DETERMINATION and STUPIDITY: Suicide

 

I got'ta admire the spunky, determined spirit of the manic depressive fifty year old inmate of Japan's Fuchu Prison, who attempted suicide on 19 February, 2008, While eating dinner he  stabbed himself in the head with the broken end of a chopstick. He failed in his attempt, but you could say this was final proof that you should never play with your food. And I thank God the sad gentleman in question was not restrained in a Swedish prison where he might have had access to a deadly spork.

Another winner of the “determined to do something stupid” award would to be the 46 year old Welsh coal miner Alan Urwin , who over three months in 1994 survived three separate self administered drug overdoses. Not one to be discouraged easily, Alan then decided to electrocute himself by wrapping a bare electric cord around his naked body and climbing into a full bathtub. When he plugged himself into the wall he blew a fuse and suffered a damn good shock. But he survived.

However, showing a real “never-say-die” spirit, Alan then bent the wire to form a noose, which he suspended from an  overhead beam.  He stood on a chair, slipped his head into the noose and jumped into eternity, or would have except the wire was too thin to support his weight. It snapped under the tension, and Alan landed on his butt.  Still not deterred Alan then broke the gas pipe in his room, laid down next to the open end and breathed deeply for several minutes. But even though his tiny house was now filled with toxic fumes, much to Alan’s dismay he was still alive. He grew impatient, and struck a match. 

The resulting explosion blew the roof off his room, and blew out one of the walls. However Alan suffered nothing worse than flash burns.  Whereupon his career as a dead man was cut short because he was convicted of arson and given two years probation, with the requirement that he undergo psychological counseling. Having finally gotten the message that the universe had been so persistently trying to deliver, Alan went into therapy and a year later was described as “cheerful".  

Suicide can best be described as a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And death is rarely - very, very, very, very rarely - a solution to anything.  It is even an ineffective way of punishing the survivors, from those who loved you to those strangers who have to clean up after you. But the one thing abundantly clear, is that no such rational explanation has ever deterred a suicide attempt. It is an irrational act, the product of defective thinking, usually committed under the influence of a drug, usually alcohol,  Amazingly it can often be prevented by the simple and prompt suggestion of,  "Please don't do that." Social engagement, such as asking a person standing on the edge of cliff, "What are you doing?" can often be enough to delay the attempt for a few minutes. And such a delay is called life. 

According to the Taiwan Fortean Times, a pair of lovers in Taiwan took the old adage “…till death do you part…” a little too literally.  

In-laws and out-laws from both families opposed the match of soldier Huang pin-jen and his girlfriend, Chang Shu-mei.  Denied the right to marry but determined to prove their undying love for each other, the couple proved instead that attempted suicide can always reduce love to the level of farce.  They jammed their heads into a single large plastic bag and tied it off at their necks. But the the drugs  (or maybe his/her partner’s breath), induced one of them to nausea, and he/she threw up in the bag,  reducing the level of romance substantially and forcing the other to choose life over humiliation.  The partner clawed their way out of the vile bag, inadvertently rescuing their companion at the same time. How disappointing.

The devoted lunatics then tried to drive off a gorge along the Central Cross-Island Highway,  If they survived the crash, they would surely drown in the river far below.  But they missed the river and landed instead in a cushion of trees and bushes which left them unfortunately uninjured.

In desperation they checked into the honeymoon suite at the two-star Samantha Hotel in Taipei. (It has since closed). After a romantic last supper they tied bed sheets together to form a pair of nooses, which they then attached to ceiling rods. But they had misjudged the length and weight of their suicide pact. When they jumped from their chairs, instead of dangling by the neck,  they landed on their feet and broke through the ceiling of the room below.

Luckily for them, the crackerjack staff of the Samantha Hotel failed to promptly notice the wrecked ceiling. So the lovebirds had time to rethink their methodology.  They decided to use the gas powered fireplace to put a coda on their love pact. They fed several coins into the pay as you go unit, turned the flames up to full and then blew them out. They quickly passed out from the toxic fumes, However, their cost consciousness proved the undoing of their undoing, and the timer on the gas jets ran out before the lovebird's numbers came up. They awoke several hours later with splitting headaches.

Finally, in mounting desperation, the lovebirds jumped hand in hand, out the window of their 12th story hotel room.  What could possibly be more romantic than that? It was a beautiful gesture – except it seemed the fates as well as their in-laws were opposed to this death do them part union.  They somehow missed the street, and landed instead on the tin roof of a five story restaurant. They thundered through the roof and crushed a large lobster tank, temporarily freeing dozens of doomed crustaceans, at least those that were not crushed instantly (a bunch of damned unlucky lobsters, if you ask me), and finishing their adventures in insanity by landing on a banquet table.

