Some Pig

“This with a thousand small deliberations

Protract the profit of their chilled delirium

Excite the membrane when the sense has cooled

With pungent sauces, multiply variety

In a wilderness of mirrors what will the spider do

Suspend its operations?

Will the weevil delay?”

-T .S. Eliot, Gerontion-

Musings on a Variation of a Theme

I had originally endeavored to title this entry Charlotte takes over the Internet, but Ralph broke it first, so alas my thought was wanting in some measure of novelty. Of course a perspicacious spider doing rounds around the World Wide Web—such an inconceivable expanse—and both learning and imbibing every factoid decipherable then putting her own spin in it (that was unplanned) would be fascinating. The sorts of allegations that would be lodged against her…….or at her—web of lies, weaving her own narratives, thinks she’s silky smooth—I shan’t belabor the tropes disguised as puns that would actually be diatribes. But I figure Wilbur to be a well-to-do protagonist, until you’re apprised or perhaps receive the epiphany that he was the pericentral character that deftly defined the dimly demonstrated protagonist. What wondrous webbed concealment! Out of curiosity or perhaps for the purposes of certitude, you did read the title of the book before you opened it I trust? Did you elect not to judge the book and all contained therein by its cover?

I burst into a boardroom full of Sony Pictures executives—yeah, Marvel Studios would have been better, or perhaps more swoon-worthy—and pitch them a film idea of the third comic Spider-Man character: Eric Erasmus perhaps, or whatever the farmer’s son who owned Wilbur was named.. Yeah, Eric Erasmus will do (R.I.P. Stan Lee. I got the alliteration on point, with a weird mix of concurrent assonance and consonance. In this hero’s origin story, Eric is bitten by Charlotte who mistakes his rough petting of Wilbur (the kid is twelve. Finesse develops later on unless catalyzed or enforced in what is sometimes called discipline) for ill intent. Same drill: venom courses systemically, weakness with the requisite ambling and stumbling, crashes at 6:55pm in summer, oblivious to the penetrant sun that render his window shades pointless. But the next morning there’s no web slinging, Eric tingle or acrobatics. Because Charlotte is not radioactive, assuming that it’s canon for that to be requisite. But what Eric is become is of superior intelligence. Linguistic professor level vocabulary, superior lexical, capability, top tier mastery of the English language. As if that doesn’t flabbergast enough, he is a bona fide game theory strategist. Much as a spider, let’s call her Charlotte, knows which segment of the web to traverse at which precise time and moment or which strand segment will trap which hapless group of flies, Eric can derive permutations and combinations up to and exceeding eight, including its multiples. Meaning he can portend, or foreshadow, the future. Sure he’s toast if he comes up against Wilson Fisk, or is he? If you can predict your enemy’s moves, are you constrained to suffer them? At least that’s what I fervently narrate to the executives in my elementary novel-induced delirium. I can see it in their eyes—how on earth did he get to this level and in this boardroom? Permutations!

I suppose at this juncture I shall find myself given to unveiling my thesis calling out latter day men as a gullible four-legged wingless species lured to and trapped ion the crevices amid the soft sticky silk “woven”—meaning artfully designed and programmed—by intellectually apex-level technical-technological programmers. We would marvel at their substantive and passable artifice and forget their true talents as keen observers of the human psyche and its readouts, cognition and behavior. But this is not an indictment of Neo quadrupeds (try it, you’ll be impressed at your prowess) or of the architects who are not guilty of detecting the former’s simplicity, but merely understanding the predictability of simplicity itself and the inclination of most towards that simplicity. Efficiency, optimization, cost effectiveness—all these are merely elements or embodiments of simplicity declared desirable, preferable, and virtuous. No. Charlotte had no such wiles (not that software engineers necessarily do, at least not on a global scale. Their directives are necessarily self serving towards their establishments as are all career-based endeavors.) If she did help herself to some flies (did she?), she acted in her nature and without, I would proffer, a conscious recognition of her agency.

