Dinosaurs

TODAY I SHALL JUDGE

DINOSAURS

Dinosaurs aren’t inherently any stranger, scarier or more exotic than a lot of animals that are still  around these days. Octopi, for example, are capable of changing color and texture, can walk on land for short periods of time and have detachable, regrowable penis-arms. But dinosaurs get special touring exhibits in museums, and Steven Speilberg movies about them, while octopi mostly just hang out in the ocean being awesome and terrifying.

When we were children, we were told about giant, scary beasts that once walked the earth millions of years ago. They were enormous, they were ferocious. They were like dragons. They ruled the earth and every single one of them died. These last two sentences, I think, are where the essential appeal of dinosaurs lie. We know them as mythical beasts verified by science. They are dragons whom credible  people vouch for as real. We can see their giant dragon-bones hanging in museums and the us and they demonstrate to us that the world could be a grander place, full of monsters. Their perceived tragedy is also compelling; like we Ozymandius, we look on their works and despair. Petrified wreckage is their only lasting legacy and someday it will be ours. In them we see our own mortality as a species and this terrifies and titillates us.

We spend millions of dollars of funding for this pleasure, to imagine ourselves ever more realistically in a world with monsters, and to imagine that we ourselves, will be future fossils, puzzled over by our successors.

DINOSAURS HAVE BEEN JUDGED AND ARE HEREBY DECREED

A TRIUMPHANT MONUMENT TO HUMANITY’S NEED FOR IMAGINED UNPLEASANTNESS