The lovers suffered numerous fractures and contusions and bruising but were finally stabilized in a stable condition at a local hospital. And when their families heard how dedicated Pin-jen and Shu-mei were to killing each other rather than parting,  both families agreed to accept the match. Which would have been the logical and compassionate solution from the beginning. 

The lesson I take from all of this is that no matter how crappy your life may feel, you can always make it worse by trying to kill yourself. Don't be an idiot. Stick around and be miserable, like the rest of us. It's only fair.

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"The Book of Bunny Suicides" (2003) originated in the twisted mind of Andy Riley

FINDING OUR WAY with a Small Brain

I believe we will create a better world, – probably.  Call me a “depressed optimist”.  Case in point;  researchers of the 3 inch fossil Fuxianhuia protensa, (above) - English pronunciation "Fuk-swe-on-wea-pro-ten-sant" -  suggest that half a billion years ago these little buggies suffered a glitch during sexual reproduction, and begot a double genetic pairing in their proto-brains. This “double dose” of mental DNA strands gave rise to higher brain functions.  Evidently, it also gave rise to crazy.

As one brainiac involved in this study put it, “The price of higher intelligence and more complex behaviors is more mental illness.” What this implies is that whether you are studying religion or astronomy, Descartes or Deuteronomy, you are ingesting a degree of irrationality right along with any knowledge you acquire. 

The ability to use fire allowed us to break down meat proteins, but that also bestows the ability to burn down the house you live in. And we do it all the time – ask any Trump devotee.  Music or mythology, Einstein or astrology, nothing that humans have ever invented could not also be used to nullify humans. Why should the Internet be any different?

Recently, some idiots exploited a “hole” in the Java software system, putting, according to the United States Department of Homeland Security, one billion computers at risk.   In other words, the $8 trillion World Wide Web could be destroyed because somebody found out a way to make 50 cents of profit by blowing up the WWW.

My question is , what kind of idiot would try to make a profit from destroying all future profits?  But the answer is obvious. The same kind of idiots who blew up the world wide economic system in 1929 and again in 2007, and are trying to do it again right now. Bitcoin anyone? The same kind of idiots who are currently running the National Rifle Association, seemingly determined to convince the vast majority of Americans that the terms “gun owner” and “gun nut” are synonymous. As a famous fictional American once said, “Stupid is as stupid does”.

On the plus side, I also recently came across research from South Africa and Sweden, which reveals that the average dung beetle uses GPS in rolling up and away their poop balls. But the G in this GPS does not stand for global, but for galactic. 

I should pause here long enough to thank the lowly dung beetles for their dedication, for it is through their tireless efforts at removing billions of tons of herbivore waste from the surface of the earth that you and I can walk without sinking up to our knees in cow, bison, pig, sheep and moose shit. They bury their carefully gathered and formed poop balls just after laying their eggs in them, to ensure that future generations of dung beetles have a hearty first meal to start their lives. 

We've always known that once the lady beetle gets a nice juicy ball of dung together, they climb on top and do a little dance. Entomologists assumed, that just like the money hungry billionaires, this was a dung beetle's way of saying to the universe “This ball of crap is mine!” 

But now it seems they are actually seeking to orientate themselves so they can find their way back to the burrow they have dug for their balls.  If the sun is up, they use the sun. At night they use the moon. And on moonless nights they use the Milky Way, that smear of billions of stars that runs across the night sky, which nobody ever figured out till now that a dung beetle was even vaguely aware of.

According to Professor Marcus Bryne, from Wits University in Johannesburg, “The dung beetles don't care which direction they're going in; they just need to get away from the big fight with the other beetles at the poo pile (above).”   Don't we all.

And, you know, there appears to be a lesson here, on the relationship between Newtonian and Quantum physics. The beetles can use the Milky Way to define a straight line back to their burrows, because they are so small, and the Milky Way is so far away. 

However, a moth, using the same basic methodology, circles a porch light because they are bigger and closer to the light source. The moths think they are flying in a straight line, as long as they keep the light at an equal distance.  Sort of like cult members and Red Sox fans.  Or bundles of energy we call neutrons locked in shell around a nucleus.     

