The hummingbird is one of those types of animals that if you didn't know it was real and someone tried to tell you about it, you wouldn't believe them. I mean, unless you were an idiot, which, naturally, most people are.

 

Actually, this is the first time I'd ever really seen a hummingbird and I didn't find it natural or beautiful except maybe in the way that I find a rat or a pimple or a dog turd. I also thought I was lucky that something like this didn't happen to me 30 years ago, or I might today have an irrational fear of hummingbirds instead of just finding them annoying and disgusting like I do now.

 

Before this happened, I might not have believed in hummingbirds either, if I'd ever given them any thought at all, which I don't think I ever did. Despite having heard of them and seen pictures, I might have thought that they were just made up animals like a unicorn or platypus or bigfoot.

 

You might have noticed that I included the platypus in that list of made up animals, and you may find that strange because you are probably one of them that think the platypus is real. If you are, you probably also think that a duck and a beaver can fall in love.

 

Like Australia. I've never been to Australia, or seen it or touched it. There's no Australian food or Australian restaurants in town. They don't have their own language or even their own accent, to me it just sounds like cockney English. There's never been a major war there, and no one's ever invaded it. All the people you think are from Australia are like cartoon characters, like that Crocodile Hunter guy, or Ned Kelly in his big old suit of armor, or Crocodile Dundee. It's all so fake.

 

Sure it's on all the maps and globes and people talk like it's real, and you're probably wondering why would someone go to all the trouble of making it up in the first place. But the British made it up, just like the made up Winnie The Pooh and Mary Poppins and Mother Theresa. It's just so that they can pretend they have an empire.

 

The next time someone tell you about aromatherapy, just tell them you don't believe in smells. In the language of touchy-feely psychobabble, they would call this a "roadblock to communication". Only they would say that like it was a bad thing. To them, communication is the end-all be-all, but of course they're also the ones doing all that smelling.

 

I don't know why people have to believe in so much stuff anyway. It seems like anyone can make up anything and just say they believe in it and no one's supposed to tell them how stupid it is, because we're all supposed to respect each other's beliefs. And yet you never hear of someone not believing in stuff that they know isn't made up.

 

It might be interesting to test my theory by having some TV Preacher start telling people to not believe in real things, like price tags or stop signs or bullets or gravity. You just know that lots of folks would go along. Then they'd all go into stores and argue like idiots with the cashiers, and fill up traffic courts, and fall off cliffs. Because, again, people are idiots.

 

The only thing missing from this whole system I'm proposing is a way for me to get rich off of it, unless I write a book like Dare To Deny. But I still don't think it'll catch on, because there's no way for anyone else to get rich off of it, and it's always easier for people to believe in things that they think will make them money. That's why almost any time someone tell you that they believe in something, they're going to try to sell it to you. And also why almost every time someone takes a vow of poverty, they're in a cult.

 

All I'm saying is, don't knock on my door or call me up or try to get me to call you or tell me my future or what I should smell or eat or invest in. I don't believe in the future, or books, or midget real estate millionaire twins on infomercials, or Jamaican psychics, or Amish people, or smelling things, or 800 numbers with naked women I can call at 3 in the morning.