Insect Human

The Van Dusen Meditation Garden was closed when I was there (or so it seemed) due to the distractions and the phantasmic eidolons of Samsāra.

OK, Phantasmic eidolons. And the veils of Māyā. And fire ants.

The truth is that the fire ants only wanted to chill out and practice their Ānāpānasati breath mindfulness but the management lost their shit and over-reacted.

And as the city glows, electric people nobody knows Electric dreams, nobody shows

A few weeks ago over at B⁴ there happened to be a discussion about bio-fluorescence and Brainbows, and the good name of the Riddled Research Institute and Mad Scientist Anti-Defamation League was dragged into it, on account of our experience in skull transparency.

Designer transparent skulls and flashy brains in 3... 2...
You writing for "Riddled" now?

In the interests of fair play and full disclosure and forestalling copyright lawsuits, we would like to acknowledge the pioneering contributions of S. Delany in the field of cranial transparency techniques.

This is also an apposite moment to point out the dangers of using fluorescent markers to distinguish neural networks, i.e. making Brainbows. For here at the Research Institute & MSADL we are all about responsibility. Using our proprietary Alternative Time-stream Observation Technology to avoid having to do any work ourselves see what went down in other realities, we are in a position to pass on the following ominous news:

1. It is a Bad Idea because in 28% of time-streams it leads to experimental subjects looking like trippy hippie Alex Grey paintings.*


2. The other 72% of alternative time-streams are lazy buggers who avoid doing any research of their own and prefer to use their proprietary technology to observe our own efforts.

3. In 6% of that 28%, the genetic modifications for transparency escaped from laboratory confinement and crossed over with a murine endo-retrovirus to result in a new breed of transparent mouse.
Come to think of it, invisible mice would certainly explain the disappearance of the chocolate Hob-nobs from the smoko room.

4. It is a especially Bad Idea because in 23% of time-streams, popular press reports of neuro-fluorescence discoveries appeared under headlines about "The Body Electric". We are not quite sure how an Electric Body differs from the usual kind, but it seems to convey a sense of 'intangibility' or 'aether' or even 'plasma'.

The iron-cast laws of Morphogenetic Resonance predict that once a a first weather report has appeared about electric bodies and singing, it is easier for similar choral performances to occur in the future. Itemising all the different US, Canadian and UK bands calling themselves "The Body Electric" is left as an exercise for the reader (not to mention New Zealand's own Kraftwerk wannabees from the early 1980s).

Further investigation revealed that you can't talk about "The Body Plasmatic" within earshot of Another Kiwi without him turning all hot & bothered and going on about the late lamented Wendy O.

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* Or in 2% of timestreams, like Pavel Tchelitchew paintings.

Right: When invisibility goes wrong

Bonus Bodies Electric from Arthur Tress...

...and from the Wellcome Institute.

Tales from the White Art

"The Why Tart?" I said. "I do not rate for question-marks as an ingredient in desserts; or indeed any other kind of punctuation mark. Colons and exclamation marks trigger my Irritable Vowel Syndrome. It brings to mind a Keat-and-Chapman story..."

SHUT UP SMUT, said tigris and Another Kiwi. They reminded me that we have covered the White Art previously. Apparently it an artform using the medium of suet or Lard.

The Riddled editorial team are still arguing as to whether this topic will feature in sufficiently many future posts to warrant its own 'LOLlard' label.

In time gone by the treatment of the Lard was expressly sculptural, but definitions have broadened, and White Art practice now includes more conceptual manipulations, e.g. firing arrows into a viking's abdomen.
However, I am old-fashioned and when invitations of this nature turn up in the Spam Tray I still think it is cheating to colour the lard for the appearance of skin and hair and eyes.

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"My mathematical career is ruined," sobbed Chapman. "My 180-page proof of the Goldbach Conjecture, destroyed! The cook saw the fancy punctuation peppering the pages and thought they must be intended for culinary use! All that special typography -- the six different fonts to mark all the special symbols, including Ogham and Glagolitic -- is under a pie-crust now! How am I going to explain this to the Tenure Committee?"

"The proof is in the pudding," Keats intoned.

Four engines burning Over the USA (#2)

Seen in Budapest, in the Danube Court of romantic Buda Castle.

I had not previously encountered the concept of Drone Wedding Photography, but the Great Gazoogle assures me that in the US at least, it is increasingly a thing.

I can't see it taking off in Yemen or Afghanistan.

Peripatus, little peripatus Peripatus, Onychophora It will cover you with glue (It will cover you with glue)

The Riddled competition this week is for the best new lyrics for Carmina Burana, replacing "O Fortuna" with "Peripatus". Instead of the usual road-kill hotpot from Mrs Miggins, first prize is increased to a Bremen-Style Haggis, flown directly to the lucky winner so we can make a joke about "a knipp in the air".

This may seem extravagant but "hang the expense," sez we. It will be worth every shiny milk-bottle top if the lyrics reduce future occurrences of the unmelodic quandary arising so often at the Old Entomologist in the early hours, when the topers at half the tables are trying to sing "Peripatus" to the tune of Alouette, while the other half are all "Peri patus, peri patus, Velvet worm! Velvet worm!" to the tune of Frère Jacques.

"A quandary has horns like a dilemma, but otherwise resembles a dromedary," Another Kiwi helpfully vouchsafed.

The Peripatus or Velvet worm or Onychophora is known for its ability to squirt twin streams of sticky mucus, which is the WORST SUPER-POWER EVAH if you happen to be bitten by a radioactive one. It uses the mucus to immobilise its victims before sucking out their digestive-saliva-liquified internals.

Mouthparts: "What pinatas
look like in Hell"

Deathworm

Sadly, it has yet to feature in its very own creature-feature horror movie. In part this is the fault of the New Zealand Film Commission, where people are all risk-averse and arse-covery about funding scripts from the Riddled Amateur Dramatic Society. Also too, no-one is selling Sexy Peripatus Costumes for Hallowe'en so you'll have to make your own if you want to join our other competition. Send photographs to the judges, Open Mike and Swearing Bob. The judges' decision is (due to a spelling mistake) finial.

Here's a Peripatus I found yesterday.

Poison's in my bloodstream, poison's in my pride

In the drunken aftermath of "Leonard Cohen Karaoke and Dendrogramma enigmatica Affiliations in Bilateralia Night" at the Old Entomologist, the conversation turned (as it so often does) to

1. the anti-invertebrate, pro-tetrapod bias in contemporary culture, and
Sensory deprivation tank: Doin it rong

2. the unfairness that Vonda McIntyre wrote Dreamsnake around the conceit of bioengineering snakes to administer medicinal does of poisons... thereby squandering an opportunity to rehabilitate the reputations of scorpions, spiders, centipedes and one species of basal crustacean.

If my hand-written summary of the following heated discussion is to be trusted -- and if it can actually be read, through all the beer stains -- then

1. The surrent holder of the title of "World's most poisonous spider" is the Six-eyed sand-crab spider Sicarius sp. In animal tests, its cytotoxic, haemorrhagic venom  kills rabbits through internal bleeding and general ooze in the manner of Ebola virus. Fortunately its life-style is such as to minimise contact with humans other than Cameron Slater, i.e. it lurks under flat rocks. Newlands and Atkinson only managed to find two reported cases of probable Sicarius envenomation where the victims showed the expected symptoms of liquefaction in the absence of multiple bites by cobras and rattlesnakes.

The Doctrine of Similars leads us to predict that the best treatment for a Sicarius bite is a homeopathic dose of Ebola. In fact that is the plot of a forthcoming Japanese horror movie.

Sicarius seldom eats -- it can survive two years without food -- so conversely, a highly-diluted dose of ground-up spider is an obvious homeopathic remedy for anorexia.

3. Canadian spiders are weird.

4.This spider does backflips and cartwheels, after watching too many Wuxia movies convinced it that it can thereby evade the weapons of its enemies. It remains to be seen whether its bite will bestow acrobatic superpowers.

The Acrobat's Exercises

Let the record show that 'agorabat' and 'claustrobat' are names for performers of daring feats in wide-open spaces and confined spaces respectively, and if the lexicographers say otherwise than they are PART OF THE CONSPIRACY TO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH.

5. Fishing spiders have been in the news lately [h/t ITTDGY]. Here is the New Zealand fishing spider, Dolomedes aquaticus.

The Whackyweedia entry lacks a description of its fishing techniques (we would edit it ourselves, but for some reason the Whacky administrators have blocked the Riddled IP address). The North Island subspecies ties its own lures from feathers and strips of shiny plastic. South Island populations lack the aesthetic instinct and prefer to stun the fish with a stick of C4.

Attempts to prosecute fishing spiders for catching rainbow trout without a license have all failed, with the courts accepting the defense that the indigenous status of D. aquaticus exempts it from fish-&-game legislation.

6. Canadian spiders are not only weird, but dangerously adept in their mimicry skills.

The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions a layer of mashed potato, baked for 45 minutes at 190° *

Life continues to imitate a 'Two Ronnies' skit:

Police are asking motorists to keep their eyes peeled.

Two victims of potato dumping

In fact "State Highway 1 blocked by spudspill" is a recurring event, which we incline to blame on the large deposits of Narrativium underlying New Zealand's North Island (either that, or on Another Kiwi drinking a third pint of Trotsky Headsplitter Bitter and twiddling with the settings of the Morphogenic Field Flux Intensifier). This time, the spillage was close to the Southward Classic Car Museum; but seven years ago...

...it happened in the neighbourhood of the vintage car wreckers, Horopito Motors.

Perhaps the reality-studio scriptwriters are working up to a joke about "bangers and mash".

* If these accounts of sub-optimal choices of paving material are true, we must deduce that there are no roading engineers in Hell, which I for one find it hard to believe.