Jun 23 2009
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
Hello again everyone! Sorry about the temporary hiatus from the blog but I was able to travel with my girlfriend and her family to beautiful Yosemite National Park in California. For anyone that has the resources to go there I highly recommend it to people of all ages! After all Inspiration Point is one of the most photographed places in the world, so you know there must be something good about it!
Driving back home after my visit however I passed several signs on I-5 telling me that the dry barren land there had once been flowing with water, and was now full only of dust and broken dreams.
Of course, ignoring the obvious quip about the lack of a hyphen insinuating that congress somehow created the famous Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, my first reaction to these signs was that some nutjob was trying to organize yet another stupid global warming campaign, blaming the government for ignoring the problem until it got this bad. Upon further research I now wish that were exactly the case. Alas it is something far more retarded than anything I have read about in the past couple of weeks. Apparently this land is now dry and waterless because of a tiny 2-inch fish called the Delta Smelt which has been placed on the endangered species list. This fish was apparently dying by the truckload in the canals that brought the water to this area and so some judge had ordered the canals to be turned off. Let me repeat that so you know you weren’t hallucinating for a second. A freaking 2-inch fish is causing the mass job loss and potential starvation of up to 60,000 central Californian farmers according to one source. (Found Here.)
Now I have heard a lot of crazy and stupid crap in my lifetime but this has got to be one of the dumbest. I know in politics it’s almost impossible to get a straight answer out of anyone, but I’m going to assume for the sake of this post that the government really is putting thousands of farmers out of a job (as well as drastically reducing the available farmland within California) to protect something that, although very small, still just smells like fish. Not the good cooked fish smell either, but the nasty week-old rotting fish smell you get from the dumpster of seafood restaurants. It’s just a fish people, and if it really is dumb enough to get killed in some canal then why do we want to protect it in the first place? I mean, even PETA doesn’t lobby for the sake of fish, and these are people whom (at least to the public eye) would rather walk naked in the snow than step on a passing spider. The people who are so messed up in the head they’ve asked ice cream stores to use human milk instead of cow’s in their ice cream. If even they don’t give a crap about this tiny little thing then why should anyone pay any attention to it?
Of course, politicians love their power and will do anything to prove that they have it and intend to keep it, and in many cases the endangered species list is just one of these crap reasons to do so. Now I’m not saying that all endangered species are such because some nutjob politician was insecure about his penis size, but several instances such as this one seem to serve no credible purpose other than pure human snootiness. Ironically, in doing this we are subtly telling nature take a hike because we have everything under control, are better than it, yet the very actions are having negative consequences for humans. How stupid is that? Let the stupid 2-inch fish do its thing, and if that thing happens to be getting itself killed, then it’s probably not a fish we’d want to keep around anyways! Stop hurting people simply because you think we are inconveniencing a few insignificant creatures around us.
Now before I get everyone whining and complaining about the poor animals, think about it for yourself for a minute. “But, how can you be so cruel to God’s creatures? Don’t you know fish have feelings too? What about the environment? Can’t letting an entire species die throw off the ecosystem enough to inconvenience mankind even more than shutting off the water can?” I’m expecting some of these questions to be on a few of your minds as you get to this part, but hold on. I’m not advocating wanton slaughter of the fish, or even that we should enjoy the fact they are dying in the canals. The fact is though that nature is tough and unforgiving, and as much as most humans don’t like to admit it, we are an integral part of the system.
Of course I’m not saying we should just ignore the fish. If we can find another way to save these fish that doesn’t involve cutting off such an important water supply to so many people and isn’t obscenely expensive then by all means we should try to save these little buggers. If it will destroy the ecosystem that badly, then keep the smelly tadpoles around. But we can’t and it won’t. They are one species of tiny fish and simply aren’t that integral to the whole system. I’m sorry but unfortunately nature just sucks sometimes…and it’s the Smelts’ turn to experience that first-hand. It’s a choice between thousands of people or thousands of tiny fish, and you can call me narrow minded and bigoted all you want, but in that situation I’m going to help the people every time.
P.S: One of my favorite comments I heard on this little debate was some ultra-conservative saying he was darn proud that they turned the canals off…because the water was pumped to Central California by the taxpayers’ own hard-earned money, and how dare the farmers accept freebies like that from the hard-working class of the rest of the State? Is this person kidding me? These people aren’t using taxpayers’ money to get this water and make a giant slip-n-slide. They are taking it to grow the freaking food this very commenter eats every day!. Sure, cut off that water and get a tiny break in taxes from the energy saved, then piss that same money away when the cost of food goes up because we can’t grow as much as we used to. Heck if these people can’t get water they won’t be the only ones lacking in food, but the rest of the freaking nation that shares in their crops are going to suffer as well. What a freaking idiot!
Feel free to leave me a comment to tell me how you feel about this, or especially if you have more information on the “crisis” at hand so that I can update my opinion! I’d hate to be ranting about something that wasn’t even true after all!
