Eventually, all tattoos are temporary tattoos.
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I was recently thinking about instances where animals eat humans.
First, I think the frequency of these events has probably decreased over time. Back in the dawn of human history, there were more opportunities for man-eating animals to devour people. Pretty much every day, really. Even if someone didn’t leave their cave during the day, it was still a cave. No storm doors, no deadbolts–just a big opening that could accommodate most man-eating animals. Hell, the opening was even called a cave mouth; it may as well have had a dinner bell hanging nearby.
Today, there are fewer people living in caves. The numbers are a little higher among flat earthers and anti-vaxxers. But, for the most part, modern humans have doors on their domiciles. Today, most people who get eaten by an animal have gone outside, sometimes right into the area where the man-eating animals are. I’ll discuss shark attacks and zoo mishaps a little later on.
BTW, I use the term “man-eating animals” as a commonly recognized placeholder, not as a form of gender discrimination. Animals that eat people don’t discriminate on the basis of sex. However, it has been proven that men are (on average) greater risk takers than women, so perhaps the use of “man-eating animals” is a warranted distinction.
I don’t have any data at hand concerning the gender statistics of people eaten by animals, and honestly, modern gender classification is more similar to ocean fluid dynamics than old-school M-F. The challenge of performing gender identification for people who have been eaten by animals is more fraught with pitfalls than the classic video game Pitfall.
So, I’m going to use “man-eating animals” from time to time as we go forward. Please know that this isn’t a personal slight: if you are human, you are a potential meal to certain animals, no matter how you choose to identify.
I think it’s important at this point to discuss the distinction between when animals eat part of someone, eat most of someone, or eat all of someone.
Eating part of someone is classic shark attack territory–and leads us to an important distinction: events where an animal eats part of someone, but the person survives. And yes, I’m looking at you, surfers.
Not only do surfers get parts of their body eaten by sharks, many of them go back to the ocean on their boards, stroking through the water minus one arm. This is representative of the “lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice” school of thought, a strategy which starts to fall apart when you continue to engage in the activity, and in the same environment, that resulted in the initial limb-to-food conversion. In other words, “lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice” isn’t a reliable life strategy if you insist on repeatedly running up and yanking Thor’s man braids.
But yes, it is possible to survive being partially eaten by an animal. This is typically a two-phase process: surviving the eating, and then surviving the bacteria the animal’s mouth introduces to your bloodstream while it’s eating you. This second phase can be tricky, as encountering animal mouth bacteria (outside of the liberal sharing done by most domesticated dogs) is much rarer than, say, the salmonella and E.coli found in most bagged salads at your local supermarket.
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To the graduating class of 2026,
I’m sorry.
I know it’s not recommended to open an oratory with an apology, but a) I am Canadian and b) I have very little positive to share with you today. If this gathering were taking place on a deserted island upon which we were all stranded, my contribution to the communal resource pool would be a bag of bitter tasting fortune cookies of low nutritional value, that somehow said the work “fuck” when you opened one, with the same fortune in each cookie, written on a mysteriously non-flammable slip of paper incapable of being used as kindling for a signal fire. The fortune inside each cookie? “We’re all going to die.”
My customary optimism aside, I don’t want you to think that you don’t have a future. You do! It’s just that your future won’t be significantly different from the previous future, which is our current present.
For instance, you will occasionally have a job. You will swing from job to job like George of the Jungle, intermittently face-planting into the trunk of a downsizing tree. Some of you, in what is a well-established human tradition, will lose your job to a machine. This is not a new thing. One of your ancestors once made a living giving piggyback rides from one cave to another cave. It was the earliest version of Lyft. They held this job until some neolithic tech bro invented the wheel.
Losing your job to a machine isn’t ironic anymore. It’s just Tuesday.
Some of you will find a partner and start a family, which right now means adopting a cat or a dog. We used to say “settle down and start a family” but I can tell you, next to none of you will ever get to “settle down.” You and your partner won’t just have side hustles, you’ll have back hustles, a top hustle, an oblique hustle, a foot hustle–which we now call OnlyFans–and, just maybe, a gastrointestinal hustle.
In your future, technology will still be very disappointing. No holodeck. No lightsabers. Virtual reality will still be some over-glorified version of having a small television strapped to your face.
Healthcare in the future? No tricorders. Doctors will still test you by sticking hard objects in your various holes. Dentists will still shove a steel hook in your mouth, like your annual checkup is yet another remake of “I Know What You Did Last Summer.” They will still use a mirror stuck onto the end of a stick to look in your mouth, like a World War II infantryman trying to locate a sniper while behind cover.
