Phantoms and Chaos

It has been said, in vino veritas…in wine, there is truth. Obviously, anybody who has imbibed more than the recommended amount of alcohol on any occasion has seen proof of this ancient cliché. We say and do things that we would normally never consider doing…like urinating off of the roof of an apartment building while people below you are wondering why it is suddenly raining, or telling your significant other that they are the worst lay you’ve ever had, since your Uncle Frank. Sometimes though, we refrain from the embarrassing and morbidly ridiculous, and find ourselves in a scholarly and philosophic mood. While we drink the intelligence away, some of the most inane, psycho-idiotic babble begins to escape our lips, to make even Freud stop and say, “What in the unholy fuck are you talking about?”. The most intriguing aspect of this consequence of inebriation is the fact that most people, when launching themselves into a tirade about the political ramifications of bubble wrap, and the Sesame Street conspiracy, seem to think that they are the smartest person on the face of the earth.

Wanna hear an example? I thought so. Ok, so last night, Jen and I decided to have a drink. I considered the idea of doing more testing on the Gatorade/Rum theory, but decided that was a weekend experiment only. So I settled for the normal type of mixer; in this particular case, I went with rum and Sprite. We settled down to watch a movie, and sipped our drinks in an attempt to relax the night away. The movie in question was Phantoms by Dean Koontz, and I only include this information on the basis that it is pertinent to the remainder of the story. If you haven’t seen the movie…save yourself the time and annoyance. The book was far superior, and a lot less cheesy. Anyway, at one point in the movie, they mention the “flatworm theory” when trying to describe how an organism can absorb the memories and intelligence from another organism through ingestion. The flatworm theory (also called contamination) describes scientific tests using flatworms and a Y intersection “maze”. The food would be on one side of the intersection, and the other intersection held only an electric shock. The experimenters waited until the first flatworm learned the correct direction to go to reach the food, and would then kill the worm, dice it up, and feed it to the new worms, who had never before been in the maze. Their results showed that the new worms appeared to learn the maze much faster than the original flatworms; almost as if they already knew the correct direction to go in the Y intersection. They theorized that the new worms had gained the knowledge from the previous flatworm, from ingestion and absorption of its RNA.

Creepy, huh? Sorry for that pseudo-scientific break, there…but it had to be done. Now that you have been saturated with the flatworm theory, we can move on.

After the flatworm theory was discussed in the movie, Jen and I went outside for a smoke break. During this time, we began to discuss the theory in ridiculously deep and mind-numbing ways...the kind of ways that only alcohol or certain herbal refreshments can induce. Eventually, we began to discuss the intricacies of certain aspects of the theory, which inevitably led to new and equally deep aspects of new ideas and theories:

RNA absorption, inherent knowledge, osmosis, instinct, ESP, past lives, the concept of a soul, genetics, Gatorade rum, the expanding universe theory, black holes, infinite realities, fate, destiny, the G-spot, time travel, God, religion, the Catholic Church, Skittles, the nature vs. nurture debate, evil, and procreation.

Looking at the list, it appears as if the two of us were geniuses on the verge of breaking the code of the universe, and answering the age-old question “why are we here?”…but we weren’t. It was just a very well disguised, drunken ramble of crap induced by alcohol. Of course, I’m sure many of the ideas and concepts we discussed were relevant, coherent, and applicable to modern scientific and philosophic principles. On the other hand, I’m sure that most of what we discussed was on the same level as the “Coke vs. Pepsi” debate, and I am equally positive, that we would argue the soda issue with as much passion and determination as we did the flatworm theory.

So, even though there is validity in the ancient Latin cliché in vino veritas, I think we should also have a phrase like in vino bullshititas to describe that “in wine, there is bullshit”.

Cheers.