Here's the latest "Toxic Fumes" column, which appears in The Hellbender Press, East Tennessee's environmental journal.
Hardcopy Hellbenders are available all over Knoxville, and I highly recommend you pick up one. Not only can you read all the environmental news you won't get anywhere else, but you can also peruse a version of this column that has benefited from the tightening up and battening down that only editing by the HBP's braintrust can provide.
Anyway, here's the unedited column:
Letter from the Future: "Hey! Idiots!"
by Scott McNutt
Of the means by which I acquired the letter below, all I can reveal is this: It was procured through a rip, torn through the dark matter that knits time and space together. And if he talks, I’ll kill Rip Torn.
The apparent date of the letter is July 4, 2076. It’s in English, albeit with some changes in form and spelling; "newkewler" for nuclear, for instance. Parts of it are illegible, but the extant passages trace the remarkable path to civilization’s circumstances in 2076. Herewith then is a letter from our future:
*************
"Dear Lil’ Mikey,
"…On our new Independence Day, I refer you to the early years of Fowler Über’s reign, when he was still known only as Gorge Gumpya Bush II, Prissy Dip of the United Estates, and none foretold his imminent global ascendance. Astounding, isn’t it, that the era we call the Cow-Tipping Point should not be recognized as significant at the time? If one could call back to those uncomprehending denizens of the planet, one might say, ‘Hey! Idiots! You SUCK! Don’t you get it? Fowler Über was civilization’s savior!’
"…Bush’s grand vizier, whom we know only as Snarlpuss, is said to have been architect of the War on Feathers. Even before the Bird Flew Panic of 2007, Snarlpuss foresaw the necessity of ridding the planet of feathery things. In 2005, he had ordered the clandestine development of a Newkewler Nest-Buster bomb. In late 2006, when the United Estates launched preemptive operations in Oxtrailer to contain bird flights, Snarlpuss deployed several test nest-busters out back of Oxtrailer.
"The unreasoning and contemptible Oxtrailian natives complained that the radiation was wrecking their environment. After a full and fair hearing, Snarlpuss had nest-busters deployed on their pointy heads, efficiently wrapping up that front in the War on Feathers...
"…The penguins put up fierce resistance, but eventually the Phenomenal Fowl Extinction was complete! Well, as we later learned, some penguins must have survived in the nether regions of the world, and some seabirds escaped to dive-bomb us even today. But still, the overall plan worked, and it was a great victory of man over plumage!
"…The birdbrains in the opposing Demoncrack party wailed that whole forests would fail, because birds helped pollinate trees. Others whined that the birds were the least of their worries. They claimed Bush’s decision to unleash logging in national forests and his order to invade Canada for its timber resources (obvious necessities after the depletion of building materials wrought by the catastrophic 2006 hurricane season), ‘were the acts of a wanton Paul Bunyan.’ In public appearances, Bush took to singing ‘Oh, I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK’ to belittle these critics. Or possibly he just liked the song. The mind of Bush was known to no one…
"Still more critics shrieked that the total vegetation loss attributable to the fowl extinction would cause astronomic atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, meaning glaciers would melt quicker than butter on hell’s kitchen table. Most, however, grumbled that they’d have no more Chicken McNuggets.
"The McNugget munchers lacked vision. Bush had already foreseen such consequences and had taken steps to address these petty concerns. Even before the first fowl was plucked in the War on Feathers, the Singular Piscatorial Concentration had already commenced, in mid-2006.
"All was set in readiness with Bush’s designation of a vast area of ocean around the Howie islands as a national monument. Great sea walls were constructed around the supposed monument and all manner of piscine creatures were agglomerated there for breeding and experimentation purposes…
"…Meanwhile, the Demoncracks struck back. At the Big Important Cinematic Auteur Festival in the fabled land of Sundunce, the party leader, whose name comes down to us only in an allegory, showed a movie titled An Incontinent Tooth. It was a nonsensical story of how our appetites would wreak our destruction. This celluloid fairy tale won the top prize, of which we still have the precise title: The Rachel Carson Self-Congratulatory Award of Self-Flagellation for Letting Liberals Express Limp Outrage and Feel Like They Were Doing Something About the Environment When They Were Only Using Up Gas to Drive Someplace to Watch a Fucking Movie.