In the future, the test for prostate or colon cancer will still consist of a smartphone wormed up your pooper, which has been inflated with air like a wheelbarrow tire. The camera resolution will be better than ever, but there will still be a lab tech sitting there telling you to just relax before you get to experience what it’s like to be an iPhone case.
How will you consume media in the future? Like we do now, except it will cost more. Streaming services will become even more convoluted and fragmented. Want to watch the latest Marvel movie, “Avengers: Who’s Left?” You’ll have to subscribe to the channel “Disney M”. Looking forward to the reboot of Stranger Things, “Working For Vecna, the Middle Manager”? Better add Netflix St-Sz to your credit card.
In the future you’ll still get to binge all of the shows you want, because you will never need to leave your home to buy anything ever again. Food, clothing, medicine, artificial limbs, you name it, someone will bring it to your door. Want to buy a new car? It will drive itself over and go sit in your parking space.
Need to have surgery done? Just take off your clothes and go sit in your new car; it will operate on you while the new season of your favourite show is playing. If you need an organ transplant, DoorDash MD will bring it straight to your car. Here’s that liver you ordered, no onions.
I encourage all of you to become shut-in consumers. Stop going out to shop. Support the growing delivery economy. That way, it will be there for you when your education devalues to zero and your car starts supporting you by driving itself to take-out places for the ultra-rich.
Because honestly, when it comes to food, I believe the most futuristic thing your generation will get to experience firsthand is the dietary transition to insect protein.
You think I’m kidding? Today, as you sit here in your matching graduation cult robes, there are pet food companies that have started using insect protein in their products. And, as we are all aware, animal testing is always followed by human trials.
Dystopic stories predicted that we would end up eating each other. Eat human beings? Are you nuts? The human body is full of valuable organs and tissues and chemicals that the billionaires will buy so they can live until they’re 150 years old. Why do you think Elon Musk is encouraging people to have more kids?
No. No. In the dinner hour of the future, you will tear open your monthly government stipend 50-pound bag of insect kibble, and pour out a bowl for you and a bowl for your pet/child. And, as you pour in a half-cup of rationed drinking water to activate the beetle gravy, you and your pet/child will look each other in the eyes, and you will think to yourself: at least I was able to get our food delivered.
Or maybe not. Predicting the future is hard, and we aren’t very good at it. We can’t even predict the weather two weeks from now with any dependable accuracy. You think you’ve got next month’s long weekend weather nailed down; somewhere a butterfly flaps its wings, next thing you know your country is sliding into a dictator’s back pocket.
Maybe in the near future, maybe even later today when you’re in the emergency room being treated for a cut from a flying mortarboard, somewhere there’s a butterfly that is about to flap its wings, causing a chain of events that will heal our world and give future generations a chance to live ideal lives.
And I hope, I truly hope, that butterfly gets to flap its wings before it ends up in a bag of pet food.
Good luck to the Class of ’26. I thank you for your attention.
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We all spent the last 360 and some days travelling tens of thousands of kilometers through space, flying around a massive spherical fusion reactor, spinning in place as we flew. Gravity and photons and time did the heavy lifting, while we all lived through another year of absurd nonsense, waiting for the darkness to come and annihilate us all.
Unmask! Unmask! Unmask!
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Hello valued employees (and contractors),
Please be informed that effectively immediately, [name] is no longer with [company].
To facilitate a smooth transition, we ask that you not submit any questions, offer any comments, or look anxiously at coworkers during this transition period.
You can assist this transition by not discussing the terminated employee in any fashion, including any conversation containing nostalgic observations or a forlorn tone. Always remember that our corporate values of TRUST and WISDOM OF LEADERSHIP are not supported by any type of looking back. We as an organization are always looking forward.
Be advised that our IT team has deleted all email and IM communications originating from the terminated employee. At this time, we ask that you take any hard copies of such messages, or any handwritten sticky notes mentioning the terminated employee, and place them in your department’s secure shredding collection box.
As per our corporate offboarding process, please say the following points aloud:
- Let the name of [name] be stricken from every company obelisk and stelae.
- Let the name of [name] be stricken from any standing committees and work-related volunteer activities.
- Let the name of [name] pass into obscurity, until none but Legal and HR shall remember it–until the prescribed record retention period has passed, and the last remnants of [name] are purged from all corporate systems from that moment until the end of time.
Thank you for your understanding and patience during this transition. Our IT team will inform the lucky employee who won the draw and gets to move up to dual monitors.
Onward,
Courts of Chaos | comedy + writing blog 