Happy Birthday Chuck

Okay, so we'll start this off by saying that Carlos is always trying to tell me what I should blog about. And I'm always telling him to get his own blog; but then I make a point of reading to him my most favorite quips and quotes from my blog. My new favorite, and with apologies to David, is AssCrackCarlos.

Or AssCrackCharlie, which what I call him when I Americanize him.

Or AssCrackChochis, because Chochis is an old family nickname for him.

So, imagine my surprise when he emailed me--yes, we live in the same house, sleep side-by-side, are around each almost constantly, but Carlos emails me--an article about Chuck Darwin that he wanted me to add to my blog. Again, I was indignant. How dare he tell me what to write about? If he wants to discuss Darwin, let him get his own little niche in blogland.

But then he signed the email like this:

Chochis cracked ass.

Well, I just had to write about Darwin. How could you turn down Chochis Cracked Ass?

So here it is:

The good people of London threw Charles Darwin a 200th birthday party at the Natural History Museum. Old school chums of Darwin, Larry King, Joan Rivers, Regis Philbin, were all in attendance--I believe Joan was Darwin's date the The Spring Fling.

The museum offered Darwin stamps, and the zoo offered free admission to anyone sporting a beard in recognition of his famous facial hair. There were folks with red beards, and black beards, gray beards; all beards get in free, whether real or fake, or married to Tom Cruise.

Katie Holmes. Beard. Get it?

Over 600 events took place, not only in the UK but around the world, yesterday to commemorate "Darwin Day" — the 200th anniversary of scientist Charles Darwin's birth. But it was a particularly special occasion in his native land.

Chuck Darwin enjoys a special place in the pride of Great Britain, where his face is on the 10-pound note, er, bill. Note? Bill? It's on the money.

And yet, amid all the celebration, there a note of skepticism. A recent poll in Great Britain shows that some 43 percent of all Britons believe in "young earth creation" — or the idea that God created the world within the past 10,000 years.

Yes, within the last 10,000 years! Dinosaurs? Pfffft.

Chuck would be pissed if he was still around today.

And an even greater percentage thought "Intelligent Design," or the idea that evolution was not alone enough to explain the origin of some living things, was or might be true.

Not to make Chuck angry, but who's to say this isn't true?

However, none of those blasphemous polls took the wind out to the sails of the celebrants; the Brits love they pomp and circumstance, after all.

At Westminster Abbey, the final resting place for Britain's great and good--does one have to be great and good, or can one be great or good--a solemn ceremony was held at Darwin's tomb with Anglican prayers sung at the simple white headstone. Flowers and foliage picked from Darwin's family home in southern England were lain at the grave.

In Christ's College at Cambridge, where Darwin studied, the Duke of Edinburgh unveiled a bronze statue showing a young, intense-looking Darwin sitting on the arm of a bench. His great-great-granddaughter, botanist Sarah Darwin, posed next to the statue for pictures.

London's Natural History Museum offered up "Darwin's birthday soup" — a pea-based broth based on a recipe from Darwin wife's cook book — along with the traditional birthday cake.

In tribute to Darwin's work in the Pacific, the Royal Mail unveiled six jigsaw-shaped stamps carrying pictures of wildlife from the Galapagos islands — including the giant tortoise and the Floreana Mockingbird.

Britain's Press Association news agency said no other non-Royal has had as many commemorative stamps released in his or her honor.

Those Brits love a shindig, Katie Holmes, pea soup and stamps.

Rock on!

Big Bang or Divine Creation

I heard an interesting discussion yesterday on the Big Bang Theory/Evolution versus Divine Creation.

Of course the Bible-thumpers talking refused to accept anything other than God creating anything. God spent seven days creating all that we see, all that we are. Now, they'll tell you that it isn't seven days literally; that God's seven days are longer than our seven days. So, does that mean that God is like a dog, seven years to our one year; or is he cat-like and has nine lives. Or is his calender just messed up?

Maybe God needed a watch and hadn't created one until the seventh day.

They use this theory of God's looooooong seven days to explain away things like Natural Selection or Evolutionary changes to species based on environmental changes. Maybe a trip to the Galapagos Islands will open their eyes to the fact that species are still evolving, still changing, right in front of our faces. There are species in the Galapagos that have evolved from one island to the next, all connected, but vastly different because of environment.

Of course, maybe we're only on God's fourth day, or fifth, and so his, or her, changes are still happening.

I like to believe in a Higher Being. Does he look like Charleton Heston? Gosh, I hope not. Does he look like Zeus, with the white beard and flowing robes? Don't think so. Maybe He is not even a He; perhaps it's Mother Nature that shapes the world. Does she look like a woman from a 1970s margarine commercial? Probably not.

Is there a god? I think so. However, I don't think he's Catholic or Mormon or Jewish or Baptist or Muslim or any of those things. I think God is love. We all have that because we were all given that, and then made the choice whether to use it or discard it.

But I'm off topic. So, for me there is a God. And maybe this God, whomever he or she may be, created the world. Maybe this God was sitting wherever a god sits, in the heavens, on the moon, in a small hotel just off Times Square, behind the sun, or all around, everywhere. Maybe he or she was sitting and watching as the days unfolded and this little blue-green planet suddenly appeared. And this God was so happy to see this globe that he, or she, sheesh, clapped his or her hands out of joy. And the sound made was a Big Bang.

I think you can have both. You can believe that a god of some kind, hawking margarine on TV or parting the Red Sea in Technicolor, created a Big Bang that started all this stuff; amoebae and slime crawling from the sea; gorillas, standing upright and learning to speak; opposable thumbs; snow; stars; sunlight; trees.

If there is a God, and I think there is, although a non-denominational one I imagine, then that god divinely created evolutionary forces that are working to make us what we are today, what we were 20 million years ago, and what will be is the far distant future.

God clapped.

Boom! There it is!