Collapsing

Last night I had a dream that a fish flew by outside my window. After I watched it perch on a tree, thought police came to my house and erased my brain because the flying fish was a sign of the imminent environmental apocalypse that the government was trying to cover up. I had to spend the rest of the dream trapped in an existence where my only thoughts could be childhood memories, half of which weren't even mine, accessed through a colorfully hand-drawn DVD menu.

I blame Jared Diamond. (Except for the DVD part. That is definitely related to the Dan Zanes video we checked out of the library.)

David has already expressed his surprise that I am still reading Collapse. And I'm a little surpised as well; I mean, I love me some apocalyptic fiction, but to read, in incredible detail, the ways that the Anasazi, the Easter Islanders, the Maya, the Vikings in Greenland, the Vikings in North America (you get the idea) all failed miserably in their environmental and societal policies and ended up starving to death? A little much, I think. I'm not even half-way through the book and I've already resigned myself to the eradication of all life as we know it within the next 10 years. Even though it goes against all my better instincts, I'm considering just stopping, because, I get it already, Diamond! They gluttonously consumed all available resources! They refused to consider the long-term consequences of their actions! There are some present-day parallels! Shelley got the same task done in fourteen lines, for goodness sakes.

But still, I'm reading. Where else would I learn about the dynamic field of packrat midden analysis?