Wile E. Coyote Never Had a Chance

Reena had two picture prompts today and since I have some time left, I decided to take on the picture that looked like a silhouette of a runner to me, but I am really not sure what it is and perhaps it is a dancer.  Anyways, as I drove to the grocery store, I was listening to that Holland–Dozier–Holland song ‘(I’m a) Road Runner’, which was first released by Junior Walker & the Allstars in 1966.  The cover that I herd was on a CD titled Garcia Live Volume Five, anyway it made me think of this picture and it is a cool song.  I read that Walker was a road warrior, constantly touring and performing, and Motown Records had a hard time getting him into the studio to record this, because he was always out on the road.

The road runner is not a bird in this song, as it is about a man who is on the move, and he doesn’t want to settle down.  He tells his woman that she can love him, but he probably won’t reciprocate, because he doesn’t want to be tied down.  He needs freedom to roam around, and he has been this way his whole life.  Every road runner has to keep on keeping on doing what they are doing.  I found this interesting video for everyone to watch.

Money, who needs it
Let me live my life free and easy
Put my toothbrush in my hand
And let me be a traveling man
Cause I’m a road runner, baby

I’m a road runner, baby
Can’t stay in one place too long
I’m a road runner baby
You might look at me and I’ll be gone

You can love me if you wanna
But I do declare
When I get restless
I got to move somewhere

I’m a road runner baby
Any where’s my home and love the life I live
And I’m gonna live the life I love
Road runner, baby

Don’t want no woman to tie me down
Got to be free, baby to roam around
All my life I’ve been like this
If you love me it’s your own risk
When the dust hit my shoe I got the urge to move

Says I’m a road runner baby
Got to keep on keeping on, hey
And I live the life I love
And I’m gonna love the life I live
Says, I’m a road runner, baby

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 282, where I selected the runner picture.

Time Is Going Out of Sync

On Wednesday, June 29, 2022, Earth rotated once around its axis in 1.59 milliseconds less than 24 hours, and this was faster than scientists had ever previously recorded since records began in the 1960s.  July 26 neared the newly-set record, at 1.50 milliseconds shorter than usual.  The previous record for the shortest rotation was July 19, 2020, when the Earth’s rotation took 1.4602 milliseconds less than 24 hours.  Ever since its formation around 4.5 billion years ago, our Earth had been gradual slowing down its rotation, and this has resulted in adding about 2.3 milliseconds to the length of each day every 100 years.  The Earth’s rotational speed fluctuates constantly for multiple reasons, the moon and Earth’s gravitational pull on each other, the moon’s effect on the tides on Earth, and changes in the weather and climate on Earth.  Many experts believe that the earth is spinning faster due to the glaciers melting as a result of climate change, as well as increased stores of water in reservoirs in the northern hemisphere.  On a normal day. the equator currently spins at 1,037 miles per hour, but if it were to spin at about 24,000 miles per hour, the Earth’s crust would eventually shift, the poles would flatten, and there would be bulging in areas around the equator, which would cause massive earthquakes that would certainly be disastrous.

The observed rotational speed of Earth is measured against what an atomic clock says is the length of the day.  Until a few years ago it had been thought that Earth’s rotation was slowing down, and we had to keep adding leap seconds every now and again to make up for the slower spin.  There is probably no need to worry, as it is thought that Earth’s rotation may still be slowing down, although we could be beginning a 50-year period of shorter days.  Earth’s quickening rotation has consequences because atomic clocks which are used in GPS satellites don’t take into account the Earth’s changing rotation.  If Earth spins faster, it will get to the same position a little earlier, but since a half-a-millisecond equates to 10-inches or 26 centimeters at the equator, our GPS may eventually become useless.  A fraction of a second seems insignificant, but international timekeepers are baffled if they are going to have to add a second or drop one, to keep clock running on time.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 282, where today she gave us two pictures to choose from and I selected the clocks.

