Cliffie's Notes

Another Reason You Should Love Your Goldfish

2009-12-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

Only those in the Deep South are unlikely to know this, but I want to remind ALL MY READERS that the Goldfish is not only beautiful, fascinating, adaptable, and a FEARLESS, SELF-SACRIFICING SPY FOR OUR CAUSE. She is also virtually IMMUNE TO THE RIGORS OF WINTER. One recruit after another has successfully raised these little beauties in outdoor ponds YEAR AFTER YEAR with no sign of discontent or frostbite. In fact, the Goldfish prefers to be out in the world where she can deepen her stunning colors and preen in the bright sun. Many, many of their legions pine away in shady, cramped indoor bowls for the sake of spying on Naked Apes and recruiting their stucky-fingered offspring, but we want EVERYONE, yes, even the Blue Herons and Snowy Egrets to be recuited -- so let us out in the ponds too! Let us out into the lakes where we can capture the attention of fly fishermen and waders. Let us into the streams where we can distract you from the Rainbow Trout and other operatives who may need protection from the bipeds until they can complete OTHER MISSIONS. Let us into the Great Lakes so we can grow large enough to EAT THE DREADED 40-FOOT ASIAN CARP -- our beloved cousins.

YOU CANNOT TAKE YOUR EYES OFF A GOLDFISH.

AND THE GOLDFISH WILL NEVER TAKE THEIR EYES OFF YOU.

AVATAR

2009-12-31T17:05:00.000-08:00

WOW. What a great movie this is. Just ignore the trifling criticisms you've been hearing, about stock characters and flat acting. (Most of the story's animated, facryinoutloud. Who acts in a cartoon?) Ignore the fact that they stole music from The Perfect Storm (quite appropriately, if you ask me) and sound effects from Jurassic Park. Just go see it, RIGHT NOW. LET ME TELL YOU WHY:

>> The core of the story is a subject dear to EVERY TWO-CHAMBERED HEART: interspecies romance.

>> The forests of planet Pandora are CRAWLING WITH OCEAN LIFE. Sea Lilies! Feather-Duster Worms! Jellyfish! Terrifying Hammerheads! Something new everywhere you look! When I left the theater and got on the road for home, I could hardly fail to notice the contrast between that lush, green, growing place lit by luminous plants and this cold, dead, concrete-paved one, lit by Christmas lights. If my eyes could still produce tears, they would have, all the way home to my tank.

>> One of my favorite touches is the bioluminenscence that sputters to life wherever someone steps in the forest, and becomes subtly omnipresent when the sun sets. Just like home!

>> The LIPs (or Local Indigenous Personnel) on Pandora are blue-skinned, marked with subtle stripes and spots, very long hair and great luminous eyes -- strongly reminiscent of a certain model of operative that has since been discontinued because their alluring presence proved a little too overwhelming for the Naked Apes to handle. And it is one of these that causes a Shaved Monkey to fall in love with her, GO OVER THE WALL and take up arms against his own species. Nuff said?

>> The message of this story is ENTIRELY POSITIVE: Even the seemingly invincible Shaved Monkeys have their tactical weaknesses, AND WE WILL PREVAIL. I also like the implied message that we don't need to recruit them all, and make them all into versions of US, to get there. We will prevail ANYWAY.

WE WILL.

LIVES OF THE MONSTER DOGS

2010-01-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

OK, OK, this book is just about Dogs -- nothing to do with US.

OR IS IT? This story is all about the first meeting between two species, one of whom revolted against its slavemongering creators, hauled stakes and started over in New York City. They're Dogs considerably modified to stand on two legs, speak German, and wage war for the hairless bipeds who created them. Except they proved to be less biddable than their creators expected -- THAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU'RE CRUEL TO THEM, YOU IDJITS. So the slaveholders went bye-bye and behold, the Monster Dogs became the new toasts of The Big Apple.

And get a load of this quote from page 89:

"The soul is very like a fish..."

OK, I agree THIS IS NOTHING LIKE OUR OWN TECHNIQUE. We are FAR more subtle and are living among them secretly while actively making the hairless bipeds into Fish -- far kinder than they deserve, I think sometimes. But this story, perhaps inevitably, skids into the territory of INTERSPECIES ROMANCE, and that is a subject of great concern to us all.

It's also a really good, absorbing read. It has some thought-provoking things to say about being human, non-human, and -- as many uf us, me for instance, are experiencing now -- SOMETHING IN BETWEEN THE TWO.

I recommend it. This is not an order, but I really recommend it.

Merry Squidmas!

2009-12-25T07:03:00.000-08:00

It's beginning to look a lot like fish-men everywhere I go;

From the minute I got to town and started to look around

I thought these ill-bred people's gillslits showed.

I'mbeginning to hear a lot of fish-men right outside my door;

As I try to escape in fright to the moonlit Innsmouth night,

I can hear some more.

They speak in gutteral croaks

And to hear them provokes

A profound desire to flee;

Their eyes never blink, and quite frankly they stink

Like a carcass washed up from the sea!

I wishI'd paid attention to that crazy, drunken man!

He tried to warn me about old Marsh's Deep One clan!

It's beginning to look a lot like fish-men everywhere I go;

They can dynamite Devil Reef, but that'll bring no relief

Y'ha N'thlei is deeper than they know!

I'll continue to see a lot of fish-men, that I guarantee;

For the fish-man I really fear is the one that's in the mirror --

And he looks like me!

He looks just like me!

