This was published in a recent issue of Salamander Fancy magazine. Much thanks to correspondent Hiram Thung for bringing it to our attention:
The community dance center has asked me to prepare some remarks about Lamarck for this tiresome debate about evolution versus bullheaded religious stupidity. As the one person in this room who has ever left the country, I am perhaps the cloest thing to an expert you have. I thank you for asking me up here, & wonder what the fuck is in your drinking water.
When Lamarck, the French naturalist, died in 1829, I can't honestly say I was too bummed out. I couldn't express that in French, though. In those dark days, we didn't have online resources like Babelfish to make fools of ourselves to French people. No, all I had was a phrasebook written by an American army officer from Virginia who learned French in Quebec. Most of the mourners at Lamarck's embarrassingly planned funeral didn't know what the fuck I was saying. Good for me!
How was that different from William Blake's funeral a couple of years before? Two words: the drugs. Holy shit did we get fucked up at Blake's funeral. I think even Blake was fucked up, & that motherfucker was stone cold dead. I know, I know, everyone thought Blake was some sort of crazy religious nut, but all I know is, the dude loves his psychedelics. Hell, he was the only English poet of his day who owned an electric guitar. You know?
Anyway, Lamarck. Eighty years after his death I was sitting outside the railroad station in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when, as it happened in those days, an argument broke out between a hobo who was talking shit about Mendel & a security guard who was a total Lamarckian. To be fair, they were about to open the meat packing plant then & everyone thought they'd finally be able to quit working at the city's fast food restaurants, which, I gotta tell you, were some of the worst places to work in South Dakota at the time. The manager of the local Taco Bell, for example, was a douchebag without parallel.
So this security guard says, "Lamarck did not die no natural death. Lamarck was killed in the War on Sailing!"
Motherfucker. I nearly shit a brick. It had followed me even there, to the middle of nowhere in a country run by an asshole the size of Teddy Roosevelt's asshole. The guard was wrong, of course. Lamarck had been on the wrong side of the War On Sailing. Blake has been assassinated, though. Still, the point was made. They were on to me. Just as I know you're on to me now.
Listen: you know your enemies by the ideas they spew. Lamarckianism, like Social Darwinism, like Trickle Down Economics, like American Idol, like Intelligent Design, is a meme propagated by our foes to keep us dumbasses. Dumb people believe nearly anything. I have traveled far & wide & pretended to be a dumbass, not just because dumbasses are allowed to eat pretty well (as you well know), but because they are not always ashamed of their strings. So I can occasionally see the marionette. Just like now.
Lamarck had an ironic name, because he didn't hit "la marck." He was way off. You thing you're on the mark? Don't be too sure.
Anyway, thanks for letting me talk. Have a fun debate.
