(Quick, Burn 'im!)
posted: April 13, 2001
I have found the final piece to one of my favorite of my whacko theories: James Bond is a Witch. And the missing piece is Quantum Uncertainty. You, there! Sit down and be quiet and I shall reveal the secret of the literary universe (or at least the trashy adventure-fiction universe, which is definitely more my beat).
Here we have Commander James Bond (Royal Navy, Reserve), hyper- secret agent. Yet, he seems to be awfully well-known. Perhaps Britain's worst-kept secret. In theory, and according to M, his boss, Bond is "a blunt instrument," the thing you unleash when the last resort is total annihilation of the designated target and damn the consequences.
Universal Export must have an awful lot of "extreme prejudice" cases, since there are or have been, at least six other "00-" operatives. Not merely licensed to kill, really, but to destroy, to wipe out, utterly. But, outstanding among them all is James Bond. Again, by M's own statements, he is not only the most efficient, heartless, intelligent and slyly manipulative of them all, but also the luckiest.
And he is freakin' lucky! Even when he is outrageously foolish, deliberately and knowingly pushes his chances to the wall and then knees them in the balls for good measure, phenomenal Luck and good Fortune stand at his shoulder.
Auric Goldfinger said "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action." In Bond's case, his probability-warping luck is much more than mere "action"; it's bloody magic! Or something which looks an awful lot like it
Any sufficiently-advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. --Arthur C. Clarke (originally attributed to Robert Forward, but me was wrong)
We don't really believe in magic, do we? (Flicks a small, annoying gremlin off shoulder "shoo, you.") 'Course not. Of course we F-in' well don't, much as we might wish to. We believe in Science. We believe in Fact. We believe in the Solid, Visible, Beat-Your- Head-Against-It Universal Laws of Post-Newtonian (and Post- Einsteinian) Physics (even if we aren't quite sure what they are). And though it is so insane, so unutterably crazed and slippery, we (I, at least) believe in Quantum Mechanics. Nutty as it is, it seems to be demonstrable. Electrons can be shown to tunnel. A measured photon in a two-slit experiment casts no interference pattern and all the rest of that tricky, quantum goo. (I hear you saying "yeah, yeah, get on with it." Either that, or "Duhhh..." Well, hang in there a minute, you impatient cretins, I'm building my argument, here.)
That's Quantum Uncertainty, which, basically, states "you can't know everything," but anything is possible. It just may be highly improbable, that's all. Essentially, you can know where the quanta (the little packets of matter and anti-matter and energy and all that lovely particle junk) end up, or you can know how they get there, but you can't know (or more accurately, you can't measure) both.
Sounds pretty crazy, eh? But it's true. It's Science. (Really. I'm not making this stuff up. Go read Where Does the Weirdness Go? by David Lindley, if you want to get a better, layman's-level explanation of it.)
And here was the eye-opener:
Recently, my husband read a science-fiction/fantasy book, which title of same he can't seem to recall (darn it. And just hold on, I'm coming back to Mr. Bond in a bit, here), in which "magic" is just the manipulation of quantum probability. Instead of merely measuring or knowing what the quanta are going to do, the magicians determine what they will do, but don't know or care or even attempt to control how it happens. Thus, "magic" is actually Science. And hello, there, Dr. Clarke.
OK: so, quantum manipulation is "magic". If you can determine what the quanta are going to do before they do it, you can, say, shut off a light at will, or teleport a human being. It looks like magic, but it's not.
And thus we get back to James Bond (see, I told you I would), who has the most amazing luck. By Bond's "luck," the villain just happens to want to brag, so that Bond discovers where the secret base is or exactly how the doomsday device functions (and malfunctions). Bond just happens to have exactly the right gadget in his pocket, or under his heel, to save his neck. The henchman just accidentally slips and stumbles and so Bond is not perforated by a bullet or sliced into salami.
But this is all far too frequent and predictable to be mere, dumb "luck". It's quite plainly something else, quite obviously an "action" as Goldfinger said. It is the manipulation of Chance, or Probability-- Quantum Probability, in fact--Uncertainty, which I've already shown you is "magic".
But in Bond's case, this isn't big magic. Not showy, wizard-y magic. It's small magic, practical and easily overlooked magic. It's that magical "luck" aided by his own innate or trained skills and a few useful objects from Q (who just happened to pick the right ones to manufacture, this week).
And all that certainly sounds like Witchcraft to me.
And so
QED
James Bond is a Witch.
posted: April 21, 2001
We stepped on board the bus with a bagful of weasels.
"What've you got there?" the driver asked.
"Ferrets."
"Cool."
"Mind if we let them out of the bag? We'll keep 'em on their leashes."
"Well, ok, so long as they don't bug anybody."
"No problem."
We sat down in a seat behind the barrier and unleashed the weasels of chaos. Well, all right, we unzipped the backpack and the two wigglers jumped out into our laps. Of course they started crawling all over the seat and climbing all over us until they decided the bus wasn't that interesting, after all, and were mostly content to sit in our hands and stare at everything.
