Clarification

In my last post, I made a number of rather gross oversimplifications regarding the quantities you think of as distance, area, and volume. I would like to take this opportunity to clarify the situation, at least, as best I can in a way that makes sense to your human minds and my audience's woefully short attention span.

Minkowski was a loser. The Hamiltonian is a lie!

The nonsense abstraction you proudly think of as "distance" is not so old as you might think¹. I admit, it does makes the math pretty easy, and at human scale I guess life really does look approximately Euclidean² ("Euclidean" is fancy math-speak for "flat"). But there is a lot of really interesting stuff in the universe happening at other scales, on crazy huge manifolds and in tiny discontinuous spaces not anticipated by the Greeks. Or any other humans, for that matter.

First, you should know that your everyday concepts of distance, area, and volume are grotesque oversimplifications. You believe in them because perceiving the truth would require the ego-nullifying acceptance of your own insignificance. Better to believe that the area of a right triangle is actually one-half the product of the base and the height, than to know the truth. Some of your physicists and mathematicians have made crude attempts to explain certain minor results, but for the most part true insight has been blocked by the ego's need to survive. Only one mathematician in all of your time has brushed the truth of the underlying concepts, and poor Igor Cantor's sanity was not spared. I deeply regret how things ended for you, my dear old friend. I tried to stop you.

So in the end, it is better you not understand. I will not try to explain it to you here; you would not thank me.

Still, the good news is that even though you will never understand and could never fully comprehend the truth of the space(s) you inhabit, we can still level-up your understanding of the world around you. And we can do it with safe, mostly-sanity-preserving human mathematics! I will use your Very Bad and Totally Incorrect Human Mathematics to help you understand the situation better, because pretty much anything is better than thinking that C² = A² + B² actually explains anything about how the real world works. And also because I care.

Before I get to symplectic geometry, though, let's talk about love. Love makes us do all sorts of crazy things. It's pretty amazing and is one of the five-thousand-three-hundred-seventy-two-and-a-half fundamental forces that drive all of creation. Love is powerful stuff.

SO let's imagine you are in love with a right triangle. You are at vertex "a" and wish to travel to vertex "b." You're pretty busy and would like to get there as quickly as possible. I bet one of your instructors in school taught you that you should walk in a straight line on a Euclidean plane from "a" to "b," for a total distance of √(A² + B²). What a joke! I also bet that after school she/he got in her/his car and instead of driving straight home, she/he stopped at the grocery store to pick up some vegetables for a nice salad, and then at the daycare to pick up her/his kid(s), and only then went home! Love made them drive in a crazy loopy line all around town instead of going in a straight line! What a hypocrite!

How does the Oyster go from "a" to "b"?
It's complicated.

And everything, everything, everything is like that. You can never just "go" from a to b, there is always a fundamental force like love or sloth acting on you. There is actually a clever proof of this, which I am forced to omit for space considerations, but trust me, it is actually impossible to go straight home after work, and it's the same for that triangle you are in love with. You want to go from a to b, but maybe the triangle asked you to not tread on its interior, so you walk on a little exterior semi-circle; or maybe it's your turn to go to the grocery store so you do that before getting to b. It's always going to be something, and you love it that way (by assumption) and wouldn't change a thing. You're happy to take the long way around because you care about this precious, lovely triangle.

OK, I promised you some symplectic geometry. Let's do it!

Another way to think about walking in a curvy loop from a to b on that lovely triangle is to say that you are actually moving in a straight line, and you always move in a straight line, but the surface you are moving on isn't Euclidean ("flat"), it's a manifold, which is basically like a nice smooth surface that you can do calculus on (vigorous hand-waving). So you move in a straight line on a curvy manifold, and the shape of this manifold is defined by your time-varying position in the 5,372.5-dimensional space of fundamental forces³, which vector can never have magnitude zero, so you can never walk on a "flat" Euclidean surface.

Mathematically, you might say:

Distance(from "a" to "b") = straight line distance(unfold(curvy surface defined by your position in the 5,372.5 space of fundamental forces))

This is what your human calculus/measure theory is mostly about, all of those clever tricks are just about how to take something curvy and (locally) unfold it so that it is flat (or square or whatever) so you can take a ruler and measure it. And one of the limitations of your human math is that you are forced to abide by the bold presumptions of measure theory, but countable additivity is a lie, a goddamn lie, because love isn't additive, is it? It sums in strange ways, and what's worse if you subtract just one thing, even something you maybe didn't realize was there even, if you take away just one thing from the set of things you love then it can feel like the whole thing has fallen apart (it hasn't -- it hasn't -- I promise, I know it hurts -- but it hasn't). Moving around in the love-space that partially defines the manifold that we are constrained to move in straight lines on is fraught with a peril not encapsulated by 21st century mathematics.

