LINE OF THE DAY, part XLI

(from wendigo, a commenter on Cracked.com)

The spiders had been acting odd.

As far as I was concerned, everything about the damned pests was strange. This was different, though. On the first morning, day one, they started emerging from their hiding spots and abandoned their webs.

Black Widows, Orb Weavers, they all exposed themselves to any number of would-be predators.

You could barely walk through your yard without entangling yourself in the near-invisible threads they'd cast out into the breeze. It was as if a thousand tiny, inverted fishermen had dropped their hooks into the sky.

The web (of course) lit up with chatter. It was happening anywhere you'd expect to find arachnids. Within minutes, all the "Ask" sites and insect expert message boards filled up with annoyed queries.

"What are they doing?"

"Is this happening to anyone else?"

"Is this happening everywhere?!"

The true shock was still to come, as the creatures simultaneously reeled themselves UP those threads. It was an Indian Rope Trick to stupefy entomologists the world over.

The consensus at that point? Well, at least they're gone.

Then the sky began to cloud over.

Some caught on quicker than others. A few folks in my neighborhood, not necessarily ignorant folks, looked upward and determined a storm had set in. Myself, I immediately recognized the wrongness of it all.

The sunlight was being blotted out, ever so slightly, by one tremendous dome of webbing.

A plane came down over the hills near my house, its engines clogged with soft gauze and mashed spiders.

Five days in, birds started disappearing. Their songs all but ceased, and the only sign of their existence was the stray tiny, hollow bone that would drop from high above.

Dark spots could be observed with the naked eye. Using powerful binoculars or a telescope showed the viewer a myriad of small, cocooned bodies floating motionless in a lofty, darkening haze. Sparrows, Crows, Hawks, and even Bats became entangled in the grim construction.

Flights were cancelled soon after the original rash of crashes. Pilots thought they could simply break through the paltry web-work of such insignificant beings. Nearly ten thousand dead passengers and crew said otherwise.

The last plane to be cleared for take-off was the rare exception. There was a roar, a violent shrieking of engine blades, and then it just stopped.

It hung there, diagonally, until the entire thing was cocooned above our heads.

The bones that fell to the ground after that did not belong to birds.

It was after a week that "Arachnocalypse", as a term, had been officially coined. Newspapers and television networks spat the phrase out at every opportunity, and it took its rightful place alongside "Snowmageddon", and the rest.

For what it's worth, I think we could've made do, as a species, without use of the sky. Even though the haze grew thicker and our world grew darker every day, there were rain storms and natural collapses to give us small breaks in construction.

The rain, by the way, would come through cloudy and slick. I didn't want to know why.

The real problem, the one we couldn't work around as easily, was the spiders that remained on land. The jumping spiders, the hunting spiders, the tarantulas, all of those who seemed to have evolved past web-weaving.

They could produce some silk, but beyond that they were at a loss. You could almost feel sorry for them, standing tall on leaves and branches, preparing for an ascent that was never coming.

I heard stories about scorpions doing the same thing, but I never saw any proof for myself.

It was almost as if they knew. It seemed to drive them mad. When they weren't stoically waiting for their strands to take root above, they attacked and bit without any sense of reason.

I lost my pet, a loyal and loving Bulldog. She came in one night covered in clinging spiders, bites all over her body. Within moments, before I could even think of who to call (Vet? Poison hotline?) she collapsed and stopped breathing.

Daddy Longlegs... I don't even know if they were in on the plan, whatever it was. They seemed to cluster in homes, crawling over people as they slept, creating vast hordes of staring, though seemingly eyeless little horrors positioned on faces and chests.

When the things weren't engaged in frightening us to death, they would simply gather on ceilings and randomly "squat" upward as if it were some elaborate spectacle the human brain couldn't comprehend.

On the thirty-second day, when the Governments finally began working on possible solutions, everything changed yet again.

The Widowers crawled out from places unseen.

