We're Playing With Fire

Four brief scenes from an American boy’s summer days nearly 60 years ago:

The first, at the age of 5, sitting on the concrete floor of my family’s cellar, carefully lighting one match after the other and watching them burn half-way down, playing with fire for the first time, enjoying the delicious knowledge that if I wasn’t careful I would burn my family’s house down – or at least my fingers. What power I was suddenly in command of!

Another summer day just a year or so later: Bored and walking along a railroad track near my family’s home in the dry hills of southern Wyoming, the silence interrupted only by the clacking of coal trains passing. I suddenly spot a few older boys I knew from the neighborhood. They’re bent over an anthill, cackling maniacally as they use a magnifying glass to burn the ants as they emerge in frenzied confusion from their anthill. I watch briefly with a mixture of fascinated curiosity, before I flee in revulsion, amazed not for the last time by the gleeful sadism of boys.

A year or so later I was introduced to another jolly game. An older boy showed a few of us fellows that if you take a clothes pin apart and reverse the wooden parts with the spring bent just so inside, then tape it back together, you could then insert one of the old fashioned strike-anywhere kitchen matches, head first in the open mouth between the opening of the pegs. If you then pressed down on the pegs, the spring would suddenly hit the match head, both igniting it as well as causing the match to instantly fly 4 or 5 meters through the air, a blazing missile to be avoided. For several weeks we boys warred with each other, as paintballers do today, and our mothers were furious when we came home with scorched hair and singed shirts. Fire was fun!

The last memory of summer folly was being shown, again, by an older boy, that if you take a can, open one end and remove the contents of the can, then make a pencil-width hole in the other end, you could then do the following: fill a pot with water, place the open end of the can down in the water with the end of the can with the little hole sticking up out of the water. You could then place a fire cracker firmly into the little hole, and when you lit it, the explosion, with the help of the water vacuum, caused the can to shoot loudly 10 meters into the air. Rocket science at the age of eight!

I did this many many times. Until one day I didn’t back away quickly enough after lighting the fuse, and the can shot up and hit me in the middle of my forehead. The force was so great that I was instantly knocked unconscious. But before I could collapse to the ground, the water shot up, too, and hit my face, bringing me back to staggering consciousness. For days after I wandered around with a bump the size of a goose-egg on my forehead. That’s the last time I’ve played with fire (..except where women are concerned..)

Yes, we humanoids have called ourselves many things. Homo Erectus – the Upright Man. Homo Sapiens – the Wise(?) Man. Homo Ludens – the Playful man. But perhaps the best description for us ought to be Homo Combustus – the Burning Man.

As is usually noted (by us) Man is the most intelligent of all the earth’s animals. But to be fair perhaps the order ought to be reversed. For no other animal on the planet is dumb enough to play with fire. Not a single one. But we do, and we boastful nitwits take pride in what we believe is our mastery over the most dramatic of the four classical elements.

Fire has always made for drama. The ancient Greeks told us that Zeus was angry with the human race because cunning humans were giving him just the skin and bones of animal sacrifices and keeping the meat for themselves – and so as punishment he kept the knowledge of fire from us. And when Prometheus, a minor god, went behind Zeus’s back and stole fire and gave it to the residents of Earth, Zeus punished Prometheus by chaining him to a rock and having an eagle devour the unhappy fellow’s liver, day after day through all eternity. I repeat - his liver (..humans years later learned to use fire to distill alcohol.. which eats what? Our livers of course. Clever and farsighted people, those Greeks.)

The Bible tells us God got Moses’ attention with a burning bush, and the all loving Father in the sky rained fire and brimstone down upon the residents of Sodom & Gomorrah, roasting small children alive for the sins of their parents. The Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, too, worshipped fire as the very symbol of God.

Since the beginning of our long and complex relationship with fire, we have learned to heat our homes, which enabled us to spread north to colder climes, to cook our food, which made digestion and the ingestion of more calories easier. We have smelted metal ore to make tools and the beams for tall buildings. We have used fire to make steam for locomotives, and burned fuel in internal combustion engines to move us about. And we have used fire not only to make weapons but to make weapons that make fire, like flame throwers and napalm. And please note, atom bombs are not called atom bombs by those who proudly make them. They call them thermo-nuclear devices!

