Prophecy Girl Is Asked To Be An Expert On Non-Jake Things! (A Sunday Interlude - Not Required Reading)

Funny story...so I got this e-mail on Friday from someone who really liked my blog and knew an author who wanted to interview me.  I got very excited because hello?  Free publicity!

So I wrote the woman back and told her all about Jake Watch and how I started blogging again because Prince of Persia was coming out and so was this book I'd written...and she called me.  Like, immediately.  And asked me over the phone to explain the blog.  So I did.  Again.  And there was a pause...

"So how did you first become interested in overpopulation?"

"OH," I said.  "THAT BLOG."

I felt a bit ridiculous for just assuming I knew which blog she was talking about, though I'm so used to the Jake ones being the only ones anyone cares about that I sometimes forget that I've had a long and illustrious career blogging about other topics as well.

In April of 2006, in direct response to britpopbaby starting Jake Watch, I decided to start a blog of my own called The Overpopulation Blog (or The OP for short).  Back in college, I became fascinated with/horrified by the exponential population growth of our species, but was dismayed to see that the coverage of this topic skewed to the depressing.  Famine.  Overcrowding.  War.  Disease.  'Fuck that,' I thought.  'Why is no one covering the real issues?'  Like that there were so many people on Earth that Nick Lachey managed to have a hit single.  Or that competition to get into college is now so intense that there is an entire industry of people who train other people to take tests to get into college.  Or that four years ago there were enough right-wing entomologists out there discovering new species of beetles that 3 different Bush officials went down in biological history by having insects named after them.

These are the real effects of a population boom gone awry!

So that's what that blog was about, although due to a new gig writing at Jake Watch, and also a sudden influx of people who wanted to discuss very serious and complex issues with me that I didn't really have the time to properly respond to, the blog was mostly abandoned, and now I only update it once a year, on Earth Day.  

But I told the woman on the phone that I'd totally still do the interview.  She thanked me and told me the author had talked to many professionals in the field but was looking for a more light-hearted approach from someone "on the ground."

So today, at 11 AM Central, I was interviewed by a CNN anchor who is writing a book about this crazy nation we call the United States (I'm not sure what the protocol is on naming the author or her book...I think I should perhaps wait until the book is actually out).  In the 48 hours that passed between the original phone call and the interview itself, I took many notes on possible things I could say about human overpopulation being serious, but not so serious that it can't be made fun of.

But the interview started with a review of the current statistics on U.S. birth rates and...I had a feeling at that point that I might be sunk.  I can't say for sure, but I may--in my babbling hysteria--have said that mankind will likely be wiped out by a plague in the very near future.  I know I didn't mean to say that, but I thought we'd be talking about how making clothing for dogs has become a viable career option (because really?!) and next thing you know, it's all about feeding villages in Africa with the grain saved by not raising a single cow...

So God only knows what actually came out of my mouth this morning, but whatever it was, it might wind up in a book, so I'll never be able to forget it.

In hindsight, it probably would have gone better had she just asked me about Jake.

The end.

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