The Crux (or why this Blog Post warrants reading)

No, this silky soft tale is about the bond of two inseparable friends one of whom had little to offer to prompt said desire for friendship. And of the benefactor quite taken, as a dear friend would be wont to do, by an innocent, guileless creature whose adorable cluelessness softened what was contained within her exoskeleton. That Wilbur—some pig, that Wilbur—was oblivious to that pitiful and grotesque destiny that awaited him, growing linearly vis-a-vis his food intake and expanding girth softened Charlotte’s heart in ways one would not think possible in an arachnid. I assume my synopsis thus far in this paragraph is wasted on you, or at least ought to be to just a couple of degrees. But allow me to paint you a picture (a sad proposition; art is not my forte). Picture your standard or archetypal spider. There’s nothing tender or appealing about it. Rugged, hairy, a plethora of eyes (they call them compound—scientific or euphemistic?), eight-legged (that’s eight sensory input points if it lands on your skin, venomous, two body parts that subserve eight legs…need I go on? My intention is not to declare them unappealing though the thought is terribly persistent, like Pennywise the Clown doing that dance. Now imagine that………let’s call it grotesque creature weaving a smooth white silky strand from the ceiling to the ground in real-time that you’re a very much part of as are your eyes and everything connected to them. Now picture yourself recording that same spider weaving a web concentrically to perfection. Employing a scientific technique to synthesize and produce pure art. At its completion, you can’t possibly tell me that you’d be rooting for at least one fly to get caught so you can witness its efficacy.

So Eric Erasmus, Spider-Man, sits his SATs, and ACT because he’s now about that life. He’s kept his secret, not because he particularly fears being discovered and endangering his loved ones and all those 50+ years cinematic tropes, but because he doesn’t care for celebrity and though outstanding doesn’t think himself omniscient (he’s actually not). Where were we, without or within? Ah, college entrance examinations. He aces the Quantitative section, intentionally failing one per to avoid invoking suspicion. But the verbal sections immerse him in their appeal. Unbeknownst to him (passion will consume you beyond a conscious recognition of the trepidation of the spheres), he is so “locked in” that he aces all verbal questions. Also unbeknownst to the poor precocious protagonist, he finishes the assessment and hands in, on both counts, his booklets 25 minutes early, witnessing to his horror and chagrin his contemporaries embroiled in their enigmatic booklets. Talk about the second meteor striking the first meteor with a single degree standard deviation amid vast differences in atmospheric density ergo friction, wind speed and cartesian directions, meteoric spin, different origins, ad infinitum. Is Eric proud of his accomplishments? Should he be? Was he enhanced? That’s the term for brilliance that exceeds or supersedes normalcy. Did Charlotte’s bite do him a favor or expose him to ridicule, or worse, envy that spurs calls of negation and illegitimacy? At this point suffice it to say my pitch with the Sony Picture Executives as I envisioned it was predictable. I’m still not sure how I got into the boardroom or if I could pull it off.

So Charlotte uses her superior verbal, lexical, and linguistic skills not to mention advanced vocabulary every now and often (“Some Pig” was meant to ease the humanfolk in. Had she gone with “Bestow a gem and a diadem upon the hoary boar,” I would picture some scenario where a Catholic priest were summoned, then pleaded with, then begged to exorcise their barn, much to the priest’s astonishment and confusion, wondering why they’d think a spirit outside a host could be exorcised, and more importantly the fact that spirits had possessed pigs only once in recorded history). And Wilbur began being fed gourmet meals (idea for a behavioral experiment: can animals tell gourmet from regular food? Do they prefer it or is satiety prime regardless of path? If you fed a dog a well seasoned medium rare steak with A1 sauce, let’s say 3 ounces to guarantee prevented satisfaction, then fed it, him, a raw 3 ounce steak, and took all the necessary recordings and notes, what would be his preference? As a rule there ought to be a multiplicity of subjects and accounting for various variables i.e. Pitbull vs. Chihuahua. That was not intended for comic effect though I must confess my curiousity) and drinking and being bathed with milk (must be nice) until the common illusion or perhaps delusion became that he looked far healthier than he’d ever been and that his skin/coat was shiny and glistening. Any well fed hog that gets washed ever so often is bound to look healthy, but: 1. This is fiction; and 2. That’s not the point of the story or whatever thesis I failed to advance and am now somehow attempting to qualify. There are two takeaways from Charlotte’s Web: first, humans, if that farmer’s family is an allegory for us all, are rather gullible when observation exceeds or falls out of their logic or subjective sense of reason. A web with grammatical writing on it and no visible perpetrator to have done it (granted, their farm is intimated to be isolated) makes them infer that because they can’t spot or trace who did the deed, it must be Providence, and two, the indefatigable lengths that friends will go to assist each other, however minute the gesture, can make a massive impression. It needn’t be grand, it just needs to be plausible.