Yes, Homo Combustus has utilized fire for a wide variety of entertaining and necessary endeavors. We’ve burned heretics and witches at the stake, we burned the initials of our ranches into the hides of our cattle – and slave owners once routinely did the same to their slaves!

And if you think the practice has disappeared, wander into any up-to-date tattoo parlor and you’ll be offered along with tattoos the newest fad – branding! Now one can see happy 16 year-old Bettina, having lied about her age to the tattooer, who really didn’t care, emerging from his shop with Johnny, Jimmy or Brian’s name branded in large welts into her accommodating little backside!
And as for slash and burn agriculture you don’t need to travel to the Amazon to see starving locals employ fire to clear away vegetation. City workers in Copenhagen wander the streets burning thousands of liters of fuel as they scorch away unsightly weeds in the summer time. Other good citizens wander the streets, puffing on rolled up tubes of other types of vegetation, adding their smoke and Co2 to the atmosphere. And speaking of pollution, China needs to open a new coal mine nearly every week just to provide the fuel needed to produce the electricity for all the new computers catering to the Chinese’ growing internet addiction. Just wait until all their coming electric cars are hungering for electricity!

We burn and we burn and we burn.

Even in our literature, our poetry, our sex lives, we burn. “I burn for your burning kisses!” The fires of passion burn “within our hearts” if not in lower regions. We burn with ambition.

Other searing sensations? In Scandinavia those unhappy hopefuls who have been left standing in wait for a date to show up, are said to have been burned away – while we in America just say we’ve been stood up.

And when intelligence services like the C.I.A. or the K.G.B. deliberately sacrificed an agent like a pawn in a game, they were said to have “burned” him. At the moment increasing numbers of employees are being “fired” – an expression which came from being shot out of a canon – which were set afire.

And for generations Danes have loudly and proudly sung about their witch-burning King Christian standing by his tall mast in smoke and vapor, while the English have just as proudly sung
“Bring me my bow of burning gold
Bring me my arrows of desire
Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold
Bring me my chariot of fire
I will not cease from mental fight
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
'Til we have built Jerusalem”
Yes, the burning bows of the Middle East are missile launchers today, and the chariots of fire are armored tanks. Progress!

But wait a minute. “Enough negativity,” some skeptical readers may well be thinking. “Do we have to hear only about the burning of crosses by the hate-filled Ku Klux Klan or Hitler’s fiery crematorium ovens? Surely there is much good we have gotten from fire? What about the candles on birthday cakes, or at romantic dinners? Or the joyous and beautiful fireworks decorating the sky on New Year’s Eve? And isn’t there a happy hippie festival held every year in the desert of Nevada called the Burning Man Festival, where at the climax a giant human figure is set afire… for some reason or another?”

Well, yes. But as for candlelit romance, why is the harsh light of day not conducive to romance? Too much reality? Because we were only safe from being eaten by wild animals if we engaged in sex in darkened caves?

And as for fireworks, I was one of the hundreds of thousands of idiots assembled on Rådhuspladsen New Year’s eve 1999-2000, celebrating the turn of the century.. (even though technically it was the next year that the new century really began.) At midnight so many fireworks were set off that I really thought we would all be asphyxiated by sulfur poisoning as the heavy blanket of smoke spreading was indescribable. A few minutes into the explosive orgy, a group of young imbeciles began gleefully firing rockets sideways into the packed crowd. I was hit in the leg by one, a very painful experience I can assure you. And when I got home I discovered I couldn’t take my pants off. A piece of cardboard from the rocket had pierced my pants and driven part of it into my calf. I had to yank the pants off and was left with ti-øre sized hole after I dug the cardboard plug out of my leg with tweezers.
Fuck fireworks!

And speaking of colorful conflagrations, what does the Danish nation.. and world television coverage have to look forward to at the climate conference?

