18467--Dinosaurs Are Not the Problem

P: Now...

J: Uh-oh.

P: ...if you're Dr. Ian Malcolm...

J: From...?  Oh, Jurassic Park.

P: ...then the last place you want to be is...

J: Jurassic Park.

P: Anyplace with freakin' dinosaurs!

J: Well, duh.

P: Yet, somehow, they've managed to sign Jeff Goldblum for Jurassic World 2.

J: This I knew.  They're making a fifth movie.

P: His third.  Somehow, they're going to have to come up with a plausible way to get him back among the dinosaurs.

J: Like the other guy, the doctor from the first and the third ones.

P: Sam Neill.

J: Get me off this damned island.

P: Oh, it's OK, this is a different island.  Of course, there are still dinosaurs on it, so...

J: Damn it!

P: We have to have an expert scientist to ignore who also wasn't dumb enough to make the dinosaurs trying to kill everyone.

J: So all Malcolm has to offer is telling everyone not to go be part of the damn buffet?

P: Well, there's the running and screaming.  And we have to assume all the chaos is a big draw for him.

J: Why am I on the island of dinosaurs and not wearing a tank to cover all my delicious meat?

P: No, that's not the perfect weapon.  You know what the perfect weapon is.  Same as for zombie hordes.

J: A baseball bat?

P: AC-130.

J: The Hercules thing?  With the 50-cal?

P: 105mm Howitzer!  40mm cannon!  25mm machine gun, front-mounted!  Most importantly, you are not down there with them.

J: Is that going to work?  Something always goes wrong.  It's like they've got somebody on the inside making things go wrong.  In the first movie, it was...the computer guy...

P: Wayne Knight.  Neuman.

J: Yeah, him.

P: He wasn't actually trying to sabotage the place, just shut down security long enough to cover his escape.  Either through bad programming or just mechanical inefficiency, things didn't switch back on like they were supposed to.

J: Either way, time to get the damn shotguns!  And that didn't even help.

P: They were way understaffed.  The place wasn't open yet.

J: Right, running a skeleton crew.

P: At least, they would be after the feeding frenzy.

J: Jurassic World was fully staffed and open for business.  What's the point of putting all those people around apex predators designed to kill us?

P: Well, they're not really, not the natural ones anyway.

J: They're not natural anymore.

P: Certainly not.  And in the last one, well, people really were trying to sabotage the place.  We had our head scientist from the first movie poking his head back up from the lab..."Hi, I've been trying to weaponize the critters for the last few years."  Because humans try to weaponize everything.

J: And working with the government.  They put raptor DNA in it.

P: And chameleon.

J: It tore out its own tracking device and went hunting for fun.  They can't control that.  Your plane might not be able to shoot it either.

P: It has infra-red tracking gear.

J: That might not be enough with that thing.

P: In which case, I'm still in a plane.  OK, so maybe they just let it loose someplace unfriendly and leave it to hunt.  Admittedly, it's about as responsible as planting minefields and leaving them behind to see who they kill.  If it doesn't get a taste for ISIS, set off the brain bomb buried deep, deep in its head.

J: Unless it digs that out, too.

P: It's buried really deep.

J: They've got to have all kinds of good nanotech in that lab.  They should have some way to control them.

P: Sure, control the nervous system, the endocrine system, or even just clog up the bloodstream with graphene clots.

J: Well, that might work.  It has to get hungry some time and actually hunt for food.

P: Better still, go beyond the lysine option and just program in a termination date.  Figure out their maximum travel range and turn them loose.  As long as they don't learn to drive or hop a boat, they're under limited control.

J: Of course, the government's still going to want controllable soldiers.  How long till they're putting together human hybrid dino-soldiers?

P: And how long till the hybrids decide to find a way to increase their numbers and take over?

J: They always turn on you.

P: Of course, intelligent dino-soldier slaves isn't the real problem.  The problem is all the clowns who want to keep making dinosaurs in the first place.

J: Step one, don't make dinosaurs.

P: There you go.  That nanotech bio-lab could probably come up with some nifty superpowers.  Failing that, there's always omelettes.

J: I want cookies.

P: Fine, omelettes and cookies.

18169--You Think You're So Smart?

Ruling the planet for over a hundred million years just wasn't enough.

Evolving from savage violence, growing into civilization and philosophy...

There's more religious iconography at this site than the last.  Huge multi-ton stones are surrounded by sculptures of creatures no one alive has ever seen.  Still, they were never really able to find contentment.

The engraved tableau we uncovered earlier this week says they modified the genetic code of their mammal food source to increase the meat yield.  No one foresaw the drastic side effects that would come from that.

One step too far?  I suppose.  It backfired on them, after all.  Their whole civilization seems to have imploded on itself after that.

So many achievements over so many centuries spent taming their world and now we still haven't found more than a couple of their cities and random fossil remains.

