This Week's Essay is a Video.

Through advanced computer sound collage techniques and intentionally rudimentary animation, the first (and so far only) episode of the “Abominable TV Show for the Internet” has quietly stormed its way onto the World Wide Web. Exploring the dangers of anthropomorphizing (in the tradition of this piece and this post), we let Derrick Jensen and Murray Bookchin bend time and space to debate whether or not we ought to pretend to be a river, and then I go ask the Kinnickinnic River what it thinks. Please go to YouTube and vote in the comments if we should pretend to be rivers or not. It doesn’t even need to be on this video. Pick any. Majority rules, and then anthropomorphizing either becomes mandatory or high treason. Sorry. That’s just the way it’s gotta be.