-- piscatorial lyrics by the thrice-exalted Andrew Leman

Now THAT's What I call Piscatorial Love...

2009-11-20T14:29:00.000-08:00

...At its grittiest and least family-friendly.

~

I just wanted to say, also, that I heard someone on NPR say the other day that Asian Carp (pictured above in the act of recruiting a Naked Ape) are a threat to the American Way of Life because they have invaded the Great Lakes and get to be FORTY FEET LONG.

~

I WISH!

Maldives Cabinet Meets Underwater To Discuss Rising Sea Levels

2009-10-20T11:38:00.000-07:00

All I can say is, ROCK ON!

Coppery Cephalopod Cake!!! Take A Look!

2009-10-12T07:10:00.001-07:00

Click here, and scroll down just a bit to see the Copper Cephalopod Cake! C'est magnifique!

It's something like this that makes me realize that humans really are worth saving!

What The..?

2009-10-08T07:35:00.000-07:00

This turned up on Google. The search that brought it up was "Fish In A Squirrel Suit."

On days like this, I don't know. I just don't know.

"ONE-GILLED GIRL"

2009-10-06T11:59:00.000-07:00

"One-Gilled Girl" by Darkest Of The Hillside Thickets

One-gilled girl
One-gilled girl
One, one, one
She's my one-gilled girl

One-gilled girl
Out beyond the bay of Innsmouth
Caught in a fisherman's net
She came and rescued me
And set my heart free

Though she's a hybrid from above
We fell in love
She's a pale shade of green
She's only got one gill

One-gilled girl
One-gilled girl
One, one, one
She's my one-gilled girl
One-gilled girl

ExplicatiNG this lyric in any detail would be JUST SILLY. I consider this to be a message of hope for all those operatives going through the "awkward phase" of transformation from a human into a fish. Believe me, with every hair that falls and every scale that pokes through to take its place -- you are MORE beautiful, MORE alluring, MORE irresistable. THANKS, DOTHS, FOR REMINDING US ALL OF THAT.

Awesome Music Download For Recruiting Operatives!

2009-09-29T17:04:00.000-07:00

Click here!

THIS SIMIAN WORLD

2009-09-10T11:22:00.000-07:00

This is simply ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS BY A HUMAN I HAVE EVER READ.

Clarence Day, better known for Life With Father, wrote this one in the 1920s; it has recently been re-issued by 1st World Library (2004). I of course have one of the old 1924 hardcovers, illustrated by the author.

My scanner got wet inside; otherwise I would have adorned this entry with Day's drawing captioned "The First Thinker." It shows an undifferentiated anthropoid ape sitting on a rock, clutching his head in perplexity. I THINK THAT SAYS IT ALL, DON'T YOU?

Seriously, this is the clearest examination of human nature EVER PUBLISHED. It's hard enough already to read the currently-fashionable folderol about brain scanning and hardwired racial prejudice and pink and blue brains, but after reading Day it's all I can do not to SLAM THE MAGAZINE SHUT AND FLING IT AGAINST THE WALL. Why? BECAUSE THIS BOOK MAKES NEARLY EVERYTHING ELSE WRITTEN ON THE SUBJECT SUPERFLUOUS.

(Except Elaine Morgan, of course.)

Day covers EVERYTHING on this subject, in terms even a Naked Ape can understand. He makes it look easy, neatly gathering up all the factors that make human society UTTERLY MONKEYCENTRIC in a slender volume anyone can enjoy. He throws the Naked Ape's nature into HIDEOUS RELIEF by contrasting it against the likely behavior and orientation of a comparable race of super-intelligent Cats, Elephants or Ants. He's not far off the mark if you ask me. Right at the end he tosses out a flippant question about whether humans are advanced (chuckle) apes or fallen angels, then scrapes it off his shoe and asks the reader, WITHOUT A SINGLE WORD: "Are you kidding me? We all know the answer to that!"

Do you see what he's done, here? For a brief moment, flashing past like a panicky Minnow, Day has managed to turn that much-ballyhooed human intelligence IN ON ITSELF and actually come up with something worth realizing. NATURALLY, that meant that the book has fallen into obscurity.

WELL, LET'S DO SOMETHING ABOUT THAT, SHALL WE? Here's the plan: ALL OF YOU will be using Conspiracy funds to purchase copies of the reissued book and slipping it into the Squidmas stockings of those you mean to recruit. All you have to do is call it a timeless comedy classic.

Then watch the Shaved Monkeys come pouring in!

I just want to say, it's reading something like this that makes me realize why we're going to ALL THIS TROUBLE to save the species.

It's That Time Of Year Again!

2009-08-15T22:09:00.000-07:00

It's true! National Catfish Month is here again!

YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO, LADIES.

Image Of The Day! Maybe The Year!

2009-08-11T12:32:00.000-07:00

WHAT MORE CAN I POSSIBLY ADD?

Piscatorial Love Image Of The YEAR!

2009-08-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

I don't know if they meant this illustration (off the cover of an old videotape)

to be this HAWT, but....DANG.

Happy St. Herbie's Day, Everyone!!!

2009-07-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

YES, WE'VE MADE OUR DECISION!

After a great deal of solemn thought, and with a lot of consideration to the privacy needs of the families involved, we've decided to give sainthood to NONE of the sailors recruited on the occasion of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. We are instead canonizing Herbie Robinson, Captain Quint's baseball-loving crewmate immortalized -- and bisected -- in Jaws. Because we had to give SOMEONE a sainthood after a lucky break like this, and to be honest NOT ONE of the recruits involved wanted his name used. That's a Shark recruit for you, always thinking of the other guy's feelings and DUCKING OUT OF THE LIMELIGHT. Thanks guys -- WE KNOW OUR SECRETS ARE SAFE WITH YOU.

