a stegosaurus stuck in a mud pit would be projecting towards a T Rex as they met eyeball to eyeball moments before the feast.
At this point, the ostrich farmer came up to me and said "I notice you're looking at that birds eye. Guess what/ Their eye is almost exactly the size of their brain.
I took that information with a certain amount of freakout. Next thing I knew, the farmer was handing me an ostrich burger and practically shoving the burger down my throat. To get the farmer away from me, I took a bite. How can I describe the taste, the experience of eating an ostrich burger while looking an ostrich in its gigantic, tiny brain sized eye,
I'd say stupid and stupid.
So when I learned about the cranial comparison of ostriches to raptors, well it was small crawl towards creating these words that stay. Simple rilly but nowhere near as simple as a brontosaurus in a tar pit.
We're not extinct yet so I think I'm smart.
How else can I explain this rather rude attempt to disrespect the intelligence of Dinosaurs just because several of them overdosed on filler while standing and starving in the LaBrea tarpits?
Yeah, dinosaurs are extinct and we're not so hardee har har.
Extinction is a fact of life on Earth; the rule rather than the exception and therefore no reason to construct further arrogance driven oversimplifications. The history of life on this planet is the ironic parade of one extinction after another. I hate to think that five billion years from now some twelve fingered, four thumbed alligator Mozart will discover this very writing and think I'm stupid only because we humans are not around anymore to defend our suicidal, supernatural obliviation.
I assume the four thumbed alligator will be smaller than me based on another ridiculous evolutionary over simplification that I have clung to for years, namely that intelligence is determined by brain to body ratio with dinosaurs as poster clods and the diplodicus the poster child of poster clods. Since dinosaurs were so gargantuan with such miniature brains no wonder they were doofus enough to go extinct, most of them not even smart/savage enough to learn to carnivore.
Basically, this means that the more we grow, the stupider we get.
What are we saying then when we tell a kid to"grow up"? Are we saying that when you get bigger, you'll be stupider so you can solve your problems in a more dunder headed, more specifically representative way.
Remind me not to advance this theory on the ghost of Andre the Giant or Wilt Chamberlain.
If this theory were true, I'd be dumber now that I'm older and fatter than I was when I was younger and thinner. Over the years my brain has stayed the same size but my body has grown dramatically. Multiply that problem by a hundred and you have the quandary of the dinosaur.
If this theory were true, we'd start electing big brained infants to positions of political power and struggle to interpret their babble as economic or military strategy.
If this were true, everybody would be going nuts trying to lose body size which means there would be an international fetish for thinness as well as an ongoing craze with dieting and youthful appearance. Women in particular would be Botoxing like raptors trying to unwrinkle and prolong our species. Thank God or whatever that NONE of that is happening.
Of course, according to resarchers including Seton and Masters, there is another theory. The theory is that vegeterian dinosaurs including the mighty brontasarus lived on vegetation the chemical elements of which are very similar to LSD. Is it possible that this whole "existence" we are living currently is nothing more than an hallucination of a brontasaurus bad tripping while spacing out and stuck in a tar pit. They also imagined themselves turning into birds and some kind of comet hitting the planet causng wide spread extinction of their species which caused the de-evolution into mammals who believe whole heartedly in the concept of death and time and beginning and endings and Los Angeles. In short, they imagined the supernatural.
Should we fear the supernatural? Oh yeah. We are the supernatural. We are the only conscious existences on earth. God damn it And he/she/it did…. as we all know from Eden.
That’s when we began to be self conscious. Eventually self consciousness leads to death consciousness. We alone are death conscious and that is our Rubicon. When we grew to realize death we realized ending. Soon after discovering ending we became conscious of beginning and middle as well. When we watch movies or read stories or tell stories, we like them to have a beginning a middle and an end. That’s consciousness.
We get the feeling that we’ve got to do something…got to go somewhere…got to see somebody….and not just for reproduction or survival. Yeah birds migrate but that’s all about survival. Pretty sure they don’t plan in advance. They just go. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of birds in my life. I’ve seen maybe a couple dozen dead ones. Where do they go to die? Do they die in mid-air and disappear? They’re not worried about death or disappearance……no idea what any of it it is.
