I know it's not a long-term employment opportunity, and god knows I could never do it, but it's always disappointing when one of your favorite baristas at your neighborhood Starbucks just up and disappears.

I wish I'd thought to pin this to my shirt last week at work…

Maybe it's the insanity of the events of the past two years and the ugly, slimy, underbelly of a sizable portion of our population that those events have exposed. Maybe it's simply the late-in-life arrival of the realization of the absolute cruelty of humans toward each other—and the other denizens of this planet (thanks in no small part to the internet). Whatever it is, I'm rapidly coming to agree with Agent Smith from the Matrix who said:

"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague…"

Shorter: This planet needs an enema. Something needs to hit the global reset button because we cannot continue on our present course. Our modern western lifestyle (which the rest of the world for some reason is trying to emulate) is not sustainable; at least not without some very drastic changes taking place—and frankly I just don't see that happening.

Humanity has existed on a global timescale for a very short time, and only within the last hundred years or so have wrecked such havoc on the environment that vast swatches of the world are predicted to be uninhabitable by 2100. While the scientific community is still not in total agreement, many members are warning that we've already passed the tipping point where we can do anything about it. The wheels are in motion, so to speak, and we're heading down a very warm path indeed.

This leads me to the question of intelligence. Are we really intelligent? We have large brains in relation to our bodies and are clever tool-builders and obviously able to effect change on a vast scale for sure, but is that intelligence? The dinosaurs existed for millions of years longer than we've been here, and yet there's no evidence any of those species possessed what we define as intelligence. If this thing we call intelligence really is an inevitable byproduct of evolution why didn't the dinosaurs—who had a hell of a lot longer run on this planet than we've had—develop it themselves? Why didn't they domesticate other species, develop agriculture, build civilizations? Is it possible that our large brains are actually just an ultimately destructive mutation?

And that asteroid out there? Would humanity actually come together and muster the will and the resources to do anything about it if it were spotted?

I seriously doubt it. We're too busy arguing over 2000 year old god-myths and whether members of Homo sapiens with different skin color are even worthy of being called human.

This. Just this.

A hospital is a weird place. In one room a man is holding his son for the first time. In another room, a man is holding his father for the last time. In yet another room, some idiot is having something that should never have been shoved up there in the first place removed from his rectum.

I don't know, but I'd sure as hell like to try.