...and I don't know why she swallowed a fly... perhaps she'll die?

as I hide outside from what I thought was a rat sneaking around in my room but had turned out to be a clandestine hookah, the song 'Basket Case' by Green Day plays through my head,
'am I just paranoid, or am I just stoned?'
been ages since I've listened to that song. aww, high school.

there's a fly that's noisier than any other I have ever heard before outside and it's no larger than any other I've ever encountered. average size, no real noticeable differences, I assure you.
but the fucker is noisy!
at this moment, I'm wishing I could speak 'fly' and tell this asshole I'd rather it leave than commit murder, but the choice isn't mine, I cannot take this ruckus any more.
that's an odd offense to get murdered for, though, wouldn't you say? being noisy? didn't we collectively condemn that dude who lobbied a few bullets into a car full of teenage 'urban' human beings because he was angry at the decibel level of their music at a gas station?
I mean, there are bounds of reason for playing your music at a gas station, I suppose, I've only ever felt mildly annoyed if I didn't enjoy the song being played, and don't you just hate it when someone else's song that they're listening to in their car gets stuck in your head? all the same, damn, sir, does that sound like overkill. bullets don't cancel out noise, by the way, sir, they add to it. in quite a cacophonic way. mission, not accomplished.

but I have no problem with murdering a fly for the same offense, so where does the moral equivalency kick in?

is it intelligence? having a brain? consciousness?
can't be, it always seems more immoral in the public's perception to brutalize an animal than your average adult human. but they're obviously much less known for their cerebral prowess than your typical person. seems like the less intelligent (and therefore less powerful) an organism tends to be, the*more* immoral it is to kill it, up to a certain point.

chickens and cows and fish and pigs and certain rodents and certain other birds are cool to kill, too (depending on the rarity).
seems like the animals safe from the murder check-list are the ones that are either attractive/cute, bear some resemblances to the human species or are in some way vulnerable or rare...
even those sometimes get knocked off.
if you live in the water and aren't a mammal, you're pretty much screwed, too.

if the idea is that the closer we feel we can connect to something, the more immoral it is to kill it, perchance the things that are designed to separate are, by nature and default, harmful.
I'm not so sure on that one, I'm just tossin' it out there. hopin' someone might chew on it. because it seems like the more you want to understand something, the less likely you're going to want to destroy it.
maybe there's somethin' to that.

back to my fly.
he's started and stopped a few times, attacked my ears in a few dive-bombs, but ultimately hurt nothing.
where did aversions come from?
perhaps plague. this is stream of consciousness-style-philosophic-drivel-laden rambling, bear with me.
rodents have been known to carry the insects that brought our species to the brink of existence. so as a precaution, we prejudge rodents and insects (malaria, spread by mosquitos being the deadliest to humans) as a gut reaction, stuck in our noggin in the algorithm of a reflexive twitch.
so maybe it ain't so terrible to harm a fly?
not sure on that one either.
how guilty should one be about killing a non-human? ending a life, at all?
does it depend on how much they inconvenience you?
not understanding their nervous system at all (from a first person perspective at least) and not being able to experience what their level of consciousness is, if there is one, is it a risk one is willing to take?
what kind of little bits of unimaginable understanding might they have?
it could be infinitesimal, but so is their world. what if their perception matches their environment, and they're happy with that? seems like a good match to me.
not so sure about that one either.

are any of these words worth reading? were they worth the calories expended, thinking them up and writing them down?
believe it or not, the little pixels you're looking at required some energy to produce. I mean that literally, not metaphorically. I mean that technically. like, in a Newtonian sense. it's, like, physics, dude.
and if some energy was expended in the process of me producing this and you reading this, was it worth it, at all?
because, some bits of the world have been exchanged into and have resulted in what you are now reading. some pieces of that exploding star is now being stored on a network of tubes and cables and cords in something called a mainframe or some shit like that. some of the oldest stardust in the world is now whatever color this font is being presented to you in.
I wonder about that, too.

now the fly is caught somewhere, I don't know where but it's near, and it's flappin' it's goddamned wings so hard to try to get out. I'm guessing it's spider food.
I guess the spider doesn't have to question its morality. or maybe it does and we just don't know it yet. who knows? probably biologists, who'd claim their cognitive capabilities aren't up to par. and I'm sure they'd be basing their info on solid ground, whereas I'm in quicksand at best, cement at worst.
but I ask, anyway, because who knows if their tiny ganglia don't meet up for poker on what we call Friday Night?
or whatever that equivalent might be.

the atomic tendency to gather and increase their density at greater temperatures is the causing principle of the formation of complex matter, altogether. so even hydrogen has its preferences.
maybe that spider has a favorite tasting fly, who knows?
I bet somebody does. I bet I'm just totally wrong. but I'm still wonderin'.

whether or not a fly or a spider or a pig or a wee little hydrogen-dude has preferences, every person does. and maybe we shouldn't worry ourselves with it. maybe everyone gets to have one, a set of preferences, and we shouldn't get so fucking pissed at the variations. sure, with each new set comes challenges, and some add or detract from the human experience, I'm sure, but...

maybe we should just smash every idea together (by flapping our gums about an awful lot) and make one super big idea. maybe it'd be like giving god a french kiss, if there is such a thing, just looking at that idea.
can't do that until we start learning to speak universally, though, eh?
I reckon. we needa' get on that, snappy. someone call a translator.

maybe it won't happen 'till I can write a piece utilizing almost exclusively lower-case letters, yet somehow sneak in some upper-cases just for myself. somethin' seems a bit off about that, wouldn't you say?

anyway, I have no clue whatsoever how to stop writing this bit. so I'm just gonna' think up a title and push the 'publish' button now.
*curtain, removed*