bad metaphor

As I mentioned before, I am a big fan of public radio (as well as everything on that Stuff White People Like list. Where do I return my Asian card?). One of my favorite episodes of Radio Lab is Space. I’d forgotten just how unbelievably amazing space was, since having pored over my sister’s astronomy textbooks when I was little. I love the opening of the episode – what happens is that a woman points a laser at a star. Sounds simple enough, right? In typical Radio Lab fashion, the hosts’ discussion opens up new ways of looking at things, kind of like peeling the layers of an onion. The way Jad Abumrad, one of the hosts, describes it is that woman actually touches the star with her laser pointer, and it is the coolest thing that Jad has ever witnessed. Radio Lab offers a child’s view of the world, in that it hasn’t lost its sense of wonder; the discussions are grounded in reality but not at all flattened by cynicism.

But the best part of the episode is Annie Druyan, the widow of Carl Sagan. She tells the story of how they married – they were working together on the Voyager Golden Record, essentially a message in a bottle from all of humanity, directed to whoever may be listening. They had known each other for ten years, never having shared a kiss or indicated feelings for the other. The two found themselves so wrapped up in the wonder and beauty of what they were doing, that they made the impulsive decision to get married. And stayed that way, until Sagan’s death in 1996. Here is his dedication to Druyan at the beginning of Cosmos, his most famous novel:

In the vastness of space and the immensity of time,
it is my joy to share
a planet and an epoch with Annie.

It is, without a doubt, one of the most romantic modern stories I’ve ever heard. Forget Casablanca, forget Romeo and Juliet, let’s have movies and write books about Carl and Annie! The real star-crossed lovers.

Since hearing that episode, I’ve become slightly obsessed with Druyan, her sense of wonder and her uplifting, marvelous voice. I found an article she had written in 2003, for Skeptical Inquirer. She covers many topics but the main theme is questioning religion’s dominance over spirituality. Druyan questions why science, the pursuit of knowledge, doesn’t stir people’s souls – why doesn’t the rest of the world at large share her sense of wonder at the universe? Why is optimism automatically associated with faith, and why can’t skeptics have hope?

This is something that I think we have to come to grips with. There’s a confusion generally in our society. There is a great wall that separates what we know from what we feel.

I am pretty much agnostic when it comes to religion. I don’t know if there is a God (or Goddesses, for that matter), and I don’t know if we can ever know that anyways, as the point of religion is faith – believing without evidence. I also can’t say I find any of the mainstream religions particularly inspiring, given their histories of discrimination and violence. And scientific institutions haven’t exactly been angelic, either. Research can lead to things like cures for cancer, sure, but it can also lead to the atomic bomb. Biochemical weapons. Land mines (are there any purpose for land mines, by the way, beyond maiming innocent people?).

In the end, however, I do feel strongly the idea that knowledge is far more inspirational and preferable to the lack thereof. I agree with Druyan that the Garden of Eden, described as paradise, doesn’t sound particularly ideal to me. Would I rather live forever, only dully aware of the static world I inhabit? Or would I risk the unknown and eat the apple? In a heartbeat I would choose the apple, and I think it lovely that the great pioneers of science have done so.

Being a glutton, I am still a little hungry after lunch, so I go pay a visit to the vending machine, which is right next to one of the janitorial offices.

There are about five of them hanging out in this tiny little office, chatting until I turn the corner. Immediately they shut up and stare at me as I try to use the machine. As if that isn’t awkward enough, it spits my dollar out. The janitors all start chiming in with advice: “your dollar is too wrinkled,” “turn it around,” “no, don’t do it that way” and “hey it just spit it back out again.”

I can’t handle such pressure so I just leave. Moral of the story: don’t eat junk food.

Spring time heralds the growth and blossoming of many things: dandelions in the yard, ragweed in the air, birds repeatedly bashing their heads into newly cleaned windows. Worms slither up from the soft loamy dirt. Misbehaving cats dash outside to chew up the nice grass, and run back inside to barf it up on carpet. An unmowed yard three houses down from me is currently home to hundreds of snakes, lustily engaging in the process of producing more snakes. Luckily, the snakes have been content with staying put in their serpentine den of iniquity thus far, and have left our premises unmolested (figuratively or literally).

Unlike some creatures, that is.

As mortal enemies, ants and I go way back. They invaded my room when I was seven years old. I can’t remember whether this was because I left food out, being a sloppy little kid, or whether being in the basement had anything to do with it. Whatever the case, it got so bad that I had to work the ants into the plot of my on-going Toyland adventures. Charlie Bear, Flora the mermaid, Pom-Pom and the other denizens of Toyland had wept during the forced evacuation, leaving behind some of the less fortunate Toylanders who couldn’t make it out in time for the mass fumigation. They even felt sorry for the Poo Poo people, the criminal element of the town that lived under the bed (aside: this contingent consisted of my least liked toys, which included Barbies. Though they were a permanent underclass, at least they fared better under my ownership than that of my cousins, who liked to let Barbies melt in the sun).

The horrors of that ant invasion have scarred my psyche forever. Though I know that I am much bigger than a single ant, the sheer numbers in which they aggregate are deeply disturbing. If it were up to me, I’d coat everything in the house in a sheen of Raid. Then I’d wait an hour or two and gleefully sweep up the remains of ant genocide.

Unfortunately, however, what is toxic to ants is 99.9% likely to be toxic to cats. My sister got around this by sprinkling the outside of her house with poison powder, thereby killing the ants before they even entered the house. An elegant solution, but one that won’t work with our furry bastards, whose favorite hobby as mentioned above is to dash outside as often as possible to chomp on that sweet, luscious, nausea-inducing grass. So I can’t very well coat that grass in poison – if they’re dumb enough to eat the grass as is, how will they know to stay away from toxic grass?

What I have done thus far: I have placed several ant death motels smack in the middle of their routes. Convenient, no? Alas, the ants appear to be actively avoiding the motels. I guess the free continental breakfast isn’t enough for these particular ants. I should gussy them up a bit, paint the walls, offer free internet and maybe some ant Skinemax to sweeten the deal.

I have also tried Windexing the ants. This has proven to be surprisingly effective, as the ants just shrivel up and die upon contact. It also makes the windows shiny and clear, further confusing the birds who keep trying to fly into them. It’s not the best solution, since more ants keep risking Windexy death to get at our sweet, delicious honey (now under the witness protection program). If only I could devise a time release Windex dispensing!

Another thing I have tried is sprinkling cayenne pepper along the ant trails. The ants seem to hate this even more than the motels. I watched an ant seem to contemplate whether to jump or ferry over a large patch of the cayenne. It ran out of time before it could decide (ha). I don’t think the cats are stupid enough to eat the cayenne, which is another bonus.

After the next batches of rain, I think I’ll go a little further with this cayenne pepper idea, buy a giant tub of it and construct a cayenne moat. Sure, the neighbors will think we are crazy, but it is East Lawrence and we’ll likely just blend in further.

And at least we don’t have snakes in our yard.

After bugging E for months to borrow his tablet, and generally being a pest, I let it sit for awhile before I got around to using it. It was a little tricky to get used to at first, but I am coming around. Odette here is my first result:

I haven’t doodled nearly as much since being out of school, as I don’t have as much drive to procrastinate! I’d like to get back into it, and update the blog with Odette’s adventures from time to time. Ideas welcome of course!