[Newspoetry] silly human behavior

[Anne Bargar]

Humans Fail to Prove Superiority of Opposable Thumbs;
Lamp Remains Inoperative

Wednesday

AP (Associated Poets)  You have to give the humans credit for being
amusing.  But lets face it.  They're all "We're bipedal and have opposable
thumbs," and "Whoa, like, let's fix something."  They fail to comprehend
that the important matters of life are comprised of laying on a heater
vent and/or chasing things.  I've been watching Tim and Anne play with
this silly "lamp" thing for almost an hour.  Granted, they look like
they're having fun , but what they should be doing is keeping an eye on
all of the things that are moving unawares in the basement.  Were it not
for me, no one would ever take care of such important matters.  They would
just play with "tools" (or is that "toys?"  I always get the two mixed
up.) and try to "fix" "things."  They never investigate all of the
important smells, sounds, or small moving things that quite frankly need
to be hunted down and dealt with.   Nor do they chase things that don't
exist.  Their behavior simply makes no sense most of the time; it is this
disturbing trend in human behavior that I wish to discuss.  
	My theory is that humans simply don't sleep nearly enough.  That's
why they spend so much time doing such crazy shit.  Right now, Tim is
fiddling with the part of the lamp that sits on the floor and Anne is
doing something to the string part that runs through the lamp and gets
stuck into the wall.  Only through lack of sleep is this sort of silly
activity reasonable.  Other humans - was that a bug over there?  No, just
some dust.  As I was saying, humans don't sleep nearly enough and this
affects their behavior.  If one takes a look at Fig. 3.7, one can see a
clear ranking of pointless and silly behavior, and the number of hours of
sleep (out of 24, with 16-20 of that being a reasonable amount of sleep)
required to make that activity seem desirable.
       Activity                                      Hours of sleep
	watching "tv"                                   6 
	eating "tv dinners"                            5 
	driving                                               7  
	having sex                                          3  
	instituting governmental policy        2   
	going to work                                    .023349875874753 
	living in extremely tall buildings       0 
	wearing sunglasses                                 8 
	shopping from the JC Penny catalogue
4.56235098757877666431213464321546987659876 
	 	We can - see, now they've pulled the whole thing apart
again.  Geez.  Why in the name of  Roast Duck with Natural Juices did they
do that?  That was silly.  We can clearly see that the less sleep a human
gets, the more likely they are to partake in pointless and nonsensical
behavior.  Let's take Case Study "X".  Case Study "X" has 2.6 kids, a dog,
and a husband.  "X" works as a paralegal, and only gets about 6 hours of
sleep a night.  We can see that this has greatly affected the sanity of
"X" first by looking at her choice of four-legged companion- a dog!  And a
small yippy dog at that!  Next, let's look at her choice of after-work
activity.  "X" likes to do that thing where you pick up a ball and roll it
towards several white things and you roll it across a wooden floor.
Unlike any sensible creature, she does not chase the ball once she rolls
it; in fact, the ball she uses is so large that it poses an impending and
lethal risk to any small creature that might get in it's way.  Pursuing
this type of activity is a sign of absolute madness, and is indicative of
the human condition in whichever century they seem to think it is.

Let's return to the activity I'm observing in front of me.  Criminy, now
the damn thing is smoking!  See, if they had only listened to me when I
tried to tell them that it was the CORD that was messed up, and not the
SOCKET, they wouldn't have tried to burn the house down again.  I'd been
hearing the strange sounds that cord was making every time I chased bugs
in the upstairs bathroom.  I tried to tell Anne, but did she listen to me?
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.  She just gave me treats.  Every time I
try to tell her something, she thinks I'm asking for treats.  I mean, I
ate the treats.  Who wouldn't?  At least they've unplugged that death
machine of a lamp they've got there.

Finally, here is a pie chart (Fig 78Q) of activities that they should be
taking part in.
chasing bugs
eating
sleeping on heating grates
sleeping on coffee makers
petting me
feeding me  
playing with string
giving me treats
listening to me as I explain how the universe really works