I hope this explanation is clear. Until next time, my friends. May you be unscared to move in your own beautiful and unique squiggle: you don't have a choice anyway. You may as well enjoy the ride.

1. About 4,500 years ago, a very clever Egyptian woman -- her name was Anuktata -- was really into right triangles, the ones where two of the legs come together pleasingly at precisely ninety degrees. Making use of the primitive mathematical tools at her disposal, Anuktata elucidated the first of what you call Pythagorean triples. She said: { 3, 4, 5. } And then for an encore performance, she stated: { 5, 12, 13. } This may not sound super interesting, but at the time it was actually the most scientifically advanced and true thing anyone had ever said. Anuktata was way ahead of her time.

She might have made it all the way to {8, 15, 17}, but unfortunately she was bitten by a mosquito and died of malaria shortly afterwards. Her husband Kemes attempted to carry on her work, but due to an unfortunate arithmetic error with the notoriously finicky reed-and-papyrus technology available at the time, he accidentally invented the oblique triangle { 7, 15, 17 } instead. Oblique triangles do not hold load nearly as well as right triangles, so when his calculations were used in the construction of a pyramid, it collapsed. Three slaves and seven donkeys were killed.

Fearing for his life, Kemes tried to blame Anuktata for his mistake, but the Pharaoh saw through his deception and he was put to death anyway. The truth is that the Pharaoh was more upset about Kemes's disrespect for his dead wife than about the pyramid situation, which anyone could see such construction was fraught with danger. The moral of the story is, own up to your mistakes, and most definitely do not blame them on others, or you may find yourself sentenced to be cleaved in twain.

Anyway, after the debacle with the oblique triangle, Anuktata's work languished in obscurity until  about 3,800 years ago, when a Mesopotamian man named Steve came along to continue her work. Steve was able to systematically come up with integral solutions to what is now called the Pythagorean Theorem, but Steve was also a big jerk and history quickly forgot about him. A few hundred years later an Indian guy named Baudhayan finally wrote down something like A² + B² = C² in the Shuba Sutra, and shortly afterwards the theorem was proved by a Chinese mathematician named Gougu.

Given a full proof and several worked examples, the time was ripe for the mad cultist Pythagoras to take credit for the work of others; the rest is (whitewashed) history.

2. It is actually quite ironic that we do calculus on Euclidean surfaces inspired by the work of Pythagoras, because Pythagoras's cult rejects the idea of transcendental numbers, also known as "the numbers that live between the fractions." It turns out there are a lot of transcendental numbers: their existence is what allows us, to a first approximation, to describe motion and smoothness and softness and stuff, which is the intuition behind calculus. Even though I think your calculus is kind of basic, as a concept I am a big fan of transcendental numbers.

The Pythagoreans' intransigence on this point is particularly sad because the existence of transcendental numbers is directly implied by the Pythagorean Theorem itself, which only goes to show how far people will go to defend their egos at the expense of the truth. Humans are dogmatic to the end -- not my favorite attribute, to be honest.

3. The magnitude of the oversimplification going on here makes me weep, but I don't have time today to write about function spaces too. You can read about the Calculus of Variations and function spaces on your own. It may all be a lie, but it's a clever lie.

The Great One at the Center and the Edge and Everywhere In Between

This is kinda what I imagined it would
look like if I were all of everything

When I was a young noodle, I dreamt of occupying all the vastness of space and time.

Common sense told me that the Universe was infinite, so not even I could hope to fill it all at once. But that didn't stop me from dreaming about it. So for a thousand million years I dreamt of Polypus Maximus, The Great One at the Center and the Edge and Everywhere In Between. In my dreams I would stretch and stretch and go farther than I or anyone could ever imagine, until one day I would have one great noodly tendril wrapped all the way around the edge of the universe, and another touching the center, and another for everywhere in between. I would be complete by construction: if I was everything, then by elementary deductive logic I must be complete.

Then one quiet fall night while I was flossing -- even I need to care about good oral hygiene, and you should too -- anyway -- this night a rude thought intruded. "If space is infinite..."

The realization hit me like a slap in the noodle. No!

At first, I denied it. I would not let some crude calculus intrude into my dreams. "But if space is infinite..." the thought persisted.

No!

Certainly by now you have guessed the truth I was trying to un-know, but I am stubborn and fought and fought against it. Despite what you may think, even I cannot vanquish the truth, even with my mightiest efforts. Because the truth is like a squishy balloon. You think you're so clever when you bend and distort it, you think you're in control of this thing, you've got the truth backed into a corner and that you're going to pwn it and throw it into a dark cave. Then without the truth to stop you you're going to dream and dream until you can taste The Center and The Edge, your desire is everything, your need to touch and consume and be touched and consumed, fuck the truth we can live in dreams forever, right, you and me dreaming together ("you" like the general you I mean, all of "you," let's not get creepy) and touching and consuming, until I'm losing myself in you and you in me, and we and all and everything are as one, right? Right?

