Word: blobbing
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...play Requiem for a Heavyweight was a taut, discerning glimpse into the shabby world of prizefighting. The plot dealt with an also-ran pug (Jack Palance) who is put out to pasture after in bone-bruising bouts, and finds it jarringly hard to adjust. He is a tough, disfigured blob of flesh who "could take a cannon ball in the face"; but he is also a gentle man, painfully aware of his ugliness. He is bounced around by some seedy managers and hangers-on ("Why is it," asks Trainer Ed Wynn, playing his first straight part on TV, "so many...
...viscous mass. To learn more, Hall experimented with a small captive squid in a light-colored wooden tub. When his hand approached it, the squid changed color rapidly, as squids do. Just before Hall grabbed for it, it turned dark-and Hall found himself squidless. He had grabbed a blob of ink-darkened water. The real squid, now light-colored, was safe at the far side...
After many similar experiments, Hall decided that the squid's standard operating procedure is to turn as dark-colored as possible just before a pursuing enemy catches up with it. Then it ejects as a decoy a blob of inky water about as big as itself. Simultaneously, it turns light-colored and takes evasive action, pretending to be something else. This system fooled Hall, and he believes that it ought to fool the squid's natural enemies...
...grey lounge suits snapped to attention. Apple-cheeked Dutchmen bobbed orange tassels on their caps. Prim Japanese in blue blazers stood stiffly with blue-belted Russians and a U.S. contingent that sported red, Russian-style fur hats over their snappy white duffel coats. Uniformed Turks were a solid blob of black...
Even in the simplest organisms, the protoplasm seems to have a goal; it knows what it wants to do. Starting with the single small blob in a fertilized egg cell, it inexorably grows to a special form-frog, pine tree or man. Inert, unorganized matter flows into the growing organism and is at once transformed by the touch of its life. It becomes alive; it creeps or flies or sings or loves. When matter is touched by man's protoplasm, the kind with the highest purpose, it becomes extremely complicated, with thoughts and aspirations that defy scientific pinpointing...