Self-righteous autonome-types and other self-proclaimed environmental activists, in their usual exhibition of their lack of imagination and morals, slinging bricks and cobblestones as well as Molotov cocktails at police, filling the air with more smoke, Co2 and petrol fumes, in their hormonal-based rites of sexual and alpha-male lust for power and attention. These same faces would have been seen at similar events down through history, watching with grinning satisfaction as witches, heretics, Jews and Gypsies were burned. Among a certain group of young blockheads the police have become the Jews and gypsies of today, something less than human and deserving of a fiery response (..just as some policemen consider them worthy of a good old-fashioned beating.) We Americans used to burn Vietnamese villages “in order to save them.” Blockhead young Europeans “progressives” will ignite firebombs to make our air cleaner, and in their game of cowboys and indians these flaming arrows will be sent against the wicked cowboys’ water canons!

Yes, we are told November was the warmest in history. Because we burn things. Who can still doubt that this long and ever closer relationship with fire is not also quickening our mad stampede towards destruction?

Will we rise again like Phoenix from the ashes? Or will our fate be one final suicidal self-immolation on the Wagnerian funeral pyre of our egos?

Hitler once screamed at his generals in impatience, “Is Paris burning?”

One day it may well be Paris and Pittsburgh, Beijing and Baltimore, Mumbai and Manchester, Hollywood and Horsens that are devoured by flames.

I understand there are flame-proof asbestos pajamas available on E-bay if you haven’t completed your Christmas shopping.

How Hard Can it Be?

Simon Emil Ammitzbøll’s recent essay entitled ”Sådan Stopper Vi Bandekrigen” (How to stop gang warfare) included several suggestions for both crime prevention and for punishment – suggestions which are highly unlikely to ever be adopted – “Legalized hash and dropping the criminal age to 12 to “better protect the legal rights of the 12 year olds(!)” – and his essay reminds me in many ways of my own that Poliltiken so wisely chose to publish way back in 1994.

My article, entitled Geswifte Løsninger (Swift Thinking) began thusly:

“During the terrible hunger famine in Ireland in the 17th century, Jonathan Swift, the author of Gulliver’s Travels, published what he called, "A Modest Proposal". In it Swift suggested (..some say with irony.. others are not so sure) that the hungry Irish eat their children (..and in an age without ketchup or mustard!) But because the vast majority of starving Irishmen were too poor to buy his book, as far as we know only a small percentage of the population followed his advice.

But however sarcastic Swift's reaction was to a tragedy that genuinely troubled him, he was also pointing out to us that no one has yet found a problem, no matter how complicated or terrible, that is totally lacking a solution. The dilemma many times is that we don't like the solutions we are left with. Instead we invariably urge the implementation of more pleasant pseudo-solutions because we know full well there is almost no chance of getting the honest and necessary practices adopted which would cure these ills. Public prejudices are too strong.”


Nothing much has changed since 1994. Pleasant pseudo-solutions to a wide variety of problems continue to be suggested or limply attempted with the meager results easily predicted beforehand.

But dear reader, there are in fact simple solutions to complex problems if society had the stomach and the sense to implement them. Legalizing hashish as Simon suggested would deprive gangsters of a large part of their income – which would probably be quickly recovered by theft, extortion, bank robbery and other illegal and lucrative pursuits. Criminals may be morally bankrupt, but they do tend to refuse to remain economically bankrupt for long.

Punishing harder with longer prison terms, too, seems to have no effect on idiots who accept prison sentences as a badge of honor. Instead, I suggest without any attempt at humor for humor’s sake, that young criminals caught twice at narco sales, weapons usage or any form of violence, be stripped naked and outfitted only in a baby’s diaper, a baby’s little pink hood put on his head, and a pacifier taped in his mouth, a rattle taped to his hand and he be placed in a play pen-like cage in the middle of the Townhall Square 12 hours a day for the period of one year for everyone to see and laugh at. This would be a sentence to scare the devilishness out of any motorcycle thug or Black Cobra. Public humiliation!