A Widower, about the size and shape of a man, seemed to have no interest in joining the growing, breeding masses in the skies. The black, armor-plated arachnid creatures only displayed one common goal.

Ensnaring us.

Daytime, as dark as it had become, was the only time it was relatively safe to go out. At night, Widowers could be all around you... in the trees, in crevices... and you'd never suspect. The last thing you'd see was the red hourglass on their abdomens.

That, and not-quite-human hands scrambling for your hair, your loose clothing, anything within reach.

Abandoned buildings were just as bad as the outdoors. I was with a group... I want to say this was about two months along... and we all took shelter in an old doll factory when it grew dark and we couldn't walk any longer.

The dismembered baby dolls, with their dark streaks of venom and plastic flesh wounds should've turned us away. Still, the webs they levitated in seemed old and abandoned. We figured the Widowers had their run of the place and long since moved on.

I didn't wake up to screaming.

It's weird to say that.

I wish I had woken up to screaming.

Instead, I lazily opened my eyes around what I assume to be Midnight. I reached out for a bottle of water, only to draw back a hand covered in burning, dark yellow venom.

I don't know if you've ever seen a bug trapped in a spider's cocoon. All they can do is silently rock. Back and forth, back and forth, bending at the middle. Sometimes there'll be a single free limb or antenna that waves around, trying to feel out any sign of help.

It's the same with people.

I'll have to live out the rest of my days remembering that sight. I'll have to live with the fact I ran away and left them there. People who had pulled me out of a burning truck. People who fed and clothed me when I had nothing.

There was nothing I could do. Logically, I know that.

The red hourglasses were already descending around me, and no matter what form it takes, an hourglass means time is running out.

My time.

Everyone's time.

LITHIUM: THE SEEDS OF GALAXY FORMATION?

     There's a weird property of metals called "cold welding" whereby, in a vacuum, two pieces of the same metal will join together when they come into contact with each other. The description goes as follows:

The reason for this unexpected behavior is that when the atoms in contact are all of the same kind, there is no way for the atoms to “know” that they are in different pieces of copper. When there are other atoms, in the oxides and greases and more complicated thin surface layers of contaminants in between, the atoms “know” when they are not on the same part. (Richard Feynman)

    This got me wondering, one of the mysteries of the universe is how large-scale structures like galaxies came to be in the nearly uniform densities of matter produced in the Big Bang. Randomness surely played a role but I get the impression from my readings that such randomness would've been too slow for protogalactic cores to develop into the enormous superclusters of galaxies and voids present in the universe today over a mere 14 billion years.

     Dark matter is called into question as a possible attractor as the hypothesized material, while it has gravity, is only affected by gravity allowing the newly formed matter to gather around its mass whereas ordinary matter is affected by electricity, magnetism, radiation, and subject to gas properties like pressure, temperature, etc.
    The trouble is, while scientists are certain dark matter exists, no one knows what exactly it is making it kind of impossible to test this hypothesis.

     Now I have to believe something like this has been thought of before and discredited but nevertheless I'm putting it forth: what if something more mundane could've led to the creation of galaxies?

     In the first few minutes of the Big Bang, the temperatures and pressures were still sufficient to convert the newly created electrons, protons, and neutrons into the heavier nuclei of deuterium, helium, and a smidge of lithium.
     Of those three elements, lithium is a metal and when the universe became cool enough to allow the formation of atoms after 300,000 years, there would be lithium floating around amidst this ever decreasingly dense gas which I imagine would have formed vacuum-like conditions quite quickly.

     Now if like atoms of metal cold weld for the reason stated above, does it not stand to reason that even the tiny, tiny amount of lithium theorized to have formed during the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis would have, through random interactions, found one and other and welded together forming ever larger seeds to acts as attractants to the far more enormous amounts of hydrogen, deuterium, and helium out there?

