The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (12 page)

To make some of my better points, let’s head out on a safari. It’s important. There are some rhinos that need our help!

That’s right, save the rhinos … or the pronghorn antelope, or the dung beetle, or the meerkat, or whatever your pathetic choice of animal to champion this week as a way of vaulting yourself into my consciousness without any legitimate accomplishment or quality of your own. But let’s go with the rhinos for now. Big. Cute. Deadly. Got no real issues with them. But if their numbers are dwindling, and they are, isn’t that nature’s way of showing them the door, like nature does with every species eventually? Didn’t nature put us here, too? Isn’t the natural order of things for species to eventually go extinct? Doesn’t the fossil record indicate that everything dies out sooner or later? How do you know that nature, and fate, and evolution didn’t put us here to get rid of them, so something better and more productive might rise in their place? How do you know that keeping them around by artificial means isn’t stifling the development of a baboon with two brains that might cure cancer in five hundred years? Who are you, eco-boy, to decide? Why do you, and not nature, get the deciding vote on what goes on the species scrap heap and what doesn’t? I know. Rhinos are beautiful, they’re intelligent, blah blah blah.

Like the whales. We’ve gotta keep them around, too, because someday we’re going to be able to communicate with them. This coming from the likes of you, who doesn’t even communicate with the members of his own family residing two towns over, which speaks the same language. But we keep the whales around for the extremely unlikely reason that we might be able to “communicate” with them one day. As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather get rid of them if it affords the benefit not having to put up with the likes of you, even if that means that my great-great-great-great-great-grandson is never going to get an email from friggin’ Shamu. And what is Shamu going to say, anyway? “Hey, humans. This is a chain email. Bring me some fish and a cute female whale to mate with. Then leave me alone or I’ll bite ya in half.”

Trees. Got to save the trees. Majestic giants, leafy wonders, your bark-covered blood brothers. Right. Gotta fight those evil lumberjacks. Don’t let the fact that natural occurrences, like floods and lightning-ignited forest fires, kill more trees per year than human logging. Inconvenient truth, and leaves you nothing to scream about and no one to scream
at
. It’s frustrating, I know, because how can you feel morally superior to a swollen river or an electrically charged thundercloud? Neither of them cares about you, and neither of them will throw fifty dollars of guilt money into a
paper
envelope and send it to your annoying tree charity of choice, just to make you shut up and go away. So that leaves
us
for you to annoy, and pester, and feel better than. As for me, I like the fact that trees exist so they can be cut down, and used to build things, like hospitals, and schools, and airports, and research labs. I like that. I want more of that. The older and bigger the tree that gets cut down, the better. It’s had a wonderful, glorious, long life. It is getting closer (by dint of probability) to dying every second in a fire, or flood, or by disease, and getting rid of it will open a hole in the forest canopy that will let sunlight in, which will then help to make the area ready for a new tree, which would never have existed had that selfish old bastard of a tree, and an idiot accomplice like you, had their druthers. In fact, two or three trees might be able to grow, and thrive, in that old tree’s place. So what are you saving it for? We need building materials. We need paper. What do you want to do, wipe your ass with an old cat?

And how old is old? How big is big? Where do you draw the line as far as which tree to protect and which goes into my next roll of double-quilted, extra-soft TP? How tall? Fifty Feet? Sixty? Eighty? And how old? A hundred years? A hundred and twenty-five? A hundred and fifty? What qualifies as salvation worthy? You’ll sit there in the leaf litter, tearfully bemoaning this poor “elder” as the chain saws get fired up, as long as someone is paying attention to
you
. But you haven’t sent your own grandmother a Christmas card in eleven years. You’ll chain yourself to an old-growth redwood as long as a guy with a camera from CNN or the Discovery Channel shows up, but you won’t volunteer at an old-age home or a homeless shelter.

See, it’s not about the rhinos, or the whales, or the trees.

It’s …

about …

you.

The constant in any radical ecological movement is not a concern for nature. It is a humongous, overarching narcissism. It is the belief in, and subsequent practice of, a form of enlightened fascism, a sense of entitlement, and a kind of conservationist noblesse oblige that dictates that attention be paid to
you
, and what
you
believe, and what
you
want. And, quite frankly, I don’t care about you, or what you think should be done about any particular animal or plant. And raving at me about it, and making an ass out of yourself to get my attention or the attention of a very busy world, does not improve matters, and it does nothing for the species you claim to care for.

Stop crying, Jungle Boy. Some truths are hard to take. Sorry I roughed you up so bad, but somebody hadda do it.

