Electric Monkey Pants

Here’s the most disturbing thing you’ll see today:

Good job, humans. We’ve created a whole new continent! Unfortunately, it’s composed entirely of trash.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or “trash vortex”, believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region. Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: “The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States.”

Is there somewhere I can turn in my humanity? Maybe I could trade it for something less destructive and become an elephant or something.

Oh wait, then I’ll be hunted down for my ivory and left for dead. Nevermind. Guess I’m human for the duration.

I’m not worried, though. This problem will eventually solve itself.

Human beings are parasites. We leech nurishment from the Earth and give nothing back (except more destruction). But like most parasites eventually do, we have gone too far and now we’re killing the host… and ultimately ourselves.

On the plus side, this floating island of garbage might make a great tourist attraction for any space aliens who want to tour an Earth museum after we’re gone.

I wonder if they’ll sell plastic souvenir coke bottles.