Recruiting Fest 2005 In Review -- Again!?

Well, ladies, last time I heard anyone mention it (I think it was on "Faux News"), the hairy bipeds were estimating that the "fatalities" from Hurricane Katrina were between two and three hundred. That was many months ago now. Yesterday I heard, between the minute-to-minute updates on some guy they think might have killed JonBenet Ramsey, that the current figure is around 1700, and they are not nearly through looking under all the sodden wreckage.

I was surprised at how close this radio announcer came to the correct number. If only they knew to look at the esophagi of the "victims" they would probably get the EXACT number of our new recruits. But wait, they don't know that they are looking for anything but victims of a badly-managed natural disaster. Hee hee! There are many more unhappy drowners to be found, I daresay, but all our RECRUITS have now been accounted for, with a few to spare.

The recruiting numbers from the tsunami in the Far East were far more spectacular, of course, but that was not in my Command Zone. And I think we have to agree that the recruitment of so many New Orleanians at a swoop is sort of a giggle. If they only understood WHY people refused to evacuate as hurricane after hurricane swept near the city all these years. Little can they suspect that hundreds of people were DISAPPOINTED AS HELL when each one of them veered off at the last instant.

I think this should also serve as a valuable reminder that we do not have NEARLY AS MANY converts in Puerto Rico as we would like. You can tell because they all take cover like crazy when they hear a hurricane is coming.

A Salute To Bill And Pam Driver, Fish EMTs

Click here to learn the chilling details of an operative's near-suffocation and daring last-minute rescue. I'm sorry to report that this was NO ACCIDENT. The cruelty of small landscum boys towards our observing and recruiting operatives is the worst-kept secret in history.

But before the former Laetitia Saunders of Neptune, New Jersey could die of exhaustion and fear -- LOOK AT THE PANIC IN HER EYES -- along came Bill and Pam Driver, whose quick thinking saved Laetitia from a horrid fate.

I see nothing about whether the mayor gave these rescuers the key to the city, or possibly a nice cash reward. NEVER MIND, Bill and Pam -- there will be a very special reward waiting for you at a time and place in the future that I cannot disclose on the Internet.

I'll tell you this much. The place will be fairly damp. You'll like it!

Attack Of the Burning Slime

I think it's clear that our plans are advancing JUST FINE.

OPEN WATER

You know, this movie really gave me pause for thought. I was shocked to realize it was released three years ago already. Directed by Chris Kentis and starring David Travis and Blanchard Ryan, it is a study in the essential wrongness of the human species. Maybe that's not true for the human viewer, but for a fish, yikes!

For one thing, I realized for the first time while watching this, how radically out of touch humans have gotten with the oceans, only THE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE ON EARTH, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. They still love it, want to live next to it, splash in it, boat, swim, surf, boogie-board, do water aerobics, snorkel, scuba...but they still don't see that it's HOME, the place WHERE WE ALL COME FROM and the place WHERE WE ARE ALL HEADED. Maybe I lacked this insight up to now because I was born part fish and never doubted my destiny. But it explains a lot about why recruiting can be so difficult. And maybe I understand a little more about why the landscum are willing to live in deserts and on arid mountaintops and sun-scorched prairie. THEY REALLY THINK THEY ARE LAND ANIMALS.

This movie explains in graphic detail how alienated humans have become from their true home, the beach. These two people -- charmingly named Watkins and Kintner -- have to pay to travel to get to the ocean, then pay again to go out on the water, because they don't know their way around and have to hire a guide with a boat. Astounding! Why, back in the day humans knew the bottom of their stretch of ocean better than they knew the tree-lined valleys miles from their sleeping caves. Why? BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THEY SPENT MOST OF THEIR TIME, LIVING IN OUR WORLD, CATCHING US IN THEIR TEETH. Renewing their relationship with their true home daily, they never feared the water.

Look at them now. Watkins and Kintner go out there with a tour group, armed with all kinds of special gear to help them survive in an element that spawned them in the first place. Wetsuits, swimfins, snorkel masks, weight belts, seasick pills, knives, cameras, lights, and of course compressed air tanks with the attached breathing gadgets. Can't they just LOOK IN THE MIRROR and see their greasy, spindle-shaped, hairless bodies (except for the tufts of hair remaining for the use of clinging babies and pheromone dispersal), paddle-shaped hands and feet, blubbery undercoating to preserve heat in the water, on and on, and FIGURE IT OUT?

