Amoeba’s Lorica: Satellight

The scientist sat in the living room of his cabin in the north woods, alone in the darkness. Alone, that is, except for the backstage murmuration of things done and things not done, of sins that required atonement and tasks that needed accomplishment. The noise in his head had driven him out of bed at an hour that, a few months ago, was the bright before dawn, but, now, was a reminder of the long winter’s nights to come.

He looked out the window. There were stars, hung in the sky like clothes on a line. A gift, the scientist mused, for soon the winter rains would make it no more possible to see the stars at night than to dry clothes without somebody somewhere burning rocks or goo to make it happen.

One of the stars blinked. The scientist’s eyes blinked in response, and they then made it the only star in the sky. It blinked again, and then again, and soon the scientist recognized that it was blinking regularly, in synch with some unseen, unheard metronome – and then, that it was moving across the heavens. An airplane. Broadcasting its presence to an unseeing, uncaring world; an actor in full cry on an empty stage, never quite sure that the auditorium is unoccupied, that it doesn’t hide a director, or a hostile critic, waiting to pounce on every missed cue, every fluffed line – a potentially fatal intersection.

The scientist’s mind wandered away from the airplane, to a night when the hours of darkness were short and warm, and there seemed to be more stars than darkness in the dark, and the scientist and his lady had a houseguest who was trying to hide from the university’s bureaucrats and accountants long enough to get the education she had come from halfway around the world to receive.

“Look!”, she exclaimed. “A shooting star!”

The scientist followed her gaze and saw, not the panicked, despairing screamflash of a meteor, but the even, purposeful progress of a pinprick across an arc of the sky.

“A satellite”, he corrected. “You can probably go online, find out which satellite it is and what it’s doing up there.” They did so, and identified it as a communications satellite, belonging to the population that made it possible for the scientist and his guest to access the internet and fetch the intel about that satellite.

Abruptly, the slight smile that this recollection brought on collapsed, as one memory brought on another – of the article in a university’s propaganda magazine (the same university with which his houseguest had been interacting) in which an astronomer decried the ‘light pollution’ from the population of communications satellites, and wailed that it was getting worse.

“Right”, the scientist muttered. “Millions of people, especially those in rural areas without other options, get to talk with each other due to satellite technology, and a handful of clueless elitist scientists, damn it, bitch about how something that is actually useful to people gets in the way of their pet projects. This is how they get their precious telescopes kicked off mountains. We should be grateful for what we’ve got, and figure out ways to make it work for all of us while we still have it. The tech will all collapse of its own weight soon enough.”

The scientist returned his attention to the airplane he had spotted. It was still there, slowly blinking and tracking across the night, a few degrees above the horizon.

Then, abruptly, it wasn’t.

Posted in Amoeba's Lorica, personal thoughts, science, We the People | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Dude and Dude: Schadenbow

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

“What tha forecast?”

Here? At this time a year? Ya know it well’s I do. ‘Dark. Continued mostly dark tonight …”

“‘… wit’ widely scattered light in tha mornin’. That’s old, dude.”

“Sue me. An’ it’s gonna get a whole lot worse afore it gets better, yeah? Dark. An’ cold. An’ wet. Yer widely scattered light might show up at, like, 10 AM. In tha pourin’ rain. An’ ya don’t need a snarky app ta figger that out. Or leastways ya shouldn’t. So what’s yer point?

“Hawai‘i.”

“I didn’t know there wuz a peninsula named Hawai‘i …”

“Dude?”

“Yeah?”

Shaddap. I miss tha state. I miss tha island.”

“Good.”

“[…]”

“One. Yer too far away ta hit it. Two. If’n ya did hit it, it’s a helluva lot bigger than you. Ya ain’t gonna hurt it, it prob’ly wouldn’t even notice. You, on tha other hand … an’ I ain’t payin’ yer medical bills.”

“Knew I c’ld count on ya, dude. Not.”

“Do I look like a calculator, dude?”

“What ya look like is a dude what’s fergotten what it’s like ta be warm an’ sunny.

“I sure as hell r’member bein’ hot an’ sweaty …

You got chicks?!?

“[…] Dude, what’re ya on?

“Ya tell me where ya got the chicks, I’ll tell ya where I hid tha stash. It’s like this, dude. I wuz readin’ about how somebody sed ‘if’n ya want rainbows, ya gotta put up wit’ tha rain.’ Sure been a lot a rain since we got here, but I ain’t seen no rainbows. Kinda a downer …”

“Facepalm, dude. That line’s so bogus it hurts. Don’tcha ‘member when we wuz chasin’ rainbows in Hawai‘i? I sure do, ’cause I hadta put up wit’ ya callin’ ’em unicorn farts.”

“Did I get yer ‘tention ‘r didn’t I, dude?”

“Riiight. Didya pay ‘tention ta tha fact that we wuz diggin’ tha rainbows an’ not gettin’ wet?

“Um …”

“If’n ya want rainbows, dude, ya gotta put up wit’ it rainin‘, all right. Rainin’ on somebody else! Ya only get ta go ‘oh wow’ if’n some other dude is, like, drownin’. That dude gettin’ wet is you, ya ain’t gonna see nothin’.”

“So I don’ get ta be happy ‘less somebody else is miserable? Ain’t there some big fancy word for that?”

“Lemme search it … oh yeah, here it is.”

“Right. So we should be callin’ these multicolored arches in the sky painbows?”

“Dude.”

Posted in Dude and Dude, humor, satire, We the People | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Amoeba’s Lorica: Academic Email Signature

A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. – Paul Simon


Name: Y. F. N. Amoeba

Title: Senior Wheel Reinventor

Pronouns: Yes. Also pro verbs.

Department: Redundancy Department

Institution: Dawg University

Address: 1 Academic Circle

    Perplexity, Confusion 66666 USA

    North America

    Earth

    Sol Star System

    Alpha Quadrant

    Milky Way Galaxy

    K.N.O.W.N. Universe

    WoofWoofgrrrrrYIP!!Hoowwwwwwwwwllll!

I acknowledge with gratitude that I live and work in a world that has been defined by the efforts of my Western European ancestors in general, and my Irish, Scots, and English ancestry in particular. 

I acknowledge that those ancestors came to the Americas, starting in the 15th century of the Common Era, and proceeded to systematically wipe out its First Peoples through armed conflict, direct and indirect germ warfare, and social and economic repression, thereby creating a community without which my chosen career would not exist and, indeed, my life would have been forfeit at birth. I acknowledge that, had I been alive during this time, I would have behaved no differently, lest I run afoul of my true peers and share the fate of their targets, personally and in the eyes of history.

I acknowledge that any attempt on my part to recognize the surviving First Peoples, that does not rescue them from their current status as tokens and suppliers of illicit entertainment, and does not restore to them, in full, political and cultural sovereignty over their own lands (that is, the full extent of the North and South American continents), is empty posturing on my part, directed at those elements of the European-derived culture that I and my homies profess to despise but nevertheless utterly depend on, and showing no concern whatsoever for the authentic needs and desires of the First Peoples – which concern, if I actually showed any, might hurt me.

Posted in Amoeba's Lorica, humor, politics, satire, We the People | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment