More Power to You — Eternal Beach City (Patreon)

Lightning, am I right? Weird stuff. I thought about delving into how weird it is that the Benjamin Franklin Kite story is always presented as him “discovering electricity” when really, we’d known about electricity for fucking centuries! What he was really trying to do was prove that lightning and electricity are the same thing or something.

Then I thought I might get into how the fuck didn’t people know lightning was electricity for so long? And what the fuck did they use as the symbol for electricity before that? A pair of socks and a doorknob?!

But instead, I want to talk about this painting in 1816 by Benjamin West depicting Benny’s famous experiment.

Why the fuck did Ben W feel the need to add a bunch of naked baby angels around B.F. helping him out? What’s the implication here?! That God sent angels down to help him with this kite idea? That no mere mortal could have pulled it off on their own? Or is this just the artist’s gimmick? If he painted his wife brushing her hair, would there be a ton of birthday suit babies surrounding her, making sure the operation went down smooth?

Also, do baby angels ever grow up? So many questions.