Friday, July 18, 2008

Heart of Darkness



The news cuts away to someplace called "The Heart of Darkness." I listen, and it is not further located on any map.

A pretty lady in cammie gear speaks seriously to us before a backdrop of dense jungle. A tribe, she says. Not hunter/gathering, but planter/migrant, which means they place seed in the ground then leave.

Another tribe is more the hunter/gathering paradigm. They find fields which have been planted and abandoned. Then they harvest. Then they eat.

The planter migrants are extremely emaciated, whereas the hunter gatherers are definitely not.

We see a still shot of an obese native, chomping on an ear of corn.

The migrants captured a monkey, she tells us. They handcuffed him in front with a stake behind his back placed horizontally with both arms looped around it. Then they sent the monkey to the hunters.

From the studio: How big was the monkey, Felicia?
Felicia: Somewhere between a chimp and an orangutan.

Immediately the gathering tribe released the monkey. It did not, however, run off into the jungle, but it hung around. We figure it only wanted to see what would happen.

From the Heart of Darkness, this is Felicia, returning you to our studio ...