Hi Carolyn,
As I hit the keyboard to plunk out this blog, an audacious arachnid scuttled across my desk and hid under my mouse - no, not the one in the pic but equally cheeky, for sure! I took that as an omen of sorts. I've been engaged in a low key but fairly intense territorial struggle with the many-legged marauders in various venues about the estate lately. I'm not entirely sure who has the upper hand at this point. I thought I had gained strategic ground in the fruit cellar but found, upon seeing the world of spider tracks covering my siding all around the garage and elsewhere, that it was a fleeting victory. Armed with some insecticidal soap ( supposedly a natural and relatively benign deterrent ) I turned back an onslaught of the little beasties in the part of the garden where we're trying to grow dill weed, rhubarb and blueberries. Later that same day I was aghast to discover, upon entering the garage, sticky webs cast across the seat and front end of my beloved motorcycle even though it had been parked there less than 72 hours! Sooooo, that's the way ya wanna play it eh, eight legs? !Anyhow, all of this just gets me around to one of my incontrovertible mantras - " Spiders shall inherit the planet "
I honestly can't fathom how a creature so seemingly inefficient ( i.e. with so many moving parts ) can be found pretty well everywhere on our dirtball and in such variety and abundance. It also makes me wonder what things would be like if spiders had evolved into the dominant species. Or maybe I should cover my you-know-what and say - when spiders evolve into the dominant species.
It surely would be a godsend for the footwear industry.
X 8
Hockey, soccer and pretty well all other sports would be spectacles to behold. Don't even contemplate what it would mean for line dancing or any dancing - J. K. Rowling is just one of the many people who have realized that tap-dancing spiders are pretty dang freaky!
Really though, I may actually be behind the evolutionary 8-ball here. When one looks around and notes the sheer ubiquity of these creepy, crawlers, one fact becomes chillingly apparent. In their subversive and inexorable way those icky 8-leggers have probably already insinuated themselves into our human world to the point of victory. And they have stayed below the radar. Soon we all will awake on that fateful morning trussed up in spidersilk, injected and set aside as a future main course. We may have but a few moments of groggy panic and realization before their mind-numbing venom steals our consciousness forever - don't say I didn't warn you!!
Okay, from spiders to gadflys then. On my way through my boxes of musty but cherished paperbacks to find my copy of Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress ( which I never did locate ) I laid hands on one of the most well-thumbed items of all. From 1968 until mid 1971 Harlan Ellison wrote a weekly column of television reviews and social comment for The Los Angeles Free Press under the title The Glass Teat. Approximately half of the reviews were out in paperback around that time and the second half appeared somewhat later. I recently snatched The Other Glass Teat off of iBooks and am looking forward to returning to and finishing up that set. Revisiting this tumultuous time after four decades and a bit may yield some additional interesting perspectives. I did mention in my very first sortie here (10/7/2012) that there would be some "Forward to the Past" adventures to be had "de temps en temps". So be on the lookout soon for some time to be spent with what one dust cover blurb (from the apogee of the stick-it-to-the-man era ) referred to as " the famous pain-in-the-ass writer and critic ". ( If the spider overlords will allow, that is ! )
Now to address the doppelgänger blog that briefly surfaced here in truncated form late last week but had to be given the hook because the blogger application was having a behaviour. I don't think it was the Supermoon's fault, Carolyn, but if I were to crack open my PC right now it wouldn't surprise me much to find a thriving cell of those arachno-terrorists working their insidious sabotage therein. There's more than one kind of software bug!
BTW - I went out in search of said moon Sunday and Monday nights and was thwarted by clouds on the former and fog on the latter. Ratz!
Since it really didn't appear here online last time, I guess for simple posterity, I should include the riddle that you guessed at from the draft version:
For dogs and cats and other creatures
Truly one of their best features
Always there to handle food
Used by humans to be rude
I can see why you would have guessed mouth but I was actually talking about tongues. The raspy ones that felines have and the slobbery ones that dogs show affection and cool off with are among their best features. Speaking of cooling off, I'm guessing that yours from last Sunday was air conditioners. Here's one to consider for this week.
Hung to initiate a practice or profession
Dreaded in affliction form
Protective and hot in the summer
Unmarried status pronounced by drunkard
P.S. Very glad to hear , Carolyn, that the flow is anything but blocked for the next Tracker installment. All that I've encountered have been highly readable and supremely character-driven. I've experienced that gotta get it down feeling too - not nearly as often as you have and not as often as I would like for sure. Pass some along if you have extra. Write on, dude!
Don
All images sourced from Google Images
Fig. 1 - npr.org
Fig. 2 - blog.hillcartoons.com
Fig. 3 - thisnext.com
Fig. 4 - wildshots.photoshelter.com
Fig. 5 - baynature.org
Fig. 6 - leo-and-diane-Dillon.blogspot.com
Fig. 7 - antickmusings.blogspot.com
Fig. 8 - snuzzy.com
Fig. 9 - cutcaster.com
Fig. 10 - myspace.com
No comments:
Post a Comment