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Squid #134
(published May 15, 2003)
Notes From The Giant Squid: Or Was It Just a Bright and Shinning Lie

Who is Poor Mojo's Giant Squid?
Dear GS:

Can you tell us what really happened at Dealy Plaza on November 22nd, 1963? Did your kind have anything to do with the assassination? I need to know...

J.M.

San Francisco


J-to-the-M, with much joy do I to you write:

It is time that all of the messes of that hazy era be set to the right. You, by your very question, have outlined the very way in which all of these years the history of your land has been mis-understood, mis-remembered, and mis-explained.

Yes, it was at the order of several squid that your Jack of the Ugly-Head was slain. But it is hardly important, for his death was but a distraction, a mis-direction, a centerpiece to a much greater slight of tentacle.

Although I recall the initial meeting of our cadre well, little of true merit or interest was accomplished there. It was 1957; this was briefly after the unpleasantness with Daryl Zanuck eldest, most succulent daughter, and I had been reduced to sharing living arrangements with Rock Hudson, nominally employed as his butler. Much of the Hollywood and Recording Industry Cabal was in attendance. Uncle Sphincter was there, as was Sorrow, Gil and I (of course)— representing our own interests, to be sure, but traveling under the diplomatic flags of Argentina (Sorrow, Gil and I) and Senegal (Uncle Sphincter— oh, that practical joke-to-maker! Senegal! It is indeed rich!) Also present were Bill Graham the Jew (an apple-cheeked boy of just 26, still intent on acting and just beginning to appreciate the marketing potential of the Rock-to-Rolling music even then beginning to scandalize the nation), Billy Graham the not-Jew (already well into his ascent to international prominence, and bleary of eye with the jet lagging, having flown in from his Madison Square Garden Mission, in which he preached the Good Word of his knock-kneed little girl pansy God). Several representatives of the United States military infrastructure deigned to arrive, each in costume and meticulously feigning not to know the others from his field. Also a young African-American guitar player of no repute, but quite energetic manual dexterity, by the name of James Hendrix was in attendance, and regaled us all with his artfully origami creations. At one point, mid-meeting, whilst we waited for the mechanical butlers to complete their ornate arrangements of the deli platters, Phil Spector began to idly whistle a little ditty that one of his proteges had recently been toying with. It was lyrically simple, as it came to be demonstrated— perhaps even simplistic— but the tender wall of sound woven about it, complex and startling, rich with aural color like the blushed skin of a lovelorn and heady squid of tender years . . . Well, might it suffice to say that it was an exciting tune and did indeed capture the mind and heart. Music, at this time, had stagnated to a sing-songy childishness, or a jingoistic umpah-umpah joviality that, in all honesty, was wont to turn the bile churningly surfaceward. It was a grim time, but something in that ditty, it spoke to us. The meeting was derailed away from the matter of the Weather Control Device, and all attention turned to the state of music and how we might turn to popularize this tune and its ilk.

Phil was quick to point out that the tune was a waltz-time lovey ballad by some manner of "beatnik kid" he had employed to fetch coffee beverages and such. It was simply not the sort of tune that might catch on across the United States. Bill and Billy indicated that this hip beatnik element was interested in much such music of the folk, and would certainly greedily lap up this delicious smear of pap. But this element was the vast minority in the latter days of the middle decade of the greatest century. Not even a moderate pressing could be supported by America's tiny counter-culture population— America was of a single mind and spirit, a Camelot, all inclusive, almost an Eden-before-the-Snake-Apples. What could turn enough of the populace away from their government, ruled by, for and of the People?

"War," one of the masqueraders muttered.

"Unjust war," answered another.

"Immoral war," added a third.

We look expectantly to the illuminated global map mounted high in the cavern wall. In the breath-held silence, one could hear the slow, meticulous dripping of the silt-rich waters as they slid down the ever-growing stalactites.

Asia, we looked to, humid Asia, with her jungles, her cream-colored populace, her frequent shift in ideology and leaders and influence.

China.

Korea.

Laos.

Vietnam.

James Hendrix slouched back in his chair, letting the crane he had folded tumble from his sinuous, long fingered hand and loosing a frustrated huff of air through his afroed hair, "that weak Kennedy bitch, he won't never send ground troops into Asia."

And, at that, the plan was hatched: we would kill this troublesome Kennedy, clumsily lay the blame to a simple-minded, emotionally unstable Communist, then leverage the very gracelessness of that framing as the basis for a widespread distrust of the strong Federalist Government. Throngs would, in their shock and awe at the much-loved Ugly-Head's demise, be driven to jingoistic ferver, then feel betrayed as Lyndon B. Dogeatter rushed his nation into a War Without Reason. This alienation would swell the counter-cultural ranks, and finally this song much loved would rise to deserved prominence.

To be french in the matter, the ultimate outcome— considering Sonny's later rise to political prominence and his odious Copyright Extension Act— was less than ideal. But, what can be said: You make omelettes, and thus need to slaughter potential fetus and then process the poultry menses. It is simply the way of the world. And, at any rate, "I Possess You, Babe" maintained its #1 slot for 3 weeks, selling 1 million copies of the 45 rotation-per-minute single vinyl disk for that song per week, and was that not the matter of greatest import?

No, no. I am afraid, dearest J-to-the-M, that I to you lie. As noted earlier, it was Mrs. Kennedy who killed Mr. Kennedy, as retribution for his sexual transgressions with a wide variety of monkey-females, primarily human and generally of sexual, if not legally recognized, maturity. A bold one, was Jack of the Ugly-Head. Here, as is usual, we can defer to the utterances true of the grizzled gumshoe detectives in the white-on-black televisual transmissions: "If you've got a dead body, and you think the wife did it, you'll probably find you're right."

Of course, how she managed this murder most foul— well, that is another matter entire, noxious in the telling and disturbing in the extreme. A clue: I will say that Jacqueline the O had mor depth than most women— by which I mean to say she was non-Euclidean and pan-dimensional, in addition to being a sophisticated rhetorician, whipcrack art critic and Napoleon at the bridge table.

I Yet Remain,
Your Giant Squid

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see other pieces by this author | Who is Poor Mojo's Giant Squid? Read his blog posts and enjoy his anthem (and the post-ironic mid-1990s Japanese cover of same)

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