Human Footprint: I Hope Mine Is 44 Triple E

National Geographic premiered the new show, Human Footprint tonight.

Before either of my two readers roll their eyes and call me a wing nut, understand that I am a subscriber to the magazine, watcher of the channel, and in general, a liker of the good images that National Geographic provides us.

Now, with that out of the way, let me sum up Human Footprint for those who were busy at the barbecue roasting a pig and slugging back milk or beer. So what?

The show features Elizabeth Vargas counting the pints of milk we drink, the tons of pork we eat, the thousands of eggs we eat, and on and on and on. And, in Elizabeth Vargas voice, it's all too damn much! She is disgusted with each of us. Our dinner plates, our breakfast choices, our preference for chicken. Elizabeth TV. We've seen it all before and heard her shock and disgust while she delivers just about every story she's ever delivered.

So, we eat a lot, we drink a lot, and apparently, we boink a lot or there wouldn't be so many of us pissing Elizabeth off.

By the way Elizabeth and Nat Geo, we are animals that are born as a result of procreation and when we arrive we're frickin hungry and need diapers and clothing. Big surprise.

We will either make it or not. It makes no difference. If we consume more than the world can give us, we die off. Then things change, the world goes on without us and without so much as a hiccup. If we don't consume more than the world can give us, we live on, we adapt, we spread out and make even more babies. End of story.

If it is too hard for National Geographic to understand that human beings are just another species, in an old world of trillions of species, then they might want to search for another hook. I know, plenty of my two readers will point out that because we can reason, think, calculate, then we should apply all of that to our lifestyles and... what? Eat less fish? Have one egg for breakfast instead of two? Take half the showers we now take?

The arrogance of the whole idea that we use too much is that we think that we are so damned important. We are not. We will live and die, and if we do it sooner than later, what of it?

Mother Earth isn't charmed with our visit and will do just fine, even better, without us. And I'm way okay with that.

In An Absolut World of Phony Victims

The Absolut Vodka print ad has pissed a lot of people off and gave others a phony sense of smug superiority.

The print ad, which appeared on billboards and in magazines in Mexico, made it's way to a wider audience via the Internet. The strange ad has been the subject of countless blogs and has sparked fiery arguments between those who find it funny and those who see it for what it is.

To the Mexicans that whine about the theft of their land by the United States, it doesn't matter that it was Mexico that started the war, and lost the war. It also doesn't matter that after the war Mexico sold the land to the United States in a treaty deal. All that matters to them is playing the phony victim where the big bad Americans bullied them out of what was rightly theirs.

Perhaps those Mexicans are unfamiliar with their own history: Mexico was never native Mexican.

The land that they are crying over was taken from the real indigenous inhabitants by the Spaniards. From Europe. Over there, where the Spanish language originated. But, for the sake of playing victim, it is better for the Mexicans to forget that.

So, let's play along with the victims. It's 2008, and through some tortured channel of convoluted logic, many Mexicans blame their unfortunate situations on America 'stealing' their land. To many of these people this imagined theft makes it perfectly justifiable to invade America illegally.

Well, what say they had all of that land back? Even though it was not their land originally, let's say that in 2008 they can lay claim to it and all of it is suddenly under Mexican rule. Would that scenario make their situations any better?

Or would it simply be a larger geographic area from which to flee?