So, I was just telling my parents about my Octopus/Inteligent Design theory. . .

[xiphias]

We're at my parents' house; my niece and nephew and their parents were over for the weekend for New Year's, and they just left, and Lis is asleep, and I was telling my parents about how Intelligent Design actually all holds together, if you assume that HUMANS aren't the creature that was designed. As I said, "So, all you need is to think of a creature without joints, without teeth, and whose eyes don't grow from their optic nerves, but are intelligent and have the ability to use tools. . . "

And Dad said, "Oh! Octopuses!"

I explained about Cthulhu and the Flying Spaghetti monster are probably therefore just visions of the Great Octopus.

And I explained my further theory about how, according to this theory, the purpose of humans was to be controlled by the Intelligent Designer to create global warming to make large shallow seas over the coastal areas that humans have built up, so that the octopuses could have the benefit of our structures while they created their own society.

And Mom said, "So, the Bush Dynasty is being controlled by Cthulhu in order to destroy humanity?"

And Dad said, "It explains a lot about Cheney -- he always did have that kind of fishy, Innsmouth look to him."

I said, "Yeah. This has actually been keeping me up at nights. . . it all hangs together all too well. If you can come up with ANYTHING that would be an argument against this, anything that will make me feel better about this, I'd love to hear it."

Mom and Dad were quiet and thinking for a while. And Mom said, "Well, they'll probably need a small slave population of humans to work the dry-land areas for a while. . . ."

(Other comments: "Well, if the Greenland ice caps go, the sea levels will go up about fifty feet. Once the octopuses get MIT, it's all over. On the other hand, they'll also get Logan Airport, which should slow them down some. . . 'I dunno, man, I went to this place near the shore, and I was stuck there for six freakin' hours. . . '")

Comments

[trystan830.livejournal.com]

found this posted on the unitarians...omgoddess, this is HILARIOUS!!
i was laughing for a good few minutes!

[halien--.livejournal.com]

Sounds like your family has fun discussions!

[hgryphon.livejournal.com]

That totally rocked my world! :D

[velouria-uk.livejournal.com]

I WANT TO BE AN OCTOPUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[tmixtli.livejournal.com]

As with several others, I followed this link from caprine.

I haven't seen it mentioned here or on metaquotes, but J. Michael Straczynski's ode to archetypes Babylon 5 features a climactic money shot in which the aliens who have been cultivating an image of angels are revealed to be glowing energy squids. Is JMS a member of the conspiracy, an unwitting conduit of the Great Octopus, or a rebel cultist determined to out his tentacled master?

[weepingtemptres.livejournal.com]

I once had a theory that the bible missed a section including "skippy" the dolphin counterpart of Adam...he ruled the seas...but I think you are probably closer in accuracy with the octopi intelligent design concept.
nice work to you and your family.
but now i must go finish sewing my wet suit with 8 tentacles...


hey i just thought...maybe there were strains of the concept flowing when "Doc Oc" was created to battle Spiderman...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, the thing you have to understand about Spiderman, as JMS so brilliantly pointed out early in his ongoing run writing the book, is that most of Spidey's nemeses (and that's one of those words, like Apocolypse, that strictly speaking shouldn't have a plural, so "nemeses" is probably as good as we're going to get) are largely "scientist/animals". I mean, the Vulture, the Lizard, the Scorpion, Man-Wolf, the Rhino, Doc Oc -- they are all humans who, through science, gained animal-like powers. Which describes Spidey, too. So for Spiderman, really, Doc Oc is more of one in an ongoing pattern, more than a single example in his own right.

You had me there for a minute but..

[(Anonymous)]

This all seemed totally believable until you got to the point where you were talking about your parent's responses. Your observations on the superiority of the octopus and the nature of The Great Creator are spot on. But, intelligent well-formed responses from older human life-forms, particularly those in a parental supervisory role are totally unbelievable. In the future, please stick with logically formed hypothesis without embellishing it with fantastic claims of rational thought by these life forms.

btw, excellent post. Deserves a spot in Wikipedia.

Re: You had me there for a minute but..