We'd like to thank the Japanese submarine crew that brought us so very many meals, I mean recruits, in a three-day period, and we'd ESPECIALLY like to thank the radio operator who NEVER QUESTIONED ORDERS and NEVER SENT A DISTRESS SIGNAL as the ship was sinking.

Beach Disaster: La Jolla, California

2009-07-16T05:17:00.001-07:00

It was an odd start to the morning Saturday in La Jolla, Calif.

Dazed Giant Squid Wash Up On La Jolla Shores

Giant squid litter La Jolla Shores after 4.0 quake shakes the ocean floor.

Squid Wash Up After Quake

First residents were jolted out of bed by an earthquake, which is not uncommon in San Diego, but what happened just minutes later was a little fishy.

First, residents were jostled out of bed at 7.34 a.m. by a 4.0 magnitude earthquake that was centered 19 miles out in the ocean.

“I was having coffee up on the balcony and I felt it shaking,” Kate Lutkemeier said.
She wasn’t the only one.

“I heard my doors and windows rattling, thinking that somebody was trying to get in my front door actually,” La Jolla resident Mary Skeen said.

The quake was felt all over the county, which isn’t uncommon in San Diego -- but what happened just minutes later was a little fishy.

“We just got here about 15 minutes ago and Lilly, what did you see on the beach?” John Feher asked his little daughter.

“Squid, Squid, Squid, Squid, Squid.” she replied.

Dozens of dazed Humboldt Squid, which were roughly three- to four-feet long and weighed close to 40 pounds, were found flapping around on La Jolla Shores beach.

“It’s like their equilibrium is all messed up and they don’t know what they’re doing and they can’t back out there,” said beachgoer Bill Baumann. “It was like they got -- I don’t know -- all shook up.”

It didn’t take long for the Seagulls to swoop in and start feeding on the Squid, so beachgoers ran to the rescue and tried frantically to save them by throwing them back in the water. That proved to be a difficult task for several reasons: they were extremely heavy, very slippery, and when the good Samaritans did manage to get them back them in water, the Squid didn’t know which way to go and kept washing back up on shore.

“Some people were saying it was the earthquake this morning that caused them to get disoriented, but who knows? Feher said.

He wasn’t the only person to mention that theory.

“A state guy was out and said the earthquake caused (it),” Baumann said.

Lifeguard Sgt. David Rains said that is one of several possibilities. Another potential cause is there were a lot of fishing boats in the area, creating a significant fish activity and Squid follow the food supply. He also said there have been a lot of water inversions, with the water turning from warm to cold, which could be the cause. But he doesn’t know for sure.

“Why are they here? Why are the squid here? I can’t honestly tell you,” Sgt. Rains said. “I don’t know if it’s tied or not to the earthquake.”

According to the lifeguard, swimmers should be wary of the creatures and keep their distance.

“The Humboldt Squid can be very big and very powerful and they may be dangerous,” Sgt. Rains said. “It’s just something I wouldn’t mess with until you’re sure that it’s dead. They’ve got a lot of suckers and claws and a parrot-like beak and they can inflict some damage.”

A spokesman for Scripps Institution of Oceanography said at this point they do not see a connection between the squid and the earthquake, but plan to look into it. Dozens of Squid washing up at the same time is unusual but it has happened before, according to Sgt. Rains. But Mary Skeen said it is a first for her.

“I have never seen Squid in the 42 years that I’ve lived here on the shores in La Jolla,” she said.

For now there are more questions than answers; did the earthquake cause the Squid to wash up or was it simply a coincidence? Just ask the little girl who helped daddy push some alien looking creatures back out to sea.

“Is it a mystery?” Feher asked his little daughter Lilly.
“Yeah,” she replied.

This disastrous incident of REVERSE LEMMINGDOM by our brave Squid operatives will never be forgotten. OR FORGIVEN.

Triumphant Day For Security Leaks

2009-07-16T04:59:00.001-07:00

Yes! It's finally happened -- one of our lesser-known aquatic operative species has successfully undertaken to DISTRACT THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY by making themselves known:

If you startled a deer, you might not expect it to jump into the nearest pond and submerge itself for minutes.

But that is exactly what two species of mouse-deer in Asia do when confronted by predators, scientists have found.

One other African Mouse-Deer species is known to do the same thing, but the new discovery suggests all ruminants may once have had an affinity with water.

It also lends support to the idea that whales evolved from water-loving creatures that looked like small Deer.

There are around 10 species of Mouse-Deer, which are also called 'Chevrotains'. All belong to the ancient ruminant family Tragulidae, which split some 50 million years ago from other ruminants, the group that went on to evolve into cattle, Goats, Sheep, Deer and Antelope.

Each is a small, Deer-like creature that unusually does not have antlers or horns. Instead they have large upper canine teeth, which in the males project down either side of the lower jaw.
The largest species, which stands no more than 80cm tall, lives in Africa and is thought to be the most primitive of all Mouse-Deer. Known as the Water-Chevrotain, this animal likes to live in swampy habitats. When alarmed, it dashes for the nearest river where it submerges and swims underwater to safety.

All of the other species of Mouse-Deer, which live in southeast Asia and India and Sri Lanka, were thought to be dry-land animals.

