Nature Boy

noonanroad.jpg

ABOVE: The life he loves is makin’ music with his friends


On a recent drive across Nevada’s barren moonscape from Mesquite to Las Vegas, Mark Noonan lets his mind wander toward his two favorite subjects: Bible stories and topics on which he disagrees with college sophomores who smoke grass and pierce their noses:

We are, of course, endlessly reminded that we are to be good stewards of the environment – but what the environmentalists who harp upon this really mean is that we are to leave the environment alone as much as possible, unless what we are doing is restoring an environment to its pristine condition. That, my friends, isn’t being a good steward, but being a lazy servant.

Indeed, if a tree fell in a forest and no one could hear it, would it make anyone any money? Verily, no, I say unto you.

Whether one believes that we were created by God and given stewardship or that we were evolved randomly, the plain fact of the matter is that only humanity has the ability to intervene in the environment – to make it better, or worse or just leave it as is.

I’ll be generous here, in the interest of not listing every organism that exists from the lowliest honeybee to the mightiest kudzu vine, and presume that Noonan means that humanity is the only species which consciously makes an impact on its environment. (Less charitably, it’s entirely likely that Noonan simply believes decades worth of petroleum-industry-published pamphlets that imply that the environment is an animated rain forest found only in South America and some other faraway locales.)

It is that first part – making it better – that I believe we are failing in; we are not being good stewards, and we’re paying a price. We spent much time making it worse, we’ve now spent a lot of time trying to leave it alone, but what we have really failed to do is make it better.

falconridge_mesquite.jpg

ABOVE: One of the first images that turned up in a quick Google search for ‘Mesquite, NV’


I’ve spent a little bit of time in and around the brine-crusted, dried-up seabed that surrounds Las Vegas, where Noonan lives, and I suspect that unforgiving geography dotted with absurd, emerald-green golf oases is deeply relevant to his understanding of man’s relationship with nature.

If the environmentalists are right, then the best thing we can do for our yards is leave it alone – just let grow whatever happens to pop up and make no effort at controlling it. Would this really be better? To be sure, you might get a much larger number of individual plants growing in the yard, but would they be growing as best they possibly can? Of course not – we carefully plan what we want in the yard and then carefully nurture it to the best growth possible.

I’ll skip past the easily made comparison to some of Chance the Gardener‘s monologues and focus on the likelihood that Noonan once drew a paycheck as a landscaper — a perfectly honorable profession, to be sure, but once again relevant to our discussion.

What I think we need to do is fight forcefully against the basic environmentalist concept that the environment has intinsic value beyond that assigned by humanity. Created or evolved, the only species in this world which can actually make use of it is us; without us, its just a bunch of stuff serving no great purpose.

What might have been an interesting (and no doubt entertaining) philosophical discussion on the relationship between humans and their environment, if not our appreciation for what we describe as nature, is turned into an opportunity to complain about the special rights enjoyed by endangered species and hippies who don’t cut their lawns. And since I’ve spent the previous half-dozen paragraphs pawning off hastily considered comparisons as droll observations, I’ll mention that, as of this writing, the comments to the original Blogs For Bush post have veered offroad into a discussion of ATVs and birdwatching.

As always, it’s worth mentioning.

 

Comments: 69

 
 
 

if only den damn bears would realise their place in the peckin order and done brung me a beer!

 
 

Created or evolved, the only species in this world which can actually make use of it is us; without us, its just a bunch of stuff serving no great purpose.

Boy, he’s got a good point there. Aside from providing every living creature on earth with food, water, shelter, and every other necessity for the continuation of their existence, the environment really doesn’t do anything for anyone but humans.

 
 

I believe Noonan’s saying God doesn’t like flowers or cute bunnies.

 
 

Noonan seems to be confusing “quality and health” with “aesthetics”.

For you, yoyo.

 
 

“It is that first part – making it better – that I believe we are failing in; we are not being good stewards, and we’re paying a price. We spent much time making it worse, we’ve now spent a lot of time trying to leave it alone, but what we have really failed to do is make it better”

Sheer profundity Mr. Noonan, did you hurt yourself performing the mental gymnastics required to deliver this vision of Godly inspired [I’m sure] brilliance. Now, if you could only bother to tell us, WTF are you talking about.