I guess they can't. Amazing.

I never realized, before seeing this film, what it must be like to be up at the surface all the time, too scared to dive and stay underwater and stay until your breath is gone, because you think you're a land animal. It means you're forced to ride the waves up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down and suddenly you're upchucking. I left the theater feeling seasick myself, and I stayed that way for a couple DAYS. This is what, for me, made Open Water a horror movie. It only renews my determination to save these wretched, greasy-haired, bad-smelling mammmals unhappy creatures from their life sentences up on dry land.

It also says a lot to me that the ad people tried to sell this as a killer Shark movie. The trailers said something about two helpless divers stranded in "shark-infested waters." "Infested"? THAT's nice. For your information, Shaved Monkeys, all the oceans of the world are SUPPLIED with Sharks to KEEP THINGS CLEANED UP. YOU certainly aren't doing it. For crying out loud, a boat comes out to a heavily-inhabited coral reef, drops off some garbage as usual, and leaves. THE SHARKS TAKE THE HINT. What are you complaining about?

And yet, I want you all to notice something NONE OF THE HUMANS SAW: The sharks waited politely, for hours or days, until they were sure the humans floating miles from shore were really intended as free meat. Watkins and Kintner got the message about their changed status immediately when they realized the boat had left without them, but they had no way to communicate this to the Sharks. So the Sharks waited and watched. Even after one of them took an experimental nip out of Kintner's leg, and he was bleeding into the water, the Sharks REFUSED to go into the feeding frenzy dictated by every Shark movie since time out of mind. They still weren't sure. THIS IS HOW SHARKS REALLY BEHAVE, even the supposedly ferocious Blacktips featured in this movie. I also want to point out that these were Sharks of the average size found in most waters since Jaws set off the worldwide slaughter of these lovely creatures. No fifty-footers here; just a well-mannered group of Blacktips three feet or less in length.

Maybe that's why so many humans left this movie disappointed. They wanted to see someone flailing in the bloody foam, surrounded by dozens of circling fins, in the very first scene. SORRY, SUCKERS. I see it as a blow struck against Shark defamation, but WILL ANYONE GET THE POINT?

I need to add, before we part for today, that the photo above was appropriated from a site called http://www.wetasschronicles.com/. I avoid help a bitter pang of regret that I didn't think of the name first. That's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.

Tree Springs Leak In Woman's Backyard

I think we all know what this means. Yes! The Flooding Of America is beginning in earnest! For those of you who are not yet fully transformed into aquatic species, HAVE NO FEAR: the change will happen when it needs to happen.

Everybody else on our side should start thinking about what real estate they want to take over. There will be LOTS FOR EVERYONE.

Oh, the Naked Apes? I suggest they take advantage of those end-of-summer sales and buy swimfins for the whole family.

A Visit To Planet Catfish

OK, OK, you ladies KNOW I am biased in favor of my own species, Clarias batrachis. I have tried, really tried, to keep it in check. But I can grit my pharyngeal teeth no longer: it is National Catfish Month and high time you all hopped into your watertight spacecraft for a visit to Planet Catfish! Be sure to try their surf 'n' turf combo, served nightly by waitresses on rollerskates and featuring (for this special month only) DOUBLE CHILI CHEESE FRIES at no additional cost!

I kid, I kid. It's just a really cool website devoted to all that is scuted, bottom-feeding and moustachioed in the piscatorial world. Great for your newer operatives who are still largely human in conformation but who want happy, well-fed Catfish near you at home or in the office. Enjoy.

Image of the day!

Click here!

