Reviews and revisions

So, I submitted two comic book reviews for the consideration of an online magazine that is trying to start itself back up. This publication has launched careers of writers at IGN, Google, Ubisoft and more. I had already sent writing samples and they asked for more.

As with many things in These Uncertain Times™, this will be a volunteer position to help this publication pull back up from the shadows, and I’m hecka excited.

The writing is coming along, fictionwise, and I find myself writing a little each day. Sometimes I crank out a thousand or more words, some days a fraction of that. I am, though, making progress with each revolution around the sun. Those who’ve looked at this story have said one common thing: They want to see where it goes. Me, too, honestly.

See, I’m trying the Stephen King Method©®™, that is, I haven’t hammered out an outline, I am letting the story live and breathe as it goes. I realise this will make revision a nightmare, but it helps me not get caught in a sinewy web of my own construction. It seems that it allows avenues of creation to blossom in a moment. It feels a lot like acting, like improv.

That leads to mental health, of course. I have discussed imposter syndrome before, and boy-o-boy does this method of writing cause it to kick into high gear. I feel like I’m just chronicling the lives of the characters, not crafting them. It’s new, terrifying and wholly exhilarating.

That’s where I find myself, in the now. Check out Rogue Planet and King of Nowhere if you want something different in your comic life. If you’re local to Fort Smith, swing by Hoghead Comics and ask Mike to get those for you. You won’t regret it.

Cody Banning is an actor and writer from the Fort Smith, Arkansas River Valley and spends his time working, writing, playing board games and loving on his amazing family. You can contact him at codybanningactor@gmail.com anytime.

Of Humans and Gorillas

There has been a lot of talk. People have become overnight zoologists. Actual experts and zoologists have been ignored. Then, there is the question of why we have zoos anyway. That’s what I want to talk more about than anything else, in this post. Welcome back to my brain, guys. Been a while.

So, everyone is on one side or the other since the news broke that  Isiah Dickerson decided he’d go for a swim-n-cuddle with the Western Lowland Gorillas at the Cincinnati Zoo. The one side, staunch animal lovers and activists that blame the zoo, its administration, the mother, God, Zeus, the Eleventh Doctor, and Trump for the death of Harambe. The other side blame animal activists, the zoo, its administration, children (In general, any child…), Tommy Pickles, atheists, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, and Obama. I may have exaggerated a bit here, but now you know the two sides we’re dealing with.

As per usual, I fall somewhere in the confused middle. In a place occupied by God-fearing scientists, spiritual anti-theists, and people who just don’t like labels. Let’s get my views on the whole situation out of the way via bullet points.

• Is the mother to blame at all?
  Of course she is, her frakking kid fell fifteen feet into the enclosure of some wild animals. What do I know about watching kids, though? I’ve never had any.  I’ve SURELY never watched any. More than a dozen. I do know that, when at zoos, everyone in my family always makes sure – especially when their child mentions wanting to go swimming with the freakishly strong, four-hundred pound primates – that they hang on to their kids that are likely not old enough to hang on to themselves. That, again, is only opinion that I am not entitled to, since I don’t have a child, after all. I do have a pug. I know I don’t let her off the leash because she likes to play in roads and run head on at cars, but, that’s not a fair comparison because you auto-magically become exempt from responsibility of your offspring’s actions when you have said offspring. Or something.
• Should the zookeepers have killed Harambe?
  On the one hand, I saw the gorilla protecting the kid. On the other hand, I put my little niece in that situation in my head, I jumped down the fifteen feet myself, and I Tarzan vs Kerchack’d that damn dirty ape.
  Emotions aside, with sheer Vulcan logics, yes. When Jack Hannah says they had to cap Harambe to save the kid because tranquilizers would have just upset him, I accept the fact that there are now only ~94,999 Western Lowland Gorillas in the world. I also accept the fact that Harambe was allegedly on loan from Zoo Miami, and somebody gon’ sue somebody.
• Should zoos exist?
  Isn’t this a loaded question? I think to an extent yes “zoos” of a kind are essential, as they often currently exist, not so much.
  There HAS to be a conservation effort for Western Lowlands. Their population, based on VERY outdated and mis-collected data (According to the IUCN Red List here: http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/9406/0) is ~95,000 individuals, in captivity and the wild. That figure is dropping every day, and has no doubt been dropping since that figure was collected based upon available habitat, not actual individual count. That individual count hasn’t been confirmed since 1981, and it is believed, according to the Red List,

  “…recent surveys suggest that since the early 1980s, commercial hunting and outbreaks of the Ebola virus have virtually extirpated gorillas from a great deal of otherwise intact forest…”

  Look up the meaning of extirpated. Ah, hell, here. I did it for you because I want you to see the severity of what’s happening here:

  “Full Definition of extirpate

  extirpated   extirpating

  transitive verb
  1. 1a :  to destroy completely : wipe out
  1b :  to pull up by the root
  2:  to cut out by surgery

  I’ll just let you ruminate on that for a second. Sunk in? In case not, basically, the foremost conservation entity in the world has said that the population of Western Lowland Gorillas is much closer to ninety-five than ninety-five thousand. That means we, as the “dominant species”, have a duty to make sure the Western Lowland doesn’t go extinct. That means that sometimes we are going to have to oversee breeding and make sure they aren’t killed by poachers and Ebola, or poachers named Ebola. That’d be a really good supervillain name. I digress.

  The question is, then, is our current system the grooviest for the animals? The answer, Mr. Powers, is: “Not too groovy at all.”

  Many animals, even in “good” zoos, live their lives in cages, and spend very little time every day in their cool, little, themed enclosures. No matter how cool or themed, can something like a male Silverback reconcile the fact that he is inclined to want to roam a twenty kilometer range (That’s 12.4274 miles, y’all…) and is stuck, variably, in a limited size, definitely not that big, gorilla enclosure, and a cage? Not very healthily can he reconcile. I mean, is a gorilla that has never roamed and migrated really a gorilla? Wasn’t Harambe more a product of his captive birth and raising? I think so. I also don’t think he would have intentionally hurt the child, but, who knows. As Jack Hanna said, a mature male g.g. gorilla can crush a green coconut in hand. That’s not the question here, though. I answered to my opinion on that, this is about my opinion on zoos.

  Conservation and captivity are necessary to the survival of endangered species, but, are zoos the right fit, even the modern cutting-edge ones like Cincinnati, or nah. In my opinion? Nah.

  There are many better options. Reserves in the actual natural habitats. Reserves in more accommodating countries. Reserves, reserves, reserves are always better than zoos. (Sing that to the children’s or seventies tune of your choice…) Reserves that allow the animals to roam large spaces that are actual habitats. Reserves that are minimally monitored and allowed to naturally occur. Reserves that allow mating to be as natural as it can be in captivity. I realize in extreme cases, like the Giant Panda, human intervention has to be stronger, but primates are known for our sex drives! So let nature take its course!

• What’s my overall point here?

  Simple. Humans, while having a duty to conserve, should do so in the least invasive way possible. Laws, protections, and reserves are the answer. Not in jails where the animals are put upon a staged facsimile of their natural habitat for entertainment and profit, and where one unobservant mother and her curious child can get them killed.

  I like zoos because of the animals, but I question if I can go to one again after thinking about it this much. I knew they always kind of made me sad, now they make me angry, too. Thanks,  human race! ;P