I should be silent. I should fear the approbation I will pull down upon my head by my confession. But silence is no longer an option. Silence only emboldens the despots that fund, encourage and order torture as a state policy. Though I must accept responsibility for my own choice to bow to their authority, until we reform the institutions of torture, though I and others may leave the torturers’ ranks, the evil will continue. They taught me deception to capture my prey and to then inflict confinement, isolation, sustenance deprivation, chemical poisoning and finally impalement. How did they corrupt my heart, ensuring years of service and blind acquiescence to their orders? They employed the mother of all extortions: my children.
Every fall it starts. While settling in for four months of football, one of them will appear in the rec room, hovering over my Laz-Z-Boy, demanding help to locate, capture, kill then display numerous six-legged creatures as an offering to their teacher. Goaded on by the fear they will fail grade school and never leave home, I rise from my throne barking out orders. Get the net! Man the jars! Retrieve the cotton balls! Bring the alcohol! When all is fetched, we’re off to the swamp park.
Soon we’re catching bugs. I’m about to toss an alcohol-soaked-cotton ball in the first bug jar when one bug turns her brown, moist eyes on me. Another deftly rolls on his back and gently waves his little multi-jointed, exoskeletal legs and antennae imitating our cuddly Pit Bull, Rascal. While another, flying up and down in the jar, motions to me, simpering, "Please. I have children." That’s it. I can’t do it. I can’t kill such resourceful creatures. Then the vision of kids who never leave home again pops into my mind.
Maybe, I suggest, my son can turn in live specimens. So, with Noah as our inspiration, we try packing them all live into our two jars. Surely if two of every animal on earth can coexist on a cramped Ark for 40 days, we can get 12 different bugs into our jars. But I’m wrong. The bugs don’t cooperate. As a new one’s placed in, another escapes. A frisky Praying Mantis starts taste testing his cell mates. We have no choice--some of the bugs must die so others may live. But which? I decide to discriminate: biting, common and ugly bugs get the death penalty; cute, colorful, fascinating bugs get life-behind bars with the possibility of parole. Explaining this to my nine-year-old son, he pulls himself up to his full 48 inches. Tenting his hands before him and boring into me with his eyes he states, "Many who live deserve death, and many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be so eager to deal out death and judgment."
Hmmm. The words sear my soul like Sting biting into Shelob’s bloated abdomen. So I count to ten. While sparing the ladybugs, butterflies and praying mantis, I cotton-ball the flies, mosquitoes, wasps and beetles. Instantly they begin to twitch, then slowly die. I feel terrible. Hence this confession and epiphany: why not combine science and art? Let the kids catch them, photograph or draw them, and then set Willie free. Is this too much to ask? No, I plead, please, for the love of Albert Schweitzer, don’t make me torture again next fall--in bug collecting merge the disciplines of art and science!
Loren M. Lambert September 13, 2003
Saturday, September 13, 2003
Sunday, September 7, 2003
Utah, Speed-Bump Utopia!
I despise speed bumps. I would bet good money that there’s a correlation between their burgeoning numbers and Utah’s birthrate. You see, instead of batting our speeding teens up the side of the head, we build speed bumps and then slip the lead foots the keys to the Hummer. There are probably five speed bumps to every Utah teen and three times as much cursing as we all eerk, squeak, squeak our merry spasmodic way through the trailer park. However, after watching my grandma waddle across the street from her condo the other day with only a one-finger salute and a speed bump between her and the teens she was taunting, I have softened up a bit. I mean, hey, such a heartening display of geriatric rage should be admired, if not encouraged.
Moreover, speed bumps are not without precedent. Look at adolescent acne--speed bumps to underage sex. Then there’s wrinkles, baldness, prolific coarse-and-gray ear, nose, #@*!$ and back hair--speed bumps to overage sex. And finally, marriage--speed bump to any sex.
No, we should not forsake nature nor humanity's creation of risk reducing remedies but improve upon them. For instance, to curb birthrates, don’t just extend the virtues of marriage to just gays--let poodles, mosquitoes and guppies marry. Similarly, we could create a bra with multiple rows and layers of fake breasts and give all adolescents hair-growth hormones so their wandering fingers, searching for the craggy peaks of the Misty Mountains or heading towards the forbidden forests of Fangorn, get lost in the foothills or tangled in a mass of bristling shrubbery.
We could require tobacco companies to lace cigarette filters with glass shards as speed bumps to nicotine addiction. We could force breweries to design containers so that intoxicating spirits seep out in infuriating droplets--speed bumps to alcoholism. And while we’re at it, let’s engineer all of our roads so that if a driver dares exceed the speed limit, he and his vehicle will be pummeled into molecular oblivion. If we do these things, birthrates will drop, our driving ranks will mature and mellow, and then we’ll be safe to eliminate all the speed bumps. Yeah, baby--move backwards to go forward.
Let’s do it! All I ask on our way to speed-bump utopia is that we impose a speed-bump tax to replace my brakes and adjust the suspension on my, uh, well, car.
Loren M. Lambert
September 7, 2003
Moreover, speed bumps are not without precedent. Look at adolescent acne--speed bumps to underage sex. Then there’s wrinkles, baldness, prolific coarse-and-gray ear, nose, #@*!$ and back hair--speed bumps to overage sex. And finally, marriage--speed bump to any sex.
No, we should not forsake nature nor humanity's creation of risk reducing remedies but improve upon them. For instance, to curb birthrates, don’t just extend the virtues of marriage to just gays--let poodles, mosquitoes and guppies marry. Similarly, we could create a bra with multiple rows and layers of fake breasts and give all adolescents hair-growth hormones so their wandering fingers, searching for the craggy peaks of the Misty Mountains or heading towards the forbidden forests of Fangorn, get lost in the foothills or tangled in a mass of bristling shrubbery.
We could require tobacco companies to lace cigarette filters with glass shards as speed bumps to nicotine addiction. We could force breweries to design containers so that intoxicating spirits seep out in infuriating droplets--speed bumps to alcoholism. And while we’re at it, let’s engineer all of our roads so that if a driver dares exceed the speed limit, he and his vehicle will be pummeled into molecular oblivion. If we do these things, birthrates will drop, our driving ranks will mature and mellow, and then we’ll be safe to eliminate all the speed bumps. Yeah, baby--move backwards to go forward.
Let’s do it! All I ask on our way to speed-bump utopia is that we impose a speed-bump tax to replace my brakes and adjust the suspension on my, uh, well, car.
Loren M. Lambert
September 7, 2003
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