Science and Biology and Aliens

So I watched the first episode of Cosmos, hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson. Now I have some really really different takes on things. Mostly about the fact that DNA evolution is such a unique series of events that it is mathematically impossible to come up with the same living species twice. Not even something closely resembling say the human species or the dinosaur species or another other DNA strand that evolved. With the insane amount of tiny "mistakes" that happen during what Tyson referred to as the proofreading stages of DNA transference, there is no way. Simply no way whatsoever.

Keeping that in mind, let's study for a moment people who want to believe that aliens have traveled here to Earth from some distant place where they evolved completely separate from us. These accounts nearly always include some version of what is called the grays. Below is one abductee's drawing of a gray:

 

Have you reached the problem yet? Maybe you have. If DNA evolution is a series of proofreading errors that culminate in the finished product (and it is, just saying) then there is no way whatsoever that aliens from another universe or even a new species evolving on this plant would ever look anything near like us. Now, have another look at old gray ass up there. Arms, legs. Check. Feet, hands. Check. Even the structure of the face - the location of the nose, eyes, mouth - are all far far to similar to that of our own species to make any report detailing an alien looking anything like this to be anything more than a super-sized order of bullshit.

The only way this sketch and the sketches like this one are to be thought of as anything other than bullshit it must be assumed that these "beings" originated here on this planet and are from the some string of DNA as we started from but only deviated dramatically at some point. Any other proposal don't hunt, as they say.

Think of dinosaurs, to further explain this. Now there was a species that did originate here on Earth but in an entirely different DNA strand as ours. Thus, and very predictably, those fuckers look a million times different than us, were a million times different than us. The series of proofreading errors - the distinct and exact set of errors in the same exact sequence - was not matched perfectly when we crawled from the natural heating vents and toward land. The end result: we are nothing like dinosaurs. 

Maybe I'm completely insane, but I don't think so. I think my very limited understanding of science and biology has led me to a logical conclusion that changes a few things, at least as far as grays are concerned. 

Even with this logical evidence, at the end of a long day, though, it is still my own personal thought that every single alien encounter of any kind has been an encounter with our own vile government as part of a perpetuated plan unknown to its citizens and for a never-to-be-known purpose. How's that for goddamn crazy as all hell.

 

Tonight I Have Scurvy

Got home at 2 p.m. from work today and went to bed. Woke up at 10:30 p.m. Refreshed but have that speculative feeling one gets when having been displaced from the world for a time and returned in the middle of some darkness that seems metaphysical.

I'm watching a television program about the 1980s and buffering that with occasional smoke breaks outside in the cold. The 80s for me is a land of nostalgia, which some have said is a specified form of scurvy. I have scurvy then. Bring me orange juice, but not too much, because I like my current state of remembering Cheers and the championship Chicago Bears and Jimmy Carter and the credit-devouring Ronald Reagan because, yes, Carter negotiated the release of those hostages people and Reagan took credit in the first hour of his presidency. Believe it. And Carter stayed as quiet as fuck about it because he is and was the actual definition of a true patriot - a person who does the right thing, the hard thing, without concern for who gets credit and who gets an unfair amount of shit thrown in their face.

Ordered four books from Amazon today - Blake Butler's Nothing: A Portrait of Insomnia, Dennis Cooper's Frisk, The Best American Experimental Stories, and a book I lost in a storage locker back in the dark days of 2008, Charles Baxter's Burning Down the House.

Jesus, those dark days of 2008. I lost my vehicle to the repo man, my house to the mortgage company, a wife I needed to get rid of anyways to an ex-boyfriend who ultimately inherited a fine mess, and my sobriety to the beginnings of a battle with alcoholism that wouldn't end for another six years.

No real thread here, just some rambling.

Also, I really want to read Abraham Smith's book Hank.

Baseball in January

It's January but I'm watching a baseball game thanks to the magical wonder of MLB At Bat. Paid meh twenty bucks and now I'm set for the next year. The Braves spring training games start on April 3 so now I won't have to miss a single pitch. By god. By god.

Today I've been watching San Fran Giant Matt Cain's 2012 perfect game on the classic games option. I'm now in the seventh inning and the crowd and the commentator's are just beginning to mention the fact that Cain hasn't allowed a base runner. I wondered in what inning they would start this up. Also, it's just amazing to hear and watch a baseball game in January.

My plan is to watch classic games from now until the first week of April. The Braves are going to fucking suck, yes. I don't care. They're my team and I will watch them every chance I get. I don't need them to win every game. I want to listen to commentators chatting each other up. I want to tune out to the pops of leather and cracks of the bat. I just want to watch baseball and chill.

I AM THE WEIRD BEAR, I AM THE WEIRD BEAR

I Won't Get To Read All the Books I Want To Read Before I Die

It's horrible. A devastating thought. I will not get to read all the books I want to read before I die.

Right now, this second, I have 567 books on my "to-read" list at Goodreads. I currently average reading about 70 books a year. The math is discouraging.

A couple years back I wanted to become a better reader. I still want to become a better reader, but the temptation to skim is strong in me, too. And I'm going to admit it here in this place that I have started skimming.

For years I've been able to anticipate and immediately recognize a passage from a book that is pretty much nothing else but the writer enjoying they way they write, how they can turn a phrase, etc. It's like standing in the mirror and appreciating how you have good hair that day or making your profile picture one that's really flattering, etc. Once upon a time I would read through these bits and pieces but not anymore. I'm moving right along and feeling less and less bad about it.

Anybody else doing this? Or am I just the worst person on the planet?

I deleted this post and didn't feel like deleting it from the post list

On Mortality

It's more than an unhealthy dose of self-pity, I'm aware. But then concerns about the level of self-pity innate to daily life are concerns for other people now. I'm not other people anymore. I'm the more quickly dying, the organic specimen fully graduated from the slowly dying bestowed upon all of us at birth. All that's left for me to do now is live here at The Farm in these replicate hours until someday soon, and without realizing it, I begin to live my last one, sixty minutes of which I will only live twenty-three or forty-seven or twelve. I'm not unhappy, despite what it may seem. I'm only preparing for the end, the great mystery. And when a human begins to turn their gaze to the unknown, I suppose the known, the reality of life, diminishes, becomes an outro that one listens to but doesn't really hear because the life of the song has already been born and died.