What is Going on with Betelguese? I hope it's not Boring!

Betelgeuse, Alpha Orionis, the blazing orange star that marks the shoulder of Orion, the celestial hunter, well it's been going through a weird time lately.

First of all it faded so much it went from one of the ten brightest stars in the sky to being one outside the top thirty and nearly outshone by Bellatrix and its other less famed constellation-mates.

"Was it going to go Supernova?" wondered more click hungry astronomical sources and even I looked at it with excitement, wondering if at any second it would suddenly flare up and blaze brighter than the full moon and cast us all in starlight the likes of which no pair of eyes on this earth has ever seen.

Of course, it didn't, and I can see with my own eyes that it has started to brighten noticeably again. probably some dust built up in its atmosphere and then was blown away to free the light again. Boo, mundane, boring, dull.

Could it be more exciting? Perhaps it was a giant signal, a giant curtain of star-proof material, held before the star and then let go to signal the start of a giant space race, a race of super powerful spacecraft looking to see who could be the fastest to Rigel and back. Perhaps we will soon see (from 600 years ago obviously) their hge glowing ion trails shining through the spaces in the stars as they rip space time to pieces as they compete for the universe equivalent of the Indy 500?

Maybe a Dyson Sphere was being constructed, and someone fucked it up and broke the whole thing, a sleepy multi tentacled crane operator the size of the moon drunk on the fucking job fucking typical.

Maybe they were just repainting Betelgeuse and ran out of paint.

or perhaps, just perhaps, perchance, perhaps, a massive solar sail was being unfurled on a generational ship designed to sail space to the Earth and render us slaves, or worse still food?

The sail has now stopped blocking the starlight, and the ship to end civilisation is on the way.

Copyright BloodyMulberry 17.03.20

CONCEPT - Oscillations Through the Earth

The most exclusive club on earth is The Polar Parachutist Club. These Polar Parachutists are unique, in that their particular descending-under-silk past-time takes place without any actual parachutes.

Instead, a diamond drill of non-terrestrial design, operating in a high energy oscillating tensor gravitational field, cores the earth like an apple from pole to pole.

Wearing a quantum heat proof suit, they just jump from the north pole, and travel through the earth's core to the south pole, the tips of their heads emerging from Antarctica, before gravity snatches them back the other way.

This continues, a simple harmonic oscillation like a spring until the jumper arrives at equlibirium rest at the centre of the earth, before they are hauled out on carbon nanotube lines, to share a beer and vodka with his or her friends, and reminisce about their amazing adventures, right through the centre of the earth.

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 23/06/2013

Squid Life on the Abyssal Plain

It is a little known fact, that after first transmissions of "The Abyss" seeped down from our airy world to the cold depths below it, the squid decided it was high time to get organised.

It has long been realised that some Cephalapod species show great intelligence; what wasn't known was how far this intelligence extends. The two species of large, 15 metre plus squid that live in the Southern Ocean depths - The Colossal Squid, and the Giant Squid - constructed a form of living television viewer made from shoals of small bio luminescent fish that lived with the squid in a symbiotic relationship. The fish provided television pictures with the help of iron rich nematode worms used as aerials; the squid provided the fish with food.

So when the squid first saw "The Abyss" in 1990, not only did they fall in love with the "Hippie" character, they decided their agrarian existence on The Abyssal Plain at depths of 4000 metres or more needed a greater sophistication. They organised their farmland, and built cities.

The Colossal Squid act as the farmers and hunters. They tend to huge crops of molluscs and bivalves that live on the sea bed, feeding them on a nutrient rich preparation derived from the outflows from thermal vents. For more mobile protein, they longlined in an enviromentally sustainable manner for Patagonian toothfish, indeed the toothfish were glad to be caught by such a noble creature as the colossal squid, recognising in them a care for resources that the brutal humans in the world above never had.

Meanwhile, the giant squid, with their longer, more precise tentacles, acted as scientists and engineers. They constructed geo thermal power stations at the the volcanic ocean vents, and harvested the minerals to construct glittering pyramidial squid cities out of fools gold and topaz. In these cities the squid live, writing great treatises on oceanic philosophy and cephalapodic poetry. They play a form of table tennis for recreation, holding bats made from turtle shells in all ten tentacles and lumps of smoothed and polished obsidian for balls. They prefer polygamy to tedious life long partnerships, and have decided not to extend their dominions to the surface of our planet as human beings are not worth the effort.

At least, they are leaving humanity alone until they are aboslutely forced to do otherwise. And for that moment, they have squid weapons to use on us that our totally beyond man's feeble comprehension...

Copyright BLoody Mulberry 09/05/2013

STORY - To the Centre, Rosas!

Instant story written at the library, inspired by the music of Steve Reich and the dancing of Anna Terese de Keersmaecker

Copyright Bloody Mulberry 04/10/2012