The Darwin Diaries

beautiation

* London, July 3 1830:
Dear diary. An earthshattering day! Have come up with Survival of the Fittest theory through being woken this morning by race on the street involving stray mongrel, cockney horse, tabby cat and chimney-sweep, where all the losers got shot. Shall be famous at last!

July 4:
Diary, help! Chimney-sweep was still twitching so hit him with an iron bar a few times. Then vacuumed up his DNA with my “Fly-B-Gone 1900” and tossed them on fire to make sure gene pool was cleansed. I must flee!

July 5:
Have decided to make for notorious tax haven Galapagos Islands.

The sea, January 2 1831.
Dear diary. God am bored. The ship is full of burly sailors and there’s hardly any genetic reproduction to observe.

Tokyo, February 6 1831.
We’re in Japan! Bastard navigator had his map upside down the whole time. At least it gave me a chance to pitch my “East End Deathrace” gameshow idea to producers here. Setting sail for G. Isles once we get a favourable easterly, westerly, northernly or southerly breeze, all will get us there at the same rate.

The sea. July 1831.
Have lost all crew members. Asked captain during a summer calm how the conditions were. He replied “it’s flat.” Sailors overheard this comment,screamed “Aaargh, we knew it! We’ll fall off the edge!” ,and dived into the water.

The sea-1832ish.
Am going insane from the isolation. Sorry for vague date. Broke sundial while defending myself from hallucinated 20 tentacled octopus. Better be famous soon, have to refund captain for broken tiller.

Galapagos Isles- Titanium spiked porcupine mating season, whenever that is.
Dear Diary- arrival. But even here my phantasies taunt me. Horrible luminous pink reptiles and giant birds with 4 feet beaks prowl on the beach waiting to get me. Well, I’ll show them this time.

Dear diary. This is the captain. Have you seen Charles? The last I saw of him he was giving an Indian burn to an ostrich and shouting “Got you now, you demons!” Then he disappeared into the forest bellowing “For king and country!”. These reckless expansionist policies will come back and ruin the empire one of these days.

Titanium porcupine “Waking up to sober regret and sneaking off before she wakes up” season.
Dear diary. Am back! Rampage was stopped by ten foot nosed puffin giving me beak to the mouth. As spat teeth out realised such a conker must greatly improve reproduction odds. Can beat off rival puffins with ease and can with one sneeze mark puffettes with scent. And once you buy a woman perfume she pretty much has to put out.

Galapagos- Day 84.
Am going home. Have just rounded up the two most advanced members of each species. Much resistance at first but fortunately a Mormon pigeon who had read the bible told everyone it might be a good idea, and they all listened. He is pigeon of great influence, 38 wives and suspected of interbreeding so much has genetic material in all major avian groups. Am on way to fame!

The Sea.
Going crazy again. These animals have maddeningly cocky, swaggering personalities due to sense of superiority. Fear many species may be destined to ultimate evolution to professional footballers.

A slightly bluer sea-,Must be about 1834 by now, I should think.
Have finished great work- “Jesus versus The Nose”. Showed it to Mormon pigeon who said was crap and I was shallow end of gene pool type. Restrained myself from violence by remembering that response to my work will be less blinkered by humans, no matter how many wives they have.

2 October 1836.
Home to glory! Kissed sand as I stepped ashore, but accidentally snogged sun bather instead. She gave winsome look, doubtless sensing top of the line genes in the air. Huge crowds gathered as I lined up my most human looking samples for display. Sold Mormon pigeon to farmer to plow fields with massive wingspan, ha!

Tower of London, 3 October 1836.
Slave trade illegalised while I was away! Banged up for 5 years!

2 October 1841.
One more day. Just...one...more...day. Then I’ll be famous.

3 October 1841.
Prince of England licks Galapagos toad, provoking psychedelic trance. Banged up again for 10 years for drug smuggling, and 5 more for treason.

June 1846.
Have taken to banging head against cell wall repeatedly. Have bump on head like a potato. Irish man in neighbouring cell says “Jaysus, they’d eat the head off you back home right now.” Perhaps have finally developed crucial evolutionally favourable characteristic?

London, October 1856
Freedom! The outside world is a hard place. All my animals are dead or working in circuses, and the 38 Mormon wives are locked in bitter reparation trials with British government. People not so keen on theory. Fortunately have enough groupies to Darwinate the species to some degree.

December 8.
Dear diary. Am depressed. Church of England has declared holy war on me, and the public want me dead. Have called meeting of evolutionary gifted celebrities to organise counter campaign.

December 18.
More depressed. Three Men with magnificent plumage of facial hair suggested pro natural selection song with bits of the chorus sung as cheetah mating calls.
“Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk,
I'm a woman's man, no time to talk
Ah ah ah ah ah,
Staying alive, staying alive.”

But was beaten to Christmas number 1 by church novelty single- Glory, glory halle-yule-a.

January 25 1857.
Have reached breaking point with the ignorant masses, am going home.

Galapagos Isles 1859.
Gah! Things are just the same here. New generation of big beaked birds are so top heavy they’ve keeled over and can’t get up. Are taunted by other birds and are not getting any. Put head in sand in empathy. Geniuses are always misunderstood in their own time.

Insect Overlord

Would probably be seen as a fantastic piece of writing at the top level of Junior Cert English, but far too irreverant for me. I can see that efffort has been made to make the piece humourous. Unfortunately though, it didn't make me laugh at all.

D4RK ONION

Harsh An Fhile. But unfortunately, quite fair. I chuckled once of twice...

Matt Holck

Would probably be seen as a fantastic piece of writing at the top level of Junior Cert English,

please don't do grade peoples work with blanket statements

I kept getting lost as to what was going on in the journal

perhaps some stage direction would help

I found the voice (took me a while)
I like it

Insect Overlord

Matt Holck wrote: »

please don't do grade peoples work with blanket statements

Why not?
Everyone is free to critique in whatever style they feel is appropriate, so long as it's within the charter. In my opinion this was the most appropriate way of getting my assessment across.

The piece is somewhat juvenile, and I believe that my estimation on the age-appropriatness of it was accurate.

Matt Holck

because the statement doesn't tell the writer why the piece seems juvenile or how to change that


the reading is choppy because of the format
it took several passes for me to complete it

Arpa

I agree with An File, although I may not have put it in such a way. The general idea is good. Mildly amusing even, but it has been done so many times before that it has become obsolete. I toyed with the idea of doing something like this with Anne Frank as the character. It yielded some funny moments but inevitably it wasn't workable. There is only one outcome using this framework and that's monotonous repetition. It's not a bad idea as a writing excercise though.

"Dear Kitty, it is our third week in the roofspace now. Fibre-glass is an utter bitch."