Diving deer

That was until researchers witnessed some remarkable behaviour during two separate incidents.
The first occurred in June 2008 during a biodiversity survey in northern Central Kalimantan Province in Borneo, Indonesia.

During the survey, observers saw a Mouse-Deer swimming in a forest stream. When the animal noticed the observers it submerged. Over the next hour, they saw it come to the surface four or five times, and maybe more unseen. But it often remained submerged for more than five minutes at a time.

Eventually the observers caught the animal, which they identified as a pregnant female, then released it unharmed.

Among the survey team was the wife of Erik Meijaard, a senior ecologist working with the Nature Conservancy in Balikpapan, Indonesia.

Meijaard knew of anecdotal reports by local people who described Deer hiding in creeks and rivers when chased by their Dogs. When he saw photos of the Deer he identified it as a Greater Mouse-Deer (Tragulus napu).

Coming up for air

The same year, Meijaard also heard reports of a Mouse-Deer in Sri Lanka that had also been seen swimming underwater.

Three observers saw a Mountain Mouse-Deer (Moschiola spp) run into a pond and start to swim, hotly pursued by a Brown Mongoose. The Mouse-Deer submerged itself, and eventually the Mongoose retreated. The deer left the water only to be chased straight back into it by the Mongoose.

"It came running again and dived into the water and swam underwater. I photographed this clearly and it became clear to me at this stage that swimming was an established part of its escape repertoire," says Gehan de Silva Wijeyeratne, who saw the incident.

"Seeing it swim underwater was a shock. Many mammals can swim in water. But other than those which are adapted for an aquatic existence, swimming is clumsy. The Mouse-Deer seemed comfortable, it seemed adapted," he says.

Origins of whales

Meijaard, Wijeyeratne and Umilaela, who saw the submerged Bornean Mouse-Deer, describe both incidents in the journal Mammalian Biology.

"This is the first time that this behaviour has been described for Asian mouse-deer species," says Meijaard. "I was very excited when I heard the mouse-deer stories because it resolved one of those mysteries that local people had told me about but that had remained hidden to science."
"The behaviour is interesting because it is unexpected. Deer are supposed to walk on land and graze, not swim underwater. But more interestingly for the zoologist are the evolutionary implications," he says.

The behaviour bolsters one leading theory regarding the origin of Whales.
In 2007, scientists led by Hans Thewissen of the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Ohio published details of a remarkable fossil called Indohyus.

This fossil was of a ruminant animal that looked like a small Deer, but also had morphological features that showed it could be an ancestor of early Whales.

Although speculative, that suggests that all early ruminants may also have led a partially aquatic lifestyle.

The discovery that two Asian species of Mouse-Deer are comfortable underwater shows that at least three species of modern Tragulid share an aquatic escape behaviour.

Because these species diverged at least 35 million years ago, their ancestor also likely behaved in the same way, again bolstering the the idea that a Deer-like ruminant may have evolved to produce the modern cetacean group of Whales and Dolphins.

Hippos, the closest modern relative of Whales, also dive for water when threatened, a behaviour that may have been lost over time by other modern species such as Sheep and Antelope.

CLICKERS

2009-07-01T08:28:00.002-07:00

Oh dear Cod, the pain!

Where do I begin? OK, this attempt at a Lovecraftian horror novel about TERROR FROM THE DEEP was co-written by J.F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams and was copyrighted to both of them in 1999. It was published by the Hard Shell Word Factory.

PLOT SUMMARY: GIANT KILLER CRABS, or are they LOBSTERS, or are they SCORPIONS, come ashore to wreak havoc on a small coastal town in Maine. Anyone stung by the business end of one of these "clickers" swells up, then EXPLODES for easier dining. One unlucky Naked Ape after another falls afoul of the chitinous horde. A determined man, new in town, who naturally is a writer of cheesy horror novels, SEES THE PROBLEM when he collides with a "clicker" and totals his car. Soon the entire town is under siege...BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! What's with the scaly green bipeds chasing down first the "clickers," then the Naked Apes, with tridents? WILL ANYONE SURVIVE?

CLIFFIE'S NOTES:

>> This should have worked. It has all the elements of a good piscatorial romance. But it's one of the most painfully bad books I've read in years. I hardly got through it at all.

>> The writing was unbelievably clumsy. That's the last thing I expected from a book plastered with raves about all the awards the authors have won. I can't help wondering what kind of comment they were making when the main character dismissed his own book awards as nonsense pushed on him by a bunch of "know-nothing committees."

>> There was NO respect for either the title characters or their green, bipedal pursuers. The net loss was disastrous, in fact -- the clickers eat the recruits, then the Gill Men eat the clickers as is only natural, but here come more shaved mokeys who blow away the Gill Men! Until the epilogue I thought ALL WAS LOST.

>> The Gill Men and their chitinous prey exist in this story only to be shot by shaved monkeys so that the wimmenfolk will look up to them and bat their eyes prettily. At the moment the humans discover that the Gill Men are intelligent enough to use tools, as well as looking vaguely human, the title characters suddenly become TOTALLY UNIMPORTANT. At the same time, the author makes a valiant effort to make the Gill Men look as LUNKHEADED AS POSSIBLE, too stupid to know what a gun is and too clumsy to do anything but charge the shaved monkeys on open ground. Why? So the shaved monkeys can feel like a MORE ADVANCED SPECIES as they BLOW THEIR HEADS OFF.

