CABIN BOY

I don't want to go into this 1994 film release in TOO MUCH DETAIL, as I'm SURE you can all understand.  But the most important character in this sorry tale, CHOCKI THE SHARK GUY, does bear mentioning.  He's played by Russ Tamblyn, an actor we all know for his immortal turns in movies like War of the Gargantuas and The Haunting.

In a word:  POOR CHOCKI!  He roams an area of the ocean known to Naked Ape sailors as HELL'S BUCKET, making friends with whoever he comes across, and he's SO MISUNDERSTOOD.  The sailors seem terrified of him, even DISGUSTED, although he's QUITE FRIENDLY, even to the title character, who's an insufferable twerp.  He's CLEARLY an operative with a special task: the Shaved Monkeys call it  GATEKEEPING.  I use the human term for the usual reasons -- to prevent too many fish words slipping into human consciousness BEFORE THEY CAN HANDLE THEM.

In this movie, Chocki's only friend is Nathanial Mayweather -- the title character, played by Chris Elliot (pictured above, SNEERING AT A FISH).  AT LEAST EVERYONE THINKS THEY'RE FRIENDS.  Here's the secret message in this movie:  WE DON'T WANT CABIN BOY AROUND US UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.  When our grinning, gladhanding half-Shark operative, Chocki, saves the cabin boy of the Filthy Whore again and again from a watery grave -- it's because FISH WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH HIM.

Why do all the other guys on board the FH make it through the movie with him?  They're absolutely disgusted by Chocki, the product of an affair between a human sailor and a Shark recruiting operative.  (Tiger Shark, by the look of things.  A rubber Tiger Shark.)  They simply don't get the concept, let alone the beauty, of Piscatorial Love, making them worthless as recruits, even though they do retain their usefulness to us in other ways -- their life's work is to bring fish and humans together, AND WHAT COULD BE WRONG WITH THAT?  NOTHING.   That's why he lets them go on living.  They see Chocki, not only as unnatural, but as weird and unpredictable.  They interpret his actions in this story as a sign that he has a soft spot, as they put it, for their cabin boy.  NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH, OF COURSE.

I did come away from this movie wondering what was up with the Shark's tooth necklace Chocki wears in every scene.  Shaved Monkeys wear them as a protective charm against man-eating Sharks.  So...?

Consider the Smelt

As I avidly re-read Dave Bosanko's Fish of Michigan, one of my Squidmas presents this year, I was reminded of the plight of the beloved recruiting operative known to landscum as the Rainbow Smelt.  It says right on the Smelt page in this book that they have done nicely since newly entering certain areas of the Great Lakes Recruiting Zone.  (Needless to say, the humans think it was all THEIR idea.  Fools.)  But in truth, we are short many, many Smelt operatives right now in the North American Recruiting Zone overall.  IT'S NOT THAT THEY'RE ON VACATION OR ANYTHING.   It's just that so many Smelt have given their all to bring in more land recruits, usually by this method...

 

...that we are winding up short of breeding operatives.  It's always a tough question -- do we want more recruits, or more Smelt?  PERSONALLY, I WANT BOTH.  AND SO DO YOU. 

 

Of course, it's a known fact, even among humans, that "if you eat any more of those Smelt you'll turn into one," and a proportion of those recruited by a plate of fried Smelt will do just that.  Or, even more likely, they'll turn into several hundred or a thousand Smelt, not just one.  (It's one of the oddities of converting a 150-lb human into 150 lbs of fish.  But you might also get a 150-lb Tuna, or a 150-lb Wels, or several 20-lb Carp, or Cod only knows how many Mudskippers.)  And any of these outcomes is ALL GOOD. 

 

BUT HERE'S THE PROBLEM.  When the Smelt start replacing themselves in any numbers -- as with any fish WE WANT THEM TO THINK are in serious trouble -- the landscum think they're in control of that, the way they think they're in control of every other dang thing on the planet, and they start to relax about us. THEY STOP WORRYING ABOUT SMELT.  And the next step after that?  They go back to dipping for Smelt as if no lesson had been learned.  WHICH IT HASN'T.  As usual.  So:

 

>> They go right back to crapping in the water en masse.  And it's way beyond crapping in the water.  It's chemical runoff, pesticides, factory bilge, secretly-dumped drums of used uranium, cars and trucks, their own wives strangled and wrapped in chains, anything you can think of. 

 

>> They go right back to gillnetting us, spearfishing us, dynamiting us, poisoning us, longlining us, purse-netting us, freezer-shipping us, gutting us for our eggs, grinding us up for plantfood, and (most revolting and humiliating) farming us. 

 

>> They eat us by the boatload, WITH NOTHING IN IT FOR US. NOTHING!  They do get some payback in the form of an avalanche of 2-headed children who can't grow hair after generations of eating OUR POISONED SISTERS, but that's far from satisfying to US, especially now that they have ceased to leave such infants exposed to the elements and treat them as if they were EVERY BIT AS PRECIOUS as the unbroken specimens of their hairy species.

 

So we have to choose between being -- forcibly -- sold breaded and frozen to Mrs. Paul, or CHOOSING to be breaded and sold to Mrs. Paul ON OUR TERMS, to make this finally stop.

 

It's been a crazy world since they came along.  BUT WE'RE WORKING ON IT. 

 

WE WILL WIN THIS.

Truer Words Were Never Said...

...by a freshwater operative.

Truer Words Were Never Said...By A Shaved Monkey, That Is

"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope.  Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning:  we are all in the same boat."

 

(Jacques-Yves Cousteau)


Yeah, and we've got you totally surrounded,
landscum!

(Cliffie)