not going to get a lot done today

My work-load is very slim this week. Clients tend to slow down this time of year, and my list of tasks-still-to-be-completed is down to practically nothing.

So, as the cloudy, rainy day begins, I settle in, down here in my computer dungeon, scan the blogs, and think about bigger pictures than Michael Richards' recent failure to invoke Lenny Bruce.

I look at my species and I see Earth as a petri-dish, where one organism has been so successful in exploiting the local food and energy resources, that its unrestrained fertility now threatens the dish's environment with total collapse. Our ever-increasing demands on finite resources, and the growing detritus from our waste is poisoning the wells, and, unless we can manufacture our own agar, it is inevitable that many of us must die.

Biological reality is not something we can deal with by shouting "it ain't so" or holding our hands over our ears and humming loudly. Our ingenuity and engineering successes are amazing, but the low-hanging fruit has been picked. Cheap gas, fast cars, and electric hair-straighteners have been great, but what about their unintended consequences?

Last night, with my elderly mother-in-law arrived safely here for the holidays, we settled down in front of the TV for an hour. On PBS, they showed the salute to Neil Simon, who won the 2006 Mark Twain prize. It was mildly amusing, with one genuinely-wonderful film-clip (Jack Lemmon as Felix Ungar, clearing his sinuses in the resturant - need I say more?).

Mark Twain was certainly a sublimely funny guy, but Sam Clemens was a deeply angry, bitter pessimist, who saw his species as clueless buffoons and, I hasten to add, rightly so. Although many of the previous-winners of the Mark Twain prize are genuinely-funny people, there is really only one legitimate living heir to His true spirit, and I doubt he's on anyone's short-list of future recipients. It just wouldn't make for a cheery, bubbly hour of television.

Again, it's a nice idea (i.e. honoring Mark Twain) gone terribly awry, due to our confusing honesty with belly-laughs.