Every 48 years, the bamboo plant flowers, producing massive amounts of avocado-like fruits that will cause the rat population to explode into a massive pest infestation which by the locals of Mizoram, India, is called mautam, the wave. Because of easy access to nutritious food, the rats will breed exponentially, until there are no more bamboo fruits left to feed on, causing the rats to seek elsewhere for food, which means that they will attack and devour all available human crops in the area. Millions of rats will quite literally swarm all over in an unstoppable onslaught of ferocious hunger. Due to the long period of time in between these bamboo flowering events, you will only experience mautam once in your lifetime. And it is indeed every bit as frightful as the stories say, so there is an almost supernatural fear of it in those areas where this is happening. 

Interestingly, there is a similar story about humans. If you shave off all the self important bullshit and take an unbiased look at the ways of the human species, there can be little doubt that we are a pest to every environment that we happen to infest, swarming onwards like so many huge rats who devour everything in our way, leaving only toxic excrements and destruction in our trails. Sure enough, there are the PR agents of man who thinks that we are just too cute to be true and that every last outpost of the inahabitable universe should be blessed by the presence of that spectacularly accomplished, noble and clever monkey, the human being, but I don't think so. Most of us are stupid cunts who will never be anything more - and even if we are educated we will become little more than elaboratly sophisticated stupid cunts. 

According to legend, the dark ages that we are living in started in 3000 BCE, with the rise of the first riverbank civilizations of Egypt, Sumeria and the Indus Valley. Since then it has gone rapidly downhill with our species, culiminating in today's absurd creatures who on an individual level mostly are unfit for survival on this planet, but survive none the less through the umbilical cord connection with The Empire (or The New World Order, if you like), a non-corpereal, nebulous structure of subconscious intent which in essence is like the fabric of a dream. A golden fantasy which motivates man to be the evil, demented monkey that we are today. It ought to be blatantly obvious to anybody with even half an ass of a brain inside their skull cavity that "we" are heading for a major disaster in the very near future. Possibly even many simultaneous distaster-like events. But still "we" are merrily breeding beyond all sensibility and control, flooding the planet with ever more humans who are constantly looking for something new to devour, just like the 48 year rat pest. 

The Empire is built upon a surge of unrealistic optimism, like the flowering of the bamboo, caused by an abundance of food which cannot be sustained in the long run. But the rats don't understand that - and neither do the humans.  And even if they do understand that we are heading for disaster, they don't care. "Something will happen to save us" they say. The Government, possibly even God Almighty, will intervene at the last minute and save the day. "There is nothing that I alone can do anyway" they say. So we all just carry on with business as usual, minding our own little lawns and the intricate decorations of our own little houses and stylish lifestyles, raising our own little children and taking it all with a smile. "Cheer up!" they say. Yes it will all surely go to hell in a handbasket, but why worry about that? Just mind your own business and carry on with harvesting the fruits of the bountiful bamboo forest. Tomorrow's another day.