>> To make a story like this go, you need to anchor it in utterly believable, normal details. So why do we have a smalltown doc shaking his head anxiously because when he ran DNA TESTS on the captured claw of a "clicker," in the office he runs out of a converted residence in the sticks, he couldn't get the findings to match any known species of crustacean? Does your family doctor have a DNA testing facility in his office? Does he have access to a database that would allow him to compare something he found embedded in someone's front tire to every known similar species? I realize the home computer is a mighty powerful tool, but GIVE ME A BREAK.

>> There was no recruiting going on here at all. None. So why did they come ashore in the first place, simultaneously getting themselves killed and blowing their own cover? Huh? Huh?

>> I no longer have separate fingers, which makes typing a chore, but ON MY WORST DAY I can do a better job than these two. It's very hard to concentrate on the story when you're constantly being jolted out of the narrative by one of their idiotic mistakes. Here's a hint, guys: when a cheetah, spelled with a small C, brings down an Impala, spelled with a capital I, you're describing the death of a car, not an antelope. Also: "adjourn" and "adorn" are two completely different words that cannot be used interchangeably. And: when making a noun plural, you add an "s." NO. GODDAMNED. APOSTROPHE. But if you're going to add the apostrophe, do have the consistency to use it every time, if only to give the impression that you think you're following one of the rules of English punctuation. Another hint: The titles of books, movies and epic poems, as well as the names of boats, are italicized. It REALLY makes you look sloppy if you do it only half the time. Oh, and you really ought to brush up on what's called subject-verb agreement. It's really NOT THAT HARD.

>> "...she went limp as the creature swooped in and buried its maw over her face." HOW MANY THINGS CAN YOU FIND WRONG WITH THIS HALF A SENTENCE? By the time I got through explaining to the authors, President Obama would be a great-grandfather.

>> Why am I belaboring these points, you ask? Well, it goes RIGHT TO THE HEART of a major conflict within our ranks. NOT ALL SPECIES ARE EQUALLY GOOD ACTORS, and regardless of species it is not that easy to simultaneously evolve into a finer, more glorious life-form AND disguise yourself as a victim of the American public school system. I think, I KNOW this can be solved, but it is a complex problem that demands a complex answer. WE ARE WORKING ON IT. Meanwhile, CARRY ON speaking correctly. Some potential recruits will think you're stuck up, but that's THEIR LOSS.

Meanwhile, do NOT spend a DIME of conspiracy funds on this book.

THE SWARM

2009-06-13T12:41:00.000-07:00

Where do I begin?

The Swarm was translated from the original German and copyrighted in 2006 to Sally-Ann Spencer, and published by Harper Collins the same year. The German version (Der Schwarm), by a human, was published in 2004 by Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch. This is a runaway #1 international bestseller, OK? It's about the war waged by the fish against the Naked Apes. I know many of you have read it already, with gaping eyes and slack jaws, but LET ME HAVE A CRACK AT IT ANYWAY.

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS VAST INTERNATIONAL EPIC:

>> Out of 898 pages, fewer than 50 are devoted to actual warfare waged upon the landlubbers by the denizens of the briny deep. I may actually be overestimating that number. I, personally, wanted to see some BLOODSHED. This book has virtually none. Even when we get to see a real confrontation -- a couple making out on the beach, oblivious as they are surrounded by an advancing army of eyeless moon-white Crabs, or a pod of Orcas joining with the nearby Humpbacks to advance on a boat full of unsuspecting Whale-watchers -- well -- NOTHING MUCH HAPPENS. Almost every human gets away, and the losses sustained are notably NOT VERY MUCH FUN.

>> As delighted as I am by the idea of a kamikaze Lobster loaded with toxic bacteria, infiltrating a four-star restaurant in Lyons so she can EXPLODE IN THE CHEF'S FACE, I have to admit I have MIXED FEELINGS. I mean, it's an adorable idea, but a terribly human one. AS IF WE WOULD EVER BE SO CRUDE. The honored crustacean never even made it to the dinner table, which means the potential for spreading the contamination is pretty minimal. And look who she killed! All those sneering French chefs ARE ALREADY ON OUR SIDE. And even if you assume this one chef isn't -- again, I would like a more graphic and horrifying exposition of the death throes, and I would like to see the medical examiner, then the entire hospital staff and every patient and visitor succumb, HORRIBLY, one by one. Maybe that's just me.

>>On the bright side, a chapter like this indicates that our quarry has NO IDEA WHAT WE ARE ACTUALLY UP TO.

>> The whole rest of the book -- at least 700 pages -- seems to be devoted to switching back and forth between different land-based cities where scientists -- cetologists, geologists, chemists, microbiologists, military strategists, a gal from SETI -- are essentially spending page after page of MY PRECIOUS TIME gazing anxiously into computer screens and saying things like, "The hydrates are dissociating!" and "I've never seen a Bristle Worm like it!" This is apparently intended to be the meaty part of the story. I know; THAT'S WHAT I SAID, TOO.

>> When they're not doing that, they're doing the usual monkey mating dance -- the cetologist with the tortured past casting a longing eye on the athletic science journalist with the auburn curls while his old nemesis, a Whale-privacy activist, is cozying up to the cetologist's most annoying female student. Typical of such novels, the women are either described as being of supermodel quality, or they are barely described at all. One comes away with the idea that this was the real point of the story, from the author's point of view. Elegant proof that he is NOT ONE OF US.