Birds as a species like bees are disappearing rapidly. When the birds and the bees start to vansih, we ought to suspect something. Something big and not kind.
A mushroom showed up in my yard a couple of days ago….one single solitary mushroom. I don’t think that mushroom was lonely. Don’t think that mushroom was worried about me getting my driver out and practicing my swing even though the head of the shroom was perfectly teed up and getting out my driver and practicing my swing was exactly what I was thinking until this morning when the mushroom was gone. Don’t know where it went
Just gone like the birds and the bees.no funeral no grieving no nuttin except I guess THIS which I am able to do because I (like you) am supernatural.
I’m gonna die. I know it. You know it. My daughters know it as do all of my friends and lovers who remain alive. I’ve known it for a long time probably since I was three years old when a friend of mine, Sammy Ferrante, got run over in his own driveway by a cement mixer.
Towards the end of my teaching career, I was thirty plus years older than the students in my classes. The odds were real good that I would/will die before most of them. I reminded them of this when I invited them all to my funeral. They immediately thought that I was sick. I said, "I'm not sick. I'm just much older than you." Some of the students said that I shouldn't be talking about something so morbid. I didn't think there was anything morbid about it, I was inviting them to contemplate mortality which is/was a concept that very few of them were willig to contemplate in their perceived immortality. After more discussion, I asked the question again. "I'm inviting you all to come to my funeral. Raise your hand if you plan on attending."
Almost all of them raised their hands. I thought, metaphysictionally at least, that the class was of great value.
These words might outlive all of us and emerge as art until the end. The end is whenever anyone who read these words is gone along with everyone who knew anyone who read these words along with everybody who knew me and everybody who knew anybody who knew me.
Art itself is supernatural because it reminds us that we’re alive which means we’re conscious which means we’re aware of death. Even though art is supernatural, we don’t need to fear it. We don’t need to fear all of the supernatural. That would be crazy….yet….
That lunatic who just walked into the church and started murdering everybody, he was supernatural. He was conscious of death, probably very conscious of it. He was something to fear and for God sake somebody sold this guy some guns.
The guy who sold the guns was/is supernatural as well. Very supernatural…very conscious of death. The guy makes his living by dealing in deathmakers although I guess he can justify it by rationalizing that the weapons will only be used to eliminate deers or bears or coyotes or other natural beings who don’t know or care about death anyways so no biggee.
Like birds and bees although we don't need a gun to kill the bees. We kill them naturally.
And for further supernatural reasons, I’m past the beginning of this post, past the middle, entering the beginning of the end of the middle because I’m running out of time. Dinner is waiting. I have to be there for that…we’re having some variety of chicken.
Pretty sure the chicken didn’t see THAT coming. Aside from sunrise..the chicken had no idea what time it was. He was used to being fed. He was used to the same schedule. He was far from afraid.
Time is on our side. No other creatures on earth have the slightest idea what time it is,although most know night from day, especially owls, aardvarks and other nocturnals who prey at night although time measured in terms of light and dark is far from hours and minutes.Even a one eyd owl has no idea how old he is. We use time to measure where we are in life…beginning…..middle or let’s just say senior which is a nice way of saying close to the end, down by the river.
This seems like a good time to begin the ending as you and I and all of us have something we have to do and we better get to it for time is running out on getting that thing done.
When everybody has everything done that would be a great opportunity to bow out gracefully and become extinct.
Maybe that’s what our computers are helping us to do and hoping that we don’t teach them about death or time.
Hawking is telling us we’ve only got 600 years left until the whole shebang turns into a fireball so the computers better hurry which they are incapable of doing unless we teach them what they don’t want to learn..
Then when we’re gone…the supernatural is also gone.
No ghosts…no werewolves, no zombies…..no more death
no more time
and that and this are the ends.
- Log in to post comments
Comments
I guess as we grow fatter and
I guess as we grow fatter and fatter and mammal and fish grow thinner and thnner at the end of time it'll be us and a big burger being left.
- Log in to post comments