The failed creation

[mordant]

God loves shit?

I used to own an African Grey Parrot who devised its own curses as an amalgam of things she had heard my late wife and I exclaim from time to time. Her favorite was: "God shit!". And said with great conviction, I might add.

African Grey's word skills are amazing! I should create all animals to have the Greys talking skills. Or the same talking skills we do - it would be really cool to talk to animals, not to mention the additional skills of vision, hearing and scenting we could benefit from. Maybe these skills should be created for humans in the first place too.

Yeah they are amazing creatures.

I miss that little gal.

She would ask for bananas and if you didn't give them to her she would repeat the word very slowly and carefully enunciated: Ba NAN ah! Like you were some kind of dunce. She would come up to you with half-closed eyes and softly say, "give me a kiss?" with a coy questioning upturn at the end. And then she would graciously offer her beak and make a convincing smacking sound when you obliged her.

In the wild they imitate whatever they hear. Sadly, buzz-saws cutting down trees, when that happens.


My previous wife died at a time when I had to do business travel and I could not adequately care for her alone, so I bought her a slot in a no-kill bird sanctuary where she now flies free with a hundred or so of her kind in a giant aviary. Most likely she'll live to be in her 60s or 70s, so will outlive me, which was another consideration. In the wild they congregate in giant flocks like that, so I like to think she's better off with her own kind.

[Cheerful Charlie]

I had a friend who had a parrot. The problem with parrots? They never shut up.

[Dom]

I had a friend who had a parrot.  The problem with parrots?  They never shut up.

They do shut up most of the day. But if anything exciting happens, like loud voices or visitors and such, they have to comment.

[mordant]

I had a friend who had a parrot.  The problem with parrots?  They never shut up.

They do shut up most of the day. But if anything exciting happens, like loud voices or visitors and such, they have to comment.

It depends some on the species and on individual variations. Also if you have more than one they tend to rile each other up. They do shut up at night though, if you have a disciplined bedtime ritual and keep the lights off. The way my current wife prowls the house at random hours due to insomnia, that wouldn't work so well.

Also some species have a far more grating voice. Macaws for example drive me nuts but our grey was very nuanced and almost always soft-spoken. Our umbrella cockatoo was far dumber and had a much more limited vocabulary but was still generally soft-spoken also.

The Cockatoo was shut up for days when a mountain lion strolled past the study window. That headdress of his went straight up and he was quiet as a churchmouse for quite some days.

[Reltzik]

Now, why would anyone create creatures that all have to eat and poop? If I were the creator of life, I would surely eliminate that. That would do away with the totally useless appendix too.

Having to eat is the origin of killing other beings. Competition for food is the origin of people killing each other.

Look where that got us!

What would you have done differently?

Well you can't have a fertile mind without producing fertilizer, which would explain why 95% of my thought process is bullshit.

Now playing deity's advocate here, we don't really KNOW what God's supposed purpose is oh wait it's about having people he can have a personal relationship with never mind.

Given that purpose, a universe with entropy makes zero sense.  Any life processes I didn't care to automate through my pick of natural laws, I'd sustain through divine providence, thereby providing a very solid framework for that personal relationship thing.

The only purpose I can imagine that would correspond with what we got would be a deity producing some sort of barbaric Hunger-Games-esque blood sport for its own sick, twisted entertainment.  ... that or the deity is an idiot, or it came about through purposeless natural processes.

[Cavebear]

I used to own an African Grey Parrot who devised its own curses as an amalgam of things she had heard my late wife and I exclaim from time to time. Her favorite was: "God shit!". And said with great conviction, I might add.

African Grey's word skills are amazing! I should create all animals to have the Greys talking skills. Or the same talking skills we do - it would be really cool to talk to animals, not to mention the additional skills of vision, hearing and scenting we could benefit from. Maybe these skills should be created for humans in the first place too.

Yeah they are amazing creatures.

I miss that little gal.

She would ask for bananas and if you didn't give them to her she would repeat the word very slowly and carefully enunciated: Ba NAN ah! Like you were some kind of dunce. She would come up to you with half-closed eyes and softly say, "give me a kiss?" with a coy questioning upturn at the end. And then she would graciously offer her beak and make a convincing smacking sound when you obliged her.

In the wild they imitate whatever they hear. Sadly, buzz-saws cutting down trees, when that happens.


My previous wife died at a time when I had to do business travel and I could not adequately care for her alone, so I bought her a slot in a no-kill bird sanctuary where she now flies free with a hundred or so of her kind in a giant aviary. Most likely she'll live to be in her 60s or 70s, so will outlive me, which was another consideration. In the wild they congregate in giant flocks like that, so I like to think she's better off with her own kind.

I once heard a claim on "Life After People" that the last human words heard would be said by the descendants of parrots. Without any meaning of course, but it is an interesting idea.

[mordant]

The simple answer for why we eat is that there was nothing imperfect about it until the fall of man.  I don't find that a satisfactory answer, but that's the standard one.  I have an answer for why we defecate, but I want to figure out a better answer to why we eat so I can deliver the total package.

