Saturday, November 24, 2012

Recruiting Tip Of The Year



While I am normally ALL IN FAVOR of mass recruitment festivals like those ushered in by Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami that engulfed Indonesia, it looks as if this recruitment method may be GOING UNDER FOR THE THIRD TIME AT LAST, at least here in the North American Conspiracy Zone.

The photocopied newsprint above shows a corner of the good-sized flood of February 26th, 1972, a perfect example of the type of festivities I am talking about.  There have been at least 6 non-waterproof books about what the landscum call the Buffalo Creek Disaster, and MORE THAN DOUBLE THE NUMBER of waterproof publications intended only for our operatives.  I just got through reading two of the ones written by Shaved Monkeys, one by a reporter from the Detroit Free Press  and another by the pro bono attorney who represented those WE DID NOT MANAGE TO RECRUIT as the dam was breaking. 

(Respectively, for those who want to read them:  they are Death At Buffalo Creek  by Tom Nugent, Norton, 1973, ISBN 978-0393054828, and The Buffalo Creek Disaster by Gerald Stern, Random House, 1977, ISBN 978-0075445685.) (The titles intended only for our operatives cannot, of course, be posted on the Internet.)(And they do not have International Standard Book Numbers.)

The books do not overtly discuss, but PRETTY WELL EXPLAIN ANYWAY, why we have been moving away from this type of recruiting for some time:

1)  Humans are just not as likely as they used to be to take shocking events as a matter of course.  If someone in the USA gets killed, for any reason, they start DEMANDING ANSWERS and saying things like "THIS SHOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED."  Worst of all, they make efforts to PREVENT RECRUITMENT EVENTS FROM HAPPENING.  They build seawalls.  They build levees.  They set up alarm sirens, all kinds of innovations like that TO THWART US.  In this case, in a time and place where there was ALMOST NOTHING IN PLACE to protect the landscum from joining up in the water forever, THEY MANAGED TO AVOID US ANYWAY with an informal system of running around waking people up and warning them that the dam was breaking.  The mining company, who appeared to be CLEARLY ON OUR SIDE IN THIS when they told the police to lay off raising the alarm and just go back to bed, still had guys in earth-moving machines at the dam at the moment it collapsed, trying to shore it up.  People who had been warned, in most cases, HEADED FOR THE HILLS instead of waiting to board Dagon's Welcome Wagon.

2)  The response by Naked Ape government officials, union activists and other lawmakers made their position clear.  They wanted NO REPEAT of this sort of event, and NO MORE Shaved Monkeys entering the water for good.

3)  The recruitment total was only 125!  It would have been many more without all the Paul Revere activity by bellering landscum in pickup trucks.  Of course, naming no names, two of those recruited have proved SO EXCEPTIONALLY HELPFUL TO OUR CAUSE that the day's work was well worth it.  But still.

4)  I think the last couple of paragraphs in Nugent's book captured the essence of the final problem pretty effectively, a problem that spans the deep water and the dry land:  NAKED APE TRAUMA which drives them AWAY FROM, not TOWARD, the sea.  Although Nugent makes much of the fatalistic, danger-eating, fundamentalist leanings of this group of coal miners, these people later got together and SUED THE PANTS OFF the mining company that caused the flood.  The book started and ended with word portraits of a very tough customer indeed: Wayne Brady Hatfield, six feet five,  and a direct descendent of "Devil" Anse Hatfield of the legendary shooting war between two landscum families, the other family being named McCoy.  He could break most other people in two with one hand.  By the end of the book THIS GUY was so afraid of water that he went all to pieces in a light rain.  You think a man like that -- one who, ironically, would REALLY THRIVE as a Grouper or maybe a Marlin -- is ever going to decide it's "safe to get back in the water"?   We want to draw them into the sea like Lemmings, not scatter them away from us like bowling pins.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Quote Of The Day

 
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"...People are like maggots, small, blind, worthless fish bait."
 
(David Smith, interpreting the works of the Marquis De Sade in Witness, David Smith with Carol Ann Lee, copyrighted to the authors 2011, Mainstream Publishing Co, Edinburgh, page 215.)
 
I have to like THAT, even if it does come from a sex-fixated dunce like the Marquis.  It proves no Shaved Monkey is TOTALLY stupid.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

They Clean Missed This Security Leak, Ladies...



...And I found it in the goofiest place.  No wonder nobody up on dry land has given it the attention it deserves.  I consider it SO SAFE that I feel free to POST IT ON THE INTERNET.

I was reading a crazy book called Fire From Heaven by Michael Harrison, which is about your favorite subject and mine, SPONTANEOUS HUMAN COMBUSTION. (Skoob Books, London, 1976, revised and updated 1990; ISBN 1-871438-65-9.)  And check out the groovy cover art:



...So anyway, it says about halfway through the book, on page 179, that a bunch of incarcerated Shaved Monkeys in Dannemorra Prison came down with botulism after eating some canned Salmon.  After incorrectly stating that the Salmon was undercooked -- the toxin grows in badly-processed canned goods -- the prison doc noticed that the affected prisoners developed some bizarre talents, if you call being unable to throw a ball of paper a "talent."  The prisoners appeared to have become magnetically charged in such a way as to be able to move metal without touching it, screw up compass readings, and so on.  HOW IT AFFECTED PAPER WAS NOT AT ALL CLEAR but after one of the affected men held a piece of paper, it, too, could be used to screw up a compass reading.  This is also apparently why the paper stuck to their hands when they tried to throw it.  As they recovered from their Salmon dinners, they gradually lost the ability.

Item:  The author attributes this effect entirely to the botulism, not the operatives consumed by the prisoners.

