Sometimes I don’t know what to make of news. I have the feeling I should be making cranes or other animals out of them, sometimes.
“Trump just said something else stupid,” says Reuters. Here is a representation of a poodle I fashioned from that.
Trump says, since we’ve been in Iraq, we shouldn’t depart without taking the oil with us. It’s the spoils of war, he says. He seems to think all the oil in Iraq is in a suitcase somewhere. I also don’t think he understands what “spoils of war” means. It means basically nothing more than the statement “I may take it because I can take it.” In this case the part after the “because” doesn’t apply, so the whole issue is a waste of breath. Or is it? Have a poodle.
I woke up this morning to news that, besides building better nukes, North Korea is making sarcasm illegal within its borders. Now North Korea will truly be the bleakest country in the world. If you can’t even make fun of Kim Jong-un, what’s the point of living?
It was pointed out immediately by smartasses the world over that sarcasm is indefinable. Is this sarcasm? How about this? Am I being sarcastic now? Let me know the exact point at which I am being sarcastic.
I don’t think that matters, because governments everywhere have learned that trick of saying, “We don’t have to know what it is in order to tell you when you’re doing it and stop you” — because, guns, police and biting dogs.
But in this case, no dogs for you, North Korea, I’m making a beautiful, showy peacock out of your news.
Meanwhile in the United States, we are having a national debate about what constitutes an appropriate political protest. Is it OK if I sit? Do I have to avert my eyes? Can I bring a friend? Do I have to say please? Do I have to get permission from master? Does the group-mind have to smile inwardly?
Which is more appropriate, plainly spoken sincere protest or the kind of thinly veiled sarcastic protest that would be illegal in North Korea? I mean, because North Korea is our enemy, right? We are on the American team, we hate totalitarianism, don’t we? So whatever they do, let’s do the opposite. Let’s be sarcastic and not build nukes.
I wanted to make a big jersey cow out of the Colin Kaepernick story, but someone beat me to it.
Speaking of protests, the Dakota Access Pipeline is being resisted in part because the land it would be built through is sacred to natives of that area.
Perhaps in reference to that, the Guardian posted a video about the fact that a national park in New Zealand was declared a person.
I don’t know when or why Te Urewera park in the north of New Zealand was declared a person. It may not be a good thing in the context of New Zealand politics. It has been suggested that the declaration might be used to take stewardship from the native Maori, who claim the land, as easily as it might be used to take stewardship from any other claimants.
Still, whoa. Mind blown.
Maybe this is what the Citizens United business needs. A little benign slippery slope. “Oh yeah, well, guess who else is a person? I am. My kid. That forest over there. The air. The water. This rock, that turtle. Anything you can’t make from scratch by yourself using toothpicks, scotch tape, wire and string, plastic and such-not, is a person. The oil fields of Iraq are a person. You don’t own the earth. It owns itself.”
Te Urewera entity has already been made a person, so it seems strange to make it from a person into an animal, but we are very used to strange now, so let’s make it a butterfly.
Further suggestions for avid news readers:
Anyone can make party animals out of news stories. If you get stuck, get a children’s coloring book of animals. Clip news stories out of a newspaper and paste them at random into the book.
It also helps to think the other way around. Ask yourself what news story ought to be made into a snake? Well, what has Martin Shkreli done lately? See how easy this is?