Early Communication

Not that long ago and not in a galaxy far, far away, people here on Earth actually wrote letters to each other, so they could communicate over long distance.  This happened after writing was developed, but before the telegraph, or the telephone, or email was a thing.  Writing letters was how people stayed in touch.  People had to wait for weeks or even months for a letter to get from one part of the world to another.  If the letter was sent general delivery, then the post office would hold the mail until the recipient called for it.  In order to preserve the confidentiality of documents and confirm that they had been indeed written by the sender, letters were sealed with wax and stamped, which began in the Middle Ages.  At first, these sealed and stamped letters were the exclusive purview of monarchs, bishops, and royal courts for use in issuing official decrees and authenticating documents.  The use of wax seals then gradually became more popular and eventually each individual had their own seal.  In a time when many people were still illiterate, these seals were used in place of a signature to authenticate agreements, contracts, wills, letters which conferred rights or privileges or any act that needed to be executed in someone’s name.

Sealing wax was made principally of beeswax and Venice turpentine, then colored with various pigments, commonly vermilion or cinnabar to give a red color.  Some royal courts used different colors to distinguish various administrative functions.  The seals were sometimes melted directly onto the document, but just as often they were hung off documents with ribbon or parchment tags after being threaded through a hole or slot at the lower edge of the document.  The wax seal was used to verify that the document was not opened, and it also authenticated the sender’s identity.  There is a myth about an emperor who devised the first envelope, by writing a message on the shaved pate of a slave, letting the hair regrow, and then he sent the man to his destination to be shaved anew so the message could be read.  This seems like an ingenious plan, but it does come with a drawback that the message had better not be terribly urgent.  When actual envelopes were finally invented, they were often sealed with wax impressed by a signet ring to prevent the wrong people from reading them.  For a really important letter a gallows mark could be put on the cover, meaning that it had to be delivered under pain of death.

The Rolling Stones recorded a song titled ‘19th Nervous Breakdown’ which mentions making sealing wax and this is said to be a metaphor for extremely pointless and superficial activities that the father of the girl is engaged in.  It is meant to convey the idea that he is preoccupied with meaningless and insignificant tasks, rather than focusing on reality, because people had stopped using sealing wax at this time.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 281, where today she gave us another picture.

Target Practice

I wanted to save time in a bottle so I could spend every minute with her when I found out that my wife was pregnant.  My desire was to save every day till eternity passes away, but then coming back from our honeymoon at Niagara Falls, the bus flipped over after it hit a wet patch on the road, and I lost her forever and my dreams would never come true.  I became a widow instead of being a dad and now I wanted to smash that bottle to smithereens.  She was not having my baby and I had to release my anger somehow.  I lined the bottle in my sights and said, “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, you poor boy, you’re bound to die.”  I pulled my trigger, now it’s dead, watch out daddy has a gun and you better run.  I called my gun Maxwell’s silver hammer and bang, bang, I made sure that the bottle was dead.  Bang, bang that awful sound, bang, bang I shot that bottle down.  I walked down the road where the bus crash occurred and I shot it, but I did not shoot the deputy that was there investigating the accident.  Voices are calling from inside my head, I can hear them, I was tense and nervous, and I couldn’t relax as I became a psycho killer bent on revenge.  I felt bad for the way I was acting, and I said, “Mama, put my guns on the ground, I can’t shoot them anymore.”  Mmm, a flood is threatening, my very life today.  Gimme, gimme shelter, or I’m gonna fade away.  War, children.  It’s just a shot away.  The bottle is shattered, I’ve been battered, what does it matter.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 280, where today she gave us a picture.

Was That Really Me?

Sometimes your body just knows that it is best to open the flood gates.  I was traveling back home on a 10-hour flight from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil going to Newark, New Jersey.  Something that I ate for breakfast that morning didn’t agree with me, so my stomach was bothering me the whole time that I was on the plane.  I got up from my seat about 10 times to use the bathroom, but only gas came out and I still felt bloated.  I felt that urge again and I figured that it would be just a tiny bit of gas again, so I lifted my cheek from the seat and I let out a silent one, instead of going all the way up the aisle to the bathroom.  I was sitting next to my wife and there was a blind lady sitting in front of us and she had her service dog with her.  What a mistake that was, as when I let out that deadly fart it smelled really bad and every mother on the plane started changing their baby’s diapers right after that.  The smell was horrible, and I saw that my wife was gagging.  The blind lady in the row in front of me started hitting her dog with her cane and saying, “Bad dog.”  I actually thought that the pilot might drop the oxygen masks because everyone was suffering.  My wife asked me why I was smiling, and I told her that it was me and then she changed her seat after that.  The good news is that I felt better after letting that one go.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 279, where today she gave us the phrase “Was that really me?”