     I would like to believe that over the millions of years between recombination and the first stars, there was plenty of time for atoms of lithium to make clumps of anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of atoms which would have collectively more concentrated gravity than the surrounding material which doesn't particularly enjoying interacting with one and other.
     Helium is famously unreactive and hydrogen is content once it finds a partner to bond with. Neither will naturally clump...but lithium would...and might that be enough to begin the slow process of gathering ever larger clouds of gas together to form the first stars and protogalaxies?

     I honestly don't know...but I like the idea.

NO SENSE OF BELONGING...

     Lately I've been wondering if a belief in God (or Gods)...religion basically, is tied to one's sense of belonging. Like, did I lose my faith in God and slip into nihilism because I grew up feeling like an outsider to my family and schoolmates? If I had a sense of being included, would I have not skipped out on Confirmation in 7th grade? Would I have had friends? a girlfriend? the wherewithal to remain in college and see it through to graduation? connections? a decent job resulting from those connections?

     I don't know...

     But I think about two particular groups and their stereotyped behavior: Born-Again Christians and Atheists.

     Both groups are notorious for having overly enthusiastic participants eager to get others to join or to attack when their efforts are challenged.
     It seems to me that both those groups have only recently discovered a sense of belonging and in the one sense, it delights them to realize they are no longer alone but then I also think it makes them wish to confront those who had isolated them for so long. They want to know, once and for all, who their real friends are so they proselytize and it should come as no surprise that people who already belong to another group are not particularly interested in throwing all that away.

     And the resistance of others strengthens their bond with their new friends, making them spiral inward to ever tighter and stubborn orbits. Where once they felt judged, now they are able to judge others knowing they have a community willing to back them perhaps for the first time in their lives.

     And if there's any truth to that, it makes me feel even sadder that I never even found an Atheist group to feel like a part of. Talk about isolation! And in that isolation, I sunk to the even-lower level of nihilism: a belief in the utter purposeless of everything. It was the only thing left to rationalize my existence and its suckitude: life is not unfair, because fairness and unfairness are human constructs. No, life is a selfish attempt at perpetuation and the universe is indifferent to it all. Purpose is something we create, not something which is given. You are because you were born and you will die for the same reason. You will suffer the whole way through until you can bear the burdens of living and existence no longer...and my life's burdens are not offset by its joys.

     Nihilism is the Atheist's atheist. I don't know...that made sense before I wrote.

     I write this still never feeling like I've ever belonged. I never thought I had wanted all that much and it bothers me that I can't even have that...

BABYLON 5: RAMBLING ABOUT IMMORTALITY AND OTHER FIRST ONE IMPLICATIONS...

"We were born naturally immortal"

     Lorien confesses this to Ivanova during the "Into the Fire" episode of Babylon 5. He goes on to say, "At first we were kept in balance by birth rate. Few of us were ever born, less than a handful each year. Then I think the universe decided, that to appreciate life for there to be change and growth, life had to be short. So the generations that followed us grew old, infirmed, then died. But those of us who were first went on..."

     I've wondered about this. Details about Lorien's race and the groups of ancient, powerful aliens collectively known as The First Ones were always scant and deliberately so as, in the words of the show's creator J. Michael Straczynski (who may have quoting someone else...haven't listened to that commentary in a long time), "To define is to kill." It's how movies like Jaws worked so effectively. By keeping the shark unseen, the impact of its horror increased because we instinctually fear the unknown. Once exposed to a fear, we can face it. Likewise, once exposed to an unknown, we can demystify it.

    This does not mean conclusions may not be drawn about them. One of the gimmicks in the show is the use of hyperspace to allow for interstellar travel in reasonable timeframes. Being able to access it is a game-changer for a species. Before that, a spacefaring species would be confined to its own solar system because space is VAST making travel between stars a generational consideration and not to mention a one-way trip. This was the fate of Earth prior to its encounter with the Centauri.
    And that is typically how a younger race "discovers" hyperspace: they are encountered by another spacefaring race who already has access and that access is sold or rented for a time until that race manages to reverse-engineer the technology of jump gates and becomes a full-fledged member of the interstellar community.
    The first conclusion drawn from hyperspace entry points called "jump points" is why they are colored orange for entry points and blue for exit points. This would be an example of the Doppler effect but applied to light rather than sound. If anything it shows how much faster hyperspace travel is because it is red-shifting the light of entry points and blue-shifting the light of exit points.

