The Zong

So imagine that you’re a large, Siberian tiger. Your DNA is coded as such that you have an innate sense of the food chain, and your emotions, while basic, probably function only to assist survival in the wild.

Now imagine that you’ve been put in captivity at one of the worst zoos in America. I mean, any zoo is crappy because you’re a fucking tiger, but this one is especially bad. If you listened in on the general gossip from the staff and could understand it, you’d know that the following happened there recently:

Three of the zoo’s four elephants have died since March 2004 - two at the zoo, a third at a Calaveras County sanctuary where it was sent, broken-down and ailing. The lone survivor still lives there. The fight over the pachyderms’ fate, taken up by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and animal rights activists, enraged the national Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which tabled the zoo’s accreditation for a year.

Puddles, a venerable 44-year-old hippopotamus, died in May, a day after a move that some employees say was bungled and others say should never have been made.

This summer, two giant elands, valued at $30,000 apiece, were killed by their peer soon after all three arrived at the zoo, during a quarantine that sources say was doomed and mishandled. Two black swans, introduced with much fanfare in May 2006, also didn’t last long.

So maybe you’re starting to feel scared and confused by your surroundings, knowing that if they killed anything named Puddles, you’re probably in big fucking trouble.

Fast forward to Christmas, 2007, when the following may or may not have happened:

According to the elder Sousa’s account to police, Dhaliwal told him that he, his brother and the younger Sousa had been “waving their hands and yelling at the tiger” just before the animal bounded up a 12 1/2-foot wall from its dry moat and attacked them.

Well, in all honesty, this probably happens to you a lot, and because you’re fearsome killer, you probably don’t give a shit. Ignoring dipshits is kind of what you do. But let’s imagine that these kids, who were high at the time and possibly drunk, started throwing shit at you.  Like, maybe some washers or rocks.

No police reports have been filed as part of an evolving civil case against the zoo and the city, but affidavits filed with Manoukian in San Jose include statements by a longtime zookeeper and a security guard about events after the Christmas evening mauling.

Any evidence that the youths provoked the tiger’s attack could limit the zoo’s and city’s liability in a civil case.

Anthony Colonnese, noting he had worked at the zoo since 1971 and was very familiar with the tiger exhibit, said he examined the grotto a few days after the attack “looking for things that did not belong in the grotto.”

He said he paid close attention to the part of the grotto “where I knew the two Siberian tigers were in the habit of resting after their mid-afternoon feeding.”

In that area, “I found two stones,” he said. “One stone was made up of a smooth material that was different from any of the rocks or gunite that make up the grotto exhibit.”

Colonnese also said he found a medium-size steel washer in the bottom of the moat. “I am informed that the keeper responsible for the Siberian tiger grotto inspected the grotto the morning of Dec. 25,” he said, suggesting the washer ended up in the moat after.

Admittedly, the evidence looks kinda thin here. Even if the kids were on crack, that doesn’t mean they necessarily threw shit at you. We may never know the real story. But we do know one thing. That you were fucking pissed off:

An autopsy conducted by a zoo veterinarian on the Siberian tiger after police shot it to death showed that the animal had been “very determined to get out,” Matthews said. Its claws were broken and splintered by clambering up the concrete moat wall, Matthews quoted the veterinarian as saying.

“This behavior may be consistent with a tiger that has been agitated and/or taunted,” Matthews said.

So, no matter what the kids did or didn’t do, you wanted to eat them so fucking bad that you basically destroyed your claws climbing up a concrete wall (ouch!) just to get to them.

So yeah, these drunk and high idiots, who drove from San Jose to San Francisco on Christmas morning, maybe didn’t deserve to get eaten, but neither did the tiger deserve to get shot to death. I guess the zoo is still at fault for not making the walls higher, but tiger lovers everywhere are pretty curious for more of this story to come out.

I used to feel kind of bad for the tiger, but after reading how it died, I actually envy the end of its life. Most animals who die in captivity are probably sick, frail, and lonely. Many die peacefully but on a table (as do a lot of humans). Think about how sweet it must have been for that tiger to get free from its confines through sheer will and and despite physical pain, and then snack on its tormentors. Sure, it got shot to death, but I’ll bet any tiger would love to go out like that. The rest of us should be so lucky.

