Monday, August 30, 2010

I'm Sure They Had Nothing Against Foxes

I spent much of yesterday feeling melancholic. I don't know why, since on the whole my life is going very nicely.

It could have been because summer returned, not that I asked it to. I like autumn and I've never been particularly fond of August. But the temperature has returned to nearly 90, which it generally does in time for the new school year (I remember as a kid, how it always drove me crazy that the weather was never better than for the first week of school). Or maybe it's something physical. I've been feeling achy all day today, so maybe I have a little something wrong with me. Or it could just be that every time I checked things online (which I do all the time), I kept seeing pictures of Glenn Beck.

Whatever the cause, I felt mildly sorrowful, which probably wasn't the best of moods to watch a documentary on the Discovery Channel about the demise of the dinosaurs.

I am, as we all know, a total sucker for anything where civilization comes to an end. I wouldn't have written Life As We Knew It if I weren't attracted to that sort of thing. And I love dinosaur shows. It astounds me how they get all those fabulous closeups, which are particularly impressive on my Stegosaurus sized high def TV.

But last night, watching all those cute vicious dinosaurs eat each other and then die anyway really made me sad. Not that I want to coexist with dinosaurs. I like mammals and I'm glad to be one.

But watching that nasty asteroid land in the Gulf Of Mexico (I think that's where it landed; geography isn't my strong suit), and seeing all the disasters spread throughout Dinosaurland moved me to tears (okay, not all the way to tears, but to near tears). Scooter didn't help. He had no interest in sitting on my lap, which would have given me some comfort as the poisonous gasses killed species after species. Or maybe it was the volcanic eruptions. Or the 300 degree temperatures. Or the gigantic ocean wave. Or the nuclear winter. Or all of the above.

This morning, I found an article on what killed off the dinosaurs that says maybe it was a lot of asteroids all at once, or some such thing. Like one wasn't enough.

Most likely though, it was Glenn Beck. The Tyrannosaurus Rexes and Reginas probably got together and decided if what mammals would eventually evolve into was Fox News, they'd rather go while the going was good.

My guess is Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, and many other such mammals, would have felt exactly the same way!

3 comments:

Fear Death By Water said...

Susan,

Have you been watching 'The Colony' on The Discovery Chanel at all? It's five episodes in and seems to be OK. I guess. The only downside for me is the participants aren't fully buying into the experiment. They aren't taking it seriously. But I guess you'd enjoy it if you enjoy that type of thing.

Tim

Oh and blogger has a tab now called "stats". You can look at where people are who read your blog, what page they're looking at and how they found your blog. I know as if you did have enough to occupy your time right? Me too. :-)

Fear Death By Water said...

uh ... that's 'didn't have enough to occupy your time'

Tim

Susan Beth Pfeffer said...

Hi Tim and hi Tim again-

I haven't watched The Colony. This summer, pretty much all I've watched is baseball (and now baseball and tennis), and all I've exercycled to in the mornings has been DVDs of Dallas (what a nasty man that JR Ewing was).

I'll have to check that "stats" tab. Thanks for letting me know about it (I promise I won't tell JR!).

PS-My "word verfication" such as it is is quetickl, which sounds like some obscure dinosaur or another.