science, pop-culture, and “B” movies

For the first time in nearly forty years,  the Moon blotted out the Sun over the United States.   Aliens are already among us, so no invasion was imminent.   I saw dozens of posts on social media with blurry images of the sun, one clever MOON PIE pre-eclipse, and the news media watching people looking up.  The closest I got to observing “the eclipse of the century” today was noting a hazy morning, somewhat “less-bright” outdoors at 10AM and only half-listening to  streaming blather of newsies tracking the sun and moon while I worked.

And then I chuckled.  Wasn’t there a “B” science fiction movie I saw as a kid (fifty years ago!)  about solar flares, or eclipses, a blind world population and hungry, mobile,  plants?

YES.   The movie I half-remembered is Day of the Triffids.  Thanks, Wikipedia! [  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids ]    Fortunately, the apocalypse has not happened.  But there’s probably enough gallons of ROUND-UP in North America alone to wipe out any walking Venus Flytrap anywhere in the world.

But if there were such a thing,  I’m thinking the times are ripe for such things.  I mean, the whole Southeastern United States is overrun with kudzu, an invasive vine that seems to have no way of being eradicated.   In southern California,  the Mexican scrub palm seems to grow like a weed – out of any type of soil or crack in cement.  My dogs certainly know the dangers of walking in certain weeds around my neighborhood – the burrs of one prick their paws, and the burrs of another can work their way into the fur and skin.

So while a bunch of folks were camped out along the path of the total eclipse, I imagine that more than a few were in an altered state of consciousness thanks to some states along the route having licensed another kind of weed.  It’s one  where the plant doesn’t eat people, but the other way ’round.  It is sort-of mobile, as it seems to travel all over – in pockets, in car glove boxes, and in medicinal bags.

While I don’t know if music attracts marijuana,   I am quite sure that, in Oregon,  the eclipse, some mood-altered, “Dark Side of the Moon”-music types,  and a few tens of thousands of the curious were.  And there may not have been people being a snack for a roving daffodil, but I’m sure the restaurants and bakeries had a great day today.  

And according to some research,  if people do happen to encounter some post-Eclipse glaucoma,  there’s a weed for that…