As for criminal violence.. has anyone ever looked at the average Rocker (Danish motorcycle gangsters) from a biological stand point? Why are they so massive? Surely their mothers and fathers weren’t all gorilla-shaped? Of course not. A massive abuse of steroids is the explanation. And as everyone knows by now, steroid abuse leads to an increase in violent behavior. A simple solution? Violent criminals testing positive for steroid use should be injected with massive doses of female hormones for at least a year. The estrogen may not totally curtail their aggressive outbursts but at least they’ll be more inclined to have a good cry about them afterwards.. which will lead to shame and the resulting lessening of anti-social behavior.

What about car thieves who seem to be better at stealing cars than at driving them, crashing most of them, it seems? Simple. Anyone caught stealing a car twice will have a sizable concrete block molded around his right foot making it impossible for him to drive a car. After he has to hump around with a 20 kilo block for a year or so he’ll soon turn to some other less deadly outlet for his idiocy.

Simple solutions for the punishment of crime were also tried in England two hundred years ago. While some prisoners were forced to sew burlap mail bags if they wanted to earn their dinner, others were employed in another clever way. Some prisoners were kept in their cells with a heavy wooden box with a crank. If the prisoner wanted to receive breakfast, he had to turn the crank 10,000 times. 15,000 times for lunch and another 20,000 for dinner. The gears in the box could be adjusted by the prison guards to make it harder or easier to turn, according to the health and strength of the prisoner. Turning the crank gave the prisoners something to do but had no other positive side-effect.

I propose that prisoners be given an exercise bicycle in their cells. By pedaling the bikes – 20 kilometers for breakfast – another 20 for lunch – a further 20 for dinner, the prisoner’s health would be improved and the bikes could generate the electricity needs for the prison - and any excess electricity produced could be sold to energy companies. The same sensible system ought to be used in most homes. If pudgy lazy little Emil wants to watch crap TV programs and/or play monstrous and brainless computer games most of his free time, let him provide the electricity for the devilish machines by pedaling a bike hooked up to them for 3 or 4 hours a day. Let him burn calories and help the nation fight Co2 production!

What about the horrors and the ugliness of street prostitution? While there is no real reason to punish women who rent out their bodies from the safety and the comfort of their own homes or message parlors – nor should their customers be hounded – there are practical reasons for working to eliminate the ugly and soulless practice of street prostitution. What about a combination of Alcatraz and Legoland for these poor working girls? Flakfortet is the answer. (Note: Flakfort is a former navel base on and island not far from Copenhagen.)

Flakfortet is honeycombed with many chambers which could easy serve as both workplaces and residences for any girl wishing to work there. Foreign and home-born prostitutes caught working the streets would be given the choice of employment in Flakfortet or being expelled from the country (..jail time for the Danish ones.)

The girls transported to the island would be checked for sexually transmitted diseases and drug possession on their arrival, and checked again before being allowed to leave. A portion of their earnings would be used for their room and board and other expenses incurred while on “Fantasy Island.” And by keeping them off the Danish streets I wouldn’t have to keep saying, “No, no thank you, ma’am. I’ve just had a good wank,” to all the Eastern European street walkers who offer me their services when I’m trying to visit family on Viktoria Street.

As for endless wars and crime? How can we get males to behave less violently and aggressively? First turn on your TV and observe. What do you see?

