What happened to the weird phenomenon of birds dropping dead? Or the bees disappearing? Scientist are still trying to figure it out?

I’m not an alarmist. At least I don’t consider myself one. I could be completely wrong about that. I’m not too familiar with the usual symptoms or characteristics of an alarmist personality. But if I was even somewhat of an alarmist, I think I would be totally justified in going into ape s#!t panic mode right now. There’s a lot going on in the world and I’m not sure everyone is connecting the dots and seeing the troubling pattern. I don’t get a sense that the masses are seeing a bigger picture. I think part of that is because the bad stuff seems to be happening everywhere else but here.

Here we can still enjoy our fast food, the Double Down – fried and grease smothered chicken sandwiches in the comfort of our huge gas guzzling SUV’s. We’re very comfortable here, and if you’ve read anything I’ve written before you know how I feel about comfort. If you haven’t, I think comfort is overrated. I also think it’s deadly. Anything that causes complacency is dangerous, it’s like the boiling frog metaphor. Try and put a frog in a pot of boiling water and he’ll just jump right out. BUT, put a frog in a pot of water on a stove and slowly turn up the heat to the frog will not jump out, even when the water reaches it’s boiling point. Why? Because the frog is comfortable and the frog can’t tell what’s happening around him. He can’t see the signals. And when he does it’s too late, he’s a French entrée.

We just may be on the track to becoming the frog, or maybe it’s too late. What am I talking about? What dots are we not connecting Sam? Well if you’ve turned on the news lately, you’ll see reports about the volcano in Iceland causing flight cancellations and delays. Or you might see a quick story about the relief effort still going on in Haiti or Chili due to the massive earthquakes that hit those areas. Or let’s go back to last year and recall the Swine Flu epidemic that swept the nation or a few years farther back to the Bird Flu hysteria of the early 2000’s.  What about Mad Cow? That was crazy. The polar ice caps melting. Oh yea, KATRINA!!! That was in the good ol’ US of A! Why are we still sitting on our collective ass?

We should not forget that man is a part of what’s happening on the planet. We’re a force of nature and we too can damage and wreak havoc. Most recently we’ve been responsible for 9/11, Iraq war, economic collapse and conflict in Afghanistan, the Tea party movement and Sarah Palin. And that’s just the stuff the US has been involved in. Is it crazy to step back and look at all of these things in context? I know a lot of people would respond by saying that now, because we’re more connected then ever and constantly bombarded with news and media, we’re simply more aware of all the tragedies happening around the world. I heard my friend say this to another friend of mine the other friend thanked him because he was starting to worry about all the weird crap happening in the world. And while it’s good that friends can comfort each other during times of crisis (like the song says, “That’s what friends are for…”) I don’t actually find this comforting.  I however, disagree with my friend’s rationalization. Yes, we’re more aware now then we ever were in the past. Yes, the media (as I’ve said earlier) likes to blow things out of proportion like “Snowmeggedon.” But this doesn’t in fact mean that there’s nothing out of the ordinary going on right now.

Never have we lived in a time of such civil and geographical unrest. We don’t have a measuring stick for times like this. We are living in a truly unique time. Even if we weren’t I’d still say we have to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. The other friend of mine was so happy to be comforted, so happy to know that he could go back to surfing the net, playing X-box, commenting on blogs about the merits of Avatar on blue ray rather than DVD. He could go back to the way things were, living a blissfully ignorant life with the problems of the world outside his bubble. I’m sorry, I hate to burst bubbles – but we’re not safe. There’s nothing that happens on this planet that doesn’t affect everyone else. Why that’s something we fight against I have know idea. But this for all intents and purposes this planet is our house.

And, I believe, you should take care of your house. If the aluminum siding on your house starts to fall off, and there’s a big hole, or a few, in your roof letting the rain soak your belongings and the lead in the paint covering your walls is poisoness and endangering your kids, just like the power lines outside your house, but not as mush as the toxic waste being put into the into the local water supply by the heartless corporation down the street which causes the grass on your lawn to turn brown and makes you sick which in turn makes you back up the toilet causing your plumbing to go crazy. Unfortunately, you just got laid off and don’t have the money to call a plumber and you don’t have a good relationship with your neighbor who is a handyman. You don’t trust him because he doesn’t shop at Fallmart he shops at GASCOS and that’s a no-no cause only right/left wing nut cases that touch children shop there. So you siphon off his wifi because you also couldn’t pay your internet bill and you block out all the other crap and relax to some porn in the only dry room in your house, your child’s bedroom.  Which, you are about to be removed from by the local authorities because you haven’t paid your mortgage but you’re not going down without a fight now that you have a semiautomatic gun that you got at a gun show without any federal red tape that infringe on your right to bear arms like I.D.’s or birth certificates. Yea, your house is a fixerupper all right. But no need to address it now – you’re comfortable right where you are.

Oh, the whole conversation with my friends started with talking about the fireball in the sky that was seen over the Midwest . We started laughing at the silly thought that it could be UFO and at how we saw a news report debunk that theory by saying a local man found a piece of a meteorite and a scientist confirmed it was part of the famed fireball in the sky. The weird thing though was in the news report there was no interview, no names and no sources given. Just that quick blurb. That convenient quick blurb that makes people relax. Just like my friend. Now, I don’t even need to think it’s a UFO. Fireball in the sky is disturbing enough.

Planet Earth, Terra Firma, whatever name you want to give the place in we (human beings) reside has been kind enough to let us live here (rent free), but we act like spoiled rock stars and we smash the room up in drunken fits of rage irresponsibly. We think, “Hey, that’s just what cool rock stars do, deal with it.” We believe we’re entitled to this planet and everything is for our taking. But that’s not really the case. We may be a popular rock band but we’re not the main event, Earth is. This planet proves that to us over and over again, it’s been here longer and its survived harsher things than humans ever could. And, if Earth feels it has to, it’ll kick our freeloading, squatting asses to the curb and rock on without us.

But I’m not saying anything new, a wise man said it much better than I ever could. Enjoy.