Now pick yourself up off my driveway and go wash my truck.

 

or you aspiring MMA athletes who want to get into the sport to score chicks like mad, let me spare you some pain: most fighters are never recognized in public. Recognized as children left behind, maybe, but not in the way that will get you an adorably polite Asian giggling while she covers her mouth and flashes you a peace sign. From time to time, passing strangers even throw spare change into my teammates’ coffee cups as they lean against a building looking like the homeless bums they could easily be.

If you want a job that will get you major fan recognition everywhere you go, do not become a fighter. Write that down. Now read what you just wrote:
do not become a fighter
. If you ignore my advice, your dream of being mobbed by beautiful women will not come true. In addition, you might as well tattoo “Don’t Hire Me” on your forehead because if you follow your half-baked ambition you will end up looking like a skydiver who packed a lunch instead of his parachute. Don’t believe me? Then listen to this.

C.B. Dollaway, an
Ultimate Fighter
alumnus and fellow decorated Division I wrestler, went to a Kanye West after party (don’t ask me why). A gorgeous lady strutted up to his table. She was almost comically tall, blond, curvier than a racetrack, and—gosh, how do I say this in a gentlemanly fashion?—rather robustly chested. She said to C.B., “Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look like Matt Damon?”

True, C.B. Dollaway does look like Matt Damon—like a Matt Damon who had the stuffing beat out of him, that is. I know it annoys C.B when someone mentions it, but when the one who makes such a remark is hot, the hotness dulls a lot of that annoyance. So he smiled and fished for a compliment by saying, “Thanks, most people say that I look like C.B. Dollaway.”

You trolling bastard.

I officially love this girl, because she actually knew who C.B. Dollaway was and
she didn’t recognize him
. In fact, she started making jokes about how no one knew who the heck he was (even though his season of
The Ultimate Fighter
had just aired). C.B. let her dig her own grave for a while, and then he leaned in and shouted, “I
am
C.B. Dollaway!”

Apparently (I wasn’t there because I wouldn’t be caught dead at a Kanye West after party, let alone his concert), the color drained from her face and then she left a girl-shaped cloud of dust as she hauled her shapely ass out of the club. So, let this story be a lesson to you. C.B. Dollaway is a decent fighter who had a good run on a television show watched by literally millions, and even
he
isn’t recognized by hot girls. Imagine how mediocre fighters feel on a daily basis. Worse, think about how
you
would feel. If you get into the sport for the love of fighting, all the power to you. If you get into it for hot chicks, I hope you will be OK dating Rosie and her five sisters.

 
BFFs
 

n many ways, my job is just like your job (unless you are a horse-reproductive specialist, in which case my job is nothing like your job; the only similarity being that we both wear gloves). To get ahead in my job, I compete against my coworkers. That championship belt isn’t just a trophy. It’s my corner office. My promotion. My Employee of the Month plaque. And once I have it, I’m chased down by all of those ambitious snots who think they can do better. But just because there is competition involved in the job doesn’t mean I can’t be friends with my coworkers. We can hang out, grab a bite to eat, talk about our days. And when promotion time comes around, we all fight to better our situations. My coworkers and I probably won’t be best chums during the free-for-all, but once a winner is declared, we can resume our water-cooler gossip. This is a normal part of all work environments. This is healthy.

With that said, I have to mention just how much it irritates me when a fighter refuses to compete against someone because “he’s my friend.” Have you ever heard of a professional football or basketball player sitting out a game because a friend of his was on the opposite team? No.

Lyoto Machida and Anderson Silva are systematically ruining MMA by trying to make it into a diplomatic mission with four-ounce gloves. It’s a
sport
, a
game
, amigos, and you two dancing macacos aren’t princes with peace treaties. Did you ever notice that Anderson dips a toe into the light heavyweight division only here and there? Anderson chooses to hide by emaciating himself. Have you seen that guy on weigh-in night? He looks like a terminal patient, or the victim of some Dickensian illness—like Tiny Tim grew up and traded his crutchs for four-ounce gloves. I keep expecting that Santa Clause look-alike to walk into frame, take Joe Rogan’s microphone, and start talking about how little it would cost to send Anderson to school.
For the price of one cup of coffee a day, you can make sure this Brazilian gets enough to eat
, and all that. Then you remember that what Anderson is doing is not only self-inflicted, but is just a means of avoiding being punched in the face by his best friend. I say that if you can’t take a solid right from a person you trust, you have no right to fight a stranger.

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