It looks like I am staying in my job at the Zoological Museum at Toeyen in Oslo. A bit of a downside is that I earn around 5.50 Dollars (49 Nok) an hour due to the indecently low pay the Work and Administration Ministry has decided people rehabilitated from long-term illness needs.. I think they need twice the amount just to “pay” the tax of 35% of our income to secure social securities for the future.On my freetime I suspect sometime in the future I will hang around our Finance Minister and the Director of the Work and Administration Department homes waving menacingly with a steel-capped baseball bat and demand they dish out some breadcrumbs. Americans, Class War is reality in Norway and your brilliant invention “the Free Market” gains more popularity among politicians (spineless things.. in fact, I suggest we look into the possibility they might have been misrepresented as mammals, perhaps they are invertebrae.. I`ll look into the taxonomy, if I have the time) and voters
and employers..we`ll either have another French Revolution on our hands, or Norway, the second most richest nation will have a majority population consisting of mute and beaten slaves, like 19th century Africa and contemporary Bangladesh.
My job consists in registering the data contained on labels fixed to needles with specimens of Coleoptera – that`s “beetles” ..nice little carapached chitin critters with six legs and antennae.
Some of the specimens are over 2 centuries old, they change color, sometimes turning translucent at times due to some weird exposure. Some of them smells of mothballs.. When I began I thought it was some kind of poison ether or formaldehyde..in terms of the first possibility, our Civil worker friend, Hallvard, reported that poisoning the critters were a popular way of killing them, until Entomologists (thats “bug freaks”) began falling over with their legs in the air.. I think he exaggerated, like the rumour he loved spreading about the cleaning maid letting out infamously poisonous Black Widows from their terrariums, forming invisible and lethal lairs around this ancient building… Never trust a kid that cuts off George Bush`s head and places it on Elle MacPherson body and pastes the infamy on his wall..
Anyways… this snippet pleased me somewhat as a Gnostic:
Among the most famous quote about beetles comes from the great population geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, who was asked what might be learned about a Creator by examining the world. His response: “an inordinate fondness for beetles“.. Terry Pratchett, in his Discworld novel The Last Continent lets a creator (not The Creator, but among them) begin Genesis anew on an separate and new island in the great Circle sea..somewhere off the coast of EcksEcksEcks …blooming and sprawling with life, vegetative and animal.. only possessing one rather noticeable and vital flaw.. there are only one of each.. hence the name Mono Island.. anyways, at a significant place in this story about a young creator and his island (sic!) *plot spoiler alert*, the most observant of the Wizards (your academic and traditionalist type of wizard, forget Harry Potter and Gandalf a moment..) who are stranded on this particular island, Ponder Stibbons, decides to stay behind on the Island while the wizards are rescued into a boat and pushed out to brave the sea in a ship grown for that purpouse – gets to discover that the particular creation of this creator appreciates most and above all…. is a Cockroach! Cockroaches and Beetles, incidentally, are not the same species.. a Beetle evolves through several morphic stages and processes.. Cockroaches clutch out their evolved self and only grows bigger.. and nastier… Anyways, Pratchett most probably found that quote of Professor Haldane.. he is quite a multivarious scholar, that Terry..
Beetling along…
And sorry for all the ranting. 😉