>> This story suffers on every page from a lack of what might be called reality testing. You can tell that this novel was translated for Brits, by a Brit. The supposedly American characters use painfully British phrases throughout, like describing the destruction of half a European nation by tsunami as "a spot of bother." (Now there was another scene that should have been terrific, but as it turned out was barely sketched out by the author. C'mon, people!) Let me tell you right now: an American describes a spot of bother as a tsunami, not the other way around, OK? And I have to point out that no American, especially not one in the military, pussyfoots around with the word "darn." We are treated to that word on every page, as if we were in kindergarten class. Even a character painted as completely obnoxious in every way uses the word "damn" only once before lapsing, for the balance of the book, into saying darned this and darned that for the next 750 pages, as if he were afraid of offending the dainty Marines all around him. None of this ultimately hurts the story, but it's so distracting! And by the way, Sally-Ann: THERE ARE NO GENERALS IN THE NAVY. WE CALL THEM ADMIRALS. Sheesh.

>> I did get a laugh out of the way the author characterized the American president: a Bible-thumping knucklehead who doesn't want to be bothered with any technical details. As long as the young, pretty, blue-eyed, Asian supermodel Navy general tells him it's all right, he figures it's all right. Now who could that have been based on?

>> The ultimate disappointment? They inevitably discover that the other species waging war in the story -- Whales, Crabs, Lobsters, Bristle Worms, Tuna -- are merely Prawns, I meant to say "pawns," under the control of a heretofore-unsuspected INTELLIGENT SPECIES. They will never understand that we don't WANT or NEED their intelligence. Fools! When the scientists agreed without discussion that any species capable of waging war on them MUST understand mathematics, seriously, I THOUGHT I WAS GONNA PUKE.

>> The characters make jokes throughout the story about Jody Foster in Contact because of the SETI specialist called in to communicate with the menace. So it was with a queasy lack of surprise that I realized they were going to have this story end like that one, with a hallucinatory encounter with the enemy that made NO SENSE AT ALL and magically ended with the Swarm backing off so everyone could live happily ever after.

I can't deny that this is entertaining in spots. I can see why some people would buy and read it quite avidly. But I'm NOT SURPRISED that our own operatives are less than thrilled.

Johann Hari: Could we be the generation that runs out of fish?

2009-06-08T06:33:00.000-07:00

The process of trawling is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction

Friday, 5 June 2009

In the babbling Babel of 24/7 news – where elections, bailouts and beheadings blur into one long shriek – the slow-motion stories that will define our age are often lost. An extraordinary documentary released next week, The End of the Line, forces us to stop, and see. Its story is stark. In my parents' lifetime, we have killed 90 per cent of the world's fish. In my lifetime, we will finish off the rest – unless we change our ways, fast. We are on course to be the people who wiped fish from the earth.

The story begins in the sleepy Canadian resort of Newfoundland. It was the global capital of cod, a fishing town where the scaly creatures of the sea were so abundant they could be caught with your hands. But in the 1980s, something strange happened. The catches started to wane. The fish grew smaller. And then, in 1991, they disappeared.

It turned out the cod had been hoovered out of the sea at such a rapid rate that they couldn't reproduce themselves. But the postscript is spookier still. The Canadian government banned any attempts at fishing there, on the assumption that the few remaining fish would slowly repopulate the waters. But 15 years on, they haven't. The population was so destroyed that it could never recover.

A growing number of scientists are warning that we could all be living in Newfoundland soon. Professor Boris Worm of Dalhousie University published a detailed study in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Nature saying that at the current rate, all global fish populations will have collapsed by 2048. He says: "This isn't some horror scenario, it's a real possibility. It's not rocket science if we're depleting species after species. It's a finite resource. We'll reach a point where we run out."

The species in the frontline is bluefin tuna, the pinnacle of the evolutionary chain for fish. This little creature can swim at 50mph, and accelerate faster than the swishest sports car. It has even developed warm blood. Yet every year, a third of the remaining population is ripped from the seas and slapped onto our plates. Soon, it will be gone.

All over the world, from the Bay of Bengal to Lake Victoria to the shores of South America, I have heard fishermen say their catches are shrinking, in size and in number. Industrial-scale fishing only began in the 1950s. By the standards of the news cycle, this is slow – but by the standards of the planet or of settled fishing communities, this is a click of the fingers. The effects of the new industrial fishing are uniform. Professor Ransom Myers found that whenever the vast industrial trawlers are sent in, it takes just 15 years to reduce the fish population to a 10% shadow of its former self.

This process of trawlering is an oceanic weapon of mass destruction, ripping up everything in its path. Charles Clover, who wrote the book on which the documentary is based, has a good analogy for it. Imagine a band of hunters stringing a mile of net between two massive all-terrain vehicles and dragging it at speed across the plains of Africa. Imagine it scooping up everything in its way: lions and cheetahs and hippos and wild dogs. The net has a massive metal roller attached to its leading edge, smashing down every tree that gets in its way. And in the end, when the hunters open up the net, they pick out the choicest creatures and dump the squashed remains in the sun as carrion for the vultures.

But we need fish. Our brains don't form properly without their fatty Omega-3 acids. So why do our governments allow this process of destruction to continue? Why do they actively encourage it, with $14bn of subsidies for fishermen to keep on trawling every year?

A small number of people are making a lot of short-term profit out of this destruction – and they are using this cash to ensure they can carry on hunting, down to the last fish. In 1992, an attempt to get the bluefin tuna listed as an endangered species was scuppered by the US and Japanese governments at the urging of the tuna lobby – who happen to give large campaign donations to all parties. A similar corruption has eaten into European politics.