Or like a human driving down the interstate highway between Houston and Beaumont, Texas. It feels like an endless straight dull line, and it is. But it's a straight line drawn on a sphere, so it ain't straight.  Or to put it another way; the closer you get to an individual problem, the easier it is to become blinded  as to what the problem you are actually dealing with, is

But to get back to my original example, Fuxianhuia protensa - this little proto-bugy has been described as a “missing link”, or more accurately as “a mistaken link”. The problem is the little multi-legged creature, which an average human would have thoughtlessly stepped  on if they spotted it in their closet, might have been the ancestor of all bugs – all crickets, cockroaches, dung beetles, moths and honey bees. But it also might not.  Or to let Professor Nicholas Strausfeld from the University of Virginia explain it. “There has been a very long debate about the origin of insects,” he says. And that, it seems, explains everything.

See, the grand daddy of all buggies was either a crab or a sea monkey (brine shrimp if you are over the age of twelve). Crabs are crustaceans, and sea monkey's are brachiopods. Crabs have better brains than do sea monkeys. So, ancient sea monkeys were once thought to have evolved into insects, while ancient crabs evolved into everybody else. 

But then along comes Fuxianhuia protensa, with a squiggly body and an organized brain, and a dependable dated age of 520 million years old. And that is old enough to have been the great-great-great-etcettera-granddaddy of both lines of evolution – which means that life got smarter and then found it might be more advantageous to get stupid again, if with fewer legs.

I can dig that..  Every human male comes to realize that women often prefer bastards to nice guys, and young women realize that most men prefer easy girls to smart girls.  As your father or mother might have told you at that point, “Life isn't fair”, and he or she may even have asked you, “If you ever figure out the opposite sex, let me know, will you?” 

To put it in a more gender neutral way, most people reach a point when they suspect that their brains are just getting in the way of their hormones making them happy. And it appears that sometime during the Cambrian period, the squiggly crawly things wiggling across the ocean floor first confronted that basic philosophical conundrum: bigger brains or bigger balls and/or bigger tits? Which way will make me happy?

At that point it now appears that the balls and tits returned to a simpler brain and instant gratification, while the brains tried the deferred reward path. And the amazing thing is, it appears we both ended up in the same place, standing atop a our own pile of dung and looking to the Milky Way for answers to the Universe and everything or at least the chance to get laid, which is usually the same thing.

It's enough to make anybody a depressed optimist.

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THANK YOU, PROFESSOR MOORE

I am deeply grateful to Professor Clement Clark Moore. In 500 delicately crafted words he created one of my most cherished childhood memories, which begins, “Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house”. But a disparaging voice has recently been heard, claiming the professor was a fraud. Do not believe it. You can no more separate Clement from his words than you can a father from his children or an author from the world he lived in.

“...Fond parents swayed my every thought;

No blame I feared, no praise I sought,

But what their love bestowed....

The best thing that ever happened to Clement Moore was his father's massive stroke early in 1811, forcing the old man to gradually relinquish control over his 31 year old son's life. Despite having suffered a stroke myself, I feel no sympathy for the Episcopalian Bishop. Six years earlier, when called to the bedside of the dying Alexander Hamilton, Bishop Benjamin Right Moore (above) forced the great man to beg three times, before providing the comfort of absolution. Witnesses described the Bishop's behavior as “cruel and unjustifiable”. I agree. And it is unfair to demand that Clement (below) carry his father's sins.

,,,Whene’er night’s shadows called to rest,

I sought my father, to request

His benediction mild.

A mother’s love more loud would speak;

With kiss on kiss she’d print my cheek,

And bless her darling child....”

To A Lady (1804) signed - “Simplicicus”. (Clement Clarke Moore above).

The young adult Clement saved the poet, born a Jew and forced to convert to Catholicism, Lorenzo Da Ponte. Twenty years earlier Da Ponte had written the libretto for three of Mozart's operas - “The Marriage of Figaro”, “Don Giovanni” and “Così fan tutte”. In 1805, broke and desperate, Da Ponte arrived on American shores with his mistress and 4 children. Clement hired him as an Italian teacher, and even secured him a position as a Professor of Italian Literature at Columbia – at once the first Catholic and the first Jewish faculty member.

The dreams of Hope that round us play,

And lead along our early youth,

How soon, alas! they fade away

Before the sober rays of Truth...

In 1812 the 35 year old Clement fell in the love with the slight and strong 19 year old Catharine Elizabeth Taylor. They were married on 27 November of 1813.

And yet there are some joys in life

That Fancy’s pencil never drew;

For Fancy’s self, my own dear wife,

Ne’er dreamt the bliss I owe to you.

In preparation for the wedding, his parents had finally transferred control of the Moore family estates in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey to Clement. And a third story was added to Chelsea, the mansion on a hill two miles north of Greenwich village. And in early 1815, a daughter, Margaret Elliot, was born to the happy couple.