Crocodiles. Crocodiles and sharks. Tune in to Animal Planet, Discovery or National Geographic and you’re likely to see viewers being tantalized and frightened again and again by these toothy carnivores in the hope of boosting ratings. On every other channel, however, you’ll see murderous humans entertaining us, whether it’s TV2 or CNN.
Anyone in possession of a television knows perfectly well that human beings are the most dangerous animals on the planet. Yet still we shrug off how destructive we are. As if it is but a trifling detail. But if crocodiles or sharks posed the imminent threat to the planet that we sapiens do we’d all quickly ban together and no matter the cost we’d exterminate them. But they aren’t. They have lived in pact with nature for hundreds of millions of years without upsetting the apple cart. Malarial mosquitoes are no danger to the world. Nor are small pox and tuberculosis. HIV and Ebola aren’t a threat to this planet, either. But we are. And we will do nothing effective to change our ways until, like mould on an orange, we consume everything and become extinct along with all other life. We are the terminal species – the species that out-smarted itself.
Doubt that? Ask yourself why have we never been visited by aliens? Perhaps the simple answer is that by the time a species becomes intelligent enough for inter-stellar travel, it has already reached the stages of over-population and over-consumption and the resulting terminal fratricide. Smart aliens don’t come here because smart aliens already killed themselves before their spaceship was perfected.
But what if we humans managed to perfect such a spaceship? The idea that it is our hope and our fate to move on to other worlds, abandoning this raped and barren smoking shell, only to do the same thing countless times through the coming eons is no consolation. If the simple four-legged creatures on some faraway virgin planet could look up at our landing space craft and give voice to a prescient thought, it might well be, “Oh shit! Here comes the consumers!”
Those of us who shudder at the thought of our descendents moving through the galaxies like mould on new oranges, would prefer to reengineer our species here first before we begin terraforming and colonizing new worlds. We literally need to get our feces together if we hope to avoid becoming the ultimate space pestilence.
Solutions. Solutions are what we need. And we will be offered solutions. Countless harmless palatable solutions with no hope of any measurable effect. Why? Because our politicians resemble us in our cowardice and in our puerile preferences. Pretend pseudo-solutions, as the famous stripper Gypsy Rose Lee once said of rocking chairs and prayer, “Won’t get you anywhere.. but they’ll give you something to do.”
But Dear God, what would truly effective solutions look like, the dazed and skeptical reader may well ask.
First of all, as a logical and just initial step, the ratio of men to women must be drastically reduced. While men in Asia are already outnumbering women by hundreds of millions due to illogical and prejudicial abortions - and the trend seems to be accelerating - what is needed on a planetary level is the exact reverse. As anyone with half a brain knows, 98% of wars, crime, conflict and generally nastiness are created, promoted and – yes, enjoyed – by men. Men are the greatest and most long-lasting problem this planet faces. Yet if the reader can see and admit this, why does the reader shy away from wanting real remedy?
Women of the world, take the first logical step. If your first fetus is determined to be male, abort it. If you absolutely have to have a third child, you can perhaps allow that one to be male. Women consume less, care for others more and more effectively, produce more positive contributions to society, so logically the more of them and the less of us hormonally deranged men the better. Let us have at least two or three hundred years of female leadership and dominance, for after all, three hundred years is a paltry sliver of time. We will certainly need that sliver to right the many wrongs hurtling down upon us due to detrimental male dominance.
We will also need to re-engineer our bodies. As women - and increasingly many man - already engage in perpetual dieting, we ought to, through genetics, go even farther and reduce our size to a third or a fourth. Pygmies should be our ideal. (Imagine feeding a family of four on a chicken leg.)

One quick step on this road is gastric bypass surgery. A recent segment on 60 Minutes showed that people undergoing gastric bypass surgery not only quickly lose dangerous weight, they’ve also been instantly and completely cured of diabetes and had their risk of heart disease magically limited. Not only are these people consuming less food to the betterment of the planet, but their health has been vastly improved, also to the greater benefit of our hospital expenditures. They also consume less clothing and as they weigh less, less fuel is needed to cart them around.

Ultimately, what may save us as a species is not that we spread out into the galaxies like mould, but the exact opposite. That we become trees. That we put down roots. That we live our whole lives in one place, using no oil or hydrogen to move us from place to place, that our travel and commerce will be done electronically, our sensations, sexuality and our communications shared and multiplied through a coming super-internet interconnectability. Perhaps science, having already introduced jellyfish genes into pigs to make them glow in the dark(!) can insert chlorophyll genes into us, so that we receive our nourishment, or the greater part of it, directly from the sun? Green hair is a small price to pay for survival. And what is nobler than a tree?
Plant your feet. It’s time to turn over a new leaf.

(But if you insist on retaining your legs and remaining mobile, when and if you do land on a new planet, shake hands with the first tree you meet. It will likely be the planet’s smartest inhabitant.)

There you have them, dear reader. Real solutions to real problems. But you will no doubt will continue to prefer pleasanter ones that don’t work.