A young man got on the bus. (I say "young man" because, on a technicality, he was, though, normally, I'd say something else. He was, to quote Blazing Saddles, one of "the salt of the earth, the common clay of the new West... you know: morons".)
He sat down at the front of the bus in the seats reserved for the elderly and handicapped (to which he was entitled for his lack of clothing sense at the very least). He stared at "they who must be stinky" and said with terrified awe, "Are those ferrets?"
"Yep."
"My, God. I heard they can eat whole babies!"
"Whole baby whats?!" I choked, unable to stop myself from laughing.
"Well, baby-babies!"
Very close to apoplexy from disbelieving mirth I peered at the guy. "You mean baby humans?"
"Of course."
"Oh, Jeeze.... No way. Looky here," I said holding up boy-weasel. "This guy weighs three pounds. Even a newborn baby weighs at least five pounds if not six or more. Even if he was starving it would take him days to eat twice his own weight in anything, much less a wiggly, stinky thing like a human baby. I mean, can you eat twice your weight in anything?" (And a good trick it would have been, too considering how much he weighed.)
"Erm, well, no.... Hadn't thought of that..."
I grinned at him and snuggled the ferret.
"Are they, friendly?" he asked after a minute.
"Oh, sure... to their dinner."
I winked at him and we stood up and got off the bus as he sat and sputtered.
What the heck, eh?
Realistically, a well-trained ferret is one of the most charming animals on the face of the earth, even if they do have a bit of a pong upon occasion. They play like kittens for their entire lifetime, are never seen in anything but the swankiest furs and love nothing so much as a bit of a nap in the afternoon. What could be better?
Eat whole babies, indeed. I can think of a few people who would have been a much nicer impact on the world if they had been rendered into ferret chow at an early age, but don't get me started on the State of California....
posted: April 27, 2001
Well, it must be Spring in the great Pacific Northwest because the evil pigeons are doing the singles-bar thing (except that they do it in public).
Sitting on a terrace having lunch I observed the hangin'-and-bangin' ritual of the urban pigeon and, personally, I think it looks ridiculous (reminds me of bars I hung out in while in college waaayyy too much). A friend and I supplied the voices to go with the actions.
Two male pigeons have parts of a cookie dropped by a toddler. They peck away industriously.
"Mmm... food. Mmm... food." Look around, look around, peck some more.
A starling swoops down.
"Hey, man, gimme some cookie!"
"Huh?" Pigeon-boy number-one looks up, thus losing sight of the cookie. "What cookie?"
"Don't get smart with me, Pige-boy. I want some cookie!"
"I don't got any cookie... duh... what's a cookie?" Pige-boy number-one looks around while pige-boy number-two keeps on eating (guess which one won't get hit by a car this afternoon).
"What a moron..." The starling hides behind the pigeon who looks around and spots the cookie.
"Ooo... food. Mmm... food." Pige-boy number-one starts pecking again.
"Hey, dopey!" The starling hops around behind the pigeon's back.
"What?" The pigeon looks around.
The starling grabs the cookie while the pigeon's back is turned and flies off with the whole piece.
"Hmm.... Well, I thought there was something here...." Pige-boy looks around, but doesn't see anything, including the now-missing cookie. "Was I doing something...?"
Pige-boy number-two gives him a one-eye stare and keeps eating the remaining bit of cookie. Pige-boy number-one pecks around, just in case.
Girl-pigeon flies down.
"Hey, I heard there was free food, here."
Pige-boy number-one gets excited, puffs up his feathers and starts fanning his tail.
"Hey, babeee...."
"Get away from me, you creep." Girl pigeon totters away.
Pige-boy pursues. "Hey, babeee...."
"I said back off or I'm calling my boyfriend."
Pige-boy number-two glances up from the cookie, but goes right back to eating and gets out of girl-pigeon's way.
"Aww, come on, babeee...."
"Creep." She flaps up onto a railing.
Another boy-pigeon flaps down onto the railing as Pige-boy number-one continues to sturt around below.
"Hey, babeee...."
New-boy looks at girl-pigeon. "Hiya, cutie, want to tango?"
"Gee, I don't know..."
"Hey, babeee...."
Girl-pigeon looks down at Pige-boy number-one, then back at New-boy. "Oh, what the heck... Come on, big boy...." She flies off toward the rooftops.
"Hot damn!" New-boy flaps after her.
"Awww.... shoot."
Pige-boy number-one gives up and starts pecking at the ground again. A thought seems to enter his mind in much the same way as would a small-caliber projectile.
"Hey... wasn't there a cookie around here?"
Pige-boy number-two snarfs down the last of the crumbs.
"What cookie? Man, you must be imagining things. See, I told you being horny makes you see stuff."
"Hmmm...."
"Hey, I hear there's good pickings by the bakery. Want to go? The food's good too." Pige-boy number-two snickers (or I think that's what it seemed to be doing).
"Ooo... food."
They fly off.
I looked at my friend. "Do you really think Pige-boy number-one was that stupid?"
"Did he get the cookie or the girl?"
"Err... no."
"See? Being horny just messes you up."
So the moral of the story would seem to be "Eat first, fuck later."
Either that or "pigeons are stupid", but that's hardly fair; we already knew that.
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