USA's #1 Spectacular Recruiting Station

Come on down to the Weeki Wachee Springs Mermaid Camp!

Seriously, does it get any better than this? For $175, the children of your Naked Ape friends and neighbors can taste the joys of MERMAID LIVING while they STILL HAVE MAMMALIAN LUNGS! Not every single participant comes away recruited for life, but it happens MORE OFTEN THAN NOT. The Weeki Wachee Living Mermaid City benefits, Florida tourism benefits, and we benefit.

I want to ask you again: DOES IT GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS?

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.

"THE DROP" by Michael Boatman

Now, this story is SIMPLY DELIGHTFUL, ladies.

It comes from a happy little book of short stories called God Laughs When You Die, by TV and movie actor Michael Boatman (chuckle). The stories all have separate copyright dates; this one is copyrighted 2004 to the author, published in October 2007 by Dybbuk Press in New York.

What a story it is! Two men in a boat, talking about this and that. Their conversation roams casually past the fact that this spot is supposed to be frequented by a black Mermaid who was once seen killing the father of one of the men. The other man actually sees her himself, as she steals a Catfish off the first man's hook (YOU GO, GIRL -- you know I like to see my operatives working together on projects like these). The men are, remarkably, not very interested in this subject, and they move on to other matters. Next thing you know, petty human drama has the two of them trying to kill each other.

Just an aside here: WHY HUMANS CAN'T MANAGE TO HAVE A SIMPLE CONVERSATION WITHOUT PRODUCING WEAPONS AND TRYING TO ELIMINATE EACH OTHER IS BEYOND ME. I used to be one of them myself, and I still don't understand it. Never did, never will. I agree it doesn't happen every time, but often enough to make me wonder how they've gotten this far without wiping out their own species. (WHICH WOULD HAVE SAVED ME A LOT OF WORK.) It's a major reason we are re-absorbing them into the aquatic gene pool, so somebody else can have a turn at being the dominant species.

The ending is a happy one. Rescue of two desperate men by a Mermaid -- how old-fashioned is that! -- SAVES THE DAY, not only for the two men but for others in the story as well.

What I like about it is that EVERYTHING GETS BETTER as soon as the Mermaid arrives. Instantly. She just takes matters in hand, and the problem is GONE. MUCH AS IN REAL LIFE.

One touch I especially like is that this Mermaid, like the one in She Creature, has a family to feed. A little touch of otherworldly wonder can be nice in a story like this, but humans need to grasp the hard fact that WE HAVE OUR LIVES TO LIVE, TOO. We kill YOU for the same reason you kill US: to feed the kids.

Anyway, the whole book is delightful, and this story is a corker.

"CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD"

ONE WONDERS what, or WHO, possessed the lyricist of the Electric Light Orchestra to write THESE PARTICULAR WORDS:

Midnight on the water.

I saw the ocean's daughter.

Walking on a wave's chicane,

staring as she called my name.

And I can't get it out of my head,

no, I can't get it out of my head.

Now my old world is gone for dead

'cos I can't get it out of my head.

Breakdown on the shoreline,

can't move, it's an ebbtide.

Morning don't get here till night,

searching for her silver light.

And I can't get it out of my head,

no, I can't get it out of my head.

Now my old world is gone for dead

'cos I can't get it out of my head, no no.

Bank job in the city.

Robin Hood and William Tell and Ivanhoe and Lancelot, they don't envy me.

Sitting till the sun goes down,

in dreams the world keep going round and round.

And I can't get it out of my head,

no, I can't get it out of my head.

Now my old world is gone for dead

'cos I can't get it out of my head, no no.

No, I can't get it out of my head,

no, I can't get it out of my head.

Now my old world is gone for dead

'cos I can't get it out of my head, no no no no.

I think we can agree the words are as fresh TODAY as they were on the day of the song’s release. Now, this is JUST THE KIND OF IMPRESSION we want to leave on our new recruits, ladies. We want to be THE LUMINOUS IDEAL presented to a world crowded with disillusioned Monkey People. We want them to see us as THE DIVINE ESCAPE HATCH from their bank jobs in the city. We want to DRAW THEM INTO THE SEA LIKE LEMMINGS.

I am currently accepting nominations for the title of Best Operative in this particular area. I prefer submissions in writing as it is getting harder and harder to keep my own paper records.

