In this realm, there are things that are strange, and then there are things even stranger than those strange things. Today, we're going to discuss those stranger things.
Venus Fly Traps
First off, they look like they grow in some remote equatorial subtropical rain forest, but they are actually natively found in the wetlands of North and South Carolina.
Can you believe that? These little dudes are more local than we thought.
Also, the slang term for them is a "tippity twitchet" because of its resemblance to female genitalia, but to be fair, a lot of flowers look like those part so, strangely, that's really not all that strange.
I know there are several species of carnivorous plants, but the concept of plants eating animals still throws me for a loop. It's as though they should only exist in a place where mushrooms make you big and stars make you invincible.
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| iykyk |
I feel like it's actually an animal in disguise, like sea cucumbers or sea urchins. The carnivorous ability of the venus flytrap defies the food chain. It's even equipped with trigger hairs and whimsical "jasmonic" acid!
A plant that became so good at photosynthesis, it was like, "You know what? This soil sucks right here. Let's see what else we can do" and then proceeded to trap and digest dumb bugs.
Is eating bugs even necessary for the plant's survival?
Or do you think they do the trapping just for fun, like hunting for sport?
The Georgia $tate $quare Dance A$$ociation
The GSSDA is an organization that loves money but hates to collect it. This group is responsible for organizing the Georgia State Square Dance Convention, and they are supposed to raise funds by selling ribbons to patrons that plan to attend. However, they always come up short somehow and still like to blame their plight on Covid, which happened like half a decade ago.
There are two primary reasons why this is not only a strange thing, but a stranger thing:
Firstly, if you have ever been on the board of the GSSDA, you don't have to pay to go to the convention. I think board rotations happen every few years, so pretty soon, you have a whole crowd of dancers going to the convention and not paying for it because they served once upon a time.
I get the idea of incentivizing people to serve on the board, but the financial benefit need not extend to those no longer on the board and apply forevermore. This is a huge financial sink hole that only continues to grow.
Secondly, this group will sell ribbons at a discounted price until a certain date closer to the state convention to encourage participation and also help plan for attendance. But then they will go out of their way to discount the discounted ribbon if you buy the convention ribbon at the state sashay dance.
Discounts upon discounts! Oh, how they love inventing new ways to be poor!
Then in almost the same breath as this announcement, they will ask for generous donations for those not attending the convention. True story.
It's like these people don't know how math works.
Is $5 off of a ribbon really incentivizing anyone to buy one who normally wouldn't?
At this point, it's like the price of a dozen eggs, so it's probably not really moving the needle for any one person.
However, $5 multiplied by 300 attendees would be $1,500 - a sizeable amount that the GSSDA could use toward the convention by just NOT DISCOUNTING THE TICKETS. The discounts are only hurting the convention at this point.
If they just focused on making it a good convention and charging a standard higher price for those who want to attend, everyone would get what they wanted, and money would never be an issue.
I feel like the GSSDA is still operating with this pre-inflation coupon-clipping mentality and fundraising strategies like we're-a-non-profit-so-let's-beg-for-money-and-see-what-can-we-get-by-with.
It's like if a church gave you reasons not to tithe while also guilting you into thinking that you should.
Very strange.
Cemeteries
It occurred to me recently how eerie and bizarre cemeteries are.
I have nothing against burying the dead; in fact, this is my favorite method of corporal disposal. When I was writing my estate plan a few years back, I found about tree burial pods and right then and there I decided that is the way I should like to be buried. Instead of having my remains tucked away in a dead box of dead wood, I'd rather biodegrade, return to the earth, and be integrated into living wood that will provide oxygen and fruit for generations to come!
Cemeteries are stranger things because they are essentially artificial deserts of remembrance. No other living being on earth does this with their dead; the other biological kingdoms are way more in tune with the cyclical self-existent nature of everything always being in a state of regeneration instead of the human fake-ending timeline.
I don't think it's unnatural to remember the dead or to honor and memorialize those that have passed on, but dedicating acres and acres to this is weird to me. Cemeteries are so cold with the loneliness and the stones and are also incredibly hot with the lack of shade, so people are really only spending time there if they have to. It's a waste of perfectly good real estate for the sake of being...reverent?
If we all believe in the afterlife, then why don't we do something a little more alive, a little more beneficial to all those still living?
So instead of rows and rows of graves...
We'd have orchards of fruit bearing trees!
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| So you can bear fruit in life - and also in death |
Oh, how beautiful it would be to walk among your ancestors like this. After all, the kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that grows and becomes a tree so that birds of the air make nests in its branches.
Don't just lie around waiting for the resurrection: go ahead and BE the tree of life!
In any case, it's more environmentally conscious than traditional cemeteries and more financial sustainable than the GSSDA. If the bones don't decay in time, just throw in some jasmonic acid courtesy of the venus fly trap.
Death is a doorway,
TWS
