Funny Little Recruiting Datum -- NOT A Security Leak

 

 

 

One of my Manoogian Mansion operatives -- aka my personal staff here at HQ -- came across this scrap of hilarity in a wildly popular book called Freakanomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, copyrighted 2005 to the co-authors and put out in 2009 by Harper Perennial. There is a whole chapter in there on how Naked Apes decide to name their cubs. You guessed it, IT'S ALL ABOUT STATUS AS USUAL.

...Back to my point. On page 203, after exclaiming over the baffling meteoric rise of the name "Madison" for females, they put in a footnote to the effect that it "almost certainly" came about because of the 1984 romantic comedy Splash. I HARDLY NEED TO REMIND YOU that Daryl Hannah's interpretation of the Madison role, WHILE RATHER INSULTING, brought us in an incredible number of recruits in the mid-Eighties and continues to do so today. And once again, let me say: NICE WORK, EVERYONE.

WHAT SURPRISES ME is that these two guys would notice! Anal and overly focused on details they are, and apparently they even get paid for this, but sheesh.

And let me just pass on to you that the copy of Sirena, read and reviewed for you here at the Notes by Your Truly, was loaned to me by a Mermaid fanatic named...Madison. Born in the mid-1980s. Yep.

Says here this book has been translated into 35 languages. The information is right there on the page for all to see. BUT DO THEY EVEN SUSPECT WE HAVE THEM SURROUNDED?

 

A SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR LANDLOCKED MERMAIDS

This one was written and illustrated -- or more likely illustrated, then written -- by Margot Datz and was published by Atria books in 2008.

I have to be honest here and say this was a VERY NICE EFFORT. The illustrations are very pretty and upbeat, and the message is ENTIRELY POSITIVE. I have NO DOUBT this will increase the recruiting successes among our operatives. More humans will want to "GO FISH" and become recruiters themselves after reading this, and the human males we aim to marry will be drawn in THAT MUCH QUICKER.

Alas, Datz betrays her ENTIRELY HUMAN VIEWPOINT on the relationship between Landfish and their human recruits on ALMOST THE FIRST PAGE. While she appears to entirely understand the plight of a fish out of water, she clearly thinks of it as ultimately a better thing that we come ashore and stay there. She talks about marrying the Shaved Monkeys as if it were an entirely middle-class American proposition -- a monogamous, once-in-a-lifetime, happily-ever-after process. She has NO IDEA that while the happily-ever-after part certainly applies to any human male lucky enough to pair off with a Landfish, the HARD WORK is JUST BEGINNING for the squamous bride, who will have to repeat the process AGAIN AND AGAIN as long as she continues her recruiting work.

She even talks about drowning Naked Apes as if it were a BAD thing! For crying out loud, that's HALF THE FUN!

Other points to ponder include her ENTIRELY HUMAN -- and again, middle-class-American, self-help styled "survival tips." Margot -- honey -- FISH DON'T ACCESSORIZE. EVER. 'KAY?

Oh, and one other thing:

I WAS SO WORRIED THIS WAS GOING TO BE ANOTHER CHILDREN'S BOOK! It is nice to see this plan of action presented for the illumination of ADULTS.

BUT MAKE NO MISTAKE, LADIES: Your instructions are DRAW THEM INTO THE SEA LIKE LEMMINGS. YOU KILL THEM. AND YOU EAT THEM.

The Mystery Of Memmie Le Blanc

 OK, I read about this fabulous case from another recruiting territory, and another century, in Michael Newton's book Savage Girls And Wild Boys, published in London by Faber and Faber in 2002.

WHAT AN INSPIRING READ. This is like "The Little Mermaid," only not fictional at all, and without the mawkish human sentiment that gums up the Hans Christian Andersen story.

Memmie was a mystery to her hosts. She was found fending for herself on the banks of the Marne in 1721, eating raw fish, root vegetables and frogs and running off like a lightning bolt if she spotted anyone coming. She also swam like a mink. She was eventually lured into human hands with an offer of more raw fish.

OR DID SHE LURE THEM?

They discovered that she had been painted black and didn't speak any language they recognized. After they scrubbed her paint off and taught her some French, she explained that she had been taken as a slave and painted black to look like the others, who were Africans. She arrived in France accidentally, while being transported to someplace new after her first owners sold her. Her slave ship sank in the Marne.

Her homeland, she explained, was somewhere that had snow on the ground much of the year, and her people had some sort of earth lodges to live in. They used tools like knives and clubs but -- here's the kicker -- no fire. The kids in this civilization learned to swim at the same time they were learning to walk. She never learned to withstand being in a room with a fire in it, and she couldn't even bear to have the windows closed in winter as long as she lived. At eight she could catch her own food and skin and eat it raw. She knew how to use a frog as a bandage, explaining she had once used it on the other girl who escaped from the sinking ship before they split up for good. She said in fact that her health had been ruined by the slavers and her first owners, who made her eat cooked food and stop swimming. People she stayed with speculated that she might be an Eskimo. Except she didn't look like one, and Eskimos are well known to use fire. Wikipedia suggests she was a member of the Fox Tribe in Wisconsin, but I never heard of any Indian tribe that didn't use fire. Besides, since when did a ship full of African slaves stop off in Wisconsin to steal a single little girl? DOES ANYONE BUT ME SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS STORY?

PRETTY MYSTERIOUS, EH?

Well not to us of course! This long-suffering operative, arriving onshore at a time when the public was fascinated with feral children and freaks of nature, was very much living the Little Mermaid life -- belonging in the water but never able to go home. She lived in miserable conditions in Paris, selling copies of a book a benefactor had written about her life, as long as history records her existence.

NEVER FEAR. SHE FINALLY GOT TO COME HOME, AND NOW DWELLS AMONG HER PEOPLE, IN WONDER AND GLORY WITH DAGON.

AVATAR

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.