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

Seeing as xiphias' parents are probably younger than I am, and I and my Spousal Unit have frequent discussions similar to this (we own "Welcome Squid Overlords" t-shirts, after all) frequently, I believe I can poke holes in your perception of reality. I may not be rational but I can think circles around you through treachery, deception, and experience.

Re: You had me there for a minute but..

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Just took a quick peek at your LJ userinfo:
Were you at Northeastern in '71 as faculty or as a student? If you were a freshman in '71, and were following a moderately typical education pattern, then you'd pretty darn close to my folks in age.

Depending on what circles you travelled in, it's possible that you've met each other -- Mom was involved with SDS at that time, I think, if that was before SDS got radical and violent -- Mom never supported violent tactics. Dad didn't either -- he was with Veterans Against the War, I believe, but just in a behind-the-scenes sort of capacity. Mom was more of an organizer and planner -- and is to this day; Dad more of a builder -- and is to this day.

In any case, my parents never bought the "Don't trust anyone over thirty" stuff, which helped when they turned thirty -- Mom tells the story of the time that she'd organized a big protest on the Boston Common, and she walked up to the top of the hill near the State house to sort of get a feel for the numbers and mood of the crowd -- get a sort of count and sense -- and there, sitting at the top of the hill on lawn chairs, was her grandmother and bridge club.

"Bubbe!" Mom said, "It's great to see you! What are you doing here?"

"Well, kinderlech, we came for the protest. I organized the senior division. We chartered a bus."

"So, Bubbe, what do you think of it?"

"Well, nu, the speeches were better in my day, but you kids do allright -- the songs are better now."

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

Please- oh PLEASE-- may I copy this to my own journal- with your permission and name and credits to you?? (I'd link- but I don't know quite how that works, yet...)

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Please do!

Linking is easy, by the way.

What you do is you make a piece of text be an "anchor" that you can click on, which opens up the new page. So you have an "anchor" which goes to a "HTTP reference", which is how it works. The "href" is just the URL that you want to go to -- you can copy and paste it right out of the URL bar. Um, if there's a ? in the URL, I usually cut the question mark and everything that's after it, but you don't really have to.

It looks something like this:

A story about Octopus Intelligent Design

And it's built something like this:

<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/xiphias/292111.html">A story about Octopus Intelligent Design</a>

Obviously, you can make the text that you click on anything you want:

<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/xiphias/292111.html">This guy has cool parents!</a>

<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/xiphias/292111.html">This moron is afraid of squid!</a>

<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/xiphias/292111.html">Do you think he's serious?</a>

<a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/xiphias/292111.html">Chocolate Ice cream is my favorite flavor</a>

However you want to say it.

[ladyfox7oaks.livejournal.com]

Oh Thank you! Thank you thank you thankyou! :)

So funny!

[(Anonymous)]

This is hysterical. I am going to link to it. By the way, I found it on MSNBC . . .

And as you can tell, I like octopi :-)

Re: So funny!

[scienceprincess.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize I wasn't logged in . . .

Re: So funny!

[sighris.livejournal.com]

> This is hysterical. I am going to link to it.
> By the way, I found it on MSNBC . . .
> And as you can tell, I like octopi :-)

As Xiphias wrote:
You're kidding about the MSNBC thing, right?

I gotta know!
Sighris

Re: So funny!

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

You're kidding about the MSNBC thing, right?

Re: So funny!

[sighris.livejournal.com]

Did you ever get an answer from scienceprincess about MSNBC?
- I think I will ask her myself since I don't see an answer & it looks to me like you replied to her accidental Anonymous post instead of the post after she logged in...

[skyblade.livejournal.com]

Have you ever seen "The Future is Wild"...it actually suggest squids could in fact be the evolutionary inheritors of the world after all of us are dust in the wind.

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

Oh, I love the book that came out of that special! Those final baby squid things frolicking like monkeys in the trees - so cute!

[toniabarone.livejournal.com]

*L* Wow. Cool. *giggles*

[zellieh]

I love intelligent design. Makes me laugh every time. The Spaghetti Monster! Hee! :D

[syk0saje.livejournal.com]

awesome. will link, if you don't mind :D

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Please do!

[john-m-burt.livejournal.com]

I finally looked at the link my sweetie sent me, and I'm glad I did. :-)