"Hereafter, the record falls silent on the fate of the Demoncracks. One assumes they all died of tooth decay. However it happened, when a species frets over how best to survive rather than simply getting on with the business of surviving, it is only fit for extinction anyway…
"…Meanwhile, with McNuggets extinct, the unwashed masses dined on fish sandwiches. Massive fishing expeditions harvested whole species to feed the ungrateful grousers’ grubby faces. Dependency on the sea for food grew exponentially. Its imminent exhaustion was apparent. Less-foresighted nations soon demanded access to the newly named Howie’s Finny Friends Fishery, now teeming with genetically engineered scaly things…
"…Bush ruthlessly beat the beggar nations back. ‘Bring it on! Let them eat steak!’ he cried triumphantly. And his subjects recognized their ruler’s beneficent wisdom, hailed him as conqueror, bestowed upon him the title of ‘Fowler Über, Pisces Ascendant’ in commemoration of his grand victory over worm-eaters both feathered and scaled, and proclaimed him hereditary sovereign…
"…Then a killer asteroid was identified as on an Earth-impact track! All nuclear missiles and rockets had already been expended in the Seven-Minute War with whatever leftist lands used to be to the right of Yourup, so another approach was needed. Fowler Über gathered his counselors and conceived the most imaginative, the most elegant solution possible…
"…Thus, all cows on Earth were rounded up. A speedy conventional war was waged upon the cow-worshipping subcontinent of Indy, utterly destroying it. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions of cows that could have been better used also perished in the conflict.
"Even some of the Fowler Über’s own subjects failed to appreciate their tyrant’s wisdom and took up arms in a bloody rebellion, known as the Revolt of Bessie’s Udder. This resistance was pinched off through systematic annihilation of the surviving arable soil in our former homeland. This was all part of the plan, for the fittest among our forebears had already departed to settle the rapidly thawing southern continent…
"…A methane-powered cowship was quickly constructed and the cud-swallowers were shot into space to intercept the looming space rock. With the bovines’ belches, burps and butt-gas powering the vessel, it successfully caromed off the killer asteroid like a sirloin-flavored cue ball, breaking the asteroid into fragments.
"These stony chunks mostly devastated the United Estates’ southern neighbors, where remnants of bovine sympathy still stewed. Yourup was inundated with billions of tons of burning beef shank, and consequently most Yourapeeins died of iron poisoning. Thus was Fowler Über’s steak prophecy fulfilled. The Cow-Tipping Point had passed. The remaining cow remains careened into an elliptical solar orbit, the source of the chuck roast showers that sometimes fall, like well-done manna from the heavens, on our new homes here in the United Steppes of Antarctica.
"Even unforeseen events favored the followers of Fowler Über. In the wake of the Cow-Tipping Point, tidal waves, which no one could have expected, breached the Finny Friends Fishery, allowing the genetically enhanced experiments to escape. This was fortuitous, because we no longer had means to reach the fishery. But now the fishes come to us! Often, they crawl right up onto our steppes. Sometimes, the seabirds provide aerial support for them…but still, we usually prevail!
"Beef in the sky, fowl from the sea and fish on the land are but a few of the many gifts of Fowler Über’s legacy. He sagely saw that an Earth mostly depopulated of humans, mostly exhausted of known resources, and with hugely swelled oceans sundering the remaining, miniscule lands, would be an Earth where the fittest survivors enjoy a tropical year-round climate, free from war, sharing the bounty of Mother Earth’s residual resources.
"That is, we’ll share the resources as soon as the oceans recede enough to force the mutant penguinsharks farther from our shores.
"Yours in Fowl Überly,
Lady Elle Eva Job Braunie"
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