More Than Just a Pretty Picture

Clouds are highlighted on the horizon, reflecting the last rays of the sun’s waning light back toward the ground, creating a vivid sky with colors melting as the evening settles in.  Warm yellows, bright reds, burning oranges, are all parts of the setting that attract our eyes and soothe our spirit while generating a calm serene tranquility.  At sunset, the sun is low on the horizon, and the rays of sunlight pass through more air in the atmosphere than they do when the sun is higher in the sky.  Thus, when sunlight passes through more atmosphere, this longer path can be 10 times greater through the atmosphere, so it has many more particles in it that will scatter the light.  Sunlight is composed of all the colors of the rainbow and at sunset, sunlight has travelled through a much thicker amount of atmosphere, causing the blue light that we see during the daytime to be scattered away from our eyes, and allowing more orange and red light to pass through because this has the longest wavelength.  The bright red colors that we love to see in sunsets, is an indication that the atmosphere is full of moisture and dust particles.  The sun’s light casts this brilliant light on the undersides of clouds like a movie being projected on a screen.  The enjoyment of the scenery intertwines and comes hand-in-hand with the air quality and weather, so if we pick the right spot on the right day, sunsets are proof that no matter what happens, every day can end beautifully, giving all of us the serenity that we crave.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 278, where today she gave us an AI generated image and the words “Serene Sun.”

I Lost Her Forever

I knew our relationship was over, but I had become finifugal about her and I just couldn’t let go.  She was my everything and I would be totally lost without her.  She was my lover, and my best friend and I felt her in my soul.  She was my meraki, the very essence of my being.  I guess my problem was that tried to stellify her, placing her among the stars, above anyone else in a cosmogyral fashion where she was spiraling through the galaxies in a playful freefall, when I should have been trying to appeal to her sesquipedalian librocubicularist side, as she merely wanted to read books in bed.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 278, where today she gave us several obscure words.
Finifugal – Adjective: hating endings; someone who prolongs saying goodbye for as long as possible.
Meraki – Adjective: to do something with soul, passion, or love.
Stellify – Verb: to turn into a star.
Librocubicularist – Noun: a person who reads in bed.
Cosmogyral – Adjective: whirling around the universe.

 

Why Do People Fall in Love

In 1680, the French 17th-century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal had his Penseés (Thoughts) published, and since he died in 1672, this was assembled posthumously.  It is a collection of some 800 to 1,000 notes and manuscript fragments on theology and philosophy, expressing his religious beliefs.  Pascal explored the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and theological terms, while defining the human condition using three words: boredom, inconstancy and anxiety.  Mankind emerges from Pascal’s analysis as a wretched and desolate creature within an impersonal universe, but hope is still there as anyone can be transformed through faith in God’s grace.

In this work Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”  Pascal probably meant that truth and reason not only come from what we see and hear, but also from what we feel in our heart.  Since this was in French, it is difficult to know if Pascal was referring to heart or love, so maybe he said, “Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.”  We are often told that we should follow our hearts, but can our hearts be trusted?  Who knows why people fall in love, but the feeling of loneliness and desire for intimacy, passion and commitment are probably the most common reasons.  Some people love the feeling of butterflies fluttering in their stomach and love is one of the strongest and deepest emotions that people will ever feel.  Our mind and heart seem to have no control over when it will happen and who it will be with.  The people that are lucky enough to find love will go to extreme lengths for this feeling and they seem to be willing to do anything and everything for the person they love.

