Category: Planetary Status Reports

I remember waking up on a Sunday morning, and having those sweet, tasty, cricket eggs … My grandma would be UP all NIGHT making those cricket eggs … And NO ONE could make those eggs like her … (they just tasted like home) She’d spend some time making coolie-cakes, and if we were lucky? – creosote paste for the dryg-sausage. It’s hard to imagine anything better, and it was her love that made it happen.

I remember Saturday meals at Uncle Cleeftus. He’d make McNuggets … He’d spend all week gathering re-gasifiers and solvent baths and bleach sinks and freeze-drying equipment. He’d usually pick the bigger hens from the coop, and toss the WHOLE chicken in … It would take about 30 minutes for the vacuum-freeze-drier to fully desiccate the the remains, and then the chicken gravel would be poured into the fine dust grinder. He would take the dust, and bleach it post solvent bath re-gasification. Once the powder had been bleached white, he’d add the emulsifying agent and water to constitute as a white paste, that he loaded into an injection molding system, which had 4 or 5 primary shapes. A brownish mix of sand and wood pulp and brown coloring would be sprayed on the outside and then the whole thing would be immediately fried … deep fried … till brown and toasty. And I used to think “Cleeftus’ put love into them McNuggets”.

One Saturday, Cleeftus decided to try a different recipe, handed down to him from him old style non-racist southern-style Alabama grandma … McRibb sandwiches … she would bake her own rolls from scratch, but it was the McRibb that took a lot of meal prep … the good news is the McRibb recipe is essentially the McNuggets recipe – but with different molds for the injection system and different outer coatings, and slightly different cook cycle … Bleaching agents and solvent bath are not necessary for the McRibb. Just an old fashioned treat, from the good old days.

[curated: 3/17/2023]

MP3: https://planetarystatusreport.com/mp3/20230228_What_humans_do.mp3

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Your job as a human is to gather resources and technology. You want to get yourself a cave someplace, and make a super hero uniform out of Kevlar and steel and various leathers from long dead animals. You should make a list of enemies that will be wiped out, and you can never have a healthy relationship … too much trauma, pain. Better to live out your days, walking the streets, beating your enemies to a pulp. That’s your job as a human.

As a human you should become an expert in the use of fire. You will use the flame to cook and to heat and to forge axes and swords. You will erect a lighthouse, not far from the Eastern Lands, that will usher in the worn out sailors and hookers and crab queens. You should do it.

Humans are porn stars and greasy. You can’t trust them, their sly ways, their TV dinners, that little packet in the bottle that say’s “DON’T EAT”, but why would they tell you this? Maybe you’re supposed to eat it, maybe BIG BOTTLE doesn’t want you to achieve total enlightenment. Your body is a sewer, so drink bottles of gasoline and milk and liquid PCP. Frame your existence in terms of “in and out” or “who’s your daddy” – and grab that wench woman, and make 12 monkey babies … that’s what humans do.

You can eat cupcakes made from cricket flour with frosting made of mashed stink beetles. Your bloody stool will be that reminder, that memento mori, the knowing that your own ass case is a festering, walking, wound of dark oils and forbidden poop dragons. People can live in a pod that is 100 square feet, and be happy – with a tube sewn to their mouth and one sewn onto their anus. Your human life will sojourn in mediocre lands, where testicle pizza is sold by Mexicans, just off the freeway. This is a very human thing to do.

You’re stuck on the road in your Corolla, and the hipster man from Bellevue tries to pass you on the shoulder. He zips by, as mud washes your car – that guy HAD to drive through the puddle. He flipped you off and called you mangy. You decide to follow that guy back to Belltown. You see him walk into one of those new thai-turkey-german fusion places where everyone is wearing denim and silk and lost in a micro-dose haze. You follow the guy into the john, and stand at the urinal next to him – but you don’t pull down your pants. You just stand there, humming some crappy song from an older age of cowboys and mass graves. And when he is finished, you follow him out the door, almost to his car … you stare blankly, not at HIM, but at the weird lights over Queen Anne Hill. And this is really just what people type mother fuckers do …

You get lost, looking for a path. Candy wrapper salesman run the place, and all you have are firecracker peanuts and a couple of call girls’ numbers you can dial … if you’re feeling lonely, right? But there’s this voice that whispers terrible ideas, murder and stealing and cutting up folks with a rusty fishing knife and a rotten attitude. You buy canned food and frozen dinners, because that’s the shape of your heart – and you won’t stop being the LORD KING of East S’compton, cuz nobody is going to push you or threaten you – you are in charge. And, being in charge is very much a part of life …

A human builds a laser cannon and fires it at the stars. He or she or it decides to point that damnable thing at some nearby star system, Quodis-445 – and in that system there is an Earth-like planet named JED. You point that light beam at JED, and you send people there. You travel, on a light beam, at 900 times the speed of a dog, you travel on a light beam at 600 times the speed of a cow. You travel on a light beam and that’s a very human thing to do.

Humans dump bodies.

When I was a kid my parents would talk about stuff “going down the tubes”, and at the time I did not realize that in their day you had these networks of large tubes, you would just dump bodies into … and don’t ask too many questions. Grandma dies? – toss her down the tube. Your hooker lover? – toss her in the tubes.

Humans are afraid to dump bodies, but they need not be.

We can start dumping bodies again, and sort out our shit.

That’s what humans do …

there are good times and bad times,

and you can find joy in all,

but the river will be fierce or friendly,

as the river will