Damn Confused Fornicating Wasps

Before we get to the wasps, I would like to make a public service announcement.  Specifically, this is Tim McCarty from the Indiana State Police.   We are going to pretend we are at the half time of a Notre Dame Football game.   "When you are have a Thanksgiving dinner, don't drink a whole bottle of Spanish wine.   Especially if you are a lightweight.   And you know who you are.   I know you have a thing for Spanish wine, and you are stressed out about getting ready for the trial and want to take various people's heads off at work, but do the right thing and just skip the wine.  Go back to your Muse meditation portable EEG brainwave monitor. The world will thank you for it."

However, lets assume for a minute that you didn't follow the State Troopers' advice and had your Spanish wine.  You then pick up the book of your life, and start to read its well creased and worn pages stained with all manner of colorful sticky substances.

"Its a somewhat interesting story, but don't expect a sequel," says a shimmering prismatic light in front of you.

You hold up the book.  "I don't want it to end.  All the characters die in the end."

"Ah, you have developed an attachment to the plot and its characters.  That's touching."

"Even you Mr. Light.  You stop at the end as well.  Frida Frank dies in a fire, George Helmcloth takes a bus and is never seen from again."

The prismatic light smiles, "But if you start the book again we'll all be back.   Even Frida, George, and Alfredo."

"Honest?"

"Certainly," continues the light.  "Its the same with you, Mike.   You're may not realize it yet, but its the same with you."

Now on to the wasps.   Wasps are freaking idiots.  Not all wasps.  Just certain species of male wasps. Simply put, they seem to like fucking orchid flowers more than female wasps.  How that makes sense from an evolutionary stand point you got me.  Kinda curbs the enthusiasm as well who those that think that the universe was created by some sort of divine or intelligent creator.  Now I'm sure there will be those that say it fits into some sort of evolutionary design that the orchids get pollen spread by fornicating wasps so it fits some sort of purpose, but really?  A wasp that prefers flowers over female wasps?  Who are you crapping?

Even Darwin was kinda tripped out over seeing the wasps go at it.  He was puzzled over the observation  of frequent ‘attacks’ made upon orchids by their pollinators. ‘What this sentence means I cannot conjecture,’ he declared.

What is it that attracted the wasps?  I mean, sure, the pink labellum of the small tongue orchid curves upwards, studded with two rows of shiny dark spots.  And it kinda sounds erotic to say that, but come on, how could wasps be so confused?  The orchids also produce no nectar or edible material. The wasps in are also normally predators, hunting caterpillars and other larvae.

It turns out on closer examination that to the male wasp, the orchid looks exactly like a female wasp, mimicking the precise dimensions and shape of the female's body. The reflections of ultra violet light to which wasps are so sensitive, resemble almost exactly the wings of female wasps and the shape and size of the female's abdomen. The orchid even has tactile features that either stimulate the male wasp into mating or guide his body into the correct position.  Woo hoo!

Then comes the clincher:  the odor produced by the orchid exactly mimics the sex pheromone of the female wasp.  Signed sealed and delivered.  The poor dumb fuckers don't have a chance. Beware the ravenous orchid, ye male wasps or you will be condemned to a life of pseudocopulation.

Of course, you can wonder how evolution would have developed such a weird state of appliances for the orchid.  But maybe its not too unusual.  Think of all the dumb human male fuckers who do the same thing with even less enticing sex objects and pornography.  Indeed, if you had a chance to visit the St. Louis Museum of Contemporary Art a few months ago they had an exhibit where female (and male) sex dolls were decorated as an art form.  Check this out here. 

At perennial artisan ale after psycheuphora induced float.  Ho hum thanksgiving otherwise.  See above

Precious Wax Drippings

I have heard that it's not wise to believe in myths.  Especially Greek myths.  Take the myth of Icarus. Daedalus and his son  Icarus were imprisoned by King Minos of Crete within the Labyrinth--which Daedalus had himself constructed. But Daedalus was crafty and fashioned two pairs of wings together with feathers, wood and wax for an aerial escape. Giving one pair to his son, Daedalus cautioned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun which would cause the wax to melt.  But Icarus became ecstatic with the ability to fly and failed to heed his father's warning.   His feathers melted with the sun and he plunged to his death in the sea.

Fact or Fiction?  Well we do know that there was a very strange band in Chicago in the 1980s named "Precious Wax Drippings".   I wonder if there was any connection.  Probably not.  But that doesn't make the melted wax from Icarus' wings any less precious.