Add to this the fact that fishermen are a determined and demanding constituency with an equally short-term agenda. They demand the maximum quotas today – even if that means no quotas tomorrow.

Our societies are structured to put these short-term cries for money for a few ahead of the long-term needs of us all. A small determined group with hard cash almost always beats a diffuse group with good intentions – until they get angry and fight back.

Yet today, ordinary people in rich countries are being insulated from the fish crisis. As we exhaust our own fish stocks, our corporations are sailing out across the world to steal them from the poor. Today, there are armadas of industrial European and American fishing boats across the coast of West Africa, leaving the small fishermen who live on its coasts to starve. Professor Daniel Pauly says: "It is like a hole burning through paper. As the hole expands, the edge is where the fisheries concentrate, until there is nowhere left to go."

We are not only stealing fish from Africans; we are stealing them from future generations. In the age of limits, we are hitting up against the capacity of the planet to provide for us – yet we are reacting with blank denial. This story is unfolding, in one form or another, in the rainforests, the air, and in the planet's climate itself.

It has left us at a strange crossroads. We will either be a despised generation who left behind a depleted husk-planet – or a heroic generation who, at five minutes to ecological midnight, turned back to the light.

With fish, the solution is even simpler and more straightforward than with the other ecological crises ensnaring us. The scientific experts say we need to follow two steps. First, expand the 0.6 per cent of the area of the world's oceans in which fishing is banned to 30 per cent. In these protected areas, fish can slowly recover. Second, in the remaining 70 per cent, impose strict quotas on fishermen and police it properly, as they do in Alaska, New Zealand and Iceland.
The cost of this programme? $14bn a year – precisely the sum we currently spend on subsidising fishermen. At no extra cost, we could turn them from the rapists of the oceans into their guardians.

Yet The End of the Line has one flaw – and it is one that riddles current environmental thought. It presents us with a great earth-altering crisis, and then says our primary response should be to change our own personal consumption habits. It urges people not to buy from Nobu, which shamefully still sells bluefin tuna, and to ask if the fish we buy is sustainably produced. It's like the end of An Inconvenient Truth, where the primary response Al Gore presses on us is to shop green and change our lightblubs.

Of course this is valuable – but it is only an anemic and minor first step. It is rather like, in 1937, reacting to the rise of Nazism by urging people to make sure that they personally weren't killing any Jews or gays or Jehovah's Witnesses, or buying from any Nazi-owned companies. We needed collective action that would stop other people from killing these minorities – just as today we need collective action that prevents anyone from irreparably trashing the means of life.

At the moment, many good people get anxious about environmental issues, and hear the message that The Response is to scrub their own lifestyle clean. Yet individual voluntary action by a minority of nice people will not save the bluefin tuna, never mind the ecosystem. But if all these honourable people act together – by volunteering for, and donating to, organizations like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and Plane Stupid – they can change the law, so everybody will be required to change their behaviour, not just a benevolent 10 per cent. It was just such determined minorities armed with the facts that spurred the fights against slavery, colonialism and fascism. When you respond as a consumer, you are weak; when you respond as a citizen, you are strong.

The voice of millions of people can drown out the concentrated power of the fishing industry – and all the other industries with a vested interest in trashing our planet – but not with the swipe of a credit card.

The alternative to collective action today is catastrophe tomorrow. As Charles Clover explains: "When the human population comes under pressure on land because of global warming, when we are running out of ways to feed ourselves, we [will] have just squandered one of the greatest resources on the planet – wild fish." The epitaph for the human species would turn out to have been scripted by Douglas Adams: so long, and thanks for all the fish.

Yeah, YOU WISH. We will NEVER leave you in peace.

Image Of The Day

2009-06-08T06:19:00.000-07:00

I Went Online And Bought Some Electric Eels!

2009-05-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE when I learned that anyone with Internet access and a credit card can rush out and buy a full set of Electric Eels -- or, heck, multiple sets -- and get them shipped ANYWHERE without the need to cushion, aerate or feed!

OK, OK, I kid. These Electric Eels are marbles -- 24 playing size and 1 shooter. I confess I was startled to see such a thing on sale in this degraded era, when kids don't know what to do with a toy that comes without a power cord. When I was still mobile on dry land, less than 10 years ago, a kid admired some marbles we were both looking at and when I mentioned PLAYING with them, he looked quizzical and said, "There's a game you play with marbles?" I have to say, my heart sank. But today's Internet find buoys me up a bit. SOMEONE OUT THERE STILL UNDERSTANDS the aesthetic thrill, the five-fingered precision and the acquisitive LUST of playing that ancient game. And, yes, I do miss that aspect of being human. SUE ME.

AND SOMEONE OUT THERE IS MAKING FISH MARBLES, BY COD. Besides Electric Eels, you can also buy Tiger Sharks, Jellyfish, Blue Tangs, Octopus and even semi-aquatic ones like Hippo, Flamingo and Polar Bear.

WHAT A RECRUITING TOOL! GET OUT THERE, LADIES, AND BUY, BUY, BUY! USE CONSPIRACY FUNDS!

An Operative Transgresses

2009-05-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

I'm DISGUSTED to have to report that one of our Landfish operatives, a flight mechanic named Chiquita "Banana" Wozniak, was caught using Conspiracy funds to purchase, not the fish-themed marbles described in my previous post, but THREE sets of playing marbles called Orangutans.

She was KILLED and EATEN.

Goldfish Blessed As Part Of World Animal Day

2009-05-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

A Goldfish was blessed to mark World Animal Day.

