March 29, 2013
Ken Kaye & Larry Barszewski
The Sun Sentinel
500 Broward Blvd.
Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33394

RE: “Manatee Deaths Spike” – Some comments on your unlinkable article about Florida’s beloved sea slugs.

Mr. Kaye,

Personally I would prefer to be descended from bears but, as a Right-Wing, homophobic, snake handling, Truther/Birther, red neck gun nut I have to subscribe to one of the basic tenets of the Church of Modern American Liberalism or I will lose my library card before I am cast into the bottomless pit named Avernus.

Ergo, I chose to believe in evolution. To be precise, Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. As a true believer in the validity of Chuckie’s writings I cannot, I will not ,comment on the disturbing fact – Damned inconvenient, if you will – that it has been a theory since before our Supreme Court decided to give Dred Scott a one-way ticket on the midnight train to Georgia.

That is a Hellaciously long time.

The end of the whale oil business, air brakes on trains. Gettysburg, repeating rifles, Mark Twain, the internal combustion engine, manned flight, unsinkable ships sinking, zippers, Mickey Mouse, talkies, E=MC2, vinyl records, night baseball, air conditioning, penicillin, TVs, automatic transmissions, frozen orange juice, microwaves, the Salk vaccine, six packs, Holiday Inns, instant replay, permanent press, “The Eagle has landed”, disco, Pioneer, “Non timere”, PCs, “Tear down this wall”, cell phones, virtual reality versus real reality, Hubble, debits still equaling credits, yet more jumbo shrimp, “hope and change”, the continuing “triumph of hope over experience” and the Damn thing still hasn’t been proved.

I know it’s hard. This country went from a few text books to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in less than 4 years. The only tools were slide rules and Dixon #2 pencils. That was hard.

If no one else is going to say that the emperor is need of some new trousers I sure as Hell ain’t. I am buying the whole nine yards.

Birds became dinosaurs that died and made oil. When T-Rex took a Pasadena it got warm before it got cold. Then it became really warm just before it became really cold. Then we lost track. Later some shrimp became coyotes and some peripatetic protozoae became Uncle Luke. Really old ferns became the Grand Canyon. The Gods of the Copybook Ledgers began to keep score and Chucking Charlie explained it all.
And we all believed.. We all bent our knees and pledged fealty, never ending fealty, because if you don’t count Ptolemy once science is settled it is settled. The Origin of the Species, a creed whose followers could give Torquemada and the beheading mullahs lessons if doubt raises its unclean head, settled all the questions, even ones that had not been asked. Survival of the Fittest became the Oratorio of the Modern Man.

Which brings me to the manatees.

Your story in today’s unlinkable Sun Sentinel tells us of the death of 409 manatees in just 3 months. It is a mammalian dirge unequaled in modern times. Where can find keeners equal to the task of lamenting such a loss?

We are on course for a record year for unscheduled manatee deaths. Jaclyn Lopez, an attorney with a “Who Needs People, Save the Whales” non-profit scam group – I say scam group because unless Jaclyn Lopez, Esq. works for free she is placing her interests above those of the more helpless of God’s creatures, presuming that it is still OK to say God even though today is Good Friday – hectors us in typical harridan style that “we need to do more to protect” these marine layabouts

Here’s where Chuckie’s ideas come in to play.

If “survival of the fittest” is Rule #1 would I become anathema if I were to suggest that it is time, it is past time, to say Hasta la Vista to these swimming dumpster divers?

If the high point in the life of the Alpha male is to swim into a whirling propeller maybe it is time for them to go. Not to a shelter, not to a manatee assisted living facility, not to a Jurassic Park for gummers but to a permanent listing in the newly updated Book of the Dead – quasi Flipper section.