SHE CREATURE

THE ELECTRONIC APPROACH TO WORLD DOMINATION

The girls down at the central research labs have assured me over and over that non-aquatic lifeforms cannot make use of, or interfere with, any of our techniques short of killing us wholesale. As a result I am letting my guard down at last. WE ARE GLOBAL NOW and I think we need to join the new millennium, dare to communicate USING THE ENEMY’S OWN TECHNOLOGY and prove to ourselves that we can do it without giving away the game. Seems to me that if The Anarchist’s Cookbook’s release on the Net can have teenaged boys everywhere making grenades out of old tennis balls, it’s high time those of us with fins, scales and tentacles took full advantage of the same medium.

I wanted to start today by clarifying some of the misunderstandings that keep cropping up when you ladies read the Sacred Texts of the Piscatorial Revolution. These are in descending order, listed according to how much they happen to irritate me. You should maybe keep this in mind when rhapsodizing to me, YOUR ZONE LEADER, at the monthly meetings about how much the Texts have changed your life.

Every one of you needs to carefully interpret the readings before using them to infiltrate or wage war on the enemy. The life you save could be your own…OR MINE. Our goal is to further your education, your ability to network effectively, and your ability to speak to me at meetings WITHOUT SOUNDING LIKE IDIOTS:

CLIFFIE’S NOTES ON AGENT OPAL: Now, I know the common wisdom is that Opal, the model undersea-mammal revolutionary in The Godwhale by the Sacred Scribe T.J. Bass, is "weakening the resistance" by mating with Harlan, a land man. This is SHEER NONSENSE. Harlan is a refugee from the Hive (land) society, for one thing. If they ever found him they would kill him. And as you read, I beg you to note Opal’s very proper refusal to mate with him until he proves he can hold his breath underwater as long as she can. She fully trains him in our way of life. Far from settling for a Hive mate, she is stealing one of the best and brightest from their ranks and making him one of us. The worthiness of her actions is well demonstrated by what follows. In fact, the Benthic Deities respond by restoring the devastated oceans around the world to full health, so that Opal’s society need never again venture on land to steal food from the Hive. More to come in later installments…

MOVIE REVIEW TIME!!!

She Creature
Released in 2001, directed by Sebastian Gutierrez

A real find. I’m delighted to report that the filmmakers – not only our operatives, but fully human actors and directors -- are bringing our sacred Cause more and more into the public eye. I can only hope the trend continues. My surprise video-store find is a new release, rated R. It stars Rya Kihlstedt as the operative, Carla Gugino as the new contact, and Rufus Sewell as the landlubber who thinks he’s in control of the situation. This was not released in theaters but don’t ask me why; it’s drastically better than some of the shore slop they put on the big screens these days. Here’s the story in brief: two cheeseball con artists (Sewell and Gugino) running a turn-of-the-last-century sideshow in Ireland are invited home by a rube (Aubrey Morris – I’ve always liked that guy), who turns out to be a retired sea captain offended by their phony mermaid. He delivers a lecture on the true nature of mermaids and tells them that there is a secret chain of islands where they still live. He shows them that he has the real article imprisoned in his basement – a stunning blonde with webbed fingers and a fish’s tail. He tells them that she’s already killed his wife and is extremely dangerous.

Sewell’s character decides he wants the specimen for his show, knowing that this is an instant ticket to fame and probably no real danger to him if an old coot like the captain has survived so long in the same house with her. They steal her after thtreatening the old man into havign a heart attack -- ALWAYS A POSSIBILITY WHEN YOU NEGOTIATE WITH A SHOTGUN POINTED AT THE RESPONDENT'S HEAD. The thieves wangle the boxed-up mermaid inot the hold of a waiting ship, and this FASCINATING realtionship develops between Gugino (the new recruit) and Kihlstedt (our heroine).

Life on board ship proceeds as usual while the plucky showmen attempt to keep the crew out of the cargo compartment where they’re holding the mermaid – and trying to convince her to eat. The only sign of progress is when Gugino comes into the room, whereupon the mermaid comes to attention with an unmistakable look of "Finally, someone I can TALK to" look on her face. Gugino seems as captivated by the mermaid as the mermaid is by her…but they still can’t get her to eat.

