Today's Incredible Image

It's not just the image; it's the timing of the thing arriving in my mailbox. I have felt EXACTLY like this all week.

Quick Tip For You New Recruits

OK, ladies, here's a way to get a fin up on the unrecruited: PHONY MERMAID SPOTTING. No landscum knows how to do this properly. WE SEE TO THAT. This blog entry is specially fixed so that any recruit, no matter how raw, can read it and know exactly how it's done. Conversely, anyone still fully Homo sap who reads this will come away as clueless as before. Neat, eh?

OK, now observe the putative Mermaid in the image above.

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WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?

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>> First off, she's cross-eyed. Have you EVER seen a Mermaid with the merest hint of a design flaw, let alone a detectable vision impairment?

>> She even appears to be squinting. No real Mermaid would ever need to squint. She doesn't NEED to get a good look to lock on a target and draw him hopelessly into the sea. To say otherwise would be to suggest that a bowl of potato salad needs to see the circling Blowflies in order to bring them home to glory.

>> Are those hands designed for swimming? Hello? Her fingers are all separate, for corn sakes -- NO WEBBING.

>> The biggest giveaway, though, is the clear outline of knees, thighs and even a humanlike Forbidden Zone built right into the tail section. HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A FISH WITH KNEES? (I don't count the kneelike structures possessed by Blennies. Blennies make a point of being eccentric.)

>> The artist did get some things right. The shoulders and neck are strong enough to work properly in the water. The hair is deployed strategically over one eye and one shoulder in the manner that, for reasons known only to the Mermaids themselves, DRIVES MEN WILD. The coloring is a VERY lifelike blend of natural and startling -- just like the real thing. Now how did the artist know THAT?

SO HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS. Keep your eyes peeled (until the eyelids stop working of course -- that's years away yet) for Mermaid illustrations that are A LITTLE TOO ACCURATE. Some of those will have been produced by our own operatives. A certain percentage of the others will have come from the pens and brushes of landscum artists who JUST GUESSED LUCKY. A few will reveal humans who have SEEN TOO MUCH and have chosen to LEAK THE INFORMATION. Don't try to guess which is which; report ALL of them to us at HQ and WE will do the inspection.

HERE'S THE FUN PART! If you detect a security leak, you get to KILL and EAT the artist. See, I knew that would put a smile on your face.

Aquatic Operative Of The Year

I'm not allowed to use the name on the Internet, BUT I THINK YOU ALL KNOW THE FACE. This photo is THE CLEAREST PROOF I CAN THINK OF -- in case you doubted -- that he is one of the greatest aquatic operatives we've ever had. Just look at that. Even months after his death HE GOES RIGHT ON WORKING to bring more humans into the sea. Before him, the rest of us are just amateurs. To call him OPERATIVE OF THE YEAR is to damn him with faint praise.

He will live forever in the Roiling Intestine Of Dagon, and in all of our two-chambered hearts.

There will never be another one like him.

Oh, Just One More "I, Vampire" Quote

"...But me? I solved the unified-field mystery alone in that unheated workshop. And why not? After all, I was standing on the shoulders of giants! Giant squids, to be sure, but giants all the same."

(Sterling O'Blivion in I, Vampire)

I Feel Terrible!

Due to duties unrelated to the cause of world conquest by the fish and our co-combatants, I have managed to miss both ESCARGOT DAY (May 24th) and the day the Slugs return from Capistrano (May 28th). I feel TERRIBLE. And not just because of the missed holidays. I'll spare you the details of the WEEK I'VE HAD.

I hope everyone had a good time.

I, VAMPIRE

This book is by Jody Scott, copyright 1984, Ace Science Fiction Books, New York, NY.

WELL, THIS ONE IS CERTAINLY DIFFERENT. This is a tale of INTERSPECIES ROMANCE between an intelligent alien being described as a "bloated porpoise," disguised as a human, and a vampire who has been alive since medieval times, who is currently working as a dance instructor in a large city.

The book is very light on the science, although it ecompasses issues like time travel and infiltrating another planet by placing one’s consciousness into a locally-friendly body. It covers a lot of human social issues, too – wait, now that I think about it, the difficulties of physical immortality and misconceptions about vampirism AREN’T human social issues, are they?

BUT INTERSPECIES ROMANCE SURE IS – THEY JUST DON’T KNOW IT YET. I don’t count a few half-insiders like the Great Scribe Lovecraft, and you can easily see from what he wrote that he was really struggling with some identity issues. Seriously, though, WHAT’S SO HORRIFYING ABOUT TURNING INTO A FISH? ...But I stray from my point.

Interestingly, the vampire main character in this story isn’t struggling AT ALL, at least not with the issues that plague most humans. And she has a lot of them, like being bisexual, having a secret life she needs to conceal at all costs, and having had many losses and disappointments in her long, long life – "I’ve been shattered so many times I feel like an experimental windshield," she says at one point.

And she struggles HARDLY AT ALL with the fact that her current romance is with A FISH. She soon gets used to the idea and NEVER LOOKS BACK. There is an object lesson in here for all of us, I think.

THIS IS GREAT READING FOR OPERATIVES AND RECRUITS ALIKE. It certainly validates the concerns of those who are still hesitating to commit, who are grieving their hairy monkey lives, AND those who have already TAKEN THE PLUNGE. But it does so in a lighthearted, upbeat way LOVECRAFT NEVER DREAMED OF.

This is one of the rare books SO GOOD that I am going to have it printed up in a waterproof edition, so that everyone who can still read can enjoy it.