Sunday, Dec. 2, 42 A.B.
Recent Additions To My Truth Collection
When I opened up my newspaper this morning, Truth fell out onto the floor and immediately began to stink up my house.
Closer examination revealed that Truth happens to be the name of a fragrance made by Calvin Klein.
Although this fragrance usually sells for $84 a bottle, Mr. Klein wanted me to know that I could now acquire it for a mere $60.
Plus tax.
(Apparently Truth, unlike food, prescription medicine, and tax preparation services, is not considered a necessity of life worthy of tax exemption.)
Why Mr. Klein thinks I'll ever need a whole bottle of his Truth when the free sample-laden ad he's given me seems to have permanently perfumed my life, I don't know.
Maybe eBay sold him my name along with those of all the other Truth Collectors it knows?
All I can say for sure is this: If Truth really smells this rank and disgusting, it's no wonder so many people prefer to reek of Ignorance....
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A few days ago, I stumbled upon a different kind of Truth entirely.
That Truth took the form of an AP story carried by Yahoo.
It was headlined "Sept. 11 Attacks Spur Baby Boom."
Yes, it seems that masses of Americans watched countless replays of those attacks, then shut off their TVs and exclaimed to themselves "I need to hurry and bring a baby into THIS type of world without delay!"
Although the evidence is mostly anecdotal rather than rigorous and convincing, it does raise several serious questions in my mind.
Nearly all of them are variations of "HUH?!"
But of course this is typical of Truth Collectors like myself whenever we come across an unusual specimen we haven't already made our own.
Once the initial shock wears off, there's a definite procedure to be followed which almost always brings clarity to what seems at first Random Insanity and not Truth at all.
That procedure is too long and involved to detail here, but I can say that it starts with our putting the new specimen next to other recently acquired ones and seeing if any links or patterns emerge.
As luck would have it, this "Baby Boom" specimen now seems remarkably of a piece with the increases in church attendance, comfort food consumption, and liquor sales that popped up in the wake of Sept. 11 - as well as with the marked drop-off in the sale of books.
In other words, masses of people seem to be abandoning reality in a wide variety of ways, and so-called "terror sex" leading to new little people may simply be one more.
All I know for sure is that I'm gonna need a new display case for all the surprising new Truths that are pouring into my house if things don't start slowing down soon....
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That last sentence wasn't the way I originally intended to end that section.
Truth be told, my first inclination was to gently satirize people silly enough to reproduce at a time like this - then rant and rave about the size of their brains.
Then I realized that maybe they weren't so silly after all.
For one thing, it's quite possible that things aren't nearly as bad as they seem. Although Sept. 11 might well have seemed like the Apocalypse, the fact remains that the attacks and the subsequent war in Afghanistan have done little to slow the steady increase in both U.S. and world populations.
These so-called population clocks maintained by the Census Bureau make it clear:
The U.S. is growing at the rate of about 4 people a minute despite the terrorist attacks.
And the total number of humans on this planet is increasing at a rate of about 120 people a minute.
This means that the approximately 4000 people who perished in the attacks were replaced by other Americans in about 17 hours.
They were replaced by other earth-born humans in under 35 minutes.
Yes, yes, I know - there's a sense in which the loss of a single individual represents an incalculable, irreplaceable loss which no number of new-born humans can hope to offset.
The only point I'm trying to make is that disasters which fail to reduce the total human population of the country or the world - or even slow down the rate of increase - can be seen as relatively minor disasters.
And it's easier to understand people's desire to reproduce despite relatively minor disasters than it is to understand their desire to reproduce in the face of, say, the Black Death, or an invasion of thousands of Huns, or the approach of a Doomsday asteroid.
In fact, here's another special little Truth I've just acquired which you might get a kick out of glimpsing as it sits in the velvet-lined box I made for it:
I've been feeling the urge to reproduce myself.
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Oh, stop gasping already.
It's a fragile little Truth which owes more to selfishness than the Sept. 11 attacks, and I plan on trading it away for the latest Truth regarding the failings of John Ashcroft the moment I can, but for now - well, there you have it in all its semi-sparkling glory.
The simple fact is that I want another little me here in the house, if only to use as a paperweight to hold down the flurry of notes I jot every day.
I've even gone so far as to contemplate exactly how I might bring this other little me into being.
Here, as I see them, are the main possibilities:
1. Splitting down the middle and allowing both halves to regenerate. For a person like myself who can barely survive the agony of a single, small paper cut, this option is not very appealing.
2. Tossing my seed to the wind and hoping for the best. I'm not sure, but I believe there are local ordinances which forbid this.
3. Borrowing my wife's ovipositor to slip a few of my eggs into a fig and hoping that an obliging male will come along and fertilize them. Alas, my wife just laughs at me when I ask her where she's hidden her ovipositor, and secret searches of her body have yet to lead to its discovery. Added Complications: Figs are out of season just now, and any eggs of mine which I might successfully slip into them are more likely to give rise to chickens than to another me. Best to just use those eggs as paperweights to hold down my notes and be done with it.
4. Gently tugging on the web of a female lurking in a corner somewhere and hoping her signals for me to approach aren't merely a prelude to my being eaten alive. Riiight.
5. Scampering over to where the local alpha male hangs out, challenging him to a head-butting contest, then taking over his harem once I've knocked him out cold. Thank you, but it seems like I spend all my time picking up after a single female as it is. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to pick up after an entire harem.
6. Carving a marionette that looks like me, than bringing it to life using magic. If the attempt to bring my stuffed Taco Bell dog to life using magic had been more successful, I might actually go for this. As it is, I think I might want to start on something a tad smaller, like reviving the career of Alan Alda.
Gee, I never thought it would be THIS complicated, especially considering how many idiots I knew in high school who managed to go on and reproduce without a lick of trouble.
In any case (even a velvet-lined one), the urge to reproduce seems to have shattered as I contemplated these 6 possibilities. (See, I told you it was a fragile Truth!)
If you still have the urge, I wish you better luck.
And if this entry has caused your urge to shatter, too, well - what can I say? That my words are a better contraceptive than 100 video replays of mass death?
Somehow I don't think that reflects very well on either of us, but I'll keep quiet about it if you will.
(©Now by DJ Birtcher despite the FDA's threat
to order a recall of every word)