Dellis makes the world better: #3 - Soylent Green should be people

First, a confession: I just watched all of season two of Wildboyz, the MTV show featuring Steve-O and Chris Pontius from Jackass travelling the world, harassing and being harassed by all manner of dangerous animals. I’ve watched them lure a wild leopard into a tree with a chicken breast on a fishing rod, I’ve seen them get bitten by numerous snakes, and seen Steve-O attach more stinging/biting/pinching things to his arse and nipples than I ever thought possible, and all on the same day that a new trailer for Jackass 2 was released. And now for the eagerly awaited confession! Wildboyz is dangerous, it’s stupid, and I could not stop laughing.

At the start of each show there’s a disclaimer, warning you not to try anything you see at home, and that all stunts are performed by or in the presence of trained professionals. Ok, this is a standard freedom-of-liability disclaimer that saves MTV’s arse in case any more kids try and replicate what they see (for instance the kids who set themselves alight, broke limbs etc.)

All of this is well and good, but you know some people are just meant to die, and you certainly know plenty who should not breed under any circumstance.

I don’t mean that in a horrible way, but honestly the more children are mollycoddled and protected these days, the more we’re heading for a generation of mentally and genetically inferior dullards.

These days kids are protected from evils with baby-aspirin, the overuse of antibiotics, and most importantly and worst of all: the super-armour of Mummy and Daddy’s litigation-happy lawyer.

When little Patrick eats a few fistfuls of ants and dirt at school because he didn’t know better, it’s now the teacher’s fault for not keeping a closer eye on him. Back in the day, it would have been the fault of the parents, and even now with Science! we can point to either their genes, his upbringing, or combination of both for the production of this little genetic proto-tard.

Medical science has a lot to answer to for keeping the human genepool green and murky, but I look forward to the day when we return to good old values:

“Yes, I am a Doct--what have we got here! I haven’t seen this before. What? Oh, he did this on purpose? I see. Well, he has to go to the back of the line, while we treat people who have had genuine accidents. Yes, I am serious, now if you’ll excu--Ma’am, stop yelling. Stop yelling. Yes, I see your point, it probably is going to kill him and yes Ma’am, I can see that pencil jammed up his nostril, and yes, it is my medical opinion that it is buried deep in his frontal lobe and probably is scratching the inside of the top of his skull…but Ma’am, here’s the thing -- he put it there. I’m afraid here at Beagle II Hospital we treat accidents first, stupidity last. May I suggest you settle yourself down there with a nice cup of coffee for the wait, and Ma’am, you might like to read this helpful pamphlet on hysterectomies while you’re waiting.”

Darwinism as a system of separating the wheat from the chaff is amazingly good. As George Carlin once put it so eloquently: the kid who swallowed all the marbles does not get to grow up and have children of his own.

I keep thinking back to those kids who nearly immolated themselves on film, emulating a Jackass stunt. It was almost as if they had no concept of fire, what it did and why setting yourself alight may not be the greatest of ideas.

“Say Jimmy, check out how my skin first bubbles, then blackens, then…how would you describe that Jimmy?”

“Why Peter, I would describe that action as your skin sloughing off.”

“Interesting. And this is ‘fire’, you say?”

“Yes, it goes by many names, and fire is merely one of them.”

“It’s pretty.”

“That is is, that it is. Say Peter, are you in any form of pain?”

“Pain, huh? Is that that sensation where something’s happening and no matter what you just want it to stop?”

“I think so. Remember when I swallowed those thumbtacks? I think that was pain then.”

“Then yes, Jimmy, I would consider myself in some pain.”

“Who would have thought?”

“Ooh, look, my arm meat is cooking with gas!”

“Fire, Peter.”

“My fire is cooking with gas!”

“Peter, what say we put that fire out by jumping into the pool.”

“What’s a pool, Jimmy?”

“It’s that watery wobbly thing over there.”

“Let’s do. By the way, is one of your neighbours having a barbeque? I smell steaks.”

I’ve done some amazingly stupid shit in my time, and I mean amazingly mind-bogglingly stupid things, but somehow without medical or parental intervention I pulled through. It’s quite obvious that Darwin (or Jesus, god, God, Allah, Budda, L. Ron Hubbard, and Cthulu) have plans for me as they’ve been keeping me alive all this time, so once I start spreading my clearly evolutionary desirable seed around look out!.

Checkmate, ladies. Checkmate.