Gugino starts acting strangely. She starts upchucking at odd moments and suddenly has this incredible sex drive. Sewell is clueless and frankly, so is she, but she knows something is different, all right. At length she realizes she is pregnant – although we’ve been told throughout the movie that she is hopelessly barren. The only real problem with this is that while reading the notebooks on the care and feeding of mermaids – written by the dead Captain’s wife – Gugino finds that the wife, too, was pregnant when she died, spectacularly unlikely because she was probably in her sixties or older.

Well, finally the showdown comes, and there is some good suspense when the mermaid spontaneously changes to all-human form – and then, while the horny sailors are working their way up to a gang rape of the helpless naked woman, she changes again to her all-fish form. And what a form it is! Mayhem de mer ensues and before you know it, most of the crew is dead. While all this is going on, the Captain confesses that the mermaid made him do something "that you’ll know about soon enough," then blows his head off.

We soon see that he’s taken the ship wildly off-course, to the secret island chain where all the rest of the mermaids live. And those gals are hungry. The real fun begins.

Gugino, after being rescued for reasons best understood to the mermaid, OR ANY OTHER OPERATIVE WATCHING THE MOVIE, gives birth to a beautiful baby girl who resembles both parents – the pretty dark-haired landlubber, and the aquatic parent with the glowing eyes. Happy ending!

These are some of the most beautiful special effects I’ve seen in years, and for a change they are NOT computer-generated. In fact it crossed my mind that Kihlstedt looks a lot like my cousin Chrissie did back in the mid-Seventies, although of course she’s much 'farther along' now, so it couldn’t have been her. There is a sort of fairytale feel to this movie that reminds me of the Tales From The Crypt series; it’s so impossible, but it happens before your eyes and that forces you to believe it for a minute anyway.

There are small, glaring flaws here and there: the mermaid living comfortably, never fed, apparently for several years, in an impossibly tiny tank too small to turn around in, in water that is mysteriously perfectly clear, absent any evidence of an aeration or filtration system. The current-day English used by people supposedly living a century ago. Things like that.

I was also very disappointed not to get a tour of the mermaids' secret island.

But I like it, I like it! I like that they put some very respectable actors in a movie that has such a comic-book feel. I like the chilling sense of possibility it gives me, because they suggest that in a world mapped end to end by landscum like Admiral Byrd and Jacques Cousteau, there are still some unknown pockets of Fish culture. For the likes of us it also makes a fine fantasy and historical romance rolled up in one. Although the ESP mating of two females of different species is a delightfully fresh idea, it clearly also serves to conceal HOW WE OPERATE in real life.

THEATRE OF FISH

Newfoundland Notes: Fish Conspiracy Operatives in The Frozen North

O flesh, flesh, how art thou fishified! (Bill Shakespeare)

CLIFFIE’S NOTES ON Theatre Of Fish by John Gimlette, Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2005

PLOT SUMMARY: Gee, I guess there isn’t one, exactly. A British lawyer who claims to be writing under his own name follows the route travelled by his great-grandfather, Dr. Eliot Curwen, around the towns of Newfoundland and on into the Labrador Peninsula. Gramps worked there for some time easing the suffering of the locals, evidently with mixed results. AS USUAL with literature written by the landscum who think they know something about FISH, it is highly entertaining to dope out where the ironies in this book truly lie. What is NOT USUAL AT ALL is the funky double-edged writing style of this author. There are many books and movies out there that read one way to a shaved monkey and quite another way to us, the landfish.

The astounding thing about this book is that Gimlette APPEARS TO HAVE WRITTEN IT THIS WAY INTENTIONALLY.

DON’T BELIEVE ME? Allow me to enlighten you with a few of his amazingly ambiguous quotes:

Page xix, under a reproduction of a Newfoundland postage stamp showing a heap of slaughtered operatives: "Poetically, if not geographically, the province owes its existence to fish…Half-mythical, half-piscatorial, it remained a trade secret for the next sixty-one years." Most of the important stuff going on there today is STILL a trade secret, thank you.

Page xx: "The colony’s owners – the great "Fishocracy…" NEED I SAY MORE?

Same page: "[A] Fish has always been at the heart of politics, the ruling genius." (I added the word "A" to the front of that sentence because otherwise it is ungrammatical.)