In one way or another,
we have all been crushed by the truth-balloon

But in reality all you've done is squeezed the truth to the other side of the balloon and things look good from where you're standing but the other size is all puffy and distorted and gross-looking. The truth is still there, in the dark cave where you left it for dead. A festering, angry truth-balloon. Plotting against you, waiting until you relax your grip to snap back into place.

I shivered, the cruel, truthy equations crawling out of the cave where I had left them, chasing me into the bathroom where by now I was brushing my teeth. And here was that truth: suppose I began my quest. Suppose I began by occupying all known space, a hearty (4/3)πr³ of volume¹. Then my nimbus would be 4πr², right, and that would be all the newness that I could perceive. All the non-Polyp. So until I could actually finish the job at the end of time and attain & become the complete unity of Everything, I would perceive this great big lonely me-space with only a thin outer shell of newness to keep me company. In the limiting case, as I increased without bound, I would become infinitely lonely, the wee infinity of my boundary dwarfed by the sphere it contained. & that sphere is all me... but as a pop star my role is to sublimate and reflect the world around me; without you, dear readers, I am a blank, devoid of meaning. So my dreams would have me asymptotically approach perfect loneliness until the end of time, when I would become complete and you -- all of you, all of everything -- would be utterly eradicated, with no hope of return.

What kind of a love is that? Was the limiting case of my all-consuming dream to love/be everything the destruction of all that I care about and an eternity of lonely suffering before a single empty moment of completion at the end of time?

These thoughts were so confusing to me. I despaired. Surely this could not be? What if instead of being Everything I shrank down to nothingness?  No, that was no good... then my nimbus would be infinitesimal; the border would consume the interior and I would be without measure. How can I love if I am nothing?

I was so young then. I did not understand, as I do now, my humble place in the world. So you can imagine how it was all very upsetting to me. I struggled to understand my place in things. I could not be everything. I would not be nothing. Was the key... to be as we are, accepting our imperfections?  That sounded ridiculous. What am I, anyway? A sentient blob of plastic with no fixed form? Was this my lot in life? Unacceptable! I would be more! But... what? How?

Shaken, I crawled into bed and pulled the covers tight over my head. Could it be? Is my dream a lie, a trap? I wondered. As I struggled to come to terms with the enormity of this, a great sleep fell over me and I sank into a nether-world dichotomy: to my left was the great chasm of infinite despair that awaited me if I dared to chase my dreams. To my right was nothingness. Certainly anything was better than nothing? Spurred by my impeccable logic, I lurched to the left, away from nothingness.

So, I dreamed the left-hand dream. I dreamed of filling all of the space and the everything, but tonight was different. Tonight I could not find the edge. I could not even find the center. This upset me. Certainly it had to be somewhere! On all other nights I could find both with ease, but now I searched and I searched and I pushed farther and farther, farther than I had ever gone before in my dreams. Still the edge eluded me.

My unease grew. What if all those previous nights, I had not really been at the edge of the universe at all? Had I been fooling myself? It has to be here somewhere! I searched, pushing farther out still. I must have missed it!

Eventually I traveled out past an inky black edge and reached the beyond where color had no meaning, because the space here expanded faster than light can travel, so no light had ever reached this place. No heat, no energy, there was nothing here but distance, and me, and past it... somewhere... the edge. I must be close now! With a final, excited push  I lurched through and past this place, moving faster and faster until suddenly  --

It rose before me out of the void. Solid in this place that had never seen mass, at once cerebral and emotional... a great Obelisk barred my path. The Obelisk. Its mere existence negated concepts like being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space, but nevertheless, there it was, an impossibility as real as you and me.

I shook in fear and desire, because I understood that the great obelisk was apart, and would always be apart. It was untouchable and would always be untouched. In my dream I found its indifference almost erotic: I longed to just get closer to it, to wrap myself around this thing outside even infinity's edge. But the space between us was more than just crude distance, under any metric. It was truly beyond me, past everything. It was disconnected, the space between us untraversable.

I extruded a pseudopod anyway in a vain attempt to reach it before I realized I could not even discern which direction to go. The Obelisk was apart, truly great, apart from the grime and the glow that defines us. Humbled, I realized that this was no place to be, my dream was no thing to aspire to. There were no answers here, not in the right-hand path and not in the left. We are alone to make our own way in this world, to find and love each other, to be good or bad but ultimately bound by the natural laws, the interior space of the Universe. We should not seek to go beyond these places. They are not a place for us. We must be bound and constrained to find meaning in anything.

