In a past life I worked as a research engineer for a company that was developing a miniature display technology based on scanning beams of red, green, and blue light directly to the retina (no lie! ).  As you move from red to blue across the visible color spectrum, the energy per photon rises, which typically makes it more of a challenge to engineer blue light emitters.  And so for decades micro-sized blue light sources were a sort of holy grail. Then, in the early-nineties a relatively unknown Japanese firm changed everything with a breakthrough that eventually enabled a plethora of new technologies including miniature displays and Blu-ray DVDs, as well as, most importantly, the practical use of light-emitting diodes for lighting.

I bring this up as another example of the mythical nature of the color blue. And I've had enough of it.

Blues music, for instance. Who decided that blue should be associated feeling down and out? Um, like the blue sky on a sunny day? (Not to mention that the vapid, cliche-ridden I-IV-V chord progressions that pass for most blues music today are an insult to all people who actually do suffer profoundly with the struggles of life.)

Microsoft loves blue. Look, there it is on the borders and scroll bars of your browser. Beware the blue screen of death!

And why do so many web sites use blue font  for hyperlinked text (hello PubliCola)? It's butt ugly. Facebook's pages consist of about 17 different shades of blue plus white. So elegant.

Blue sky.  Deep blue sea. Blue jeans. Tangled up in it's all over now, baby blue. Enough already. Blue is boring and soulless. No? Okay then, check out the photos below and you be the judge, though none of them tops this.

And remember, all it takes to alleviate the oppressive sterility of blue is to mix in a little red, as in the very last photo. Ah, purple.