"Just about every adult human being back then had a brain weighing about three kilogrammes! There was no end to the evil schemes that a thought machine that oversized couldn't imagine and execute.

So I raise this question, although there is nobody around to answer it: Can it be doubted that three-kilogramme brains were once nearly fatal defects in the evolution of the human race?"

"About that mystifying enthusiasm a million years ago for turning over as many human activities as possible to machinery: What could that have been but yet another acknowledgemnt by people that their brains were no damn good?"

"That was another thing people used to be able to do, which they can't do anymore: enjoy in their heads events which hadn't happened yet and might never occur. My mother was good at that. Someday my father would stop writing science fiction, and write something a whole lot of people wanted to read instead. And we would get a new house in a beautiful city, and nice clothes, and so on. She used to make me wonder why God had ever gone to all the trouble of creating reality."

"Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical."

"And a unique physical feature of male great frigate birds was also bound to attract the attention of immature human males concerned with erectile performances of their own sex organs. Each male great frigate bird at mating time tried to attract the attention of females by inflating a bright red balloon at the base of his throat. At mating time, a typical rookery when viewed from the air resembled an enormous party for human children, at which every child had received a red balloon."

"The high point of that program, like the high point of Mary Hepburn's lectures on the islands at Ilium High School, was film footage of the courtship dance of the blue-footed boobies. The dance went like this:

There were these two fairly large sea birds standing around on the lava. They were about the size of flightless cormorants, and had the same long, snaky necks and fish-spear beaks. But they had not given up on aviation, and so had big, strong wings. Their legs and webbed feet were bright, rubbery blue. They caught fish by crashing down on them from the sky.

Fish! Fish! Fish!

They looked alike, although one was a male and the other was a female. They seemed to be on separate errands, and not interested in each other in the least - although there wasn't much business for either one of them to do on the lava, since they didn't eat bugs or seeds. They weren't looking for nesting materials, since it was much too early in the game for that.

The male stopped doing what he was so busy doing, which was nothing. He caught sight of the female. He looked away from her, and then back again, standing still and making no sound. They both had voices, but at no point in the dance would either make a sound.

She looked this way and that, and then her gaze met his accidentally. They were then five meters apart or more.

When Mary showed the film of the dance at the high school, she used to say at this point, as though she were speaking for the female: "What on Earth could this strange person want with me? Really! How bizarre!"

The male raised one bright blue foot. He spread it in air like a paper fan. Mary Hepburn, again in the persona of the female, used to say, "What is that supposed to be? A Wonder of the World? Does he think that's the only blue foot in the islands?"

The male put that foot down and raised the other one, bringing himself one pace closer to the female. Then he showed her the first one again, and then the second one again, looking her straight in the eye.

Mary would say for her, "I'm getting out of here." But the female didn't get out of there. She seemed glued to the lava as the male showed her one foot and then the other one, coming closer all the time.

And then the female raised one of her blue feet, and Mary used to say, "You think you've got such beautiful feet? Take a look at this, if you want to see a beautiful foot. Yes, and I've got another one, too."

The female put down one foot and raised the other one, bringing herself one pace closer to the male.

Mary used to shut up then. There would be no more anthropomorphic jokes. It was up to the birds now to carry the show. Advancing toward each other in the same grave and stately manner, neither bird speeding up or slowing down, they were at last breast to breast and toe to toe.

At Ilium High School, the students did not expect to see the birds copulate. The film was so famous, since Mary had shown it in the auditorium in early May, as an educational celebration of springtime, for years and years, that everybody knew that they would not get to see the birds copulate.

What those birds did on camera, though, was supremely erotic all the same. Already breast to breast and toe to toe, they made their sinuous necks as erect as flagpoles. They tilted their heads back as far as they would go. They pressed their long throats and the undersides of their jaws together. They formed a tower, the two of them - a single structure, pointed on top and resting on four blue feet.

Thus was a marriage solemnized.

There were no witnesses, no other boobies to celebrate what a nice couple they were or how well they had danced"

.. Og meget mere :)

Og om min cykle tur og weekend.... Det skriver jeg mere om en af dagene :)