Page 27: "Occasionally, these creatures were seducers, like the half-fish, half-woman that went for Richard Whitbourne…His servant stepped in, cracked the thing over the head with an oar, and it swam off." Here we arrive at the very heart of the reason this model had to be discontinued by the front office. We just lost too many operatives this way with very little to show, especially once the shaved monkeys started in on their Age of Enlightenment. But I think it’s a testament to the greater wisdom of our R&D labs that even hundreds of years later, the mermaid’s power to seduce is still a legend. When P.T. Barnum displayed the front of a dead monkey stitched to the back of a dead fish and called the frightful object a ‘mermaid,’ hordes of people pressed their dollars on him so they could take a look. THEY WOULD DO THE SAME TODAY.

Page 49: "His lawyers, on the other hand, were struggling with a deadly riddle: when is a fish not a fish?" IF YOU ONLY KNEW! MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Page 56: "…But mostly people sang...The boy was always a fisherman. Sometimes he got his girl but, usually, he drowned. For some reason, everyone found this funny and we all laughed although we couldn’t think why." YOU AND I KNOW that the laughter is started by the operatives in the audience, and they find it funny, ladies, because the boy who "drowns" gets a much more suitable girl than the one who returns ‘safely’ to dry land. OK, she has gills and she doesn’t cook, but before long HE WON’T MIND. Most amusing of all to me is this: I really think that on some level – a very dim level to be sure -- even the humans in the audience sense and appreciate what is going on here.

Page 74: "…Indentured fish-slaves." I can think about the multi-layered meanings of THAT phrase for HOURS.

Page 81: "To his friends, he was ‘The Codfather’…" Hoo boy.

Same page: "There was a tendency among politicians of all stripes…to put the interests of the fishermen – who were voters – above the interests of the cod, who weren’t." Here we see one of the obvious, inherent flaws in the Naked Ape political process, but would a Naked Ape reading that passage have any idea what he was looking at? NOT LIKELY.

Page 100: "After the failure of the early plantations, the fish took control of the law." IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE. But again, I’d be amazed if Gimlette knew what he was saying when he put this down. Because if he did, he'd be ONE OF OUR OPERATIVES and he would be KILLED and EATEN for publishing a book full of security leaks the size of the floodgates on the Hoover Dam.

This list reaches less than a third of the way into the book, ladies. I’m sorry to say that most of the middle and the end of the travelogue strays far ashore into landscum political boringness. This includes a bunch of hairsplitting about what difference it makes to be Innu, British, French, Beothuk, Inuit or Canadian. YOU ALL LOOK THE SAME TO US. Of course there are quite striking differences, let’s be real. On one level, this book charts the destruction of a number of Fish-friendly, utterly sustainable cultures like that of the Innu by competing interests, in the form of Basques, Brits, the French and various other groups practicing things like gill-netting. On the other hand, the book charts the Fish invasion into areas of Europe and North America that NEVER WOULD HAVE HAPPENED without the intervention of commercial fishing and people like Clarence Birdseye. Gimlette takes note of all this without ever totally losing sight of the ones who really matter: the Cod. We see that as the Cod decline, the fortunes of Newfoundland shrivel up and blow away. This is an incredibly ambitious message for what is, on the surface, just a travel book.

I want you to remember that message, ladies: IF THE FISH AIN’T HAPPY, AIN’T NOBODY HAPPY. Gimlette even demonstrates this for us by way of contrast, describing on page 133 an amazing "natural festival" that the locals call "The Miracle Of The Caplin." The Caplins’ yearly love feast, still celebrated only because the Caplins have not yet been driven underground by overfishing, brings out every other species out of their hidey-holes to share in the fun. Even the landscum are invited. For a brief moment Gimlette draws away from the depressing vista of slapped-together lean-to huts and the drunken self-destruction of his own species, and lets us see the Whales, Dolphins, Cod, and Puffins meeting for the big party of the year. Even in this come-one-come-all setting, the landscum can only seem to stand at the shore and stare. Then, unfortunately, Gimlette goes back to human affairs, which seem to truly interest him and which is the strongest evidence for you new readers that this man is NOT an operative. (But, gee, maybe we should sign him up, huh?)

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I could hardly put it down.

BREAKING FISH NEWS – PURELY COMEDIC SECURITY LEAK!

Dateline: Atlantic and Pacific Herring Shoals

Nov. 10th, 2005: National Geographic reveals that Herrings in both the Atlantic and Pacific communicate within the shoal by expelling gas from their rear ends. This startling finding first appeared in Biology Letters, a UK publication of some note. HOW DID YOU THINK WE COMMUNICATE, BY SEMAPHORE? I mean, give me a break.