I know it’s been awhile, and I apologize to all three of you for my absence, but I’ve been busy trying to figure out where the fuck I’m going to get my next paycheck. Also, I’m upgrading The Zong from the ground up. Look for some changes next week.

In case you don’t watch CNN, CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, UPN, or Entertainment Tonight, here’s a clip that has been blowing up on all those networks and on the internets:

The first time I saw this was on CNN, A network devoted to bringing us all the hurricanes and celebrity gaffes that are fit to print. Or air. The two ladies who were reporting on this incredibly important story had a really good laugh and laid a couple of zingers on the girl, one 18-year old Lauren Caitlin Upton, presumably while people were still dying in Iraq, the economy is faltering, and Michael Vick was discovering Jesus.

I wanted to laugh, I really did. It’s true that this clip is a motherfucking train wreck, and the clip has gone viral in the grandest way possible: it’s been shown on literally every major NEWS network available to the masses. Still, instead of laughing, I got a real bee in my bonnet about the whole thing, and the more news pundits I hear discussing this kid’s inability to speak while on national television, the more it strikes me as fucking heinous that anyone having anything to do with the media nowadays has the stones to make any commentary on how stupid our kids sound.

Put aside the fact that Lauren is barely an adult and it’s pretty obvious that most people love to see an attractive young person appear stupid because they’re jealous that they’re unattractive and useless. Also put aside the fact that the national response to her rambling, tortuous answer is pretty mean-spirited. Let’s just wait one goddamned minute here: have you watched even a single hour of CNN lately? If you haven’t, then maybe you should check it out and tell me why you think it is that our 18-year-old beauty queens turn into brain stems with nice tits when they’re asked about the state of the country and the world. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that most of the news items they and the other media outlets like them spend more time covering the parade of celebrity and entertainment bullshit than they do stories of actual import.

That these television stations have jumped on the bandwagon and continue, even in the last few days, to ridicule this girl for her failure to grasp the simplest concepts when they themselves make everyone who watches them stupider goes far beyond being regrettable–it verges on disgusting. It seems to me that it’s just one more piece of the puzzle depicting our crumbling civilization; rather than actually taking action to make ourselves and our citizens better, we kick back and laugh at some kid who can barely talk on television so that it makes our own failures seem less important. Is it any wonder that we elected a president who speaks about as well as she does?

Yesterday, at a benefit event for a charity called Cars For Kids in Tennessee, 6 people were killed while watching a drag car doing an “exhibition burnout.” The video shows the car burning out down a lane bordered on both sides by thousands of spectators.

Liberal that I am, I’ve been to exactly one drag race in my life, but the people who organized that shit probably knew how dangerous a car moving at that speed can be to a huge crowd of people, because they had huge barricades on each side, and the crowd was not allowed to get closer than 30 or 40 feet from the track, if I recall correctly. I should note that many people have still been killed at drag races even with these precautions.

So I guess maybe I’m an asshole for saying this, but it pisses me off when something like this gets news coverage and everyone calls it a “tragedy” or and “unfortunate accident.”

Events like car shows and stunt shows draw large audiences, and the Tennessee tragedy raises questions about how safe it is to stand in the crowds.

“It did careen into the fans, which was extremely unfortunate,” said Robin Ammon, author of “Sport Facility Management” and an expert in crowd management.

It “raises questions,” now, does it? What kinds of questions were raised by the dumb fucks who organized the event when they were told that a giant drag-racing exhibition was going to be held in between two huge crowds of people? What country is this?

I think it’s time that we start to ration the word “tragedy” in our national consciousness. While it is really terrible that people were killed at this event, and they will be mourned, calling this a “tragedy” really kind of distracts people from how stupid the people involved actually were, and gives much more credibility than is deserved to those who organized it.

Like using the word “hero” to describe just about everyone, the usage of “tragedy” to describe every time someone dies for no reason dilutes the word beyond meaning, and discourages people from talking about what actually happened. In this case, what actually happened is that a bunch of people died because nobody who organized this charity event (ironically, to raise funds for disabled kids) thought it was a bad idea to run a bunch of fucking DRAG RACERS through a crowd of people. If there’s a tragedy here, it’s that there was no law preventing this from happening, and that the response will be simply to hang our heads and say that this was “unfortunate.” On the contrary, from where I’m watching, these deaths were pretty much inevitable.