 
 

His idea of better stewardship is to make Interstate 15 a more meandering route?

John Muir would be proud.

 
 

“Created or evolved, the only species in this world which can actually make use of it is us; without us, its just a bunch of stuff serving no great purpose.”

If nature doesn’t serve Nooners it obviously has no good reason to exist. Heaven forbid something be allowed to live that doesn’t “serve a great purpose”. Like Mark Noonan for instance. I can’t think of a less great purpose than writing for blogs4bush. Sorry Mark, but to make a better world you have to go.

BTW any new info on Mark’s campaign? I really really really hope he runs. Please God.

 
 

Garsh, I love the bitter irony of pro-lifers who think a clump of cells deserve more government intervention than everything that surrounds and nourishes us. Mark Noonan’s continued existence is all the proof I’ll ever need that God simply couldn’t exist.

 
 

Oh dear god don’t let Noonan make the enviroment “better”. He’d probably end up making all the trees explode.

 
 

This is a part of the same mass wingnuttien head-explosion signified by the Pammy and the fury.

They’ve gone a long ways down dead-end road (and dragged the rest of us along with ’em). Damned if they’re gonna turn back now.

 
 

he brine-crusted, dried-up seabed that surrounds Las Vegas, where Noonan lives

Seriously, Noonan lives in Vegas?

Jeebus.

I kinda like Vegas, but, boy, if you want to have a really fucked-up artificial concept of the natural world, that’s the place to go.

Damn. Italian lakes n fountains in the desert.

 
 

Probably the only place more environmentally artificial than Vegas is Dubai.

 
 

“Mesquite Nevada is a small and upcoming little town 82 miles north of Las Vegas. They are primarily a retirement town, simply because they have several golf courses and the summers are a bit less hot than Vegas, at least I think. It has a large Walmart a few casinos for those gamblers which host some “has been” but still great entertainers. I saw Gordon Lightfoot at the Casablanca Hotel and Casino last year, he was good…but tired! Kenny Rodgers frequents there among several other entertainers of this caliber.”

 
 

It’s amazing how stupid that man is. That last quote is just insane. I can’t imagine sitting in the same room and having a conversation with this man for more than 5 minutes. My head would explode

 
Principal Blackman
 

I really really really hope he runs. Please God.

Me too. I would consider it one of the great happenings in the history of our political system. SNN better get exclusive Noonan War Room access, too!

 
 

So noonan is actually a sea-monkey? It all makes sense now.

A similar fictional product, called “Sea People” was purchased by Eric Cartman in the South Park episode “The Simpsons Already Did It”. It didn’t take long before Cartman found out they were just brine shrimp, but when he added a bowl of semen to the Sea People container, the brine shrimp mutated into a highly advanced underwater civilization, eventually building statues of Cartman and Tweek after being relocated to an aquarium.

As of 2005, there are even slot machines with a Sea-Monkey theme.

 
 

The geriatric Rottweiller is moulting. Or shedding. Or blowing his coat, or whatever they call it. Our house is covered with tufts of black dog-hair.

 
 

comments seems to be broken

 
 

um, I tried to put in this link and it wouldn’t take.
noonan’s environmentally friendly wear: http://www.golfknickers.ca/photogallery.html

 
 

for links, that is. I’ve tried three times to put in a link and the comment won’t take.

 
 

comments seems to be broken

The spam filter was being overzealous, all ok now.

 
 

When I saw the title I thought we’d be discussing Ric Flair. “Whooooo!”

Imagine the disappointment when it turned out to be Noonie-noonie. Who doesn’t seem to remember that the Space Elf created the whole world & its eco-system for His amusement, and only created humans ’cause He was lonely for something intelligent to torture.

 
 

Ah, now I realise it. “Everything from the lowliest honeybee to the mightiest kudzu vine” is, y’see, it’s part of the environment. And humans… aren’t… part of the environment. Because we’re special. Because God says so. Because I say so. So, y’see, when a migrating species eats all the grass, or when Godzilla wakes up and kills everyone, then that’s just the environment doing its environment thing. Circle of life and all that. But when a human does anything, then the environment changes.

See?

It makes a lot of sense when you look at it through the lens of buhhh brain not work no more.

