I Saw a Tapir.

'Tis better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Bitches ain't shit.
- Dr. Dre

Alright, before we begin another romp into pop culture infused cynicism, comedy, and outright pointless stream-of-consciousness non-sequitors, it's time to do a bit of personal history. Calling me a late bloomer when it comes to women is not entirely deserved, but it's not exactly wrong either. If anything, it's kind of akin in some really strange way to a Page/Plant reunion tour. It isn't quite what you expected it be, at the same time it is amazing and the closest thing to a holy experience you will ever have while also somehow disappointing you to the point where you have an existential meltdown as you suddenly realize the Snowdens of yesterday are truly lost once and for all.


Yeah, that's it. My love life has conspicuously lacked a John Bonham for going on eight years now. (Count the pop culture references in the last paragraph. The lack of them should let you know what kind of mood I'm in.)


So, let's do a bit of tallying akin to the most asinine Major League Baseball statistics:

• See previous posts for first bitching rant.
• Oh yeah, let's talk about my first major relationship. A girl that is, by almost all accounts perfect for any good person, is drug through hell by my on-again-off-again shenanigans and interloping Honors College snoops and bitches (Class of 2006, you will NOT be missed).
• Hey, remember the time I got a text message telling me that one of my exes who is by all accounts antisocial or maladjusted in the most disturbing ways was pregnant? Oh yeah, the text was from said ex.
• God knows how many people in the intermission when I decided that I was freaking scared to death of a relationship (after that last one, can I be blamed).

Now, it's happened again. The best way I can phrase it is as a joke:

Person #1: Hey, did you hear about Daniel Green?
Person #2: You mean the guy who flew 4,000+ miles to suffer a heartbreaking breakup?*rimshot*

So, I'm stuck in London. Surrounded by far too many closed circuit televisions for a nation that isn't ruled by some despotic post-Soviet egomaniac. It's an alright city, but being surrounded by 8,000,000 unfriendly, strange faces without a single friend for hundreds upon hundreds of miles is kind of, ya know, a downer. I mean, even the damn art in the galleries won't look me in the eyes (I'm not joking here, I went to the National Galleries and there is a conspicuous lack of those creepy/awesome paintings with eyes that follow you around the room. I smell a conspiracy). At this point, federalism would be a welcome construct to experience again. This brings me to my main point. The other day, I was at the London Zoo watching the animals with you-know-who, and something occurred to me.

Zoos and lesbians have so much in common it isn't funny, thus making their connections to failed relationships even less funnier on some sort of cosmic scale (I only say cosmic because I am so tired of using 'exponentially').

Zoos and real-life lesbians are some of the most frustration things to modern man. By 'modern man' I mean 'not females.' With both cases, all we want is for a simple thing to the one simple trick that makes it famous. With animals in zoos, we want to majestically gallop. Swing from rope to rope. Roar. Fly and expose their magnificent plumage. Say "Polly want a cracker" or at least some sort of mild expletive in front of a geriatric. Basically, we want animals to act like some kind of National Geographic special, complete with the British voice over (I am so sick of nasal Limey accents at this point that I would LOVE to hear some Southern drawl). Yes, this also includes some possible doing of the horizontal mambo in front of kids who then ask their parents what the animals are doing (Duh, giving each other piggyback rides). With lesbians, men want them to majestically gallop. Swing from rope to rope. Metaphorically.

The ultimate frustration with both is that never do either. More often than not, both zoo animals and lesbians end up laying around beds of straw and looking at the bipedal creatures on the other side of their enclosure with a vague sense of annoyance and/or disinterest. The strange bipedal creatures, in response, throw apples. It's a system that has worked for millenia. It's a system that has, for better or for worse, taught humans that disappointment is the only true way to handle and live life. Think of life as one big Weezer album released post-Green. Or a better one, Prince's discography when he was purposely trying to suck. Even more important, it teaches us that what we are taught to want and what we are indoctrinated to believe only happens every once in a while. Attaining what we are taught is the ideal is something akin to one human out of six billion winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not counting organizations here, as obviously that shoots my entire argument down. So, there. Whoever said selecting whatever parts of reality suit you best has never talked to me. Or a Protestant group trying to write its doctrine. To put it in a more accessible manner, the chances of one of us getting what we are told is absolute perfection before we die is about the same as Franz Ferdinand recording another good album, Howard Dean becoming president, London becoming fully air-conditioned, most of American suddenly realizing that Grey's Anatomy is absolutely the most idiotic show polluting our airwaves, or the Cubs and Saints becoming respective national champions the same year that every Major League Soccer game sells out without Beckham's help.

Our relationships are the same way. Will we ever find what we need? No. Never. Not fully. Especially if we refuse to change our expectations or adapt our lives. Well, not adapting is the same as doing yourself in while listening to "The Passenger." Not bending, never bowing to the fact that a moment or a time in your life or a person is more than you can handle or not quite what you expect is probably the absolute worst thing you can ever do for yourself. Why hurt yourself by letting something slide by your expectations when you can meet in the middle and find so much more happiness?

And that's why I still go to zoos.