The Sophomoric Wordsmith

Those Herons Had It Coming

The following is my (rejected) contribution to blvd, a fashion magazine published at my place of employment.

Remember hurricane Katrina? Remember the people that stayed in New Orleans, even after the calls to evacuate? Remember how some people said that whatever happened to them was their own fault for staying? Well, it was their fault. Never mind if they were too poor to move to another state. They should have just walked the 400 miles away to safety, and slept on the grass in the median of the interstate.

Now there’s another disaster in Louisiana, and another set of “victims.” Don’t be fooled by news anchors that talk about the “innocent animals” covered in oil. Those animals should have known what was coming. They saw the smoke rising from the exploding oil rig months ago. It’s their own fault for staying in their pristine marshes and undisturbed wetland habitats. Those herons have wings; they could have easily flown away. They can’t now, of course, since they (stupidly) covered their wings and everything else in oil when they dove into the water to catch fish to feed themselves. But don’t feel bad for the animals. They’re animals! They probably can’t even feel the crude oil covering their scales, feathers, flippers, mouths and eyes. Well, maybe the dolphins can (they are smart enough to do flips on command, after all) but don’t feel bad for them either…if they knew what was good for them they would have gotten themselves captured and sold to Sea World long ago. They’re supposed to be as smart as our five year olds. Don’t they understand that they are only here for our entertainment?

So forget about them. Don’t do anything different just because there might be a couple million or so barrels of oil lapping up onto beaches all over he southern coast of the US. Don’t try to join your fellow Americans in a boycott of British Petroleum. It’s not like you can really blame BP anyway. They didn’t mean to fill miles of ocean with black sludge. Sure, they cut some corners on a few safety precautions, but that’s what any corporation worth its salt would do as long as it produces an increase in profits. It’s called streamlining for maximum efficiency. Tell that to the next person who tries to complain about how BP ruined the environment. And besides, who needs a beach when you have a pool? So don’t even worry about it. You’re plenty busy living your life anyway.

But above all let there be pleasure. Let there be textural delight, let there be silken words and flinty words and sodden speeches and soaking speeches and crackling utterance and utterance that quivers and wobbles like rennet. Let there be rapid firecracker phrases and language that oozes like a lake of lava. Words are your birthright. Unlike music, painting, dance and raffia work, you don’t have to be taught any part of language or buy any equipment to use it, all the power of it was in you from the moment the head of daddy’s little wiggler fused with the wall of mummy’s little bubble. So if you’ve got it, use it. Don’t be afraid of it, don’t believe it belongs to anyone else, don’t let anyone bully you into believing that there are rules and secrets of grammar and verbal deployment that you are not privy to. Don’t be humiliated by dinosaurs into thinking yourself inferior because you can’t spell broccoli or moccasins. Just let the words fly from your lips and your pen. Give them rhythm and depth and height and silliness. Give them filth and form and noble stupidity. Words are free and all words, light and frothy, firm and sculpted as they may be, bear the history of their passage from lip to lip over thousands of years. How they feel to us now tells us whole stories of our ancestors.

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—	Stephen Fry (via mistergookey)