It’s a typical Satyrday night. I’m mixing up the medicine, a nice tangy rum punch designed to make me more receptive to the forces of the universe while I do my chores. One can easily learn the secrets of Kung Fu while scrubbing the bathtub of scrum, it’s all a matter of training. I’m also chopping up the ingredients for my yummy beef stew. K and are planning to watch some Grey’s Anatomy to a steaming bowl of stew and a glass of thick, rich milk to make a party in our tummys (so yummy, so yummy).

Cooking is an unpredictable venture. The formula of a recipe should ensure a consistent result every time, but the real world operates on a random adventure generator on a regular basis. You can’t always count on what kind of experience you are going to get out of life. So it is that as I’m mixing up the punch, it turns a brilliant red, and no matter how much I try to get it to behave, it remains red, instead of the off-orange and feathery brown it usually is. I examine my ingredients, and realize I bought a bunch of juices that have nothing to do with the original recipe. Well, it’s always dinosaur hunting when I have to go to the supermarket, and its likely that the robots in disguise had me so distracted that someone else pulled the strings when I made my juice selections. I do try to be open to outside messages, after all.

I start work on the stew, and for some reason it turns out a deep red color instead of the brown-brothy color it usually does. I look at my ingredients and I realize that instead of using my jar of home-jarred tomatoes, I used a can of Nature’s Promise tomatoes instead. I shake my head and realize I’m acting on some kind of puppet-master control field and try to get to the bottom of things. The stew and the rum punch taste excellent, it’s just they are, well this shade of red that I feel means something. You know, like in that scene from Close Encounters when the main character starts realizing there’s some meaning to what they are building with a mountain of mashed potatoes.

So I sit down and I visualize the color red in my mind, and decide to see what comes up. The image that flashes into my brain is the Blob, from the old 1972 movie Beware! The Blob, a sequel to the original movie in 1958. Whoa, that takes me back. The last thing I want to do is consume anything that reminds me of the Blob, because that thing was a deadly poison that killed and consumed you if you touched it! But here I am sucking down a ceramic cup of the good stuff and preparing a pot of stew that has a meaningful connection to that which scared the pants off me as a kid.

As a young pouchling, I watched a lot of movies on the TV. Back then independent stations were more common, and even the big networks had a creative side. The late night monster movies were a staple back then, and you could always be assured of picking up something weird past ten P.M. One movie I saw was, of course, Beware! The Blob. It made an impression on me as a kid.

At the end of the original The Blob movie, the creature known as the Blob is frozen and dumped somewhere in the north pole with the titles “The End?” showing. The intimation is that this is not the end of the matter. Beware! The Blob (also known as Son of the Blob, which I think is false, more like daughter of the Blob) picks up from that loose end.

An oil pipeline worker digs up a canister and brings it home. The canister contains, you guessed it, the Blob. It thaws out, and starts eating everything in sight. A pair of young love birds clue in to the danger while the authorities stall. The blob is a nasty, icky, bright red jelly creature that can move quickly and squeeze through any crack to reach it victims. It sticks to you like glue, and quickly engulfs you to digest your body. As it absorbs animals, insects and people (it apparently doesn’t like plants) it grows in size. The only thing that stops it is cold. If you freeze it, the blob can be stored and transported (as it was in the original movie).

In Beware! The Blob, the final showdown occurs in a skating rink, where the hero of the movie finally lures it onto the ice rink and turns on the cold, freezing the creature and saving the town. The sheriff poses in front of the creature, and the lights of the news media thaw a piece of the creature where it reaches out to grasp the guy’s boot. Again, the titles “The End?” appear as the movie ends.

This movie terrified me as a kid. The Blob could appear anywhere and strike quickly. Once it got a hold of you, there was no escape. You would live long enough to be absorbed into the creature and turned into liquid lunch. In one scene, a guy gets a haircut, and as he’s getting a shampoo from the barber, the blob squeezes out of the sink drain and snags the guy by the head. I absolutely refuse to get my hair shampooed at a hair cut establishment to this day because of that scene.

In the movie, the presence of the creature is always accompanied by a spooky sound tone. That musical tone has lodged itself in my brain, and I always jump when I hear that exact tone of music played somewhere. The Blob ain’t gunna get me! Although, where could you run? Your only hope would be to splash it with cold water or throw ice cubes at it.

The memory is not quite as fierce or terrifying as it used to be. I’ve had to go about my business despite the fear that at any time that sound might begin, and I find myself washing my hands while a red slime oozes out the drain and tries to get a hold of me. But I haven’t forgotten that primal terror, the fear that would keep me from going to sleep at night, because the light in the hall was making that same dull hum as the Blob.

As I’m stirring the pot, and mixing the punch bowl, I realize in a sense I’m consuming the Blob at this very moment! You can’t escape the Blob, only postpone the inevitable. The creature always thaws out and comes at humanity again and again. The test of survival never ends. Of course, in the movies, consuming the Blob is always fatal (the guy who drinks it from his beer can dies horribly as it consumes him from within). The Blob comes from outer space (the deep unconscious), and needs to eat everything in sight (to what end?). The idea of anyone consuming the Blob and surviving is as preposterous as the existence of the Blob itself.

The thought strikes me that the Blob is an archetype of feminine power, engulfing everything and devouring all in its path, growing larger and stronger. I’m cool with that, as long as I don’t lose my own individuality in the process. It’s the hero/heroine pair up in the movie that always defeats the Blob, or more accurately, puts it on hold until next time. So perhaps the individuation of certain characters is what moves the plot along. The Blob is too strong for any one person to take on, and yet, it’s the individual response to the reality of the growing Blob’s power that determines the outcome.

I’m thinking that the Blob represents nothing less than the fear of girl power. That nasty contamination by women that always wrecks things and makes life more difficult. What does the Blob want? It must be looking for a connection of some kind, and anyone who doesn’t measure up to the requirement gets eaten alive. The people who are smart enough to flee or avoid contact with the Blob might be the very people the Blob is trying to contact. The Blob comes from outer space (the heavens), maybe it’s trying to make contact, and the outer space girl power needs to hear a message from the right person to move things forward.

The Blob keeps getting put off, because we love the fear of running from the gross girl germs that might give us cooties. The movies keep coming. But maybe it is way past time the process moved to the next level. Humanity has to grow up eventually, or be stuck in a never-never land of childish dependence. I hear the message, I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m letting the Blob get inside of me!