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Slime. Exactly what is it and what is it good for? If you’re like me, when you think of slime you think about checking the air pressure in your tires. But there's more to it. A lot more.

 

To some, the word slime refers to the versatile, squishy play material introduced by Mattel in 1976. Make-it-yourself versions appeared online about ten years ago. White Elmer’s glue + multipurpose contact lens solution + baking soda = slime. Plus food coloring if you want even more fun. The recipe for Ghostbuster slime is similar: water, liquid starch, Elmer's glue, and food coloring--green, of course.

 

Play dough is still arou, but is more doughy than slimy. While play dough is ideal for sculpting and building, slime is more for “sensory squishing” and who doesn’t like that?

 

Many examples of slime exist in Nature, as you may have noticed the last time you had a head cold. You don’t need three ingredients to make that stuff. Rhinovirus or Springtime pollen plus nasal passages = snot. Snot is a particular type of biologic slime known as mucus and plays a valuable role in trapping and ridding the body of viral particles, pollen, dust, or whatever is causing the irritation.

 

The production of slimy mucus in plants may also be a defense mechanism. Or, in the case of okra, a survival tool in that it preserves water for those extra dry periods.

 

Okra, the main ingredient of gumbo, is a natural thickener of soups. Some claim it also causes hair to grow faster.

 

Slime as entertainment is not a new thing. Slime has been featured prominently in literature and even music. But finds its natural home in the world of horror, like the amorphous shoggoths in H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness. These creatures are not much more than deep-black slime, out of which limbs can be formed “ shapeless congeries of protoplasmic bubbles, faintly self-luminous, and with myriads of temporary eyes forming and unforming as pustules of green light all over the tunnel-filling front that bore down upon us…”

 

And we can't forget The Blob. This movie was released in 1958 and starred Steve McQueen. The movie’s theme song “Beware the Blob” was scored by Burt Bacharach and recorded by The Five Blobs.  The movie is actually based on a true incident from Philadelphia in 1950.

 

On the night of September 26, 1950, two veteran Philadelphia police officers, Joe Keenan and John Collins, reported seeing a mysterious, glittering object fall from the sky. The officers tracked the object to a field near Vare Avenue and 26th Street. There, they discovered a pulsating, purple jelly-like mass approximately six feet in diameter and one foot thick at the center.

The substance was described as vibrating or moving on its own and emitting a faint mist. When the officers turned off their flashlights, the mass appeared to glow with its own internal light. Officer Collins attempted to touch the mass, but it immediately began to dissolve, leaving behind only a sticky, odorless residue on his hands. Within 30 minutes, the entire object had completely evaporated. Two other officers, James Cooper and Sergeant Joe Cook, arrived as backup and also witnessed the substance before it vanished. 

 

While there is not a horror film about giant okra pods invading the planet (Hollywood—are you listening?) there was a movie in 2016 titled "Okja" about a South Korean girl who forms a bond with her giant, genetically-modified pig. Close enough.