 
 

This might come in handy for future photoshopping.
http://op-for.com/noonan.jpg

 
Herr Doktor Bimler
 

but what we have really failed to do is make it better.
Well I did my best, I set out to improve on Nature, but the authorities closed down my recombinant-DNA laboratory.

 
 

Its always the same argument. “GOD gave us this planet and we can do whatever the fuck we want with it cuz GOD wouldn’t make something that was breakable!!”

 
 

Seedlings! Join Noonan’s garden army. Be the best you can be!

 
 

I pull the blinds then I take my clothes off
Dance around the house like nature boy

 
Tender Mercenaries
 

Created or evolved, the only species in this world which can actually make use of it is us; without us, its just a bunch of stuff serving no great purpose.

Yeah, I think I’ll head on down to the beach today, shake my fist at the ocean and say “F you! You’re nothing without me!”

 
 

Someone really needs to force Noonan to read ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ by Ursula LeGuin. His comments are a perfect synopsis of William Haber.

 
 

Created or evolved, the only species in this world which can actually make use of it is us; without us, its just a bunch of stuff serving no great purpose.

Some of my brain just leaked out my ear considering that an ostensible human could actually commit such words to print without following with “only kidding, LOL.”

 
 

It is that first part – making it better – that I believe we are failing in; we are not being good stewards, and we’re paying a price. We spent much time making it worse, we’ve now spent a lot of time trying to leave it alone, but what we have really failed to do is make it better.

WTF?

This is not conservatism. A conservative would say first and formost “stop … leave it alone”. This is the same kind of whack job, Communism turned toward the far right that has given us neo-con foreign policy. The same mentality that gave us wars in Vietnam and Iraq applied to the environment? I * don’t * think * so!

 
 

Wow, he sure put that straw-conservationist in its place! Didn’t leave it a stick to stand on.

Jerk.

 
 

when he talks about improving nature, I think he means chia pets. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chia_Pet

 
 

Peerless. This is a truly thoughtful idiot who has never heard the word “ecology” or, if he has, probably thinks it means “the study of e-coli, which are repulsive.”

On a similar note–and Mark would dig this–Pastor Tim “Left Behind” LaHaye is of the belief that “three-quarters of the earth’s surface is wasted by water, making much of the earth unusable.” Fortunately, “the earth will enjoy a complete resurfacing before the Millennium.”

 
 

“the study of e-coli, which are repulsive.”

Which AM repulsive.

 
 

Something to keep in mind. This:

And God said: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.’ And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them. And God blessed them; and God said unto them: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that creepeth upon the earth.’

And God said: ‘Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed–to you it shall be for food; and to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is a living soul, I have given every green herb for food.’ And it was so.

is a directive for Noonan.

 
 

Bookish 15:11.

 
 

Roy edroso always says that Jonah has written the most stupid thing ever written, at least until the next time Jonah writes something.

But this guy is determined to give Jonah a run for his money, isn’t he?

 
 

In order to visit some friends near Zion National Park, I fly into Vegas and drive up I-15; the first thing you see entering Mesquite is that green golf course, and it’s startling after all that brown. And infuriating. Trying to make the desert look like Britian.

 
 

The existence of Mark Noonan is proof that Evolution is a lie. It’s also proof that there is no God. Back to the drawing board, everyone.

 
 

AM repulsive. Right.

Excuse I.

 
 

It’s simply not possible for anyone, even a wingnut, to make such a stupid declaration as that last sentence and mean it. No sentient human who functions without a drool bucket could possibly believe that. I think he’s just fucking with — with — well, someone, although I can’t imagine who, or why.

 
 

He’d probably end up making all the trees explode.

Voluntarily and spontaneously.

 
 

My high school biology teacher would make Noonan do this essay over.

 
 

Typical fucking god-botherer; unless every aspect of nature can be made to serve man, it is worthless. Even worse, “serving no great purpose”; what monumental, I-am-the-center-of-the-universe, all-non-human-life-must-bow-before-me-or-risk-my-wrath bullshit. There is no “great(er) purpose”, just what each of us decides, and that kind of moral free-agency scares the shit out of the god-botherers. Why, with that kind of freedom you could dress in 2 wetsuits and shove a condom-covered dildo up your ass, and we can’t have that happening all the time.

