I, for one, am mighty proud that Kansas has recently made the network news and newspapers across America. With the Kansas Board of Education's decision to remove teaching of evolution from the state's school curriculum, we've taken a bold step into the Millennium -- the one that ended a thousand years ago.
Yet, because I cherish all points of view, no matter how simple-minded, I've delved deep into my creative resources to unite the bitterly divided sides in the evolution/creationism debate.
The result is an entire new system of thought I came up with one day when I was waking up from a nap. The remarkable thing about this new theory -- actually let's just call it fact, I'm THAT sure it's right -- is that it draws liberally from each controversial theory, without vulgar plagiarisms or deliberate misunderstandings to go for a cheap laugh, and yet unites those oppositional theories like an old connect-the-dots drawing depicting its picture with precise pixilated presentation.
I'm naming this new system of thought LINGOLUTIONISM after myself, the only one bold enough to rebel from the restraints of rationalism (consolidating camaraderie with the creationists), and cold enough to dismiss the myths of mythology (engaging empathy with the evolutionists)
Here, then, are the fundamental cornerstones underlying the lean-to of Lingolutionism:
In the Beginning there was the Lingo. And the Lingo was good, really really good. Then came the firmament and the squishyment and spontaneous combustion of huge fireballs way out in space that are, in reality, only sky glitter. One of the fireballs gave birth, without revealing the father, to a heavy hunk of carbon gunk which shot out and started zooming around on its own. It is now known as Earth. When Earth finally cooled down, it stunk real bad and no life forms were willing to hatch except cockroaches, which are impossible to gross out. But after a while The Great Arranger (did I mention this guy?, long white beard, kind of a cosmic landscaper) figures that cockroaches alone are a blight on the hardened star gas of our world, so he runs the hose on the world for 12 billion years and then sprinkles a bunch of powder like that stuff they advertise in comic books that will turn into sea monkeys. In no time, there's oceans full of things that once were us, all eating each other. And it was Good.
Well, even though it was good, we got tired of being wet all the livelong day, and decided to check out the dry world so we wiggled up on the beach and started begetting and begatting with everybody else -- strangers in the slime, exchanging glances and DNA (which stands for Da Natural Apparatus). After a while we couldn't swim or climb trees so well anymore but we developed a skill for blowing things up. This is what you've heard of as the Big Bang Theory.
And we invented something even scarier -- stories that said we were in charge of the world. Then we decided we're better than all the other critters and pretended we didn't even know our cousins the monkeys. So we built places to live where we wouldn't have to touch any other animals or even the earth. And we kept begetting and begatting until there were more of us than anything but cockroaches.
Then we kept telling our children the stories about how special we are and we all lived vapidly ever after.
That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. I challenge anyone to disprove LINGOLUTIONISM. And if you think that's a wacko theory, wait until you see what Kansas kids will be taught in public schools.
Frank Lingo writes from Lawrence, Kansas. Email and an excerpt of his new novel are at (www.earthvote.net)