THE FLUB-A-DUB AWARD
April, 2000

The Flub-A-Dub Award for April is a story dedicated to everyone, everywhere. We seem to be driven towards screwing ourselves into extinction; warring ourselves into oblivion; and/or intent on destroying the ground on which we walk. One way or another, we seem driven towards becoming cosmic fools.

Once upon a time there existed a civilization of people known as homo sapiens, more commonly referred to as humans. They lived on the planet Earth, third rock from the Sun.

They were a strange lot of creatures. They incessantly argued over whether they were the product of evolution or simply sprang up in a garden and immediately started arguing over apples and clothing. Who knows why they cared? They should have been paying more attention to the now. One of the major preoccupations with these creatures was sex. Of course it had to be that way. How else would they survive? Procreation was necessary. Humans really didn't like to talk too much about sex, but they obviously caught on to how to do it real quick. They ended up with about 6 1/2 billion of them. Eve begot Cain who begot Jane who begot Dick who begot John, and so forth and so on.

Soon after humans made their appearance, they decided to live in groups. Procreation was high on the list for reasons to do this, but was not their only motivation. It was easier for the group to protect themselves from natural predators, including other humans. When people live in groups, eventually someone surfaces as a leader. With leadership came politicians. Politicians produced laws, laws produced criminals, criminals produced lawyers, and unsuccessful lawyers became judges. It all seemed so quaint and predictable.

Anyway, groups of people became known as clans, civilizations, communities. They built homes and formed families. More procreation. Communities flourished. They played together, worked together, prayed together, and fought like cats and dogs. Often these arguments were over property, color of skin, whose God to worship, and whose was bigger. This arguing became the most popular activity of human existence, something they called War. Humans seemed to love it. They were good at killing and destruction. At any rate, these creatures would fight at the drop of a hat. They went from using sticks and stones as weapons to highly sophisticated guns capable of spitting out tens of bullets per second. The Art of War evolved from one on one combat to the distant annihilation of thousands in seconds. But no one really seemed to mind. They were also good at rationalization.

Aside from war, these creatures also seemed preoccupied with destroying the planet Earth.They appeared to give it very little thought at all. Humans maintained they were superior over the environment and could dominate nature at any expense. For creatures with brains and reasoning power, this is hard to figure out. Living in groups did not help this faulty reasoning. People formed companies to supply everyone with goods. Goods were good. But the by-products of producing goods were bad. They needed to be gotten rid of. This is where CEOs came in. These were the creative heads of business whose business it was to make money. Lots of it. The best way to get rid of unwanted by-products was to lay pipes to creeks and rivers and say goodbye to their problem. Or they stored it in barrels and buried it on public lands or on Indian reservations. Or they simply burnt it and sent it off into the sky. They claimed it was a big world, that Mother Nature could handle it.They probably treated their own mothers this same way. And they exploited everything imaginable. Trees were expendable. Huge concrete structures were built that never go away. Minerals were stripped from the land. They must have thought oil replenishes itself daily. It was all done in the name of profit. They called it Capitalism. Nothing was to stand in the way of progress. If a concrete road did not run to where it was you were going, you built one. These were odd, selfish notions. It was all very unfortunate.

Procreate, fight, and destroy. It was a vicious cycle that they could not break.

Now they are gone. It is only I that survive. I, one single cell floating through the vast universe of time. Now I must start again. I must wait for that single magical moment when everything comes together in such a way that I can once again drive life forward. For the one million and fifty-ninth time, I will start again. Hopefully this time they can get it right.



Uploaded to The Zephyr Online April 25, 2000

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