 
 

If the environmentalists are right, then the best thing we can do for our yards is leave it [sic] alone

Because you see the planet is basically like a biiiig yard, or the median on Las Vegas Blvd. Except instead of being a 4 foot square of soiled astroturf in front of Noonan’s trailer, it’s Madagascar.

 
 

“Someone really needs to force Noonan to read ‘The Lathe of Heaven’ by Ursula LeGuin. His comments are a perfect synopsis of William Haber.”

So who’s George Orr in this analogy?

 
 

We are, of course, endlessly reminded that we are to be good stewards of the environment economy – but what the environmentalists conservatives who harp upon this really mean is that we are to leave the environment economy alone as much as possible, unless what we are doing is restoring an environment a free market to its pristine condition. That, my friends, isn’t being a good steward, but being a lazy servant.

Fixed.

 
 

I think colorized Noonan needs a brighter red lipstick.

 
 

Why does do this man’s chin(s) look like testicles? He reminds me of Peter on Family Guy. Many people have multiple chins, but they are usually not situated side-by-side.

/looksism

 
 

Ginger, I can’t think of who’d be George. I don’t think there’s anybody left who knows that we should be careful what we wish for.

 
 

As a native Las Vegan (I don’t know Noonan’s bio; I thought he was just gassing about the Reid thing, or honestly thought we yokels would fall head over heels for the first fat authoritarian to tumble into town), I can tell you there’s one thing pretty much inculcated into you from birth that prevents you from being 100% anti-disruption environmentalist.

You remember the Yangtse River dolphin going extinct? How we were supposed to be sad about that? Can’t pull it off, or the part where I’m supposed to be bothered by the loss of the local environment. We’ll set aside for a moment that the Yangtse’s flooding and pestilence are villainous elements of local history going as far back as the history itself; I just can’t hate a dam.

Djur and I had a long argument, and not just the fake kind we use for intros at our blog, about the same subject. Hoover Dam is a very good reason to have an unshakable baseline positivism, the impression that man can destroy and reshape the environment in his image, because it’s one of the final products of Modern-era America – before we got pomo and monetarist, subjecting everything to dumb hedonistic calculi and producing locally optimal solutions that throw the whole system into Hell. Boulder/Hoover was built at tremendous expense and at large cost of labor, and it wasn’t contracted out in the ‘competitive’ fashion we seem to like now, but – gasp – built by a federal program designed to create a strong, lasting dam on the Colorado.

As a result of the dam, we have this lake, Lake Mead, you might have heard of – the largest man-made lake in the world, last I checked (which isn’t recent enough to make me right – I’m semi-sure that the Three Gorges floodlake is probably bigger). It watered vast swaths of the Southwest, made agriculture remotely possible, and its massive volume flow made electricity available to the common man without filling the valleys with stinking coal smoke.

Now, because of people like Noonan – people who take that positivist impulse and use it as an apology for rapine greed – Lake Mead is going dry, southern Nevada is in a permanent drought and our golf courses remain as green and pristine as ever, taking up twice the fucking residential water supply and making sure nothing the city mandates for residential water use will ever matter worth a tinker’s damn. And the dam in and of itself does have its drawbacks – for instance, the Colorado don’t flow into the gulf no more, and sometimes it doesn’t even flow into Mexico. It’s destroyed a major ecosystem and that’s unfortunate. If I hadn’t been raised around a dam, I wouldn’t like that one bit.

But the positivist baseline for me is that people can get together and change the world for the better, and sometimes are pretty much obligated to do so. The Three Gorges Dam will damage the environment horribly, but the equivalent level of power generation with China’s local coal supply would turn the Yellow Sea into a naval moonscape even faster than it’s already becoming one. And the profits from it are going into the capitalist-apparatchik class – but then again, so do the profits from everything in the People’s Republic.

I love dams, conceptually. I think nowadays they’re just a nuisance, because we are not the men we were when Boulder was built; we will not spend money to make things last, we try and cut corners however we can. The most horrifying experience of my life was watching this triumphalist-toned Science Channel documentary about these engineers making a bypass for Boulder’s over-the-top highway – the traffic it gets is more than anyone wants, and we want to be able to lock it down in response to threats. So they hire these people to put up a bridge on the Arizona side, through a canyon.