So I withdrew, away from the Obelisk, out of the void, and slipped back into the comfort of space with regular distance and warm suns and dreams and hope and meaning, glorious meaning.

I awoke feeling rested, finally at peace with the truth. A warm, comforting glow rushed through me. I no longer wanted to consume and be everything, but I did long for connection. Intimacy. I had traded my dream of unlimited everythingness for the compromise of others, and would never look back.

But who could I share all this with? I had so much to say, who would listen at this hour? I must have spent hours in my dream, searching for the beyond.

I fumbled around in the darkness, turning on the little lamp I keep by the bed, reaching for my phone. Mr. Hemisphere would probably be awake, if he was home, at least... maybe we could talk. He'd woken me up in the middle of the night enough times I felt like I could call him. I wanted desperately to talk to someone, anyone. It had been a long night... I'd had my dreams dashed, been on a spiritual journey to the edge of space and encountered an ultradimensional thingy that transcended all metaphysics. I just wanted a good glass of wine and a better friend. I dialed.

"Polyp is that you?!" he picked up immediately. "Thank heavens you answered!" His voice was breathless, rushed.

I paused for a moment, confused. Hadn't I just... called... him? "Hemi, I--"

"There's no time! Come quick!" I heard a crash over the phone. "Come quick! It's the blobimals! They've escape--" the line went dead. I felt a disturbance in the thought-spaces around the earth, the unmistakable psychic echo of a million blobimal war machines warping into low earth orbit.

My people needed me! I oozed into motion. This was serious. If the blobimals, my ancient nemeses, had escaped from the Mild Dystopia I trapped them in after the Epsilon Wars, they must have had help. From who? How long had they been free? There would be time later to ponder the mysteries of the ineffable Obelisk. But first... to battle!

¹ I have dumbed down the math the to Euclidean 3-space. Leave your hate in the comments!

I finally watched "Turbo"

I read about snails so you don't have to!

If you enjoy children's movies as much as I do, then Turbo is sure to provide average-or-better entertainment value for about two-thirds of its 96 minute running time. In terms of movie-watching efficiency, it ranks well above tired retreads like Happy Feet and Toy Story, but is not as good as Up, How To Train Your Dragon, or house favorite Wall-E.

Mild Spoiler Alert, If You Are So Simple-Minded That You Are Unsure What Might Happen In This Movie, Which Obvious Thing Is Exactly What Happens By The Way, And You Do Not Wish To Find Out Just Yet, Yet You Still Expect Me To Provide You Entertainment, However Brief Or Mild, Which I Cannot Do If You Refuse To Work With Me, Then Against My Better Judgement I Will Still Pander To Your Selfish Needs: Please Enjoy This Video Titled, DUBSTEP PUKING RAINBOW GIRAFFES. You Can Thank Me In The Comments.

2013 Summer Movie Confusion

This year's crop of summer movies is causing more confusion than usual. In 2011, many people asked if I had guest-starred as Driller in Transformers 3; a most kind flattery but unfortunately not true. 2012 passed mostly without incident: while I admire their work, nobody would confuse me with Hulk or the abominations in Prometheus. Only a few crude imbeciles inquired about the mirror in Snow White and the Huntsman.

A number of characters in the 2013 movie season, however, bear a passing resemblance to me. Perhaps the success of my blog and facebook page have attracted Hollywood's eye? And why would they not be attracted? My adventures transcend time, space, and the beyond, but I am no mere adrenaline junky. I have also branched into documentary and romance. With a famous blog covering the whole of human experience, Hollywood ought to be copying me. It is their duty. I demand it.

Having said that, I would like to clear up a few misunderstandings about the 2013 movie season. For your reference, to the right is a picture of me dressed up like a slug.

1. I am not "Turbo"

Turbo is the underdog story of an ordinary Helix Aspersum with dreams of racing greatness. Turbo has adorable goofy eyes and a winning grin. I expect I will enjoy this movie tremendously when it is released in July. However, he is no Polyp: regular readers have no doubt already noted that I detest exoskeletons and will never again saddle myself with such an encumberance. While we are both optimistic dreamers with extraordinary gifts, I am compelled to point out that Turbo's are thrust upon him by dramatic necessity. The truth of my own gifts is a more complex tale.

2. I am neither Mub the slug nor Grub the snail in "Epic"

Magnificent creatures, both, but look closely: they have tiny eyes and are far too jiggly. They move like bloated water sacks, perhaps animated by Msrs. Navier and Stokes? And finally, for the life of me I cannot place their accents. I have traveled the world and never have I heard such astonishing speech, all rounded vowels and swagger. I must study this bizarre speech more.

