Y'ever heard of those cute little rodents called lemmings? They live up on the tundra, the land of permafrost, in places like Norway, Sweden, Finland. Places that have fjords, and people who have things like picked kippers for breakfast. These voracious little critters… er, the lemmings, not the people with the pickled kippers… do nothing but eat lichens and breed, and after a while of this, there isn't enough lichen for 'em all, and everywhere they go, there's nothin' but more lemmings. I guess they get sick of seeing the same ol' familiar fuzzy faces all over the place and go a little haywire, 'cause where there're a lot of them in a small location, the spontaneously decide to march to the nearest cliff and fling themselves off it. From my understanding of this phenomenon, they do their free-fall into the sea with a determined exuberance, and if they do not die upon impact they swim out further until they drown.

On a related subject, you know that suicide is one of the top three leading causes of death for people ages fourteen through forty-four? Yup! In fact, twice as many people kill themselves than die of AIDS each year. And then there's this other large percentage of people who try to exterminate themselves, but are prevented from goin' the full monty by meddling friends, family, paramedics. That's an awful lot of people deciding life isn't worth living anymore. Really makes you wonder what impels them to do it. Makes ya wonder if they aren't all tired of seeing the same ol' familiar faces all over the place…