deepundergroundpoetry.com
THE WORD AND VERSE Issue 1 - P2
The word and verse is an independent publication put together by members of DU for the purpose of entertainment and is in no way intended to offend or cause suicide.
-1 P2
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That's what she said.
The first date in literature appears in the 5,000-year-old Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. In order to tame Enkidu, a Tarzan-like wild man
who is terrorising his people, the king, Gilgamesh, sends Shamhat, a beautiful prostitute. There was no question of first date nerves.
They meet at a water hole where "Shamhat loosened her undergarments, and he took in her attractions". He goes on to drink seven
jars of beer, eats bread for the first time and the couple spend a week in bed. As a result, Enkidu decides to shave, clean himself up
and get dressed in clothes for the first time. Rejected by his former animal friends, he accompanies Shamhat to the city, "having
acquired wisdom".
source: QI interesting facts
--------
**How many burnt kittens would it take to get Grace (Idryad) pissed off?
................................................................................................................................................................................................
Let's Waste The Children
I regret to inform you that I will need to kill a whole lot of children. It’s ok though, because if you are reading this then you are
probably from a relatively wealthy country, and I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the first ones I’ll kill will be the children of
anyone you know.
The need to kill children is not new, so I don’t see the point in getting terribly excited about it. A few years ago I took a sailing trip up
through the Pacific from New Zealand and it was interesting to reflect that humans there have been doing this for a very long time.
The islands of the Pacific have a feature that most places don’t: They are small enough for most people to grip the concept that they
have finite resources available to support human life. The earth is an island also, but we as a species seem to be having a little trouble
grasping this point on the larger scale. At a small scale, when you yourself have to draw the water from the well, or go out onto the
reef looking for fish for lunch, you can easily see when the total number of people has exceeded the ability of the island to support you.
So, let’s talk about how Pacific Islanders solved this problem of population pressure. Traditionally they used two approaches. One was
a habit of sending groups of excess people out on long sea voyages to find more land. Usually the son of a chief would lead the
voyage, with strict instructions to not return. The successful voyages led to the population of islands as far away as New Zealand and
Easter Island where the failed voyages resulted in a temporary bonanza for sharks. This method is still going on today, with a net yearly
export of people off the islands to places like New Zealand and Australia. The second approach was the euthanizing of newborn
children, and this was equally effective for everyone except the sharks.
Pacific islanders used these methods to keep family sizes low enough to only replace loses from accident, warfare and old age. They
also had one more slightly harder to understand cultural idea; because the island peoples had a strong culture of revering the elderly,
they did not have to have large families to ensure that the parents stayed fed as they aged. This point is made because it offers
another route to control population that is not currently available to many. It only takes a visit to a country without any form of
welfare program to see that fear of financial hardship in old age leads to ever increasing family size (see note 1 below).
So that is how the Pacific Islanders were in these Pacific islands at the time of Captain Cook’s arrival. In the interest of examining what
is happening globally, let’s now look at what happened once the societies changed away from these ‘heathen’ ideas. It is now possible
to travel to Tonga and see poverty in the midst of paradise. The ocean is fished bare, the sea-birds are gone, the islands are mono-
cultures and the diet of the people is reduced to an average of only five or six reliable food groups (small fish, sea slug, pork, dog,
banana, coconut, taro).
That a people can live in what most Westerners would call paradise, and be effectively on a subsistence diet should frankly scare the
shit out of you. The reasons are simple: they broke the rules by over populating because the missionaries failed to understand that these
people had a society which allowed them to balance their needs to the available resources. Once they did not have the opportunity to
apply their techniques (through pressure from the missionary churches), the quality of life in these areas dropped significantly so that
now, they rely heavily on overseas financial, medical and food support. The lesson here is clear: when you live on an island, you had
better understand how many people your island can support.
The Earth is now showing us in a million ways that it is an island. An island that supports 7 billion people, and growing, and there are
no new islands over the horizon or countries to send food aid to us. Where does that leave you and I? Easter Island provides the
perfect lesson. Easter Islanders used their forests to build statues for ancestor worship until there was so little forest on the islands
that they couldn’t build canoes to go fishing. When Europeans arrived, there was a small community of starving and sickly people
living on a denuded and war ravaged bare rock, surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish that they couldn’t access. Resource pressure
leads to environmental degradation and conflict, and history shows examples of this everywhere you look. The terrifying difference is
that this time, having failed to learn our mistakes, we have also run out of islands.
Which is why, dear readers, I’m going kill some kids. In fact, I’ll have to kill in the order of tens of millions a year for quite a few years.
You may think me harsh, but I tell you this: They are going to die anyway, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, and then out into Asia and
onward into the West. They will die through lack of food, lack of water, oil wars, water wars, border disputes, pandemic illnesses,
extreme weather events caused by climate change and so on, and so on.
You may post some to me if you wish, so obviously they should be small. The smaller the better. -GGM
--------
Note 1: As an aside, it has been shown many times that giving women, in any culture, access to better education and healthcare
reduces family size. This information must become part of any population control dialogue.
--------
**Is maikeru555 aware that he is using 80% of DU's allocated memory?
...............................................................................................................................................................................................
Poem box
To those who truly care about art the importance of presentation cannot be understated. Presentation is everything. Your meaning
may be noble, but it'll be worth nothing unless you can convey it in a unique and aesthetic manner. -JT
--------
**Has aglitch ever put empty Smarties tubes on the four legs of one of her cats and watched it try to walk down the stairs?
................................................................................................................................................................................................
link to page 3
http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/34674-the-word-and-verse-1-p3/
-1 P2
Zoom Out:[/font]
That's what she said.