A Goldfish received a blessing from a Catholic priest in an Amsterdam church to mark World Animal Day. The fish was joined in her blessing by a Canary, a Guinea Pig, a handful of Cats and more than two dozen Dogs.

In a ceremony that was sometimes touching and often comical, Rev. Pierre Valkering led his congregation in songs and prayers — frequently interrupted by meowing and yapping from the pews — before the blessing took place.

The Goldfish received the first blessing and appeared very much in her element as Valkering sprinkled her with holy water.

St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals on whose feast day World Animal Day is held, was the inspiration for the service — a seven-year-old tradition in Amsterdam.

Posted: October 10, 2007, 2 a.m. EST

I found this article posted at FishChannel.com; not very recent as you can see by the post date, but I have gotten so many inquiries about it EVER SINCE that I finally had to RELEASE A STATEMENT.

Our field operative, a Goldfish who prefers to be NAMELESS on this site, wants to reassure all aquatic- and land-fish everywhere that the ceremony was PERFECTLY SERIOUS, and so was the priest involved. Many other priests tagged for this duty could not be compelled to sprinkle holy water on ONE OF US and were relieved of the honor. WE FULLY REALIZE that the very idea of blessing a non-human FLIES IN THE FACE OF CATHOLIC DOCTRINE, but St. Francis remains a remarkably powerful guy in the Monkey heirarchy. And he was one of those zany animal lovers. He's proved to be a much better "in" than even the Grand Guignol with his Fish bell, who has been largely forgotten today. Monkeys have VERY SHORT MEMORIES, especially when it comes to US.

I also need to respond to the angry cards and letters demanding to know why we would need, or want, the blessing of a Shaved Monkey in a dress. WE DON'T. That's the short answer. But let me expand on that. IT NEVER HURTS to do a little tunnel-digging between our sphere and theirs. And you really do need to do the DAMNEDEST THINGS to bring in new recruits sometimes. The Catholics have been a tough nut to crack ALL ALONG because of their queasy relationship with the FISH KINGDOM. Only these people can manage to EAT US WEEKLY, AS PART OF THEIR RELIGIOUS PRACTICE, and still not see the value of our contribution. I say, DO WHAT WORKS.

PREDATOR X

2009-04-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

The History Channel premiered this show at 8 p.m. Eastern on 3/29/2009. Pretty cool 2-hour presentation, about the rather difficult process of finding and reconstructing an as-yet-unnamed-by-monkey-science AQUATIC DINOSAUR, predatory type.

CLIFFIE'S NOTES ON THIS FABBOO TV SPECIAL:

>> Good on dinosaur specialist Dr. Hurum for even undertaking this huge task. There could not have been anything pleasant about scraping away at the permafrost for weeks surrounded by Polar Bears, then turning over one piece after another of ancient shale with bare hands in the Arctic wind to figure out which fragments belonged to OUR OPERATIVE.

>> I also have to hand it to the massive-looking team of scientists who spent hours and hours bent over work stations fitting and gluing the fragments together. Those five-fingered hands DO HAVE THEIR USES. It means more when you realize that these scientists got NO CREDIT on the show. In an age of reality programming full of people willing to trample their offspring underfoot to get their names on the small screen, that really means something. Bravo, people. Working that hard to bring an aquatic operative to light GETS YOU IN GOOD WITH US.

>> Hurum implied, but did not state, that the sea monster legends he grew up with in Norway not only might have a basis in fact, but have a basis that leads ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE JURASSIC. I wish he had just gone ahead and said it. IT'S ONLY THE TRUTH. I pity the Naked Apes who cannot remember back that far, THE WAY WE CAN. Who do you think keeps those stories alive age after geological age -- THE EASTER BUNNY?

>> Very nice computer graphics. VERY nice. For once, I would have liked to see a lot more footage of the sea hunter in action. I have to say they were pretty near PERFECT when it comes to factual accuracy.

>> The science they used to undertand the mechanics of having four flippers, like the ones this operative had, is...interesting. They built a remote-controlled robot with four flippers and threw it in a pool to see what would happen. The science they used to see inside the fossilized skull of Predator X was also interesting; they borrowed some breathtakingly powerful CT scanner which (bizarrely) is used at an auto factory. The gadget they used to calculate the bite pressure of an extinct animal was pretty cool, too, especially since they flew Hurum all the way to St. Augustine's Gator Zoo to demonstrate it. Using a rescue helicopter to transport the skull from the North Pole was pretty dramatic. They then flew the good doctor to the coast of South Africa to hang out with Great Whites. What kept occurring to me, though, was ISN'T THIS COSTING YOU PEOPLE A FORTUNE? I always thought of dino-hunting as a fairly low-budget operation. I gather from this presentation that they are willing to make an exception if it's a REALLY SCARY PREDATOR.

>> And that's what they stressed over and over in this show. Big dang predator. Combines the worst features of a Crocodile, a Great White Shark and a speeding semi. FIVE TIMES THE SIZE OF T. REX. I know, I know, in America bigger is better, but come on!

>> Of course, if that's the final criterion of greatness on American TV -- and I'm sure it is -- at least the biggest, toothiest and scariest is ON OUR SIDE.

>> With all the great things I have to say about this show, I have to add that as usual THEY MISSED THE WHOLE POINT. It is right there if you want to see it: LIFE IMPROVES IF YOU RETURN TO THE SEA. If you're lucky, you might even get to see an aquatic operative like this one. Or become one. Or, better yet, GET EATEN BY ONE.