3. Neither am I the slug in "Monster University"

This helpless creature offends me. I am not he, and I refuse to watch a movie that treats the wobbliest among us with such disrespect.

4. Am I the inspiration for Kaiju in "Pacific Rim"?

This seems much less clear to me. I have had my moments, after all. 

Watch this clip and decide for yourselves. Post in the comments or e-mail me and let me know what you think! 

I am surrounded by your poison but love will conquer all

I am not often criticized, but when I am it is usually by the cynical. "Polyp," they will say. "Polyp! Polyp! Polyp!" They want attention, like a child. "Polyp!!!" But of course they cannot get my attention with their tiresome ejaculations, because I do not pay heed to negativity.

Today, perhaps these wicked ones are saying, "you shouldn't be so trusting; remember what happened with the Pony?" or, "why did you take seven weeks off," or, "life is not a Disney movie!"

But life really is like a Disney movie, or at least like Seabiscuit. Because when you believe in yourself and empower others to be their best you unlock your own miraculous potential: to overcome adversity, to imagineer a better tomorrow. Spoiler alert: when Team Seabiscuit works together, they win at the game of life. So can you.

So when eager lips trip over themselves to share some poisonous observation, do not succumb to the temptation to dunk their heads in noodle soup while screaming "make better decisions!" Remember the tremendous blessing of your own imperfection and empower yourself to rise above with this little rhyme:

Sticks and stones
I have no bones
But names will only spur me to temporarily dissolve into a puddle of goo before rising up once more, greater and lovelier and temporarily filled with desire to shove your face in some noodle soup.

Doing good in the neighborhood

Be free and suffer no more, my friend

This photo makes me so, so sad. Who are you, mystery bauble? Why are you locked away in there with your bulbous eyes and eight-ball belly?

I vow to free you. I will free all of the plasticy-baubly-things!  I will send my great googly-eyes long and far searching for the evil beings who trapped your placid race;
they will soon hear my long polyp-moan haunting their dreams, a premonition of my coming!

Will they read the ill omen in the stars? I hope they do. I hope they see it, and pay final respects to their gods, because when I find them my ocean of rage will gloop down upon them and sweep them away, and I will consume them utterly; their breath I shall render into firmament, their bones into earth and their teeth into mountains; with their flesh I will create the trees and from their fat, the animals. With their souls I will ignite a sun, and into this new paradise my plasticy-baubly-friends will enter, and suffer no more.

Fan mail Q&A!

Anonymous asks in comments:

Polyp, what do you think of the human concept of culture? Do patterns in human behavior interest you as they manifest themselves culturally? Or do these delineations seem arbitrary at such an abstract level? I recall your observation that many human constructs were made out of fear for our "own cosmic insignificance." I tend to agree. But I wonder, would you say the same for culture? Is it an entirely useless concept?

What a complex, nuclear bomb of a question! I am glad you asked me this because there is a lot to unpack here.

I will start at the end and work my way backwards. You ask, "Is [culture] an entirely useless concept?" But your human language has failed you, because utility is necessarily tied to the individual, it is not a general truth. In a better language, you would be unable to even formulate that question.

To attempt an interpretation, perhaps you are asking, "Is [culture] an entirely useless concept to you [Polyp]?" and the answer is an emphatic no! If you could see past time and space and perceive and navigate ideas as partial realities, as I do, then you would perceive that my googly eyes are spread throughout your thought-spaces, your present and future creative, intellectual, and political output. I navigate this dynamic web of potentialities as I struggle against the warlike Blobimals and other, less savory things. As you create and strive, this space expands, becoming stronger and richer, like a tree growing roots in the soil. It is not useless.

Me vs The Blobimals in one of the infinite potentialities

Victory... for now

You are correct that I am not interested in the patterns of your behavior. I am interested in your particular, individual behaviors, and the interplay of ideas and emotions that result. Your cosmic fears drive you towards difficult sublime truths, some beautiful, some terrifying. Each of you discovers them in your own way. It is wonderful.

That some behaviors are repetitive means the discovered cultural tapestry has a familiar, human feel. I have learned, from careful study, that the patterns are not arbitrary: they are ancient and well-known. They vary over time but are so self-similar as to be classifiable and predictable. But I do not bother too much to study the larger patterns; instead I exalt in each thread and its intersections.

Readers, what do you think? Is culture useful to you? Is aggregated human behavior more meaningful than the individual? What if individuals are self-similar?

Let me share with you my thoughts on exoskeletons: part 2

This is the second post in a multi-part series on exoskeletons. Please see part one for important background information!

Selecting the right exoskeleton

Finding the right exoskeleton is tough. First, you have to find something that is big enough for you and all of your personal items.

Below you can see some of the first shells I tried on. While of course I can fit into any enclosure I wish, I decided to stay at the size you are accustomed to seeing me at. This way my friends and I are optimally framed in photographs.