The first date in literature appears in the 5,000-year-old Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh. In order to tame Enkidu, a Tarzan-like wild man
who is terrorising his people, the king, Gilgamesh, sends Shamhat, a beautiful prostitute. There was no question of first date nerves.
They meet at a water hole where "Shamhat loosened her undergarments, and he took in her attractions". He goes on to drink seven
jars of beer, eats bread for the first time and the couple spend a week in bed. As a result, Enkidu decides to shave, clean himself up
and get dressed in clothes for the first time. Rejected by his former animal friends, he accompanies Shamhat to the city, "having
acquired wisdom".
source: QI interesting facts
--------
**How many burnt kittens would it take to get Grace (Idryad) pissed off?
................................................................................................................................................................................................
Let's Waste The Children
I regret to inform you that I will need to kill a whole lot of children. It’s ok though, because if you are reading this then you are
probably from a relatively wealthy country, and I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the first ones I’ll kill will be the children of
anyone you know.
The need to kill children is not new, so I don’t see the point in getting terribly excited about it. A few years ago I took a sailing trip up
through the Pacific from New Zealand and it was interesting to reflect that humans there have been doing this for a very long time.
The islands of the Pacific have a feature that most places don’t: They are small enough for most people to grip the concept that they
have finite resources available to support human life. The earth is an island also, but we as a species seem to be having a little trouble
grasping this point on the larger scale. At a small scale, when you yourself have to draw the water from the well, or go out onto the
reef looking for fish for lunch, you can easily see when the total number of people has exceeded the ability of the island to support you.
So, let’s talk about how Pacific Islanders solved this problem of population pressure. Traditionally they used two approaches. One was
a habit of sending groups of excess people out on long sea voyages to find more land. Usually the son of a chief would lead the
voyage, with strict instructions to not return. The successful voyages led to the population of islands as far away as New Zealand and
Easter Island where the failed voyages resulted in a temporary bonanza for sharks. This method is still going on today, with a net yearly
export of people off the islands to places like New Zealand and Australia. The second approach was the euthanizing of newborn
children, and this was equally effective for everyone except the sharks.
Pacific islanders used these methods to keep family sizes low enough to only replace loses from accident, warfare and old age. They
also had one more slightly harder to understand cultural idea; because the island peoples had a strong culture of revering the elderly,
they did not have to have large families to ensure that the parents stayed fed as they aged. This point is made because it offers
another route to control population that is not currently available to many. It only takes a visit to a country without any form of
welfare program to see that fear of financial hardship in old age leads to ever increasing family size (see note 1 below).
So that is how the Pacific Islanders were in these Pacific islands at the time of Captain Cook’s arrival. In the interest of examining what
is happening globally, let’s now look at what happened once the societies changed away from these ‘heathen’ ideas. It is now possible
to travel to Tonga and see poverty in the midst of paradise. The ocean is fished bare, the sea-birds are gone, the islands are mono-
cultures and the diet of the people is reduced to an average of only five or six reliable food groups (small fish, sea slug, pork, dog,
banana, coconut, taro).
That a people can live in what most Westerners would call paradise, and be effectively on a subsistence diet should frankly scare the
shit out of you. The reasons are simple: they broke the rules by over populating because the missionaries failed to understand that these
people had a society which allowed them to balance their needs to the available resources. Once they did not have the opportunity to
apply their techniques (through pressure from the missionary churches), the quality of life in these areas dropped significantly so that
now, they rely heavily on overseas financial, medical and food support. The lesson here is clear: when you live on an island, you had
better understand how many people your island can support.
The Earth is now showing us in a million ways that it is an island. An island that supports 7 billion people, and growing, and there are
no new islands over the horizon or countries to send food aid to us. Where does that leave you and I? Easter Island provides the
perfect lesson. Easter Islanders used their forests to build statues for ancestor worship until there was so little forest on the islands
that they couldn’t build canoes to go fishing. When Europeans arrived, there was a small community of starving and sickly people
living on a denuded and war ravaged bare rock, surrounded by an ocean teeming with fish that they couldn’t access. Resource pressure
leads to environmental degradation and conflict, and history shows examples of this everywhere you look. The terrifying difference is
that this time, having failed to learn our mistakes, we have also run out of islands.
Which is why, dear readers, I’m going kill some kids. In fact, I’ll have to kill in the order of tens of millions a year for quite a few years.
You may think me harsh, but I tell you this: They are going to die anyway, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, and then out into Asia and
onward into the West. They will die through lack of food, lack of water, oil wars, water wars, border disputes, pandemic illnesses,
extreme weather events caused by climate change and so on, and so on.
You may post some to me if you wish, so obviously they should be small. The smaller the better. -GGM
--------
Note 1: As an aside, it has been shown many times that giving women, in any culture, access to better education and healthcare
reduces family size. This information must become part of any population control dialogue.
--------
**Is maikeru555 aware that he is using 80% of DU's allocated memory?
...............................................................................................................................................................................................
Poem box
To those who truly care about art the importance of presentation cannot be understated. Presentation is everything. Your meaning
may be noble, but it'll be worth nothing unless you can convey it in a unique and aesthetic manner. -JT
--------
**Has aglitch ever put empty Smarties tubes on the four legs of one of her cats and watched it try to walk down the stairs?
................................................................................................................................................................................................
link to page 3
http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/poems/34674-the-word-and-verse-1-p3/
Published 2nd Dec 2011
| Edited 7th Dec 2011
All writing remains the property of the author. Don't use it for any purpose without their permission.
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