The Zong welcomes our first new contributor, Joe Alterio, to the fold. If his first post (below) is any indication, the dialogue in here is gonna elevate. Information for all our contributors (all two of us) will henceforth be posted here.

I woke up to find a great man had died, and of the billion or so obituaries and tributes that will be written for him today I think my personal favorite was written many years ago by the man himself, who wrote:

“I am not especially satisfied with my own imaginative works, my fiction. I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.”   - Kurt Vonnegut

Yeah, I was up late last night learning some fun stuff you can do with the new Wordpress, and I decided to try my hand at re-formatting the Zong a little better. I hope you like it, because I’m not gonna do it again for awhile. As you can see, the format is similar but the colors are kind of arrogant. If it’s really driving you nuts, you can adjust the “tint” knob on your screen until it looks right. That’s what I did.

Anyhow, over there on the right I’ve neatly organized all my past posts in an Archive entitled “Old News” using a neat little plug-in called “Fancy Archives.” Thanks to Andy over at Nymbus (cool domain, dood) for developing it and using the word “fancy” to describe it.

I’ve also updated the Zong? page to include the true origins of the word, as I’ve been lambasted over and over for not giving EZ his due propers. Sorry it took so long for that, EZ, but rest assured that civilization thanks you for your contribution to the New Language Math.

One other thing. I’ve started a page with some wire headlines on it that I will add to, called the “Headline Hall of Fame.” Catchy, right? I’ll be adding one every single time I see a worthy inductee, and I’ll definitely listen to nominations.

In case you missed it over last weekend. This really is a news headline:

International concern over China’s satellite-killing growing

This headline deserves to be in the Eye-Catching Headline Hall of Fame, when they get around to building it in Ohio somewhere. Evidently, the “concern” about this kind of a thing is pretty serious.

China used a ground-based medium-range ballistic missile to destroy an aging weather satellite, the Feng Yun 1C polar orbit weather satellite, about 537 miles above Earth on 11 January. The U.S. National Security Council, which monitored the act, described the procedure used as “kinetic impact.”

Part of me wanted to say “Awesome!” when I first saw this. I mean, I’ve been saying for years that there are too many goddamn satellites all over the place, and we need to start killing them, big time. But then I read this:

The U.S. had carried out similar tests in the cold war era, but had abandoned it since 1985, mainly concerned with the accumulation of debris in the space and potential threat to other civilian and military satellites in orbit.

Then I thought that we’ve already screwed up the environment right here in our own atmosphere, and maybe we should try not to screw up space, too.

You know all those bumper stickers you see out here in NorCal and thereabouts that say “Keep Tahoe Blue?” I want someone (like maybe Tim Lillis over at Narwhal Creative) to design me a bumper sticker that says “Keep Space Black.” Then I’m gonna print a brazillion of them and use an old bomber to drop them over Red China. That’ll show those space-polluting commies!

It’s fun to write stuff, but it’s even more fun when someone other than myself or my mother (hi Mom, I’ll try and call you later) reads it. I thank you who are reading in the Zong’s early going (there are at least five of you now), but mostly I need to give some shouts out.

To the right of these words, I have some links to stuff that you should click on, and I’m adding some more today. My friends and I are gonna start playing Fantasy Congress, an idea that seems a great compliment to the thrust of this writer’s meanderings. My talented friend and co-conspirator against doing anything in moderation, illustrator-cum-novelist Joe Alterio, directed me to this page. It’s hot. I’ll let you know when the league, er, house is set up. Let me know if you want in.

Anyhow, check out Joe’s blog Good Work and his hopefully not-too-prescient web comic about working-class robots, The Basic Virus. It’s even cooler than the title sounds.

Also, props to an old friend Kevin Obsatz, a subtle quasi-cellulose-mad-scientist who I can’t wait to actually talk to soon and who is running a truly sublime aesthetic over at Video Haiku. This world is full of art and bullshit, but Kevin’s got the lock on real life.