It’s a major architectural feat and they hire the lowest bidder. And it shows; to cut costs, they do their mixing, molding, and drying on site – you know, on the windswept outskirts of a canyon, because the loathsome fucker who won the bid evidently thinks springing for a tarpaulin or a 100-mile truck from better country would break the budget. And then they do the most profoundly terrifying thing I’ve ever seen: separate the bridge-builders into two camps and work them in competition to each other. So each side starts doing things to ‘speed up’, like, you know, adding meshing with concrete justification extensively because their pylon pieces aren’t perfect (!!!) and generally half-assing beyond belief to rush the other side to the middle of the canyon.

I felt like I was sitting helpless watching the next major bridge collapse, and the jocko fuckers were pleased with themselves. It was a breathtaking saga of incompetence by the lowest bidder, but that last part – that it’s cheap – is all that matters to us. If Boulder had been built now, it’d have cost a fifth as much, taken three times as long, would have had to go down for repairs three times, wouldn’t have made it into the black during the Carter Administration (or ever, for that matter), and would, of course, have been privatized to ward off public-sector inefficiency. I mean, personally, I’d happily pay another $20 in taxes to avoid dying in a fucking bridge collapse, but hey, I was never any good at economics.

I think I agree with the sentiment Noonan is expressing here. But the point is, he’s gotten it out of a basic and overarching contempt for civil society, and if it were up to him he’d go back in time and force the builders of Boulder to contract it out to the private sector. After all, it’d be more efficient that way. And certainly, if there’s anything that distinguishes man from beasts and gives us the right to change the environment as we see fit, it is our efficiency.

 
 

But the positivist baseline for me is that people can get together and change the world for the better, and sometimes are pretty much obligated to do so.

Interesting Alec. I usually see things that way as well. Interesting digression.

 
 

Why does do this man’s chin(s) look like testicles?

Hmmm. Could it be he’s actually one of these?

http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=10&hl=en&q=ballchinian

 
 

Why does do this man’s chin(s) look like testicles?

Funny you should mention that because as it happens his testicles look like Confederate Yankee’s chin. That is to say they are absent.

 
 

I think colorized Noonan needs a brighter red lipstick.

And a clown nose.

 
 

Even Kevin didn’t hop into the fray to defend this one.

Not even a gratuitous “Dirty hippies hate America!”

A bad sign for Mr. Noonan.

A very bad sign.

 
 

You’re hardly an unbiased observer, Alec, considering your unbidden and visible turgidity at the mere thought of dams. It’s amazing that the Hoover Dam isn’t pregnant yet.

LOOK AT ME I’M ALEC

HUUH SMOKING IS SYMBOLIC OF MAN’S VICTORY OVER NATURE

PFFT PPFT HKKKKK LUNG CANCER

 
 

Djur must have listened to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me this weekend.

 
 

gbear: Why do you say that?

 
 

HEART CANCER YOU ANTI-OBJECTIVE NIHILIST

 
 

And to explain the turgidity, which was intense but certainly not unbidden per se:

I suspect that unforgiving geography dotted with absurd, emerald-green golf oases is deeply relevant to his understanding of man’s relationship with nature.

I’d argue that anyone with a soul here is raised to love the dam and learns to hate the golf course. Noonan, whose career just screams ‘traditional family values’, probably went the other way around and the converse. The difference is between massive and purposeful environmental disruption for the public good and massive, purposeful environmental and public-resource disruption for the good of a few wealthy men.

And I swear I’m not the father.

 
 

Djur, WWDTM this week was clips from previous shows. One of the clips featured a question where the answer was ‘visible turgidity’. Maybe the phrase is more common than I know and is rolling off the tips of tongues early and often. I don’t hear it much here in St Paul…

 
 

Ah. I figured that maybe there was a question about Ayn Rand’s opinion of smoking. Good to know. Never listened to it myself.

Alec: It’s not our fault that you were built in a Hell crafted by man’s own hands.

 
InsaneInTheCheneyBrain
 

Birthed from Satan’s bottom!

 
 

Whatever happened to that spaghetti-puller guy?

 
 

…the answer was ‘visible turgidity’. Maybe the phrase is more common than I know and is rolling off the tips of tongues early and often.

I dunno what you guys are talking about, but the pairing of ‘visible turgidity’ and ‘tips of tongues’ is making my pants tight.

 
 

So, please, do carry on.

 
 

(comments are closed)