Anarchist Vampire Mushrooms Dine On the Black Life-Blood of Capitalism, Human Waiters Needed.

Shocking Origins Claim: Humans Just Fungi with Stomachs?

The bearded visionary Paul Stamets, seen by many mycosmonauts as the world's leading fungal alchemist, made this shocking claim in his 2005 manifesto "Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World". Undoubtedly an inspiring message in this era of family breakdown, the potential addition of fungal ancestors to the human geneaology is a hypothesis that deserves further explication, at least in the view of this humble investigator.

According to the shamanic Stamets: "Animals have a more common ancestry with fungi than with any other kingdom", further asserting that, about 650 million years ago, "The branch of fungi leading to animals evolved to capture nutrients by surrounding their food with cellular sacs, essentially primitive stomachs". This controversial claim may quickly become the provocation of choice for those keen to fence wits with the creationist intelligentsia. As recently tested at a dinner party, this investigator can confirm that the suggestion that Adam was a mushroom is indeed highly efficacious in stimulating heated indignation and outraged gall in even the most formidable Darwin-denialist. However, once we allow our initial instinctive repulsion to such a blasphemous proposition to subside, it quickly becomes clear that the affinity with our spore-bearing cousins is no more than the meanest of common sense. If further clarification does not offend, both animals and fungi occupy the enviable status of heterotroph in the ecological hierarchy. Unlike their chlorophyll-imbued vegetative inferiors, neither deign to harvest energetic sustenance directly from the sun's electromagnetic bounty. Instead, they rely solely on their wit and guile to elicit a carbon tithe from the labouring autotrophs.

The animals' chief innovations in this regard were discretion and etiquette, as they developed stomachs in which the private exploitation of organic materials could be conducted. Fungi, on the other hand, have persisted in quite shameless public degradation. It is rumoured amongst theorists of the distant past that, prior to the questionable innovation of chlorophyll and its primary pollutant - oxygen, the primordial world was a veritable Garden of Eden for the fungal aristocracy. Those innocent days would have been spent bathing in the sweet vapours of ammonia and methane, whilst supping at their leisure on limitless pools of deliciously complex organic compounds. Yet, despite their fall from grace, this is merely the beginning of a secular litany of fungal achievements. Stamets cites evidence from clock-watchers of molecular adaptation that representatives of the 'shadow kingdom' were amongst the earliest complex-celled pioneers to invade and colonise the barren terrestrial regions. One billion years ago, wandering far from the soothing waters of 'nanny earth's' vast primordial womb, a grand fungal fraternity of imperialist endeavour was initiated to which the noble orders of modern freemasonry are still proudly indebted. As are we all.

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