The wax that melted from Icarus' wings dripped into what is now the Adriatic Sea and congealed into priceless gems that remain undiscovered to this day.  Some say the wax had magical powers.  I doubt it.  The wax certainty never helped Icarus.  However, I would have liked to have been there and collected the last drop of wax from Icarus' wing.  I'm into the final drops of a passing event.  There is something poignant about them:  the last bit of drippings squeezed out of a fruit, the last drop of an evening rain shower, the last tear, or the last drop of Brunello in a Reidel glass. The final drops of mortality.   After the last drop; what are you left with?  Perhaps the following:

Susie Doodlevector was repulsed by the man slobbering on her shoulder even before she knew he was dying.  She wondered what he was doing at this high school play.

"My dear," the old man rasped, "do you have a child in this production?".

"Yes," replied Susie.  "My daughter is the director and set designer.  She's also arranged for the caterers for the reception.  I think my other daughter is involved in registering voters during intermission. Why do you ask?"

"Wonderful," the old man continued, moving in closer.  "I want to get closer to you and feel your warmth.   But I feel if I get too close to you I will start to melt from your furnace."

Before Susie could recoil in disgust, the man continued:  "My dear, I fear that I do not have long for this world.  But I sense that you control my passage into the next.  You are Charon, ferryman (ferryperson) to guide me across the river Styx and my destiny."

"If what you say is true, old man, where is your coin for passage?" retorted Susie.

"I have no coin, mistress, but please show mercy upon me, a sinner."

"I have no regard for mercy," replied Susie.  "In fact, if you look at my Myers-Briggs Jungian profile, I am more impressed by Truth and Justice than mercy."

"How unfortunate for me," replied the man, eyes downcast.

"Let us speak of the Truth," continued Susie. "If you say the Truth, you will get to pass.  I will take you to your destination in Hades.  But you may be disappointed, for have you not read Dante?  In any event, if you do not tell me the Truth, I shall cast you out in the transitional space.  And mark my words, the transitional space is very scary.   It has been described by a devout Christian Yoga teacher I know of in a Panther Creek basement as the space between the ashram and the stairs leading up to her idea of fundamentalist Christian Kingdom."

"Ok, I get your point," said the Man.  "I shall speak the speak the truth.  The Truth is that you will throw me into the abyss of the transitional space."

"Very clever," replied Susie. "You think that I cannot throw you into the transitional space, because if I did, I would violate my promise to you to let you pass if you speak the Truth.  On the other hand, you probably believe that if I allow you to pass, it would mean that you spoke an untruth by stating that I would cast you into the abyss."

"Indeed," cried the man, "It appears that in my last gasp of life I have put you into something of a paradox.  Maybe I should use this opportunity to spread my wings and get closer to you, my goddess."

"Not so fast, for I'm afraid I'm going to have to shoot you down.  Your statement that I was going to cast you into the abyss is not a statement of the present Truth.   It is a statement of a possible future contingent of what I may or may not do.  A proposition is true only if it is verified by the state of things as they currently are.   Or to quote Jim Morrison, whom I once had dealings, `The future is uncertain, but the end is always near' and you my friend are at your end."

And with that, the man collapsed into Susie's arms.  A small bit of drool collecting on her lapel, which she collected into a small vial, satisfied with her specimen.

The cardiologist standing next to Susie took no action to save the man--though it was clear to all observers that his heart had stopped.

Barnie and Fifi Fife, Edwardsville's finest  go well beyond even Rick Ranger in Responding to those damn fornicators!

  

  

You're the One that I Want

All through that fateful summer, Sandy had chills multiplying up and down her spine during her many encounters with Danny Zuko. Zuko too thought that the power Sandy was supplying was electrifying. It was young love at its finest, and it was appreciated both near and far.  Especially far, as their relationship soon had many extraterrestrial admirers who studied the mating rituals of humans with an interest akin to fanatical ornithologists.

Summer turned to fall and the years breezed by.  Danny grew discontent and began to question his place in the universe.  Had he know about the alien observers, he could have asked them about his place in the universe and obtained helpful information.  Instead, he turned to L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology for answers. This proved disastrous, especially when Zuko brought L. Ron to a meeting of the T-Birds and both Danny and L. Ron were unceremoniously banned from further gang activities.  Zuko then tried a comeback with the rival gang the Flaming Dukes.  Though their initial foray against the T-Birds (supported in part by Zuko's Boeing 707) was successful, the T-Birds decisively defeat Zuko and the Flaming Dukes at the Battle of the Battle of Irrigation Gulch in 2002.   After that defeat, a dejected Zuko turned to drugs, alcohol, roles as women in B-movie Hollywood productions.

The passing of time was also not kind to Sandy.  With Zuko otherwise occupied with Scientology, she took out her frustrations in the gym. What began initially as a modest exercise regime soon escalated into a full fledged obsession with all forms of physical activities which soon proved to be too much for the other Pink Ladies.  Sandy was soon banned from all further pajama parties with the Ladies who could no longer accept Sandy's constant desire to get "physical" with them.  Like Zuko, her career soon descended into making low budget movies and exercise videos.  Sandy and Zuko were last seen together in 1995 at the opening night of the critically and commercially disastrous remake of Grease III.

