This is dedicated to the great north-eastern norwhals.

It's easy for us as humans to get caught up in unimportant things. At the very bottom of the barrel, someone may get upset or even lose sleep over the elimination of their favorite contestant on American Idol, Survivor, or The Biggest Loser. Then even those of us who can muster a shred of human decency still get upset by a dent in our 1997 Toyota, getting called when we're on the No Call list, or having our pizza show up late enough to be annoying, but not quite late enough to be free. In fact, on any given day, one of us might be sad, angry, confused, embarrassed, or any of a whole slew of negative emotions over things as trivial as... an 8MB/sec download speed, having only 2/3 of a bowl of cereal left in the box, being behind two other people in the checkout line, stepping in a puddle, seeing an ex-boyfriend/girlfriend/friend/boss/coworker/etc. while walking down the street, a light bulb burning out, sand in one's shoe, clouds, ants, or really just about anything. Most advanced race on the planet?! Please.

Now let's play hardball. Surely your wedding, pregnancy, PhD, CEO position, becoming a four-star general, or some other fanfare achievement is worth while. Maybe. A little bit? No.

To date, about 74 billion people have existed. A very small handful have been important. We'd still be here without any of them. Not one person comes to mind when I think about *critical* humans. Earth hasn't had it's Death Star to destroy in a small time window right before it became fully operational. We haven't dealt with alien invasions where only one scientist in the world is capable of preventing our annihilation. I guess penicillin was neat - it wasn't necessary and someone would have found it even if Fleming hadn't.

Even if one single person managed to cure cancer, land on mars, win WWIII, and win an Oscar in the same year, we still could have done without her. Humans are the new cockroaches - throw wars, famine, disease, natural disasters, and anything else you like at us, and there's still going to be way too many of us - in fact, despite everything that's happened in human history, there's more of us now than ever!

I'm sitting here by myself in the near darkness, typing out a whiny blog post that no one is going to read about why everything is stupid, instead of living in South America, surrounded by sexy underage whores with assault rifles and liquor bottles, while I shoot black tar heroine directly into my ocular cavity while my friends and I place bets against our personal safety and juggle flaming, poison-tipped chainsaws and live on a diet of nothing but filet mignon and top-shelf gin and tonics.

Absolute best case scenario - I publish a few books some kids have to read in a class no one cares about for a few years or I end up making a enough money to sleep with some B list celebrity. The only thing worse than knowing this sad state of affairs is the fact that I'm too apathetic to do a damned thing about it.