Some Like it Hot

On Thanksgiving, pie, climate change & faulty science.

Let me be the first to wish you a happy Thanksgiving Eve, a day for last-minute trips to Central Market where someone will invariably steal the parking spot that you’ve been waiting on for 45 minutes. Your only recourse is to stalk them inside the store and slam them with your cart and be like, Oh! I didn’t even see you! This place is kind of like a PARKING LOT full of PARKING SPACES that aren’t YOURS.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Thanksgiving and the assorted gourds scattered around the table for no apparent reason. It’s the time of year that you can eat five kinds of pie and not feel bad about yourself. Because the world might run out of pie.

This is a mincemeat pie, only slightly better than the all-meat pie of yore.

This is also the time of year to give thanks that the earth has not yet completely imploded due to too many people having too many babies. Stop already! Not only can the earth not withstand a growing human population, the requisite baby showers alone are horrible. (Oh look! Another diaper cake! What a disgusting name!)

This past summer was a not-so-subtle reminder that we are in the end times. It was over 120 degrees for like 30 weeks straight, like you’re locked in a sauna with someone who keeps pouring water on the rocks because they’re trying to lose weight by dying.

Needless to say, in the Texas legislature, the very “science” of climate change is questionable. There are all those vexing EPA regulations as well as the very real possibility that Greta Thunberg will spearhead the movement to force us into green jobs, like recycling sorters and refuse collectors. Yuck.

So it’s no real surprise that the Republican-dominated Texas State Board of Education has approved new science textbooks for public schools (yes, they’re still around). The textbooks tone down the still unproven and socialist theories behind climate change. Some members of the board requested changes concerning the negative depictions of the oil and gas industry and the hypothesis of “human evolution.”

A conservative group named Texas Values™ asked for a “balanced approach to teaching the origin of life” and stipulated that evolution should be taught as a theory next to creationism. Are you serious? Like, Adam and Eve serious? Like, the two who were kicked out of Eden which resulted in our sinful and destitute lives? Not to mention that serpent and global warming.

Texas Values was also concerned about pictures of the evolution of primates since all of the primates were naked. Except for that orangutan who played Cliff Claven in the sixth season of Cheers.

This is why your mail always gets lost.

Wayne Christian, the head of the Texas Railroad Commission, said he was happy that the board ended up approving text that was supportive of fossil fuels.

“The Texas State Board of Education did the right thing by rejecting radical environmentalist propaganda on ‘net zero’ and ensuring our students learn the benefits of fossil fuels,” he said. Personally I love swimming in toxic levels of carbon dioxide.

Anyway I feel like I’m doing my part since I have an electric car. Sometimes the battery lasts long enough to drive from my house to my next door neighbor’s.