In a sane universe I could live with eating and excreting because life would have something, on balance, to commend itself to us. It is not so much that poop is gross (because sewerage systems and indoor plumbing deal with that quite effectively) or that obtaining and preparing and consuming food is a chore (because we have managed to turn that into an overall pleasurable activity that accommodates pretty much every taste) but it is that plus a zillion other things.

This morning I got up early to take my car in for its annual safety inspection and to have a loose piece of optional trim on the back reattached. But it turned out that the trim was loose because some idiot must have rear-ended us in some parking lot. Now I have one unwanted thing off my to-do list and two new ones added: contact the insurance company so their claims denial department can work their magic, and then take it to a body shop to fix the broken plastic brackets and trim under the bumper, and probably botch that while they're at it.

It's like every little goddamned thing has to metastasize into 47 new goddamned things. At my age, it starts to get old, particularly trying to get it all done from behind a mask while the world burns down around my ears.

[Dānu]

The simple answer for why we eat is that there was nothing imperfect about it until the fall of man.  I don't find that a satisfactory answer, but that's the standard one.  I have an answer for why we defecate, but I want to figure out a better answer to why we eat so I can deliver the total package.

In a sane universe I could live with eating and excreting because life would have something, on balance, to commend itself to us. It is not so much that poop is gross (because sewerage systems and indoor plumbing deal with that quite effectively) or that obtaining and preparing and consuming food is a chore (because we have managed to turn that into an overall pleasurable activity that accommodates pretty much every taste) but it is that plus a zillion other things.

This morning I got up early to take my car in for its annual safety inspection and to have a loose piece of optional trim on the back reattached. But it turned out that the trim was loose because some idiot must have rear-ended us in some parking lot. Now I have one unwanted thing off my to-do list and two new ones added: contact the insurance company so their claims denial department can work their magic, and then take it to a body shop to fix the broken plastic brackets and trim under the bumper, and probably botch that while they're at it.

It's like every little goddamned thing has to metastasize into 47 new goddamned things. At my age, it starts to get old, particularly trying to get it all done from behind a mask while the world burns down around my ears.

[trdsf]

Being an engineer, i am offended by all these stereotypes about our profession!

Here is a link that will certainly do away with all those falsehoods and minsconceptions: https://www.joe-ks.com/archives_jun2003/...r_Test.htm

Liebchen*
I spent 7 of the happiest years of my life in a german engineering university
I have jokes to mock every profession
"One economist is one guy that tomorrow will be able to explain you why what he yesterday forecasted for today it did not happen"



*Extremely stark Rheinisch accent, as my German sounds...

My favorite on economists is: "The best way to get three opinions on the economy is to ask two economists."

For whatever reason, our German teacher in high school had (and therefore taught) a pronounced Bavarian accent -- no idea why, he was not German by birth or heritage.  I swear, the first time I heard the Berlin accent, I wasn't convinced it was actually German...

[trdsf]

African Grey's word skills are amazing! I should create all animals to have the Greys talking skills. Or the same talking skills we do - it would be really cool to talk to animals, not to mention the additional skills of vision, hearing and scenting we could benefit from. Maybe these skills should be created for humans in the first place too.

Yeah they are amazing creatures.

I miss that little gal.

She would ask for bananas and if you didn't give them to her she would repeat the word very slowly and carefully enunciated: Ba NAN ah! Like you were some kind of dunce. She would come up to you with half-closed eyes and softly say, "give me a kiss?" with a coy questioning upturn at the end. And then she would graciously offer her beak and make a convincing smacking sound when you obliged her.

In the wild they imitate whatever they hear. Sadly, buzz-saws cutting down trees, when that happens.


My previous wife died at a time when I had to do business travel and I could not adequately care for her alone, so I bought her a slot in a no-kill bird sanctuary where she now flies free with a hundred or so of her kind in a giant aviary. Most likely she'll live to be in her 60s or 70s, so will outlive me, which was another consideration. In the wild they congregate in giant flocks like that, so I like to think she's better off with her own kind.

I once heard a claim on "Life After People" that the last human words heard would be said by the descendants of parrots.  Without any meaning of course, but it is an interesting idea.

This may be an observed phenomenon.  About which a really wonderful song was written.

[Scoop]

The human body is fine.  It's evolved to be as functional as possible in our envrionment. 

 What I would do if I were creating the universe is dispense with the creation of cancer, malaria, bubonic plague, flesh eating bacteria, worms that eat the eyes of children blinding them or killing them, smallpox, cholera, encephalitis and a whole host of other awful diseases.  Malaria has killed more people in recorded history than any other disease.  It's probably well over a billion people. Even today 400,000 people die of malaria every year and many of them are children.     Scientists have found malaria cells preserved in amber that are 30 million years old.  No telling what havoc malaria wreaked prior to recorded history. 

So that's what I'd do, eliminate all that shit.

That would leave the issue of procreation also.

I thought about that.  I'd have women's cycles be every 6 months or even once a year instead of every month.  There ya go.  

what? 
twice a year?   


I hope it gets prostitution legalized too.