(No… No … not the sex thing, you pervert … the whole psychic thing!!! )
You gotta give it to him, people … he nailed all the predictions. For most people, this string of successes is quite fascinating and paranormal. If you are a smart ass, I don’t blame you for thinking that it’s just a re-packaged “toss of the coin” or that the octopus knows nothing beyond eating its regular meal with twice the options on its menu and a minor design change in setting that that there are lot of creepy humans staring at it while it smacks a sumptuous meal. This thing is quite a character, says the owner, “There was something about the way he looked at our visitors when they came close to the tank. It was so unusual, so we tried to find out what his special talents were.” A person of few words, it has no intentions of pleasing the hand that feeds it. It just said, “Germany has to lose, it will. Deal with it, dude”. It never hesitates to have a take on an issue, never to be the one of being scared to speak the truth or have what it takes for a courage of conviction. The thing I like most – it is unperturbed with all the death-threats over it. In all seriousness, I do think it has no super-vision into the future, in fact the species Octopus vulgaris has no evidence of a color vision – now that’s like having a problem visualizing Scarlett Johansson in real life just because you had a Black & White TV all along … or may be even worse. Oh! One more thing. I don’t think people are completely being lame when they talk about what Paul would do next. It's nothing different from other strategies to future prediction - astrology, palmistry, crystal ball psychics etc. Come on. What’s wrong with a little game, some myth to make life more interesting? No one believes it’s all true. But, it’s fun to have a conversation pretending it’s real. That to me is akin to the power of ritual associated with a myth. To quote Joseph Campbell,
“Rites are the enactments of myths, and by participating in the rite one is participating in the myth and consequently activating the accordant structures and principles within one's own psyche. Without some kind of ritual enactment the whole thing fails to get inside the active aspect of one's system, unless one happens to be working through actual life problems in terms suggested by mythological considerations.”
The octopus, as gtoosphere points out doesn’t care if someone is kicking a ball … in fact, in the spirit of being a smart ass myself … I’d say, it doesn’t know anything beyond a need to eat which is pretty much sums up much the prescient abilities of every living organism ever lived, which is to eat and umm … the other ‘thing’! Think about this. It even has a wikipedia page, it held its first press conference and not for any crime. If I were an octopus in any decent kind of universe, I'd think, "That wasn't bad. Not bad at all." … and I also fashion that I'd probably thank the human media in my speech …
Yes, the media has to be credited for all this. No doubt, it made the octopus a hero. While following the story and reporting on it is one thing, the colors and the emotion of the narrative is extremely interesting. For example, take the reports from two newspapers. Also, I present a case how the entire cast of “The Lion King” is ROFL & LMAO at humans and why we should stop pretending its journalism:
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From Huffington Post:
Paul The Octopus STUNS Germany, Picks Spain
Perhaps most agonizing for German fans is that Paul momentarily hovered over his home country's box before slithering sideways to munch on the mussel representing Spain. Even as he picked the Spaniards to win, Paul still showed his affection for Germany by dangling several tentacles over the German box while he scarfed down the Spanish snack. Scroll down for photos and video of the sage of the sea making his bold pick and enjoying his tasty treat.
* “Agonizing for German fans” – I can’t believe “agony” is in the list of appropriate emotions to the event.
* “Home Country” – Seriously WTF! First of all, it’s born in England. Okay?. Second of all, it can be argued if it is capable of any patriotic feeling when its goddamned habitat is just a glass box.
* “Showed his affection for Germany by dangling several tentacles”- Do we need to even talk about this?
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From Times of India:
Paul the octopus makes waves - and enemies
He is a global talking point. Google him and you get about 2,630,000 results. Paul the octopus is currently among the top 10 trends on Twitter. And he is big enough to get death threats. Embittered by Argentina's loss to Germany - an outcome predicted by Paul - Argentine chef Nicolas Bedorrou wants to beat him to death
* “Google him and you get about 2,630,000 results” – Seriously, for a paper that pioneered google-copy-paste style of reporting, you expect to believe all the 2.63 million links are relevant. Somewhere on page 30:
CASE CLOSED.
* “An outcome predicted by Paul” – refer to earlier discussion. Mr. Paul is quietly having his dinner. Let’s respectfully not freak him out.
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… And many more from your ‘trusted sources’. What exactly are they trying to do? Are they trying to be cool in high school? Trying to bring a human entertaining touch to journalism? Want to break ice with a casual conversation and be my friend? I am losing my ability to fathom such bizarre behavior from the clanging workshops of the media factory. Why do they sometimes lose it? And why is that sometimes being too often these days? Frankly, I am not, and have never looked towards the media to feel better about the world with media, being the reason for a negative view in the first place. It’s them who used to report only the bad but dramatic stuff and now, they are trying to make up for it by reporting the ridiculous with serious emotional enactment to compete with the soaps and sitcoms for the ratings. Imagine, sometime during the last week, on one of those 24-hr TV news channels, somebody would have covered it the following way :
“Horrifying pictures there from New Orleans at the BP oil spill site, it seems there is no end in sight to the largest ecological disaster that has befallen America. Now moving on to a lighter subject, Paul the octopus means some serious betting business in the soccer universe for the FIFA world-cup in South Africa …”
And it’s not just the news media that seems to have a misplaced agenda. Now, PETA wants to save Paul and leave it to the ocean. Again, Wrong context-Wrong opinion. We all know what happened with Free Willy when you try to return domesticated animals to their wild. Not every animal you see needs to be left into the wild. Just leave it alone and enjoy its miracles. What is this obsessive need to state the organization’s mission statement in every conversation? Societies for endangered species, animal rights, environmental protection, organizations opposing oil and coal industries seem to just have one solution: instant discontinuance of a certain way of life a.k.a. “STOP!” and PETA takes a little step further as it says, “STOP! We got naked people …!”
You know what … forget about the universe or life or anything else… just the media needs to "Intelligently" designed on an emergency basis. The evolutionary process is proving unbearable.
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