It is a grand and touching thing to find amity and camaraderie with someone who will alter the strands of the World Wide Web for you. Disclaimer: I’m not advocating for illegal cyber activities however noble the cause. Previously the thing to do was to walk the ends of the earth to assist the ones you love, or like, or don’t mind terribly but would never allow them to know your partiality because ‘we can’t have that.’ For reference, watch if you can that hilarious and riotous movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy” about a pilot who upon finishing a bottle of Coca Cola (or Pepsi. I’ll remain on the fence for liability reasons but I do question the relative availability of Pepsi per square kilometer in Botswana in the 80s. That is neither suggestion nor indictment) threw it out of the window of his single engine plane thirty thousand feet where it struck a hapless eleven year old boy/soul/son on the head. Now, these soda bottles do not break easily, but skulls do. Thank the Gods the boy’s skull was not broken, but some major blood vessels were no match for the soda bottle. Again, fiction. No 11-year old boys were harmed in the making of the film that I’m aware of. Makeup artists are masters of their craft. But I digress. Much to the father’s chagrin, the boy was in considerable pain for a few days, enough to prompt his dismayed and miffed father (you simply can’t be angry at the Gods, even the ones who fly planes) to rid his land, family, and kinsmen of this bane. He literally walks the end of the earth, meaning the edges of the desert, where he encounters a laughing hyena (great way to build your self esteem if Dad jokes are your thing) which wants to…..well eat him, but by placing a short log atop his head, he learns they won’t accost a creature taller/larger than them, a lion which he by some miracle or excessive adrenaline outruns (lions aren’t that fast. Lionesses though…..don’t take a chance with them), and finally the pilot, the bottle chugging and tossing god who is puzzled at the site of a limping Botswanan tribesman (an arrow hit its mark, I don’t recall how) was gripping onto a soda bottle so firmly. If you have a friend who’ll take a hit for you or the heat from you or better yet talk some sense into your assailants not to throw a hit or turn up or even start the heat, you’re obliged to sing the hook from the song “Thank You for Being a Friend.”

The Protagonist Unveiled (and a Hackneyed ending to a Superhero Movie Script Proposal)

Some pig he was. He was always magnificent. He was bound to be noticed. But those closest to us tend to catalyze that discovery. To bring out the best in us by unearthing it or by removing the impediments, the worst in us, that prevent us and others from realizing who we truly are. True friends don’t always tell us what we want to hear. If memory serves me superbly (it doesn’t always, but someone must play the role of Charlotte), that very Charlotte told Wilbur in no uncertain terms while breaking it gently what his future as a farm pig held for him. Dismal, dour, and dank news indeed. But that was not a given she placated him and promised to endeavor to save him from that fate if he would participate like his life depended upon it because it did. Side note, what ages was this book approved for? Also, I have no intention of disclosing when I read it. What I intend to do is emphasize that nothing is impossible. Absolutely nothing. The tragedy of being human is that you can only see, think, reason, and portend so far. And because of these limits we resign ourselves to accept the results they shall wrought on us. Do not. Do not. Do not accept these limits. Just because it hasn’t been done doesn’t meant mean it can’t be done. Sometimes you need a friend, a pal, a mate to adjust the map by 23.5 degrees and show you the inlet or the pattern of the elements.

Eric……..Spider-Man, the most varied of his predecessors decided to try a different approach. He heard of the legends of Charlotte and her intellect. Legends they were, but his genome had arachnoid alleles so go figure. He sought to take on Fisk a different way. He couldn’t shoot silk strands but he could program them with the most arcane code yet known. Eric Erasmus decided to weave a World Wide Web of his own with strands that would entangle and bungle Fisk and his associate flies. Not all webs are made of silk. The precious Eric had happened upon a host of abilities including determining the odds in statistical fashion, establishing patterns and relationships of the players in logic games he constructed and all statistical and economic derivations of probability and patterns of occurrence. He temporarily had Fitz’s assets frozen and with anonymous tip helped see to their actual seizure.

One Board Member retorted that that was 90 percent of the Season One Finale of Daredevil. Well………

Some spider. Some sentient savvy selfless spider.