"Hey, Dave!  You done with lunch?  We want to get back to the dig while there's still daylight."

"Sure.  Just making some notes."

"What about?"

"Thoughts about the dinosaurs, what else?  We've got a lot to learn from them."

"Whatever you want to learn from the past better come from all the pictures you take.  Bulldozers come through in three days, remember?"

"Right.  Can't stop progress, after all."

16797--Sowing the Seeds of Chaos

Every now and again, you may feel that your personal life, the world around you or one of your writing projects has fallen into a rut of stagnation.  How can you fix it?  Change your normal routine.  Yes, big scary change.  Embrace the change.  It can be good.  It can stimulate new ideas and ways of doing things.

Static systems tend to produce static results.  That's often just fine.  Predictable results are frequently what we seek.  Sometimes, though, you're going to be searching for something new, even if you don't know what it is.  I would also suggest that when you go shaking things up, have some fun doing it.  Give your imagination a little challenge, though, and you might come up with some more creative ways of shuffling your deck. 

In the spirit of my recent writing about tricksters, I'll share a couple of my own past shake ups.

Once upon a time, I worked as a radio DJ.  It's a job that can be fun, but it has its own particular thorns, too.  Hey, that's why it's work and you get paid to do it.  Anyway, one particular afternoon, I decided to play Queen's "We Will Rock You".  Most of you familiar with it know that it is normally followed by "We Are the Champions".  This makes sense because it's the very next track on the album and the gap between them is so small that the first flows into the second very well.  People have become accustomed, almost programmed, to hear them together.  Well, that particular afternoon, I made note that the two separate tracks are just that: two separate tracks.  When "We Will Rock You" finished, I spun something else.  It was a nice smooth transition into another bit of rock and roll that I don't even recall at this writing.  What I do recall, though, is that we got a pretty fair idea of just how many people were listening to my show that day because the phone lines rang like I was giving away money.  Not playing "We Are the Champions" was apparently enough to incite an emotional riot because that was suddenly the most important thing in their world.  I even got to talk to some some station executives who usually didn't care about talking with me.  Who knew they had such an interest in what I played?

Another fun upon a time came way back in 1993.  That's right, the twentieth century.  Some friends of mine had gotten terribly excited about the opening night of "Jurassic Park" and called a couple of dozen of us together to go watch it.  It was a real event.  The box office lines were long, spotlights were sweeping the sky and news crews had come out to do their little feature pieces.  One of my friends who had called us all together had arrived about the same time as I had.  As we were getting our group organized in the very long lines, we chatted to pass the time.  To make the wait more interesting, he said we should "Sow the seeds of Chaos."  What could I do but accept such a lofty challenge?  I put on my 3D glasses. 

 

Now, let me explain at this point that earlier that very day I had come upon a stash of 3D glasses.  These weren't the slick Men-in-Black-looking 3D glasses we enjoy in the twenty-first century.  No, these were their primitive forebears, made of colorful cardboard and sporting one red and one blue lens.  I had found a box of them at work that no one else wanted.  I was told I could have them and shoved them into my backpack.  Between the time of that find and the movie showtime, I found that those 3D glasses didn't just enhance 3D films.  They also made the world a brighter place as well as the covers of comic books.  So I was already having a fun Friday afternoon.  Since we were going to see this great new film with groundbreaking computer effects, I had to give it a try with my new glasses.  And I had enough for everybody.  As more of our friends arrived, I gave everyone their own 3D glasses.

With the challenge aired and accepted, I encouraged the rest of the group to begin putting on their 3D glasses.  Then, I waited.  At first, there were a few curious finger pointings and giggles, but I held my ground and acted "normally".  Soon, the questions started.  "Why do you have 3D glasses?  Is this a 3D movie?  Do you have any more?"  "Well," I said, reluctantly reaching into my bag of tricks, "I have a few extras..." and began handing out 3D glasses to grateful strangers.  As that spread, more inquiries came, people asking "Where'd you get those?  Is this a 3D movie?  Where can I get a pair?"  "I really need to hang on to some for my friends," I told them, "but you could ask at the box office."  Grateful for the guidance, they'd trot off to bother theater management.  As I recall, we even made it onto the news as the curious reporters began to wonder why no one had told them "Jurassic Park" was being shown in 3D.  The movie theater personnel were too busy to respond to the inquiry, but I was happy to give out some of my extra pairs of glasses to the local media.

As we drew near to getting our tickets, my friend conceded his challenge when he asked, "What the Hell are you doing?"  I reminded him, "You said, 'sow the seeds of Chaos'."  "Well, yeah," he said nervously, "but I didn't think you'd be so good at it." 

It was all in good fun.  No lies were told and there were no casualties that I heard about.  Plus, we all enjoyed the show.  It seemed like those dinosaurs were ready to leap off the screen.

How do you shake things up and turn the mundane into something fresh?