Item:  Some of the prisoners retained the ability after the others "recovered."  Why?  The DNA transfer took and they were WELL ON THEIR WAY to becoming Salmon themselves.  They did need to learn to hide their new abilities.  IT CAN BE DONE WITH PRACTICE.

Item:  Every single one of the new operatives successfully escaped down the drains when the time came.  NOBODY SUSPECTED A THING as their landscum bodies were left behind on their bunks.

Item:  None of this has ANYTHING TO DO with spontaneous human combustion.  I cannot figure why he included it in the book, but at another point in the text he accuses the melted dashboard saints in a car in nearby Pontiac, MI of having something to do with the fiery death of GM employee Billy Peterson.

Item:  This kind of lateral thinking and wild conclusion-jumping may have a little something to do with why nobody takes this author very seriously.

Item:  If spontaneous human combustion were a lot more common, you and I could stop working so hard at turning all the landscum into fish.  Yeah, I know; woulda, coulda, shoulda.

If you need a laugh, you might want to read this one.

Sunday, November 11, 2012

Let's Clear Something Up Right Now...



I've said it before to you new recruits, and it appears the time has come to SAY IT AGAIN.  Lothrop Withington, Jr. was ONLY OUR PATSY when it came to the invention of that late-1930s college fad for Goldfsh swallowing, later done competitively and called Goldfish Derbies.  I recently whipped up an entry on this blog referring to the entry in Felton & Fowler's Famous Americans You never Knew Existed,  honoring the Guppy who gave her all for the Cause.  Well, I continued reading and THERE IT WAS...yet another reference to good old Withy who continues to take credit for the creation of one of the most daring and radical recruitment methods EVER used in the North American Conspiracy Zone.

What I really couldn't believe was the version of the story contained in this compelling volume.  I hold nothing against Bruce Felton and Mark Fowler; it is one of the many tragedies of the human condition that they just can't tell the truth from a lie.

But come on, I would have known this was nonsense even if I'd first read this as a fully-human travel agent.  Withy says here that he was introduced to the swallowing of Goldfish when he was on vacation in Hawaii as a child.  He says one of the natives was catching Goldfish down on the beach and eating them alive.

HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A SALTWATER GOLDFISH?

PEOPLE OF THE STURGEON




OK, I just finished this book; it's a large, hardcover photo essay on the re-establishment of the Sturgeons of Lake Winnebago AND THE SHAVED MONKEYS WHO THINK THEY MADE IT ALL HAPPEN.  The book was written by Kathleen Kline; it was published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2009.  The International Standard Book Number is 978-0870204319.

This reminds me of The Best of LIFE because of the big, loud pictures that jerk the reader back and forth between beauty, humor and horror WITHOUT ANY WARNING.  On one page there's an operative swimming peacefully; on the next you might see another operative hanging gutted over the deck of a fishing boat, or maybe a decorative display of the spears used to prong us to death.  Then they change over to a photo of a landscum Sturgeon Cotillion by the water's edge and you think ah, now we're getting to the good part about how much they reespect our kind -- but oh, no.  MORE DEAD STURGEONS WHEN YOU TURN THE PAGE.

Of course, in a general sense, this sort of interchange between the Naked Apes and our operatives is necessary and a good thing.  But things have come to a pretty pass when the only people who can see the horror in our eyes is some freakazoid from PETA.

Normally I am ALL IN FAVOR of fish drawing humans into the water.  But Sturgeons are really not that interested in recruiting, as fish go. They have 'other fish to fry,' to use a human colloquialism.   CAN'T THE LANDSCUM JUST RESPECT THAT AND LEAVE THEM ALONE?  Oh, no, they can't.  Until they feel the first stirrings of Piscatorial Love, they just see them as SO MUCH SANDWICH FILLING. 

Or in the case of Sturgeon, they're just so much CAVIAR.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Says Here...

 



...that the first American to take out a life insurance policy on a Guppy was Stan Mazanek, a student at the University of Arizona.  It's right on page 157 of Felton & Fowler's Famous Americans You Never Knew Existed.  That's by Scarborough Books, a division of Stein and Day, New York, published in paperback in 1981.

What makes me happy about this entry in the book is that when the Guppy operative died, Mazanek settled successfully with the insurance company for $650.  This is not only the first life insurance policy taken out in the name of Piscatorial Love; it is also the first time one of our operatives managed to leave money to the landscum without having to first transform into the likeness of a human being or -- ick! --  have children with one of them.  Breakthrough after breakthrough!

What makes me unhappy is that Felton and Fowler did not see fit to include the operative's name in their reference guide.  Guppy names are not pronouncable in the human mouth -- they lack the requisite pharyngeal teeth -- but when she talked to her recruit, the operative in question called herself Solliya.

Saturday, November 03, 2012

PETA Intervenes In Sea Bass Disaster

 


Irvine, California:  A truckload of Sea Bass operatives, being transported live to a recuitment center, I mean restaurant, overturned on a freeway in October of this year.  There were no survivors. 

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, rather unexpectedly, sprang into action.  They demanded a memorial sign at the site of the crash, the kind many humans erect at the sites of human freeway deaths.  They explain that there was great piscatorial suffering involved.

Well, truer words were never spoken -- a minute feels incredibly long when you can't breathe and your lidless eyes are grubbing against hot asphalt -- but IS SUFFERING REALLY THE POINT HERE?  Well, yes, if you belong to PETA. 

But PETA TAKE NOTE:  We give our lives GLADLY for the glorious cause of bringing humans and fish together.  One day, when the last of you bad-smelling two-leggers has entered the sea, to dwell with us in wonder and glory forever, we fish will STAND DOWN.  Maybe then we will be free to worry about our poor, sweet feelings and our need for personal recognition in the form of death memorials and la de da. 

Wait -- if we did that, we'd be turning human.  Never mind!