The Yosemite Files: Volume One

Just what in the fuck is wildlife management? Besides being an oxymoron, this practice is an attempt for human beings to once again harness the awesome power of our natural world, beat it a few times in the head, and then piss all over it in an attempt to make it better. Wildlife management is a big topic here in Yosemite Valley, especially concerning the American Black Bear (make no mistake: it's not Mexican or Canadian).

Thanks to gross habituation of these large beasts through years of the tourist feeding, photographing, and I assume, fucking of these wonderful animals, they are now deemed out of control. So how do we solve the problem? More human intervention of course! Tens of bears are killed by Park Rangers every year because of the property damage they cause (yeah, that's fair, hold them to a penal code and an American ideal that they couldn't possibly comprehend). Those that haven't caused trouble yet are chased out of human infested areas in an attempt to "save" them (a lot like Christian Missionaries tried to "save" heathen Hereros in Africa).

I think that we just have to accept this as a byproduct of our own collective mismanagement in the first place, you know, like global warming. So, in fear of having our cars broken into (because of improper food storage) we pay people with federal funds, to go around shooting these bears with beanbags and maceballs because they are following the evolutionary path and foraging for the most abundant and easily available food source.

There isn't much management on the squirrel front, but these little fuckers are the most annoying of all. No matter how much you stomp your feet at them they just keep coming back. I like to ask people not to feed them not because I care if they become dependant on human food, or fat like many of the people I see waddling around here, but because I don't want a squirrel in my shadow wherever I go. These little shits are relentless. I had one try to take a drag off my cigarette the other day. I told him I would gladly bum him one, but I don't want his bubonic lips on my square.

In summation, wildlife is either no longer wild (thus the necessity of it's management) or we need to solve this problem at it's source: No more people, no more problem. If we close the park to visitors, the animals here will have no choice but to figure out how to find food from the land, or die. And that my friends is natural selection.

UPDATE: Still Nothing

My Twitter Homepage is full of nothing. I consider SPAM nothing. All it is is a bunch of advertisements trying to get me to download nothing songs from nowhere men. So I guess I have found a small semblance of something...Twitter is yet another advertising platform designed to get you in your private life, down home and all up in your biznass. Result: Twitter is something in the vein of a billboard on the roadside of life.

UPDATE: Twitter is Nothing

Nobody cares what you are doing right now. I thought it was bad in Middle/High School when people used AOL Instant Messenger as a social platform to talk to people that you would never face in real life. I mean "sexual" relationships were started, carried out, and ended all using this "social" utility. Then along came texting for people who were too lazy to pick up the phone and make a thirty second phone call and instead let their thumbs to the talking, thus dragging such as conversation over a period of hours. OK, I will admit it comes in handy sometimes when you are in a situation that you can't talk, but wait until after class for fucks sake. As the Internet slowly takes over our lives, Facebook comes into play, combining instant messaging with a social management tool that makes people feel important because they have over three hundred friends who are people that they would never talk to in real life. I boycotted it for as long as I could, but alas, I am a member with limited use.
Maybe I'm just hating on the next new thing, but in the age that the Internet can be carried around in your pocket with you, it's just getting to be too much. Twitter is really nothing. The people that care about what you are doing right now will call you to find out (or god forbid, text you), not check the fucking Internet. I don't want people following me, I'm already paranoid enough, and I certainly don't want some fucking Internet nerd to know that I'm taking a shower. Conjoined with reality television, why don't we all just wear webcams on our heads all the time so that our friends can experience first hand exactly what we're doing?

Anyway, after I post this, I will be going deep undercover and become a Twitter member, just to get the real scoop on this ridiculous craze. Wish me luck and look for me you fucking tweets!

Twitter is Nothing

As far as I can tell, Twitter is absolutely nothing. Is it a stripped down Facebook that is reduced to nothing but the iLike application? Does it achieve anything other than people's desperate attempt to have their name somewhere else on the Internet? Is Twitter anything? I like the Vanessa Carlton song "1,000 Miles," but I don't necessarily want everyone in the known universe (or at least those planetary systems with decent wireless reception) to connect me as a fan, shit, I don't even want my close friends to know that. This will mark my attempt to delve into this concept and research as closely as possible as I can (the Internet is a fifteen-minute bike ride or thirty minute bus ride away) while holding to the above post title as my hypothesis. If you think that Twitter might be something, or even something else, please feel free to respond to this post because after all, Twitter might not be nothing at all.

Inner Monologue

I don't think there are any thoughts in my head. [Yeah, I can see the fallic nature of that statement (that's why its funny). What is the adjective for fallacy anyway?]. Supposedly I'm part of the most intelligent group of sentient beings on this planet but I can't even prove it because I can't even track the thoughts running around in my head. Does anyone else have this problem? Ah, who am I kidding, no one is reading this now. Its all part of the trillions of words that will never be read by anyone spanning around the world and across this web.
Anyway, I think I may have pinpointed the problem: My Inner Monologue.
I have a tendency to talk to myself in my head, which makes it pretty hard to let thousands of processes per second go on. I talk to myself in my own head, in drawn out sentences. I think that's where most of my writing comes from too. I have a tendency to come up with a catch phrase that I really like and either start from there or work it into a work in progress some how. Sometimes it works, most times it doesn't.
To make things worse, music, my number one favorite medium and human invention, is a huge distraction. I went for a walk today and besides the birds chirping, the only music I heard on the whole trip was a passing half-second drifting to my ear from the gas station. The line: "...we've got a solution now." I knew I had heard it somewhere before and I drove me crazy the rest of the walk trying to figure out where it was from. I'm pretty sure I narrowed it down to some britpop band; like Blur or Supergrass or something, but who can be sure (until I hear it again, proving that that stupid little line will remain planted firmly somewhere in the back of my brain for up to the next seventy years). So while this stupid song lived upon the top of my frontal lobe, I was unable to have any other semblances of thought.
Am I supposed to find myself up there in the brain? It's proving to be quite difficult to find myself amongst the other eight billion people on this planet, much less among the 350 million in this country alone. If you see me, let me know, I sure would like to meet that guy and find out just what the hell it is he is doing these days. Thanks for being here to reflect upon.