Friday, July 27, 2018

Some Great Fish News This Week



All kinds of fish in the news lately!

>> 20-foot Great White Shark (name withheld for privacy purposes) filmed with Naked Ape frogmen!

>> Newly-discovered fossil species of sharklike fish!

>> Atlantic Gyre May Be Defeatable Using Waxworm Larvae!

>> Tapwater in Flint, Michigan:  Still Poisonous

>> Tapwater in Kalamazoo, Michigan:  Newly Thought To Be Poisonous

AND THIS JUST IN:



Well, One Of Our Secrets Is Out...



It appears that the featherless bipeds have come to realize that our lovely blue-green algae sisters have GONE AIRBORNE to meet and recruit them in A WHOLE NEW WAY.  Oh, the scare talk is a delight: 

>> Unspecified, debilitating, even fatal illnesses caused by flying blue-green algae!

>> ALS and Alzheimer's caused by airborne algal bloom menace!

>> Keep your dogs and cats away from scummy water, whether red, green or blue!

>> Workers wearing hazmat suits and gas masks to avert the terror from the skies!

>> You, too, may have inhaled toxic algae!  BE AFRAID!

I haven't had this much fun in YEARS.

Tuesday, July 03, 2018

DROWNING TOWERS



I just finished reading this one (ISBN 978-0380786015), and I have to say I WAS A LITTLE PUZZLED AT FIRST.   I expected this to be an epic of PISCATORIAL LOVE, like T.J. Bass's The Godwhale or maybe Swim To Me by Betsy Carter.  I didn't expect what I got -- a multi-generational family saga of Naked Apes TRYING TO AVOID THE WATER AT ALL COSTS.

It's a funny kind of novel.  It's what they call a FRAME story, about an actor travelling out to the archaeological "dig" at one of the towers mentioned in the title. You get to it by boat and you can walk around in this high-rise, at least the parts that are still above sea level, because the icecaps have melted and Australia is consequently a lot smaller than it used to be.  This complex, built by the ocean, has been inundated and long since abandoned.  One of the apartments has been made into a kind of museum.  The archaeologist in the boat has written a novel about a man who lived in this apartment while the water was still rising, and the actor is reading her story to see if he can work it up into a stage play.  (Typical for frame stories, we spend almost the entire book in the novel written by the archaeologist.)

And what are the people in this story doing?  By current standards -- fish AND human -- they have it totally bass-ackwards.  Somehow, it's all been swapped around in this book so that the jobless poor are herded into seaside high-rises with not enough living space, and not enough of anything else, either.  Everything is wearing out.  Food is scarce.  There are no extras of any kind.  Everything and everyone is grubby and rank-smelling.  If you want something repaired, you'd better do it yourself or go without.  Richer people live up on the highest ground they can, away from the damp.

When I look at the high-rises by the ocean NOW, with their sunken marble bathtubs, wall-sized TV sets, "smart" refrigerators, air conditioning, microwave ovens, waterbeds, gilded bannisters, built-in shelving, security systems, marinas, cabanas and full wet bars -- even swimming pools down by the beach  -- ALL REPORTED BY OUR OPERATIVES WATCHING IT UNFOLD FROM THEIR WALL-SIZED AQUARIUM TANKS -- well, if I still had hands I would be scratching my head in puzzlement.  

The author is clearly putting an equals sign between GETTING WET and THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT.  Which is true of course, but not the way HE means.  The few times anyone gets wet in this story, it pretty much means they're DESPERATE and HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE, and the price they pay is HORRIFIC.  They come up to the surface gagging, if not vomiting, and far, far dirtier than they were when they went in the drink.  The author makes clear this is traumatic, not freeing.  

Fish?  DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH.  There isn't a fish to be seen once in the whole story.  Even in the nostalgic past, when old people look back and remember going to the beach for fun, there's not a fish anywhere in the scenario.  

The author makes clear that the water is filthy and contaminated because of the HUMANS, art least.  But it seems not to have occurred to anyone that the water might be cleaner farther out from the shore, or that there might be resources available to them in the water even though dry land is pretty much SHOT.

Nobody even seems to consider turning into a fish.

Tragic.  Truly tragic!

When The Police Are Gone, This Will Stop Happening...

...Says here that an Altoona, Florida Naked Ape called 911 because her 15-year-old daughter had been treed by Alligators.  Sure enough, the police arrived to find the recruit's RESOLVE WEAKENING in the face of the IRRESISTABLE APPEAL of being converted from a hideous featherless biped to ONE OF US.  Most of the congregation moved aside -- that's the correct English collective noun for Alligators; it slays me -- in deference to their leader, who was promptly SHOT AND KILLED with an AR-15.

It's events like this that make me follow the DISSOLUTION OF THEIR LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCIES with great interest. 

I couldn't help but notice the last line in the article, though:

"A local marine biologist was summoned to evaluate the cause of death."

Was it really not clear to them?  I hope this means they feel even shakier about dealing with us than I thought.  AND THAT'S PRETTY SHAKY.

I see a few positives in this deplorable, nay, REVOLTING event:

>> Nobody commented on the girl's CHANGED ATTITUDE towards our operatives as a result of this contact.  The Shaved Monkeys can ASSUME what they are going to assume.  We, on the other hand, KNOW.  I HAVE THE REPORT RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

>> Almost all our operatives got away alive.

>> We will meet her again.  We always do.

>> Everyone appears to have forgotten one salient fact:




ALLIGATORS CLIMB TREES ALL THE TIME.