To whom it may concern, I never proclaimed that I wasn’t a little sick in the head, nor have I ever denied having said, or at least thought, poorly timed and inappropriate comments in a period of bereavement.  I’m the kind of gal who laughs in the middle of a funeral.  I can’t help it.  It just pours out of me like a burp and fart all at once.  I’m sure armchair psychologists out there would label it a classic defense mechanism.  They’re probably right.  I am not, as some have assessed, emotionally detached.  I just take the winding path through grief, which always starts (and eventually ends) with my poking of fun at death and even the dead.

Earlier this week the world lost a memorable Australian caricature named Steve Irwin in a truly bizarre accident.  I’ve never really participated in the Steve Irwin phenomenon, having been more of a Jeff Corwin fan, but I found myself strangely saddened by this news.  Despite some of his more irritating quirks, I always regarded him as I would a crazy backwater cousin, charming and amusing even if a bit gorky. 

Mr. Irwin did some risky (yes, even down right stupid) stunts.  And while I rather not speak so personally on behalf of someone I didn’t know beyond the boob-tube, I’d vouch that the man understood the risks and the potential consequences.  They all know the risks: the daredevils, adventurers, and civil servants of the world.  Unfortunately, people are more incline to berate and admonish the daredevil only upon his/her untimely demise. C’est la Vie.  C’est la Mort.  So let it not go unstated, Steve Irwin was not just a boisterous stuntman/obnoxious idiot.  He was a passionate conservationist who used his global notoriety to educate and stir an equal passion for the environment to his viewers. In addition to documenting and promoting animal welfare, Mr. Irwin campaigned for the protection of endanger species and land preservation, using monies earned from his celebrity to buy tracts of land for wildlife reserves in Australia, Fiji and the United States.  He was, at heart, a naturalist, wherein no creature on this earth is ugly, worthless, or dispensable.  Not even those goddamn fuckin’ stingrays.  I never thought I’d actually say this, but I’m going miss those ear-bleeding “crikeys!” of his. 

It should also be noted for the record that Mr. Irwin had his own twisted sense of humor.  He named his kids after his frickin’ dogs, for Christ’s sake!  So keeping that in mind, and for all the reasons and defenses given above, I have absolutely no shame in making the following statement:

So Steve Irwin walks into a barb… 

*ba-dump-bomp-ching*

Thank you, good night!

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Comments

Tim (http://www.loadedguntheory.com/blog/director/listblog/tim.html)

2006-09-07T14:40:21.000Z

It’s good to have you back in the world of the bloggers. I miss spewing water on my screen while reading your posts.