If it weren’t for fuzzy minded, heads up their asses, tree hugging boobs tossing 2 week old balsamic vinegar drenched lettuce, arugula, and endives, tofu gone a bit gamey, out of date low fat organic yoghurt [as opposed to the inorganic kind, the one with the long strand polymers, don’t you know?], and wheat germ off our under-maintained bridges, honorable spans waiting for their Summer of Recovery, these sea horse wanabees would surely starve.

Wasn’t the first rule from the Federation to any Starship never to interfere with the life process on a new planet, with the natural order of things?

Why do we do it with these useless things? We can’t pet them. We can’t train them. We can’t water ski using them. They serve no useful function. Only the newly born can make a passable sushi. When a pod gets diarrhea dolphins and skip jacks jump into boats. Baby loggerheads are so traumatized that they become fatally constipated. Manatee scat may be useful in removing unwanted tattoos but you can never again eat meat. The tattoo comes off just before your fingers and toes.

If I were to mention 1,500,000 abortions a year since 1973 you would think poorly of me so I won’t.

If I were to suggest that Lake Okeechobee be turned into a manatee only refuge, one like what we have done for the furbish lousewort or the snail darter, you would say I am on the right path, right?

Before I get to my “final solution” for these useless creatures I have a question. Why don’t the alligators eat them?

Here’s my plan.

Find out what “sends a chill” up its flipper. Manatee musk, a picture of Cesar Chavez, a Judas bull, soft music, white wine, underwater incense, Rachel Carson arm wrestling with Margaret Sanger, perpetual tumescence, round the clock estrus, Whole Food salad bars dripping with Viagra, rotting succotash bushes, a case of Ranch Dressing…whatever.

Get them all to the New River.

We can make this a teachable moment.

Ring the dinner bell.

Get them to swim into a 20 foot wide underwater Cuisinart on perpetual puree.

We will have proved Darwin’s Theory. At least the part about “survival of the fittest”.

The serendipitous bonus is that we get sausage for the homeless.

I mention the homeless because there is a news story above yours about doing what is known in the sub-rosa world of accounting as a midnight Oklahoma transfer. It gets the homeless the Hell out of Dodge. It involves taking money out of one trust fund to use because another trust fund is empty. Kind of like Social Security and Medicare.

Whatever the Sun Sentinel has in its corporate soul satire is not on the list of contents. Unless the paper has a mole named Jay Swift straight from the Onion or the pages of John L. Carrot I must believe the story is correct.

Larry Barszewski, your fellow ink stained wretch, says that the city of Fort Lauderdale will provide bus fare for the Knights of the Road on 2 conditions.

#1 – Wherever the bus stops, be it Darmiscotta, Maine or Winona, Minnesota, a family member must pick them up. Unless racist photo IDs are used it will be difficult to guarantee that transaction. The city has no position on whether ungendered or non-gendered “significant others” can be part of the plan. The Chamber of Commerce just wants them 1400 miles away.

#2 – You have to have AIDS. Honest. You have to have AIDS. If you are a non-AIDS homeless dude or dudess you ain’t going nowhere

Am I the only one to note that it is still a bit chilly in my 2 destination cities? The French Judge was right when he said that the rich and the poor have an equal right to sleep under the bridges of Paris; the rich in the summer and the poor in the winter.

So if you are a permanent address-free pilgrim, doubtless part of the undeserving poor, a victim of life’s circumstances, and you want to get back to kith and kin your best bet is to spend a drug filled weekend doing the horizontal tango with a Haitian ape.

Since we know, it being settled science, that Darwin is right – It is unimaginable to even think that he may be wrong, right? – herd culling is required. Be they swimming or standing if they can’t contribute to society they must be denied their “fair share” of our planet’s diminishing resources. Those of us who are more fit, more productive, must be given preference, even second helpings, at the trough.

That’s Darwin in a nut shell, right?

Do you believe that before Good Time Charley came along some people thought the above ideas were bad? I’m glad he cleared that up.

Manatees and homeless AIDS carriers.

Perfect together.

A one-way, non-transferable, no refund ticket to Palookaville.




Kevin Smith