     However, where those gates came from in the first place is never mentioned outright in the show. The clue given is via the First Ones. Shadow vessels appear to phase into normal space seamlessly. The Walkers of Sigma-957 explode electrically into normal space. This unnamed First One jumps into normal space as though cloaked in fire.

Shadow Vessels appearing

The Walkers of Sigma-957

almost-as-old-as-the-Vorlons First One

     But when the Vorlons appear, they appear using the same funnel shape used by every other of the younger races depicted in the show.

Vorlon capital ships entering normal space

    The conclusion which may be drawn is that the Vorlons built the jump gates seen throughout the series and seeded them throughout the galaxy. It is probably fair to assume the Vorlons had intended them for their own use but others found them and made use of them. They built the highways and now others benefit from their pioneering work.

     Another thing I couldn't help but notice in the show is that despite the advanced age of the First Ones, the younger races seemed able to adapt to them quickly. Like, their technology was still far beyond our own but we could crack it. Maybe that's an effect of it being easier to reverse engineer something than it is to create it from scratch but I also wonder if it had anything to do with what Lorien had said about his race's initial immortality.
     Using his own words, one can infer that with long life, comes slow change and that with short life, comes faster change. We don't know how long-lived the individual beings of the First One races are. We only know that the Shadows are the oldest of them. Personally I would like to believe that the Vorlons are the youngest of the First Ones because the show has a way of rhyming (in addition to the main rivals, the Vorlons and Shadows, being diametrically opposed) and it would seem appropriate if they were.
     Lorien comments that the beings in the cloaked-in-fire ship are "almost as old as the Vorlons". The natural interpretation that statement in English carries the implication that they are younger than the Vorlons but it could just as easily be the other way around if you allow for it (and I am :-) ).
     It's the same as when they are given names. The name of the homeworld of the Shadows is Z'ha'dum but the name of their species is said to be over 10,000 letters long, unpronounceable by the human tongue. The name of the Vorlons is just that and while their homeworld is once referred to as "Vorlon" by Lyta Alexander, it is usually referred to as "the Vorlon homeworld". Unless Lyta was correct, I would like to think the name of the Vorlon homeworld, like the Shadows's actual name, is over 10,000 letters long and thus unpronounceable to the human tongue so as for their respective species to rhyme, so to speak.

     Anyways, what if the First Ones are mortal, but especially long-lived naturally? Another feature the First Ones have in common is that they are unlike the younger races in that they are not walking meat sacks like we are.

Lorien

Vorlon

Shadows in their raiment - they're ultraviolet, thus invisible to the human eye as energy beings

     They're all "energy beings" and while it is implied this is a transcendent state any species in this universe can achieve in time, quite personally I like to think of it as the First Ones came from a time when the Universe was different, more magical if you will. Lorien would be from the immortal "Golden Age", the First Ones would be from the long-lived but increasingly body-bound "Silver Age", and the younger races are from the short-lived, very mortal, meat-sack bodies "Bronze Age".

     To take a page for J.R.R. Tolkien's lore, I would say the immortal Lorien race could choose to cloak themselves in bodies as though raiment if they so chose but that they did not need such bodies to survive and could survive the loss of those bodies. However I'm assuming that they would need to use physical bodies in order to work the substance of the Universe but were slow to do so being immortal.