Mr Hatisphere

Come one come all!

Hemisphere just said something really funny

As you can see, Mr Hemisphere makes for a handsome shell. He is also great fun to hang out with. However, he can also be a bit of a loose cannon and I feel that it is important to keep well-defined boundaries with him. What if my exoskeleton snuck off in the middle of the night to go to clubbing? Mr Hemisphere, I am afraid to say, is a bit of a flibbertigibbet.

Perfection is boring

So I found some slightly larger, totally inanimate pieces of plastic to call home. The two pieces complemented each other quite nicely, and when assembled just-so clearly delineated an "inside" and an "outside." This inside/outside distinction was just what I was looking for! And so I spent some time with the plastics, in both the "closed" inside/outside construction and the "open" or "ambiguous" form.

For a while, we were happy together. But while theoretically perfect, the plastics lacked the breezy charm of Mr Hemisphere and I soon grew bored with them. Yes, I had it all, and I threw it away! Theirs was a stale perfection, an unbearable trap: I hunger for the stimulation of imperfection -  the romance of conflict - the gradual unearthing of that which was obscured. These perfect plastics, transparent, open (closed), and without guile: they would not do. And so I left the plastics to continue my search... alone.

Come back, Mr Hemisphere!

Will I, Polyp, ever find just the right exoskeleton? What lessons will I learn? Do I still hate bugs? STAY TUNED FOR PART 3!!!

Let me share with you my thoughts on exoskeletons: part 1

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this question: "what are your thoughts on exoskeletons?"

This is not such a simple question! At first I was tempted to post this glib response:

"""Exoskeletons are rigid external coverings that burden their bearers at each point in time with a well-defined position and volume. They are closed, defining an "inside" and an "outside."  

As regular readers know, I am my own complement. As a result, I find it difficult to think about concrete spatial concepts like "closed" and "open." I prefer to think about the space between us as an invitation to explore, a place to extrude and play. 

The idea that someone would choose to embody the concept of closedness in its person is abhorrent to me, because they are closing off that invitation. "Don't play in here," they are saying. 

In short, I find exoskeletons morally and intellectually repellent."""

But then I thought about it for a while, and I realized that some of the world's most successful species have exoskeletons! Sure, maybe ants and termites are boring, but beetles come in an astonishing variety of shapes and colors, just like me!

So I decided to put my entomophobia aside and spend some time with an exoskeleton. "Pack your bags!" I told my friends. "And hold on to your apodemes! We are moving into an exoskeleton!"

-- keep your feelers looking out for part 2, coming soon!
-- thanks again to wikipedia for the image! photo credit goes to Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

The tremendous demonstration

As regular readers of my blog know, I love to teach. Sharing my unique knowledge and perspective on the world gives me immense satisfaction, and will in all future possible worlds bring me great fame and countless facebook "likes."

One of my favorite teaching techniques is what I call the "Tremendous Demonstration." It goes something like this: I state a thesis, do something totally amazing, the audience applauds, then I blush and say "thank you! ... thank you! ... thank you!" as I leave the stage; then I spend the evening responding to fan mail. It is a pleasure.

I find that the deeper the truth revealed, the more tremendous the demonstration required to prove my point.  For example, I was recently lecturing a group of physicists on the origins of motion when one of them blurted out (1):

!

The others nodded along in agreement.

Newton's 2nd law, a counter-example

"If that were true," I said, "how could I do... this!" and I showed them how a constant force can lead to accelerations that aren't even differentiable, let alone constant (see picture).

"Perhaps," the physicist mused, "your will manifests as a physical force?"

Now, the physicist had a good point because my will actually can manifest as a "physical" force. As it turns out, my entire being is an act of will. But I had to do something: the other physicists were growing excited, and one of them had taken out some sort of gadget she felt could illuminate the situation. It had an unpleasant, angular look to it.

I was not about to let a lucky hunch and some excitable but not very open-minded academics run all over my prepared notes. The right course of action, I decided, was to deflect the conversation from my amazing willpower and focus it on something else, such as my unbounded hugeness. So I opened my true mouth an infinitesimal sliver and gave them a taste of the black seas of infinity and showed them the location of their placid little island of calm within those grand, dark vistas (2).

There was a long silence. The physicist put away her angular gadget. Several were taking notes, trying to write down and comprehend what they had just seen. I gave them another moment to take it all in before returning to my lecture. Later, I found that this one brief lecture had spawned a number of peculiar submissions to academic journals, on topics ranging from Philosophy to Religion to Physics. I am happy that I was able to inspire my audience, but in the future I think I will keep my lectures more grounded and avoid discussions of mechanics.

