Extinction Explained

I think I’ve figured out why we seem to be fine with letting our animals go extinct. The other day I was walking through downtown Kona when a seagull flew by. He soared past on a gentle breeze and dropped a little bomb before happily flying away. At that moment I felt like Isaac Newton watching the apple drop (or maybe it was a fig).

Think about what happens when you need to use a restroom in town.  There is, of course, no public restroom. So you go into a store like Starbucks. The store, of course, has a sign saying “Restroom For Customers Only.” So you get in a line dictated by current corporate staffing logic, which is to have as few employees as possible, but just enough to prevent people from bailing to another business. Businesses determine that number from data they purchase from the DMV.

This, incidentally, is why preserving our public libraries is so essential–young people might be shunning print books, but they’ll always need restrooms.

So, the real reason we’re letting animals go extinct is resentment. We resent the fact that they can “go” anywhere while we have to pay up and wait in a line.

Down by the beach I found a public restroom with showers out front. You gotta love a beach town, and not just for the sand and surf and the European dudes in little Speedos. They should demolish Macy’s and build a beach right in the middle of downtown Seattle so people would always have a restroom.