Lorien's raiment

     The First Ones were also born without bodies and could choose to have them or not but unlike Lorien's race, they were more limited, appearing to be limited to a single physical form with which to work the Universe and which each species of First One had in common with others of their kind. They were also weaker. A Vorlon, for instance, cannot survive in the vacuum of space whereas we see Lorien doing so just fine. The Shadows seemed especially vulnerable to being killed by explosions or simply being shot.
     If I had to venture a guess, I would say the First Ones were born that way and were not the product of evolution like the younger races are.
     As for the younger races, being one of them yourself, you know how vulnerable we are to death. It's like our bodies can't wait to die and that our souls, if they exist at all, appear inseparable from, and thus likely die with, our bodies.


    But the thing is, for races millions to billions of years older than humanity, they're not inscrutable and I wonder if this has to do with them living longer. Human generations are only about 25 years long. Imagine if our generations were 1,000 times as long or even 10,000 times? You wouldn't be in as much a hurry to do things, now would you?
     Human civilization is about 6,000 years old coming from 20-25 year generations. 250 generations built this city. But if those generations were a thousand times longer, just getting to the Moon would've taken millions of years. Maybe that's how it was for the First Ones: never in a hurry to get shit done because there wasn't one. Even more so for Lorien's race, thus his surmising that for there to be change and appreciation, life must be short.
     And because human, Narn, Centauri, Minbari, Drazi, etc. lives are so short, they've gotten a lot farther in the short lifespan of their civilizations than the First Ones ever could have done in the same period of time.

     I think it would at least explain how beings so old could be beaten by creatures so young as us as well as outmaneuvered in thought.

    As for the charge that the Shadows and Vorlons who took it upon themselves to nurture the younger races like shepherds had become rigid and inflexible, perhaps (also an allusion to the Lord of the Rings), it is because they were cheating death.
     The Vorlons did so directly. A rough draft script for a never-produced Babylon 5 movie stated that the Vorlons were not always immortal implying that they are now and thus weren't always. The Shadows are known for hibernating in-between their wars which may have been their trick to prolong their lives beyond reasonable measure (perhaps even doing so as a response to the Vorlons becoming immortal...if you're going to cheat, we're going to cheat too!). You could extend, say, a thousand year lifespan considerably if you were only awake for it twenty or so years at a time and in stasis for hundreds to thousands of years in-between.
     The lack of change the Universe once corrected for by creating mortal intelligences would thus come into play again and need to be dealt with. Creatures living long beyond their natural lifespans, however long they already were naturally, would disrupt the natural flow of life and growth in the Universe.
     Thus, they and the remaining First Ones had to go which was finally able to happen thanks to Sheridan and the Vorlon Kosh.

     I've really lost my place but I'll publish this nonsense that you might enjoy it...somehow.

NO ONE TELLS ME WHAT TO DO...NOT EVEN ME

     I hate that I have to state this outright because people can be fucking idiots but I'm not suicidal, not even when I'm low. I don't actually want to die no matter how annoyed I get at circumstances. I'd be perfectly content with immortality coupled with invincibility (and then making damn sure I keep out of cities and caves): I sincerely believe I have the kind of mindset one would need to tolerate immortality.

    However, I know I'm going to die and in those moments of moriturism, I get frustrated. There's no joy in ellipsism nor is there in coming to terms with all of my being coming to naught. While some may escape into religious promises of an eternal afterlife, for a long time I've not been able to justify my fear of not existing in that manner and yet, despite that indescribable sadness that my borrowed time must some day be repaid, I'm reminded that I really do hate being told what to do and dying really seems like the ultimate form of that...at least when it's allowed to play out on its own.

     Because some day my body WILL betray me and I will die. It could be sudden or it could be a long-term thing like cancer, but regardless of the form it shall take, death will become me and I will have no say in the matter.

     Unless...

     And then I thought how suicide is a curious solution to this dilemma absent me actually having been born a god and not having realized that yet. Suicide is the both the ultimate expression of wrath as well as a personal statement to the universe itself saying that, while I must die, I will not do so on your terms!

    And I admit...I kinda like that.

    Now if only I had a clue as to when my body planned on making its exit...