A Few Reality Checks

CLIFFIE’S NOTES ON AGENT ELINOR: Same thing again, girls. Over and over I hear you misinterpreting the actions of the amphibious revolutionary role model Elinor Caskey in the Sacred Writings of the Great Scribe Michael McDowell. Now, I know the "Blackwater books" (The Flood, The Levee, The House, The War, The Fortune, and Rain) add up to a long and fairly complex saga. But all the complexity lies in the landscum part of the story. If you read through you’ll see that everything Elinor does is totally consistent, geared towards creating a safe haven and power platform for her descendants. On the Planet of the Apes there is no stouter fortress than unlimited cash. Please note that rather than simply amassing a fortune and spreading her progeny on the earth, she does all she can to keep her daughters in the water. With mixed results, of course. You know how kids are. Like The Little Mermaid, she essentially sacrifices her aquatic life for the love of her life. But in sharp contrast to the hapless Little Mermaid, Elinor ends up happy, rich, and powerful, with more descendants in the river than out of it. She overcomes all obstacles and humiliates her enemies. Can you top that?

CLIFFIE’S NOTES ON THE LADIES OF INNSMOUTH: In his fine teaching stories "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" and "Dagon," the Great Scribe Lovecraft wrote only what he was privy to as a male, and a largely human male at that. Come on, do you think the town fathers of Innsmouth just took the money from the King Of The Fish People and announced to all the unmarried women that they were going to have to marry the Benthics whether they liked it or not? Don’t you think if it had gone down that way, the citiizens of the deep would have arrived onshore to encounter a cordon of armed women and a load of buckshot in the face rather than a wet welcome?

Come on, THINK ABOUT IT. The Elder Gods saw the situation and approached the women years before the town fathers knew anything was going on. Thery knew which side of their bread was buttered, all right. Half of these women or more would have been willing converts already, easily identified by certain insignia WHICH WE ARE STILL KEEPING SECRET, LADIES. They advised the Rulers of the Deep about the most effective methods of bringing the men in on the plan. At this point the women and their aquatic husbands were quickly freed to act on many plans they’d been working on for YEARS. I happen to know that my own great-great-great grandmother had been waiting half her life to finally pair off with the Benthic she’d been in love with since she was a teenager. I wish I could have known her thoughts as she cringed before her own naked-ape father and husband, doing her best to convince them that she was only a naïve landlubber girl and apalled at the whole setup – making this sacrifice only to help the family finances. Ha!

Well, that’s enough brain strain for one newsletter.

A Tribute To The Lake Champlain Monster

CLICK HERE to view a very fine 'sister' site, devoted to the study (and tie-in memorabilia sales) of Champ, the Lake Champlain monster. I especially want you all to view, AND PURCHASE, some of this fine Champ gear. I am soon going to own one of just about everything on the sales page of this site. I mean dear Cod, they've solved all my Squidmas shopping problems in one fell swoop!

There is not nearly enough attention paid to the shy and retiring Lake Monsters which are (never quite) found around the world. The decline has become even more serious with the recent spate of "let's prove Nessie doesn't really exist" documentaries.

Really, I never.

I've explained elsewhere on this site why Nessie can never be found using clumsy sonar and the other feeble tools of landscum science. Why don't they talk to ME before committing this idiocy to film?

Ah, yes...They don't know I exist. Onwards.

I did want to respond, while I'm thinking about it, to one of the more recent scientific "proofs" that there is no Nessie. This is based on a finicking analysis of the infamous "surgeon's photo," you know the one I mean. I can no longer remember which debunker announced in which TV special -- I see so many of the damned things, you wouldn't believe it -- that the Nessie shown in that photo could not be more than a couple of feet long. Hence the whole thing is a hoax, yattata yattata yattata. As usual, they overlook the head-slappingly obvious:

TEACUP PLESIOSAURS.

Do I have to explain EVERYTHING to these blame fool idiots?

Another Piscatorial Love Shirt!

Click here to behold the newest Piscatorial Love t-shirt, declaring your allegiance to the Deep Ones!

Quiz Time!

Click here to take a goofy quiz celebrating August, National Catfish Month. This is brought to you by the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga, and you'll know at a glance that it was designed by humans, for humans. As if a preference for burritos over sushi could have anything to do with the type of Catfish Dagon chooses to make out of your useless monkey bod! He might, of course, choose to make you into a Herring, a Squid or an Elephant Seal. As a landscum lawyer might put it: your results may vary.

Hey, I thought it was kinda cute. And I feel certain a few kids will take this online quiz and discover that it gives them...pause. Yes, one or two will say; Yes, what kind of Catfish am I?