This is a brilliant idea, in principle. Maybe I need to start reading to the spiders.
Except…no, not Charlotte’s Web. The spider [spoiler] dies at the end [/spoiler]! This is not the inspiration I want to give the spiders. I’m trying to get them to breed, and telling them they’ll die afterwards isn’t exactly a great message.
Maybe I should read them this one.
Although it is missing the giant cleaner emerging out of the alley to gulp down the corpse & virus. Our immune system is almost as ruthless and brutal as the Florida police.
By the way, the Florida police:
I would never have thought of using a car full of kids to hide behind. Brilliant tactics.
The other day, Mary stopped by the lab and immediately spotted two spiders lurking in the crannies that I hadn’t even noticed before. Obviously, females were endowed with superior spider spotting skills by Evolutionary Psychology in the Pleistocene, when it was their essential duty to scour the cave of venomous spiders while their man slept in, or ate his raw mammoth, or knapped flint spearheads.
Anyway, then I ran across this painting of Mary’s bronze-age Nordic avatar, so I had to include it.
(possibly by Docatto, from a game called Legend of the Cryptids)
The image is captioned “The remote areas of the Outlly continent are under the control of the snow spiders and their riders. The leader of the riders, Kastehelmi, patrols the sparkling snowy fields on her trusted friend Salomo to drive out any unwelcome intruders. The only colors they want painting the endless white expanses are their own.”
There’s another image also captioned appropriately, “When Kastehelmi sights an interloper, she summons a swarm of snow spiders. Suddenly, the ivory plains are speckled in scurrying black dots of all sizes. Mealtime has come at last. They pierce the flesh with their legs and crush bones with their tough mandibles. Not even a drop of blood is left behind, as this would blemish their perfect domain.”
Yep, sounds like her.
Oh, this is sad. Gahan Wilson hasn’t produced much new in recent years — he has been suffering from dementia — but I discovered his work in the 70s and loved it. He and Gary Larson plucked my brain out and shaped it before stuffing it back in my cranium.
“I won’t bring any more friends home unless you let me play with them first!”
His work was always distinctive and recognizable, and unlike anyone else’s. That’s a great legacy.
Well, I, for one, do have tenure, and am free to pursue my goal of building an army of multi-legged venomous monsters and taking over the planet from my secret lair in an exotic location that no one would ever dream could be the center of an empire.
Livin’ the dream! Bwahahahahahahahaha!
Now I just have to solve the minor problem that my experimental subjects are so tiny.
How did these guys figure out my plan way back in 2017? I’d only just started exploring the arachnid option back then!
Humankind: I have the solution
To your mess of crime, scandals and pollution
I have done the work
Hey relax, there will be no delay
All my little friends are on the way
Wrap tycoons,
Fatcats, politicians, inside silk cocoons,
Drain them of their vital juices
Raise the flag! Tyrantula tenure has begun
We won’t be around when it is done
The time is now—
I’m gonna let my hungry spiders out,
Because they are the only ones who have the guts
To find and purge the world of all its human sin
They will envenomate our failures!
We can spin a web of hope
Here in my Arachnotopia
Nothing is beyond the scope
Of the grand Arachnotopia
We can spin a web of hope
Here in my Arachnotopia
Nothing is beyond the scope
Of the grand Arachnotopia
Listen to the misanthropes—
Start anew, Arachnotopia!
(You’re gonna get it!)
