So let me say this right off: I was not, in fact, abducted
by aliens.
It sure seemed that way at the time. It did! The strange voices, the
unfamiliar social and physical conditions in which I found myself, the
weird flora and fauna. For a while, I wondered if it was an elaborate digital
simulation, or perhaps a nearby planet terraformed for some dark purpose.
But it turned out to be something called a "vacation" which, as I understand
it, involves not working for some period of time, and instead being someplace
that I'm usually not. So that's what I was doing. Or, at least, that's
what I came to believe.
This, then, is some random stuff I wrote down in a notebook (an analog
text editor, essentially) while I was "on vacation."
Another time, I might still be abducted by aliens. I'm rather looking
forward to it.
Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night, and hear people talking,
or a person talking, or you think you do, but you can't quite make out
the words? And you think, This must be a dream, or It's just
the wind, but you know it's not a dream, and you know it's not the
wind? And you think, Maybe what I hear is the Voice of God, but
then you think, Nah, it can't be the Voice of God; that's just
nuts. And then you turn over, and you find God Himself, lying there
beside you, talking in His sleep? And you elbow him a couple of times and
He snorts and turns over and goes back to sleep and so do you? And then
you wake up in the morning, and you go to ask God what He was saying, and
He's not there, and you wonder if maybe He went out for bagels or something?
When I was a child, I was an imaginary friend.
Seven Men in a Bottle
(Being) a Play in Five Acts
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The act of narrating an event, or a series of events, which could not,
in principle, happen.
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The act of drowning seven fish in oil for no apparent reason.
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The act of misinterpreting instructions.
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The act of casting Satan out of a field of stinging nettle by the laying
on of hands.
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The act of seasoning dinner from a bottle whose contents are not known.
Post-Modern Neo-Darwinism
Context is just
a narrative's way
of making another narrative.
Is 8 a public figure?
Praise For
Tom Clancy's
New York City Phone Book
"Breathtaking in scope"
"An astonishing array of characters"
"Technical accuracy that approaches
perfection"
"Comprehensive ... detailed ..."
"Essential Clancy"
"I can't wait for the sequel"
A man, blind and deaf from birth, bought a copy of 101 Ways to Communicate
Better for all of his friends.
Product Marketing Campaigns That Didn't Make It
(For Some Odd Reason)
Candy
It Will Stick To You
A Dairy Product
That Dares Not
Speak Its Name
Cats live a dozen years, give or take. They sleep 80% of their lives.
To perceive life as a cat does, you would have to sleep 23 hours and 12
minutes every day.
We're doing our part.
Earthquake
or
Guillotine ?
You Decide!
CNN Reports in Depth
Professor of Nanosociology Eunice Tyler joins us with this.
I've been studying the nanocolony
here in northern Texas for thirteen years, and they've done some remarkable
things.
Mark James, from Roanoke, Virginia, considers the nanobots a problem.
We can't let these ... these
... things take over hundreds of square miles of our country!
Standing on his ranch in Plano, Texas, Beaumont Sutton argues for letting
them be.
There's a balance in nature,
and we have to respect that.
This is Dave Edwards, for CNN.
A desirable handicap.
One of my best Scrabble word so far: cilliar,
as the first play. 72 points.
(Sadly, it turns out to be spelled ciliar,
but I didn't have a sensible dictionary along at the time. Oh well.)
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Being: A schedule for five young women, known only as A.
through E., with three women available for certain services each
weekday and all five on the weekends, with two days a week off each, but
with no one woman off by herself so that one may monitor the other while
away from the household, these days off being contiguous for those having
earned favor.
What do people who are still in the closet do in societies that don't
have closets?
A Good Smiting
It's time for a good smiting.
When was the last one, really? Oh sure, WW II, with the Nazi death camps,
Dresden and the atomic bombs. Or Stalin's purges, various of Mao's slaughters,
or Cambodia.
But to find really good smitings, you've got to go back to Biblical
times. You know, Sodom and Gomorra, or the Great Flood. And even in the
latter, Noah is said to have brought two of every species on board so,
from a species point of view, it wasn't a smiting at all. (I always wondered
how he managed to get species, like Koala bears, or pumpkins, that weren't
native to the Middle East at all. But whatever.)
What we need is a real, serious, species-ending smiting.
Let's start with mosquitos, shall we? What good, really, are
mosquitos? Yeah, they're the primary vector for arthropodal viruses, if
you're a fan of arthropodal viruses. We'll get to them later. Various lizards
eat mosquitos, but we're just sure there are substitutional goods for them.
So let's start by smiting the mosquitos. There. Doesn't that feel good
already?
We might want to consider parasites in general, just because. Parasitic
wasps? Pretty gross. Tapeworms? I don't even want to think about
how they reproduce.
Ah. Viruses. Viruses are pretty much Bad. Well, OK. Those ancient viruses
that turned into mitochondria in our cells were Good. But everybody else
is Bad. Smite.
Similarly with prions. Nasty little molecules. Smite.
Bacteria? Bacteria are probably pretty much good. No yogurt without
bacteria, after all. Or sour cream. Or aged beef. Bacteria get rid of lots
of things that die. Without bacteria, we'd have piles and piles of dead
things. Ick. Some, though, like anthrax: Bad. So you bacteria will probably
need to be pre-approved to avoid the smiting. Sorry.
This brings me to insects. I do not want to smite all insects.
Butterflies, for instance, are quite delightful, as are lightning bugs.
Praying mantises and ladybugs, which eat other, more opprobrious insects,
can stay around. But Order Insecta as a whole? Again, please fill out your
pre-approval forms. You guys are pretty gross.
I'm inclined to leave marine life, and plant life in general, pretty
much alone. Except maybe sharks. I don't like sharks.
Which brings me to coelenterata - worms and such. Pretty gross, in some
respects, but they stay pretty much to themselves, and they keep the birds
fed, so they can stay around.
On to reptiles. Reptiles, despite their modern reputation, are pretty
good. Cute, even. Keep 'em.
Birds. I like birds.
Then there are the mammals, the most problematic order, and the subject
of virtually all previous smitings. I'm fond of mammals, on the whole.
Rats, not so much. Certain cats are problematic. A number of our human
colleagues could easily trigger celebrations by being smited. I have a
list. But let's not be picky. For the sake of argument, let's let the mammals
live.
So what have we got? Prions, viruses, some bacteria, various parasites,
lots of insects. I admit that this is a pretty different smiting list than
god has compiled in the past. I'm hoping that god appreciates the changes
of pace.
Oh, sure, there will have to be some ecological adjustments afterwards.
But we all survived the Yucatan meteor, so I figure we'll recover from
this little fiddling.
As always, if there's anything I can do to help - anything at all ...