...When cruel Palsy’s withering blow

Had left my father weak, forlorn,

He yet could weep for joy, to know

I had a wish’d-for infant born.

And, as he lay in death’s embrace,

You saw when last on earth he smil’d;

You saw the ray that lit his face

When he beheld our darling child.”

From a Husband to a Wife.  (Clement Clarke Moore 1816)

To my ear this dutiful verse rings hollow with convention. But the sanctimonious domineering hypocrite Bishop Moore died in late February of 1816.  His home schooling had trained Clement, like himself, for the clergy. But Clement rejected that career.  That same year, Clement and Catherine had a second daughter, Charity Elizabeth Moore, and in 1818, a son, Benjamin Moore. It was his children who changed Clement.

On a warm sunny day, in the midst of July,

A lazy young pig lay stretched out in his sty,
Like some of his betters, most solemnly thinking
That the best things on earth are good eating and drinking....

As they grew, the children found, as love does, the chinks and cracks in their father's armor. And unlike his own father, Clement found the courage to tentatively lower his defenses and embrace the assault.

...When, at last, he thought fit to arouse from his bath,

A conceited young rooster came just in his path:
A precious smart prig, full in vanity drest,
Who thought, of all creatures, himself far the best.

More children followed, as the man who was an only child built the large family he had always wanted, with his beloved Caroline. There was Mary “Lil Sis” Clarke Moore, born in 1819.

'Hey day! little grunter, why where in the world

Are you going so perfum'd, pomatum'd, and curl'd?
Such delicate odors my senses assail,
And I see such a sly looking twist in your tail,
That you, sure are intent on some elegant sporting;
Hurra! I believe, on my life, you are courting;

Clement Moore Jr. was born in 1821 with a birth impairment, perhaps cerebral palsy. Rather than isolate the child in an institution, Clement and Margaret kept the boy by their loving side for the rest of their lives.

'Well, said, master Dunghill,' cried Pig in a rage,

'You're doubtless, the prettiest beau of the age,
With those sweet modest eyes staring out of your head,
And those lumps of raw flesh, all so bloody and red.
Mighty graceful you look with those beautiful legs,
Like a squash or a pumpkin on two wooden pegs...

Like his father before him, Clement home schooled his children. But they were not forced to memorize Hebrew and Latin, as he had been. Instead the elder Clement set problems before them, such as the task to decide which life was to be preferred, that of a rooster or a pig. A fourth daughter, named Emily Moore, was born in 1822.

Hereupon, a debate, like a whirlwind arose,

Which seem'd fast approaching to bitings and blows;
'Mid squeaking and grunting, Pig's arguments flowing;
And Chick venting fury 'twixt screaming and crowing.
At length, to decide the affair, 'twas agreed
That to counselor Owl they should straightway proceed...

Catharine Van Cortalandt Moore was born in 1825.

...It seem'd to the judge a strange cause to be put on,

To tell which was better, a fop or a glutton;
Yet, like a good lawyer, he kept a calm face,
And proceeded, by rule, to examine the case;
With both his round eyes gave a deep-meaning wink,
And, extending one talon, he set him to think.

And finally there was Maria Thersea Barrington Moore, who was born in 1826.

“...Were each on the table serv'd up, and well dress'd,

I could easily tell which I fancied the best;
But while both here before me, so lively I see,
This cause is, in truth, too important for me;
Without trouble, however, among human kind,
Many dealers in questions like this you may find.
Yet, one sober truth, ere we part, I would teach --
That the life you each lead is best fitted for each.

Nine children in all, each an individual personality to be discovered, enjoyed and entertained. You can never lie to your children without lying to yourself'.

Thus ended the strife, as does many a fight;

Each thought his foe wrong, and his own notions right.
Pig turn'd, with a grunt, to his mire anew,
And He-biddy, laughing, cried -- cock-a-doodle-doo.

The Rooster and the Pig, Clement Clarke Moore

There is no question Clement Moore wrote the Rooster and the Pig.  But did it precede or follow 1823's  “A visit from St. Nicholas”?   Moore did not initially claim authorship of either, but that was not unusual for the man. And neither did Major John Livingston, the nominated challenger. However, no friends of Livingston ever claimed he wrote the greatest Christmas poem ever written. It would be a generation removed from that Knickerbocker Christmas before there was any attempt to reassign authorship to Livingston. Whereas, from the beginning there was a chorus naming Clement Moore as the author, beginning almost on Boxing Day, 1823. And with what you now know of the oft demeaned Clement Clarke Moore, can there still be doubt?  He is the hero of everyone who loves Christmas.

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