Octopi

Octopi:  It is an unfortunate reality that squid are often mistaken for octopi, just as egrets are often mistaken for herons, which are often mistaken for cranes.  While it was unclear which of the two the legendary Kraken was meant to be in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film, partly because folklore itself was unclear, it is certain that the 1904 ‘Puck’ magazine wished to display the Standard Oil company as an overzealous octopus that had scooped up more power than U.S. legislators and had had harnessed more funds than the U.S. treasury.  Not to mention the National Reconnaissance Office, which deals with satellite surveillance had no qualm in using the ominous globe-encompassing octopus to be the insignia for one of their most prominent satellite launches.  The theme that seems to emerge is one of shrouded mystery that invokes fear; power and intelligence that may just be overextending its grasp.  This is for good reason, too, in that octopuses (also an acceptable way to pluralize the individuals) have demonstrated remarkable amounts of intelligence for any animal, especially invertebrates:  they remember specific human individuals, work their way through mazes, use tools and even unscrew lids to obtain a morsel reward.  Not to mention, they inhabit the deep and the chasms they dwell in are at best mysterious and at worst chambers of destruction.  As much as we like to believe and repeat the aphorism “what you can’t see can’t hurt you”, we know it isn’t so and lingering fear of a creature than can induce the skill of mimicry and camouflage and still be as big as a bus is terrifying.  Which does lead to an interesting question, after all:  how far out of or even away from the water are we willing to go to avoid the menace that may not even be there or is probably leagues away?  We can extend this question to:  How much control do we relinquish to security agencies as we slowly drift towards totalitarianism with our ever-heightening fear of the next terror attack?  At what point does the chameleon of security become harder to see and more of a threat than the mimicry octopus of terror?  If you are an ant – or at least considered one – in the great game, the answer is clear.  Or, perhaps these questions mean nothing to the sports-crazed, imbecilic, asinine fatuity that plagues and predominates society and when malcontent suppositions are replaced with melancholic succor the vast majority will be in a haze so thick (likely a haze soaked in THC, mind you) that they will past the threshold of not being able to tell the difference in terror and security and to the point where one is an absolute necessity and the other cannot even be mentioned in the dictionary.  I plan on calling a spade a spade, and a man a man, and an octopus and octopus while it is still legal.  After that, I plan on doing much the same.