Blue Maggots

You may be wondering why the title of this post is "Blue Maggots." Thinking that this post contained a putrid story about me pouring my daily bowl of Captain Crunch Berries at 8:00 in the morning, half awake, only to take a bite hoping for that surgery crunch only to feel the squirming of a half dozen maggots go down my throat. But that is not the case I do not wake up at eight, nor do I eat Captain Crunch. And as for the consumption of maggots I don't think you should meddle with my private life. This I will tell you. Altogether my summer has been rather uneventful. I have had my wisdom teeth taken out by a greedy dentist, no doubt taking them so he can place them under his pillow. My hair has been cut into a kickass/humiliating shape (I have grown to like it). And I have hung out with friends about as many times as I can count on one hand.

But out of all the things that have happened I've become most perplexed by a lava lamp. It's not how they work that confuses me; The lamp heats up the wax which causes it to rise through the oil were at the top it cools down and falls to the bottom. What confuses me is how they don't work. They never do. You turn it on expecting it to illuminate your room or at least a wall, but the light it produces is very minimal. That I can except. After all, even though it is a lamp, it is meant to entertain. This is were the thing bothers me.

When I turn it on it does nothing, the wax remains at the bottom. So I wait until the bulb heats the wax. But how long must I wait? A minute. Ten. A half hour? It ends up being a round an hour before anything begins to move at all, and when it does it's not in the friendly lava lamp kind of way. One of two things happens. Either a column of wax rises to the top creating a link between the top and the bottom making it so that most of the wax goes to the top via the column were it is than held up by it. Or after waiting for more than an hour all the wax spontaneously rises at once where it become wedged against the sides of the glass where it remains until I shake it.

Shaking it, although the most instinctive thing to do, is not a good idea. I causes small particles of wax to form inside the glass making it so that one cannot anything beyond the edges. Also it creates air bubbles inside the wax which ruins both appearance along with the way it falls and rises. Over time the bubbles will go away and it will once again become a blob lying on the bottom of the glass. After the that the stage is set for this viscous cycle to repeat itself. What I've noticed while stupidly using this defective lighting device during the summer in my un-airconditioned house is that you can always rely on it producing a lot of excess heat. This leads me to believe that the only practical function for this fad is a mini heater for the homeless during cold winters and rainy nights. It would also serve as a minor light supply and maybe even a cooking element with a little do-it-yourself rigging.

Don't misunderstand me it doesn't always fail to work. Every once in awhile when the planets line up perfectly (which happens slightly more often now because they wacked Pluto) it preforms an amazing display of what was "hip" and "groovy" in the seventies. And me and my two cats will sit staring in aw as bubbles of wax majestically float and sink to the bottom.