The magnolias are in high bloom around Vancouver right now and their blossoms are a stunning pink. They are huge blooms on spindly trees, making the flowers appear heavy and luscious. The picture and some comments about the breed of magnolias mostly found around Vancouver are found here.
Before they bloom, the buds look like alien pods quietly morphing an inconspicuous tree into a pod person producer! The pods are quite large and hairy - trust me, you'd wonder about their mission, too.
The pods make me remember The Day of the Triffids, a horror film from 1951 that scared us silly when we were little girls. The triffids are mutant plants that feed on decomposing human flesh. They aren't alien (as my faulty memory would have said) but their propagation is blamed on "the reds" from the Soviet Union. Oh McCarthy, we owe you so much! The more appropriate film to mention in the context of magnolia pods is Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956. Alien plant pods drift to Earth, find suitable subjects and grow replicas of human individuals. The replicas have no emotion, which leads their loved ones to suspect they are not who they claim to be. The pod people aim to replace the entire human race. It's a fight to the finish - who will gain the ultimate upper hand?!I wonder, should we be concerned about the magnolia pods and their potential for effecting harm to the human race? Some would say that Vancouver is well on its way to being populated by pod people. Just look at the Lululemon set in Kits, or the soulless Yaletown dwellers. This speculation requires further research. I'll have to go find a mad scientist out at the University for some sage advice; hopefully he'll have a large room cluttered with fantastic looking glassware and bulky old metal scientific technology. Nothing like a rusty chronophyllumgraphicometer to really get the story rolling!
I was intrigued by the scientific instrument in the last part of your discussion 'chronophyllumgraphicometer' so I decided to google it but alas google found nothing. This leads me to believe that no such device exists. I have trouble believing that you would make up a bullshit name for a scientific device that really doesn't exist. So what does this said instrument do? I can only surmise it would some how chronologically sort things of common origins and represent them in a graphical interface. It would be quite the amazing contraption some people might even thing it would require a computer and some logic statements. But if it looked like a rusty old device that would be substantially cooler.
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