Logan's Running the Trees and Vaporizing The Kids!

1976 was an eventful year. It was full of funny looking quarters. some Steves started a little computer company in a garage. And Logan's Run missed out on the Oscar for Best Picture.

Despite this hella poster:

For those of you who have not been graced with such immersive historical cultural indoctrination, allow me to sum up the plot:

In the year 2274, the remnants of human civilization live in a sealed city, a utopia run by a computer that takes care of all aspects of their life. The citizens live a hedonistic life but, on their 30th birthday, they are vaporized as a seemingly necessary method of population control. The movie follows Logan 5, who instead of reporting to be vaporized, goes on the run with his companion Jessica 6. They are, of course, hunted by wards of the city sent to terminate them and basically a bunch of questionable 1970's sci-fi melodrama ensues.

Let it be known that I have for some time been constructing a working theory that all science fiction is actually just pre-comedy. Logan's Run is definitely a must see, if for it's style alone.

But Logan's Run is not really what I want to talk about. What I really want to talk about is trees. All the trees that are all around you. 99% of them did not exist 30 years ago. Outside of parks, conservation areas, and the occasional old neighborhood shade tree, all of which constitute a very, very small percentage of a percentage of a percentage of the actual total number of trees, it's actually not very easy to find a tree that is 30 or 40 years old anymore. Why is this? Trees should be able to live to be 150-200 years old.

Unless of course, someone is Logan's Running them. Yep. We are the evil computer in Logan's Run! Okay, to be fair, the computer wasn't actually evil. It was programmed by humans who had to make some hard choices at a difficult time. It has just simply outlived its necessity by the time the movie begins.

The irony is that we are in a difficult time and we are executing the trees which we should be allowing to live longer to help save ourselves! And since trees live approximately twice as long as humans, we are executing trees in their preteen to early teen equivalent years, not early maturity! We're not the computer in Logan's Run executing 30 year olds, we're thoughtless humans vaporizing tree kids! I kind of figure that by 30 years old or an early maturity equivalent, even the late bloomers have done enough bad things that they at least sort of kind of deserve it. At least a little bit. But kids?!? Those poor saps!

One of the real problems with talking about the subjects of environmentalism, over population, carrying capacity, or mass consumerism is that the battle lines were drawn long ago and everything has been polarized for a long time. It's difficult to have a sane, rational, thoughtful conversation about such things. Especially when you're in the midst of a bunch of arboreal child murderers! (And/or your own sanity might be in question.)

Which is why I have decided to put all my pre-chickens in a single woven vessel and from hither forth, I declare:

A War On Thoughtlessness!!!

and/or pledge support for carefully considered proper tree aging initiatives and 1970's sci-fi!

Tune in next week for:

Which is weirder:

humans, weird animals, or the god responsible?