Short 'n Curlies #16 by Si Spurrier

[Mark Seifert]

I Fact You, Right In The Face:

Here's one for all the Creationists out there to wrap their banana-loving brains round.

Folks: I know that -- as far as you're concerned -- every earthly creature that exists (or has ever existed, or will ever exist) was created in the divine backsplash of a colossal cosmic wankbomb during the Fifth and Sixth Days, a little over 6000 years ago. You know this to be inescapably and self-evidently true because the unknown author of a book with a thousand shades of translation-ambiguity and several millennia of editorial influence Says So.

Nod, grin, vacant stare, right? Good. That's adorable.

It therefore breaks my heart -- aaahahaha -- to introduce you to an unpleasant little bugger called by scientists (real ones, mind) "Culex molestus."

That's the Tube Mosquito to you and me.

See, the London Underground system is 250 miles of track spread between 270 stations, which -- despite its name -- is actually only underground 45% of the way. The first of its tunnels were dug in 1863, which is about the time -- according to those very same pesky Real Actual Scientists Who Believe In Evolution And Everything -- that a prolific breed of bloodsucker called Culex pipiens first delved underground.

C. pipiens has a very distinct feeding cycle, lays its eggs in ponds and puddles, slurps almost exclusively on the veinjuice of birds, and Does Not Believe in the book of Genesis.

Cut forwards eighty years or so, and the eel-gobbling folks of London's East End, gorblessem, are using the tube system as an air-raid shelter during the Blitz. Pity our cockney sparrah chums, oh readers, because not only are the dastardly hun pounding them to living fuck with 13,000 tons of high explosive dropped from 12,000 feet, but they also find themselves being eaten alive by a wholly new and entirely wretched form of Life.

C. molestus feeds according to a weird rolling cycle which bears no relationship to anything as crude nor passé as The Sun, lays its eggs in slime-encrusted patches of condensation between tube stations, and has an extremely aggressive predation-system focused on rats, yellow-jacketed workmen and Fat Fucking Tourists. We can tell it is unmistakably the scion of C. pipiens, and not just because It, too, Does Not Believe in the book of Genesis.

Get a pipiens and a molestus together -- stick 'em in a luxury hotel-room with all the blood they can schnork, a selection of invertebrate aphrodisiacs and a superhot selection of malarial porn -- and despite them sharing a common ancestor within the past century, it's almost impossible to get the SheBug larvally-loaded.

They are genetically distinct creatures.

Cling to your banana a little tighter, oh bible-literalist. It gets better.

The Tube-sucker doesn't exist anywhere in the UK except on the London Underground. Before the tube was built it didn't exist anywhere at all. What's really crazy is that C. molestus has recently -- within the past few years -- shown-up in similar underground systems in other major cities in Europe, Asia and Australia. Which means that either the little fuckers are spreading across the planet from tube-car to tube-car, or -- gorgeously, gloriously, wonderfully -- local populations of C. pipiens have mutated in a similar way all on their own.

?Which may not be quite as wacky as it sounds, because whilst all these different international versions of the molestus behave in broadly the same way, and look kind of similar ("wings, legs, proboscis = bug"), each population is indeed distinct on a genetic level. In fact, just to ratchet up the Oh Fuck Darwin Would've Shat A Lung Laughing factor, different populations of molestus in London are also genetically distinct according to which tube-line they live on.

Thus we have populations of Culex molestus (Bakerloo), Culex molestus (Jubilee), Culex molestus (Circle & District) and Culex molestus (East London Line -- A Bus Replacement Service Will Be In Operation Until June 2010).

All of which, of course, oh noble Creationist, have existed since the sweaty armpit of the 5th/6th day, and have (presumably) been hanging around, sulking, in some remote swamp somewhere just waiting for us tardy sinful manbeasts to catch-up with the Divine Plan and dig/build/name the appropriate trainlines. It's Obvious.

I like to imagine, by the same token, a species of SuperMosquito -- which can tell when a person is conveniently distracted by the mesmerising Smuggery of their brand new iPhone, and attack appropriately. We probably won't see such a thing for twenty years or so, but -- when we do -- we will obviously and naturally decide that it's been out there all along somewhere, patiently waiting for its Intelligently Designed Niche to become relevant.

Equally, somewhere in the swamps of Asia is a species of rat whose feet were designed to slide along frictionless magnetic railgun tracks, and can understand the phrase "we apologise for the delay, this was caused by a Person Under A Train at Mornington Crescent", and can rush to the appropriate location for the resulting feast. For the next ten thousand years or so it will remain a miserable beast utterly ill-suited to the world it was forced to inhabit, but you just wait: give it an aeon or two for the world to catch up with the Glorious Plan, and that little sucker's In Business.

And then there's the Corvus nanobotii: a breed of urban crow who will only -- can only -- lay its shimmering electromagnetic eggs on the shifting microcarbon walls of the 459th Century's swarmscrapers, which -- when it eventually emerges from the genepool -- will obviously have been hiding somewhere all along, and was indeed among all those other gribblies created in Eden.

Praise Be The fucking Masterplan, and pass me the bite-cream.

This Week I Have Been Mostly Hating:

All car-drivers Ever. Inconsiderate, peripherally-blind, door-opening wankers who'll knock you off your bike on blind corners and not bother to stop, who'll lurk right up your arse behind you honking and cursing as you struggle to pedal up a hill -- even though there's plenty of room for the shitehawks to pass -- and who'll pull-out into your path with as much thought for your onrushing twin-wheeled contrivance as a retarded Rhino for a quantum gnat.

Also:

All cyclists Ever. Insane, dangerous, accident-causing lunatic roadhogs with an inflated sense of entitlement, a profound obliviousness to the laws of the road, a catastrophic misunderstanding regarding the rules of Traffic Lights, and a range of IdiotWear spandex which would make a colourblind superhero blush with shame.

BrainFart:

It's good to see things from both sides.

Nothing cures deep social divisions like Travelling A Mile In Someone Else's Hate.

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Twitter: @SiSpurrier

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[Emperor]

More on it here:

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito[/ame]


I enjoy the idea that the two species are "very difficult to mate" - not half!!

I've always liked the peppered moth story:

[ame]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppered_moth_evolution[/ame]


Not only is it easy to see evolution in action and it is amusing to see the Creationists busting three or four guts to try and find an angle of attack on it (and looking very desperate in the process) but I like to think it pissed the moths off when the clean air laws made the evolutionary pressures swing round back in favour of the darker moths. That'll learn 'em - I think they were being a little too smug about the whole thing.

[Jason A. Quest]

different populations of molestus in London are also genetically distinct according to which tube-line they live on.

And somewhere there's an entomological Henry Higgins who can identify the tube line of a C. molestus based solely on its buzz, and is willing to bet that he can train one to pass for a C. pipiens. "Repeat after me: The train to Saint James stays mainly on the rails."

[Peter J Poole]

" different populations of molestus in London are also genetically distinct according to which tube-line they live on. "

You say molestus, I say molesters?

Cheers

[die-yng]

Great, ifonly you could make them see the light by simply showing them how wrong they are.
But, no, with great guys like George Bush jr., Chuck Norris et al. these bs will probably still be taught in some american schools in 100 years.