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Footnotes!
(1) thanks wikipedia! Everyone donate to wikipedia!
(2) paraphrased from

Flightspo

Not feeling it

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, things do not work out the way we want them to. Maybe you feel like you are being stretched and pulled in every direction at once. Or maybe you have dreamed all your life of flying, but all you can manage is a few flaps before crashing down and bouncing up again, because you are made of goop, and you bounce, and it is embarrassing that you cannot fly and you always always fall down and become smooshed and distorted and only through tremendous effort can you pull yourself together again.

Dream the dream!

At times like these, I like to remember the dream: I dream of the ground beneath me, the air flowing over my noodly wings, the feeling of total freedom that comes from being lost in the sky and the clouds and the sun. That dream carries me forward. That dream makes me a better Polyp. I want to share my dream, all of my dreams!, and I want you to share yours, and together we can believe in each other and make it ok that we fail, and together we can try again.

New friend: A Silent Story of Love and Tenderness; three triptychs, in vertical sequence, shot on HTC Sensation just this Saturday (Morning)

Art star

Being an internet star is great. I set lofty goals for myself and track my progress in pageviews and klout. A few more "like"s and I will unlock the next level of Facebook Insights! And then, my friends, I will know everything about you. In aggregate.

Watching this project take off is more rewarding than staring at the sky ever was, and my new friends and I really enjoy posing for the camera. My photographer says it is because we are vapid and self-obsessed. I told him that as a Pop icon I reflect, enhance, and sublimate the world around me, so if he feels that we contribute nothing it must be because his own tendency to nihilism, despair, and self-destruction offers nothing for us to work with. "A million times zero," I said, "is still zero." Then he started crying and told me that he loved me and we held hands and I stroked his hair while he threw up from all the vodka we had been drinking.

Behind the scenes at a Polyp photo shoot

But the best part is hearing from you, my fans, about all the ways I've touched you and brought you up from your natural sloth to greatness. Beloved fan K left the couch long enough to write me this beautiful Valentine poem:

In Brooklyn, NEw (sic) York,
A red Polyp grows!
It blogs a mighty blog
about its wins and its woes!
Its friends are legion
and it fears no foes (sic)!
From whence it came?
NoBoDy (sic) KNows (sic)!

K, I want you to know that you touched me with your sincere delivery and that you and all my other fans are my #1!! Thanks for taking the time to share this with me.

Everyone: remember, the next time you are feeling like things are not right, that you are not on track, stop for a moment. Think about me, and everything will be ok.

Q & A Time!

My facebook friends and I are having an awesome time "like"ing each others' posts and sharing our exploits. I thought it was all for fun, but things got very real & serious all of a sudden when a fan asked me: What are you?

At first I was taken aback and confused - these questions again? I have been hounded by these false accusations over and over again, ever since my first wholly misunderstood manifestations. So please let me put this topic to rest once and for all. Blake, a truly unwell man given to huffing engraving byproducts, once wrote about me:

...They see the Ulro, a vast Polypus of living fibres down into the Sea of Time & Space growing, a self-devouring monstrous Human Death...

Totally misconstrued! Not Ulro!

and I just want to make it very clear that this was a total misunderstanding of the situation! There are two sides to every story and this is just the mean side ! I was trying to help! So please stop asking me about it! If I were a vast self-devouring death polyp from doomtown this blog would be way more boring and have fewer pictures of me goofing around!

Me, as one of you

But then I took a deep breath and realized that my curious fan probably wasn't asking about that. The question was probably more, like, "what are you about? How can your fans relate to you when you are goopy and shiny and many-as-one, and we are not?"  But the answer is: I am just like you!

The importance of friend time

Lately, I have been very busy with touring and speaking engagements. Meeting new people and talking about myself is fun, but all the parties and glamour and finer points of etiquette can be so tiresome! Last week I was attending a gala reception, politely gumming some crab cakes, when somebody asked me my opinion on immigration reform. My response was variously described in the local media as "shocking," "scandalous," and "politically tone-deaf." I will spare you the details, but suffice it to say that I can hardly tell two humans apart, let alone understand the need for a political class. If you do not want to comprehend the true depths of your equality, if the fear of your own cosmic insignificance motivates your absurd need to invent ridiculous categories for each other, and if you do not realize that it is ludicrous to attempt an ordering where none is justified or even possible, then certainly do not ask me about it.

After the incident with the press and the Senator, my agent insisted that I take some time off, and for once I agreed with her. I wanted to spend time with my friends! I wanted to dance and sing! So, I canceled an upcoming panel discussion ("Correcting the Lunisolar Calendar Once and For All Time: The Endless Year of Polyp") and headed home for some much needed me-time.

