Monsters

I really, really, really like monsters. Really.

More than anything else, I like the design and the creativity of them. Someone had to come up with that thing, whatever the monster is. Some prefer to call them “creatures” these days, but I like the word “monster.” Monsters literally have to be created by an artist of some kind. An author, a graphic artist, a film maker. It’s really amazing when you stop and think about it. If you think it’s easy to do, step away from the computer right now and go draw an original, cool monster. I dare you.

Trust me, it’s not easy. Especially the “original” part.

I like how creepy some of the monsters are, but only if there is some kind of fun through line in the story surrounding them. I don’t much like movies that only scare. GOTCHA. They’re fine, but that’s not really my cup of ectoplasm.

I like the idea of monsters, the notion, mostly because I know they aren’t real. The more real something is, the less you actually want to be scared by it. That’s my hypothesis anyway. If you think that death in a movie is anything like the real thing, then you are deceived. And monsters are the same way. Real monsters, which are almost always human (or, perhaps, an illness), are not something we really want to toy with. Some human beings are much more genuinely frightening than anything anyone has ever managed to put on a movie screen. Trust you me.

Much better, or at least much more fun, are the monsters we create with our imaginations. The ones who say something about the nature of being human. The ones that creatively reflect the things we feel inside, good and bad, but have a hard time expressing. I think the pretend monsters help us, in a small way, to cope with the threat of the real ones.

And, even if they don’t, they’re fun, plain and simple.


© LW Publishing 2011

It's Complicated

Hey!


I had a rare professor once at Eastern Michigan University who expressed amazement about creation. I don't know if it was on purpose or not, but he was talking about the structure of the human ear. He was taking us through the stunning, mind numbing complexity of it – the obvious “design” – when he stopped and said something like, “Anyone who says this happened by accident has no idea what they’re talking about.”

And it’s not just the inner ear. To me the human eye is another perhaps even greater example of this. And “color” is what really fascinates me.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always been fascinated by color. I’ve read about it over and over again, but it still leaves me in awe. The way I understand it is that color (the way light works) has been designed for the eye and the eye has been designed for color. They work together in a completely non accidental way.

Different colors are different “lengths” of light. Long “lengths” are red. Short “lengths” are blue. Green is in between. It’s how the surface of a thing reflects the light that determines the color. Depending on what it’s made of, the object will absorb some wavelengths of light, but it will reflect other wavelengths. If it reflects long light, it’s reddish. If it reflects short, it’s blueish. I’m not sure how orangeish comes about, but I imagine no color rhymes with orange.

But then our eyes have to pick it up. Our eyes are the “receiver” of these light lengths. And the human eye is MASSIVELY complex. We have rod and cone shaped receivers in each eye ball. They take the light that goes into the eye and translate the light into what our brains perceive as color. And please understand, that’s what they’re there for. Rods and cones exist to receive light and send it to the brain to be perceived as color.

You can learn more about the human eye at the link below. If you do, realize that this is a simple breakdown. Entire books could be written about any one design piece of the eye. Probably have been.

I’m thinking the prof was right. “Anyone who says this happened by accident has no idea what they’re talking about.”

http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html




Peace to you.

© LW Publishing 2010