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

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. . . '")

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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.

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."

Yes, I was a freshman in '71. But I probably never ran into your folks. The circle I ran in would be roughly described as "depressed druggie math, science, and engineering majors" and we tended to isolate ourselves in the computer labs in the basements and the radio station on the top floor of the student center. We were sorta the equivalent of today's geeks, and not terribly involved in the outside world or politics. Even after I pulled myself out of that slough, I still was never quite involved in anything really active.

Then you might have known my father, who was a depressed radio/computer geek. . . David Osmond.

I might have at that - there's a very faint ring of familiarity about the name. But I can't be sure - a lot of the early '70's is hidden in the overall haze of depression. But since I got my third-class radio engineer license back then, it's a distinct possibility.
I don't know if they even still offer those licenses. So much has changed in, oh my Cthulhu!, thirty five YEARS!!!!

Dad got his ham license in junior high school, I think, although I'm not sure if he still knows any Morse Code. When I was in junior high school, Dad "gave" me his ham set, by which I mean that it was set up in his office, and he let me play with it sometimes. When he got back from Vietnam, he started working as a radio engineer at a couple of local stations -- mostly college and non-profit, but I think he did a little for WCRB in Waltham, live-recording operas and stuff.

I seem to remember that there is no longer ANY radio license which requires code. I mean, fifteen years ago or something, they instituted a "low code" class license, which you could get with only like 5 WPM in Morse code, then they switched EVERYTHING to "low code" (which was actually a challenge for some people on re-upping their licenses -- they could do code at 40 wpm or so, but once it was slowed down to 5 wpm, it just sounded like dots and dashes instead of letters. . . ) and then, a couple years ago, they got rid of code entirely.

I'm still occasionally working on teaching myself code, because I think it's cool.

Oh, mine was for broadcast radio, not ham radio - what they called, at the time, "third-class engineering license with broadcast endorsement" which didn't require code, but DID require that you know a certain amount of electronics, how to read meters, what things like "impedence" and "potentiometer" mean, stuff like that. So that if one was alone at the station overnight, as I often was, one could monitor all the equipment despite the lack of a full-time engineer. At the time, the FCC had a lot more requirements for stations than there are now, with logs you had to keep with all kinds of meter readings, and you had to know how to operate more kinds of recording equipment and stuff - huge tape players, 8-track, all that stuff, and know enough to load and unload them, unjam them if something got snarled up... that kind of thing. So it was mainly an electronics-type license. I did the overnight Friday and Saturday shows on WRBB, Northeastern's station, from midnight until 6 a.m. It was fun. It was strange.

Never did ham radio, though I have gone through phases, several times, of listening to shortwave, which is a whole 'nother radio peculiarity!

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

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