And such would have been the fate of Sandy and Zuko had it not been for their extraterrestrial admirers.  For though Sandy and Zuko were all but forgotten in Hollywood, the Grease franchise was the longest running theatrical production in the entire Orion Nebula.  Sandy and Zuko merch was priceless, and promoters, learning of their hard times on the planet Earth soon teleported Sandy and Zuko to the Orion homeplanet of Rigas VI.  The Rigan's were extra-dimensional beings who had little use for all the baggage that Zuko and Sandy acquired after that fateful summer depicted in the first Grease movie.  Consequently, everything else was edited from Sandy and Zuko's life and they became 17 again, locked in long passionate kisses and walks on the beach for eternity.  They became the living embodiment of the dream of Grease, and each time they sang the songtrack, it was filled with new meaning:

I saw my problems and I'll see the light
We got a lovin' thing, we gotta feed it right
There ain't no danger we can go too far
We start believin' now that we can be who we are - grease is the word

They think our love is just a growin' pain
Why don't they understand? it's just a cryin' shame
Their lips are lyin', only real is real
We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel - grease is the word

Plaza de crown, with endless delights.  

Touching the Triceratops Grazing in my Backyard

We created the concept of space to put distance between ourselves and everything around us.  If there is no space, there is no separation.  There is only one giant universe.  A gigantic all encompassing wholeness.

We created the concept of time to prevent everything from happening at once.  If there is no time, there is no separation between moments. There is only the eternal now.

We created the concept of causation because of fear.  There is nothing more terrifying than an arbitrary universe.   But all we really have is data and information.  We have the data that when the bat strikes the ball, the ball will change directions.  But only data.  We don't actually know that the billionth time the event occurs what is going to happen.  So we invent causality which is an inference created from the data.  Scientific induction.  In this way, we cannot describe with science what actually is.  That lies in the domain of aesthetics.   All we can see is patterns supplied by data.  What "is" is fundamentally unknowable.

We created the concept of the self because we don't really pay attention.  Did you ever notice that there is so much more information coming from your thoughts that what is actually happening in the world that is not your thoughts?  If we look, what we think of as the self is in an unending process of condensation and evaporation of thoughts, images and sounds. In this way, the self, like causation, is nothing more that ephemeral patterns of data.   

When the concepts of space, time, causation, and self start to bleed over, interesting things happen. I just saw a herd of triceratops in my backyard.  They were grazing on trees and I felt  both the nourishment going in and the loss of me being consumed by me.  Anything is possible in a world without space, time, causation, and self.   Indeed, what is possible is only an inquiry into causation and data.   You are already there--go ahead and touch them--they don't bite.   

The French didn't want me around; They didn't like my groove; So I packed up my bass guitar-- I moved to Hollywood

Locked inside his cage, the Sleeping Cat sleeps with one eye open, waiting for redemption.

He may not actually be sleeping.   He has jet lag, it seems.  He knows somewhere on this globe, many people are sleeping.  He would like to join them.  But he is not tired.  So he follows his breath in and out.  Not awake, not asleep.  His concentration focuses first on the sensation of his breath, then the sound of his breathing, and finally the kaleidoscope of colors through his closed eyes.  Its almost like he is once again in a sensory deprivation tank.  His thoughts resting on one point.  Concentrating. Stopping.

In this way, he goes on for hours.  In his moments of lucidity, he wonders if this what death is like? If so, he thinks he could accept it.  Then he goes back to his breath.  Death is just another breath out.  So many thoughts, so many breaths.  Just like life:

"If you think, "I breathe," the "I" is extra.  There is no you to say "I."  What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale or when we exhale."----Shun Ryu Suzuki

Indeed, the trope of the "Sleeping Cat" is not without historical antecedent.  The "Sleeping Cat" is also a famous wood carving by Hidari Jingoro located inthe East corridor at Tosho-gu Shrine in Nikko, Japan.  It something like this:

Here is a closer look:

It is written that the "Sleeping Cat" symbolizes Nikko or the Spirit of Ieyasu, who is the manifestation of the Buddha of Healing, giving nourishment to the mind, body, and spirit.  And in his own way,  the Sleeping Cat in the cage feels nourished by his slow breathing.  By his concentration.  And by the end of thought and sleep.

I encourage you to visit the Sleeping Cat in Nikko.  Especially if you are visiting nearby Ashikaga and are wined and dined like the dignitary that you are not.  And the Coco Farm and Winery where autism is rewarded by the fastidious separation of grapes into piles.   And goats scare away the crows from the vineyard.  If you look hard, you may even encounter one of the heirs of Confucius along the way--turn left at the Fukai factory if you want to find her.