Compatibility is always helpful, because you are able to exist with someone else and this can be a good reason for falling in love.  Attraction is also one of the contributing factors to falling in love, but this is more important in the initial stages of a relationship.  As humans, we look for a connection or a bond to enrich our lives and this could help you to fall in love.  Many people say that that opposites attract, but birds of a feather are the ones who flock together, so it is our similarities that will bind us with another person.  Without communication, you can never love someone for who they are, because if you are not talking to each other, then you don’t know your partner.  I look for intelligence in a relationship, because without this, it will never last.  Mysterious people are always attractive because humans are naturally curious and we want to know more about them.  When you allow people’s imaginations to fill in the gaps about you, they’ll be drawn in to see if their assumptions turn out to be correct.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 277, where today she gave us several quotes for inspiration, but I didn’t feel anything from them, so I went my own way.

Artificial Conversation Entity

I told my robot Radion that I had to write a story and I asked for his help.  He possesses gender-specific features, so he identifies as a male and he doesn’t like to be called it.  Radion is very intelligent, and he is capable of speech, but his fingers are not suited for typing.  He asked me what my story was about, so I told him it was going to write about how a chatbot is able to make predictions that enable them to string words together in a meaningful way.  Radion thought that would make a very interesting topic and he said that he would do some research for me.  I told him that I was not interested in writing that seemed awkward, or repetitive, or inaccurate and that it had to seem like it came from a human.  I told Radion that I don’t expect the chatbot’s writing to be perfect, as I could always do some editing later and that I am only interested in a chatbot that is equipped with an artificial brain, also known as artificial intelligence.  It would be nice if they could explain quantum physics to me and I also want to learn about super string theory.  Radion said that he would get back to me after his research was done.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 276, where today she gave us a picture prompt of a robot and a kid with a laptop.

Leda Laid an Egg

Leda was the daughter of Thestios, the King of Pleuron and the wife of Tyndareus king of Sparta and her name means happy.  Zeus was the God of the sky and thunder and also the ruler of Mount Olympus and although he was married to his sister Hera, he had easy access to the women of the world and he took full advantage of it.  Hera was his fourth wife after being married to Metis (mother of Athena who Zeus swallowed so Athena popped out of Zeus’s head), then Themis (mother of the Fates and the Seasons) and Mnemosyne (mother of Muses).  Zeus was very promiscuous.  He had a powerful imagination and most of his affairs were with willing participants, but he also sank to trickery and disguise to seduce them.  Zeus constantly cheats on his wife, sexually assaulting various humans and finding strange new ways to procreate.  Only the Greeks could make up stories about humans interbreeding with other animals.  However, in the 1920s, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin sent an animal-breeding expert to Africa in hopes of creating an army of half-man, half-monkey soldiers.  Luckily both of these attempts to inseminate women with monkey sperm and impregnate female chimpanzees with human sperm failed.

According to the Greek myth, Zeus, fell in love with Leda, so he turned himself into a swan to mate with her on the banks of the Eurota river.  That same night she must have still been worked up from seeing Zeus shaking his tail feathers, Leda also laid with her husband Tyndareus.  One story says that an eagle attacked Leda as she was bathing in a body of water outdoors.  Zeus had already been spying on her like a pervert from the safety of Mount Olympus for some time, but today he decided that it would be his lucky day.  He used the eagle attack as an excuse to change himself into a magnificent swan so he could win her favor by fending off the violent eagle.  At this point it’s unclear whether or not he seduced Leda willingly or raped her, but the end result is the same, as Zeus impregnated Leda and yes, it’s weird that a human woman would lay eggs, but that just shows how powerful Zeus was.

After these unions from Zeus and from her husband, two giant eggs were formed, and each egg contained twins from the two different fathers.  It was generally assumed that Helen of Troy (future wife of Menelaus king of Sparta and the person behind the Trojan War) and Pollux (known for his sailing ability and horsemanship) were the children of Zeus and Leda, whilst Clytemnestra (the one who murdered Agamemnon after the war) and Castor (a member of the Argonauts) who is sometimes called Polydeuces, were the offspring of Tyndareus and Leda.  The second century CE travel writer Pausanias claimed that the egg laid by Leda could be seen on display in a temple in Sparta.  The fame of the four children would far outstrip that of their mother, however after her death raised to the rank of a divinity, under the name of Nemesis.

Written for Reena’s Xploration Challenge 275, where today she gave us a picture prompt of a golden egg.