I have two primary fears in my life.  Number one is to be eaten by a shark.  I think most people are born with that fear automatically encoded into their DNA.  Granted, I may be safe here in the middle of Las Vegas, but I'm going to go with my instincts on this one anyway... 

My second fear is that I will one day die and be reincarnated as a penguin.  Sound a little strange??  Maybe it is...  The truth is I'm still coming to terms with it myself.  See, I didn't realize I had this fear until about 2 hours ago.  The terror really soaked in 15 minutes later, when I realized that both these scenarios could actually happen back to back. Get chewed up by a shark and wake up as penguin...  Wouldn't that be some shitty shit??? 

Now, before indulging you in my newfound demons, I should probably bring you up to speed and tell you what got my mind churning this crap around to begin with.  I rented this movie called "The Farce of the Penguins." It's supposed to be a ploy on the award-winning documentary "The March of the Penguins."  It's basically live action footage of penguins in the wild, with voiceovers from several mainstream comedians/actors  (Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Saget, Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia, etc).  Transposing the two is somehow supposed to illustrate the absurdness of human existence and expose the thin veneer of mundane circumstances that separates US from all other species on the planet.  At times it half-assed succeeds at this.  Although the movie had a few funny parts, the way that it provoked my mind is what's really central to this blog.

Being a hardcore advocate of evolution and naturalism, I often marvel at the animal kingdom. How amazingly complex and interrelated it all is.  The variety of species and the powers and prowess some of them have developed.  How stark it is in contrast to our own existence, and how far we as animals have transcended our biology. I have read intensely in this subject and have given it great thought.  Although I have often imagined what it would be like to be certain animals, penguins never came to mind.

Until today.

So please excuse me for a moment, while I get all "Discovery Channel" on your ass... 

Penguins got it rough.  They live in the world's harshest environment. In fact, in the entire region south of the Antarctic Circle there are fewer than 70 species of animals, 44 of which are insects.  The average temperature in the winter is 94 below zero.  Penguins go through annual periods of starvation.  They will gorge themselves for a month or two, get so fat they can barely walk, storing up food/energy, then they waddle 900 miles across Antartica for mating/nesting season.  They won't eat for another 120 days...

Males and females take opposite turns feeding and watching the kids in the far off nesting grounds.  That means when the males go eat, the females starve, when the females leave to eat, the men all starve.  Penguins barely see much company from the opposite sex and only get freaky with each other ONCE a year. Still, they trudge hundreds of miles to the same spot every year just to get it on...  It's a total meat market.  After about 2 days of waddling around checking each other out, they finally pick a single partner to mate with.  Is it just me, or does this sound like a really fucked up version of gym class???  Some of them don't even get picked. It's bad enough being a penguin, but walking 900 miles through artic tundra to a sex orgy involving every penguin on the continent and not getting picked is God's cruelest joke... 

Ironically enough, this is where I started to lose sympathy for these creatures.  In fact, this is where they started to straight up piss me off.  Why don't they all just set up camp a few miles from the food source???  Then they could sit around 365 days a year, eating, playing, and banging each other like monkeys.  Not only are penguins stupid, they are filthy, disgusting creatures.  I was "lucky" enough to catch an exhibit at The Shedd Aquarium a few months back.  All they do is stand around looking at one another, shitting EVERYWHERE. I think it might be how they communicate with each other...

Hey, What's Penguin for "Where's the Bathroom??"

"Ppppttttt..."  

I sat there for 15 minutes just playing the "Which one is going to poop next" game with a pack of random 5^th graders.  They beat me.  I think 5^th graders have a natural sense about these things...

OK, All this potty humoris leading us off course; back to the science...

It really doesn't matter if you believe in Evolution or God's plan.  Any way you cut it, penguins got fucked.  They're BIRDS but they can't FLY. They SWIM, but they're not FISH.  They're waddling contradictions, irony cast into flesh.  Their black and white color scheme is a testament to this fact.

Let me be very clear when I say that I believe natural selection to be an iron-clad truth, and I will stab you in the neck if you say any different.  But what scientists don't always take the time to acknowledge is that there is a fair amount of grey area concerning natural selection. It's not always about survival of the fittest.  There are fringes.  Not everyone can be king of the jungle.  Many species have to seek other avenues...sometimes, they just happen to move to the ends of the Earth and eek out an existence as some freaky inbred half fish, half bird creature. 

Way to hang in there, guys.

Penguins are a fluke, an evolutionary hiccup if you will.  99.9 percent of all species that have ever lived on this planet are already extinct--it's only a matter of time before they follow suit. Their current resurgence in pop culture is only the species' 15 minutes of fame.  Hopefully, with the recent rise of global warming, penguins will be wiped off the face of our planet within the next decade...

Wouldn't that be convenient for me?? 

One fear down.  Let me get on with my life...

Girls like to get all sappy and babble on about how penguins are so cute and harmless.  Whatever.  Sometimes you have to sit them down and remind them what we're dealing with here.  You have to look that penguin straight in its beady eyes, and realize that the thing staring back at you is a WILD ANIMAL.  If it were bigger than you, and had the slightest pang of hunger, it would eat you alive and screaming without thinking twice about it.  In prehistoric times (50 million years ago) there were penguins over 5 feet tall and 300 pounds.  If you think I'm kidding, click on this....  http://www.eliasdesigns.com/penguins/history.htm  

History tells us you have to nip these things in the bud before they become a problem.  They get bigger, they get bolder.  Pretty soon things spiral out of control and you'd have packs of bloodthirsty penguins, built like linebackers, running amok in the streets of Long Beach, fucking and shitting everywhere with random abandonment. 

 Not in my backyard. 

Fighting some horny, pissed off, shit-covered giant penguin in an Albertsons' parking lot at 3 in the morning is not the future my children deserve.  That's why I'm instituting a strict "Punt a Penguin" campaign.  If you see a penguin roaming around outside its natural habitat, run up behind it and kick it as hard as you can.  Don't feel bad about this.  You're doing mankind a favor.   At first I felt bad about these urges, but you watch these things waddle around for 90 minutes, and if the thought doesn't cross your mind at least once, then there is something seriously wrong with you.  Something... Un-American.

Do your part.

And let's send these wretched creatures back from whence they came.