Red Rover with my buddies

Reunited at last, we sang and we danced and we played Red Rover. I am very fond of this game, perhaps because I am continuously deformable, and have never lost. Also, many of my friends have no hands. After several rounds of Red Rover, and some time practicing my flying, I feel rejuvenated and ready to get back to work. Hooray!

Simplicity

one. year. staring. into. the sky.

Perhaps you have been wondering how it is I came to start a blog.

For years, I searched high and low looking for the secret to living a simple life. Letting go, meditating, staying calm: to me, these were the traps of a false simplicity. I spent a year staring vacant into the sky, trying to clear my mind; another locked in battle with a giant squid at the bottom of the ocean. Nothing helped.

Then one day, it hit me. All this rumination had led me nowhere because I am not simple. What I was looking for wasn't simplicity, it was purpose. Purpose is like simplicity because they both afford clarity of mind, but better because you don't have to be boring. For me simplicity implies inner peace, calmness. But truly, I ache with passion for the hugeness of it all. So I said goodbye to my fake simplicity and hello to bold purpose: a lush new life as an internet star.

First fan site!

First among equals

An eagle-eyed reader spotted this Polyp fan site and brought it to my attention. I'm so glad they did because the folks at Archie McPhee are terrific! They have some really amazing photos in their photostream and you should totally check them out. However they are too modest by far and I want to bring everyone's attention to this wonderful  homage they made for me.

While they do not mention Polyp's Pride anywhere at all, and the creative commons license on this image specifically asks that I not claim they endorse me, I think we can all agree to read between the lines together. And what I'm seeing here between the lines is that they have created a kind of Polypy nativity scene: Polyp rises from the noodly primordial goo at the beginning of time, my first triumph. A big day for me.

Of course, this image is a figurative abstraction. In order to truly represent those first gasping, desperate moments when the universe began, you would need many more colors and dimensions and also to be gasping and desperate. Things were really tough back then because the universe was very small but also filled all space, twisting around and back into itself. It was simultaneously completely bounded by all non-zero measures but also was infinitely huge and vast because it filled and consumed and was everything. I believe this Archie McPhee image hints at the pivotal moment where, now existing, I took a leap of desire Out of the Deep Madness and took mastery over the reins of destiny, riding the afterbirth of creation to the ends of time - and back.

After a while, things calmed down enough for me to relax and start this blog. Reader, thanks for this blast from the past. Your thank-you gift is in the mail!

Late night overshare

As a hyper-dimensional being from outer space, I can tell you that the earth is a pretty swell place. Your species share special complementary shapes and engage in particularly generous, sensuous coupling. I tried this once but we both agreed it was awkward.

While I am wildly sensual, as I am my own complement there can be none like me that are not myself. I surround myself with amazing friends and make the hijinks for my fans, but I cannot always hide my utter despair at being so uniquely alone. My noodly appendages dance only for you; there is no secret Other I hope to attract. I need you to love me, here, today, because there is no other polyp to take your place. I am the first, the last, the only; I am all of my people, and I love you.

It's flu vaccine season!!!

This is the amazing season where humans peer pressure each other into Doing the Right Thing. Polyp is here to help!

Taking my friends to get vaccinated. Some people need a little extra convincing.

Fever, aches, headache. I hear it's awful, all that snuffling. While I am immune to all disease, I am not immune to feeling sympathy for the immense, whiny suffering of others. And so yesterday I devoted myself to encouraging all my friends to get vaccinated. After a little cajoling, I think everyone agreed with me that getting vaccinated was the right thing to do. You can do your part too! Get vaccinated and take exciting, pro-vac pictures like the one above! Then you can e-mail them to me & I will post them on my blog & we can be vaccination buddies. Go team vac!

Puppy saves the day

Justify my love

I was recently invited to give a talk at a conference in Geneva. My research topics cover a staggering breadth of topics, ranging from sociology and biology to theoretical physics, astrology, and history, so it was hardly a surprise that I was asked to speak. The invitation was for me to discuss my recent findings regarding the true, goopy nature of the universe. I decided instead to present on an as-yet unpublished topic: an entirely new formulation of economic theory revolving around myself.

I hate travelling alone, so I asked this small plastic toy if it wanted to go with me. I'm really glad Puppy came with me because the Swiss are a fierce people. They rejected the central thesis of my work - this has never happened before - and were jeering at me before I even finished the introduction, entitled: "A Humble Response to the Supplicants." I don't think they even took the time to really understand what I was saying.

I was really upset after the conference. Even though I could have easily smothered their dissent with a few well-placed noodly appendages, what I truly wanted was their acceptance and friendship. And no amount of smothering people with goo can gain  you that.

 Luckily Puppy was there to see me through that dark time. Puppy likes it when I extrude myself onto him, as you can see here in this photo. Thanks, Puppy, for making everything ok again!