SONGS THAT CAN JUST GO AWAY, part XII

     Okay, look, the hotness of Ariana Grande aside, this song is a mess.

     I'm not saying it isn't catchy. Of course it is. An impressive amount of cynical calculation goes into making today's pop music to ensure such outcomes. No, the problem (no pun intended) with this song is it's doing too much and yes, I'm saying 820.4 million views (as of this post) can be wrong...

     First of all, I think this song was given to the wrong performer. And yes, performer. I'm not for a moment going to pretend that Ariana Grande is anything more than a performer in her industry. If you want to be an artist, you have to be able to do more than sing songs and Ms. Grande has not been presented to us as anything more than a singer of someone else's songs. There's no shame in that as it's a staple of the music industry. Not everyone can sing, write lyrics, compose music, plays such compositions, and arrange it all into a presentable piece. Farming out that work to professionals has created some of the best music we've ever been given.
     I'm just not going to call you an artist for being a professional singer/performer. I'll reserve that title for people who can do at least three of those five things.
     But the point I'm getting at is this song seems out of Ariana Grande's range. When I hear it played on the radio, I can barely make out what she's singing. She's trying to sustain notes either too high for her or too high at that tempo. Plus it sounds rather nasal, no?

     Secondly, I hate featuring. Again, it's been done for a long time but in the past it felt more like something a friend was doing for another like Eric Clapton playing the solo on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or Greg Hawkes playing keyboards for some of Ric Ocasek's solo work. And featuring back then was another artist contributing to the work of the main artist. Nowadays featuring feels like an intrusion to the song you've been listening to.
     This too goes back a while as I can remember some No Doubt songs off the album Rocksteady having featured artists and I think in the rap industry, it goes even further back.
     Iggy Azalea, however, is an intrusion. Her presence takes away from, rather than enhances, the work. It's as though someone had changed the radio station in the middle of the song before changing it back. It's almost like a commercial you must endure before returning to your regularly scheduled programming.
     Again, I get it. It's about money. Having hip-hop in your pop song gives it crossover appeal which means more $$$.

     On a side note though... How is Iggy Azalea not considered to be doing something equivalent to blackface? She's a white Australian affecting a decidedly "black" voice. I guess that's considered okay now? Or is it one of those "it can't be racist because" things since she's not American? I don't know...

     But perhaps the most glaring thing about this song is you can't know whose song it is. It's not Iggy Azalea's because she's just in it for the bridge but it's arguably not Ariana Grande's song either because should the band/performer be the one singing the chorus?
     I mean, think about it. What is the chorus to "Problem"? It's nothing Ms. Grande sings. It's that guy whispering "I got one less problem without'cha": that's the chorus. Nothing else qualifies and that's something that makes this song very confusing. Its most memorable part (which is typically the chorus, though yes it can be a bitchin' solo) is not sung by the headlining performer but by another hip-hop artist named Big Sean so is it his song then despite his minimal presence?
     I would have to say yes because that's how I feel when listening to songs. The chorus is generally the most important part as it's repeated, making it easy to learn quickly and allowing the song itself to become embedded in one's mind when it hits right. It focuses your attention on the song and since it's not performed by Ms. Grande, it makes the whole experience weird.


"Problem (feat. Iggy Azalea)" by Ariana Grande
     It's not a bad song when taken in parts, but because it is messy, it needs to go away...

DIDN'T QUIT WHILE I WAS AHEAD...

     Two Sundays ago I went gambling for the first time in my life. My cousin and his wife invited me to go to Atlantic City for the day. I took the night off work leading me to tell my coworkers that my gambling goal would be to win my lost wages. The trip down was disappointing in that it's very boring. I had no idea New Jersey has so many trees. The parkway is just an unbroken line of trees on one side and another unbroken line of trees on the other. It was only shortly before our destination that it opened up into what looked like salt marshes and a bay with electricity-generating giant windmills.