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Squid #168
(published February 26, 2004)
Notes from the Giant Squid: Sweet, Free Mason

Who is Poor Mojo's Giant Squid?
Dear Giant Squid,

Long have I read of your Advice and Adventures (indeed, little else have I read, ever) and, as is only natural, I have come to recognize the superiority of the giant squid to humanity in all ways.

For a brief time, this produced in me a great sorrow, for I knew in my single heart that I would forever remain weak and helpless, shackled to a single hue, possessing only four crude and clumsy limbs, utterly useless in such environs as the Trench Mariana. However, despair sat not long upon my simian visage. I decided to make the best of an unutterly horrible situation and become a pioneer, choosing to strike out into new territory in the hopes of improving all mankind by my example and efforts.

In short, I have decided to make myself as squidlike as possible.

Thusfar, my actions have had little success. I have managed, by making use of a jackknife and copious amounts of morphine, to remove all the bones in my left hand — however, instead of thus becoming a set of five furious (if tiny) tentacles, my hand has become a useless and pain-wracked mass of scars and skin (even now I must type this, laboriously, using only my remaining boned hand).

I will refrain from detailing my similar catastrophic failures in the realms of water-breathing, eye augmentation, penis enlargement, and the arts chameleonic.

I now turn to you, my model, my idol, my lord, my inspiration, and I ask.... where have I gone wrong? Should I embark upon experimentations genetic? Should I graft the skins and organs of actual marine life to my filthy chimpskin?

Or (horror of horrors) must I attempt to find some sort of hollow contentment in the being a Sapiens Homo, accepting my shameful lowerness as a natural consequence of the monumentally unfortunate circumstances of my birth?

I await your recommendations with existential angst and Architeuthic obsession.

—Mason.


Dearest, Sweetest Mason,

My optically perfect eyes gaze upon this electro-sent letter of yours, and the base salinity in my glass and concrete tank rises ever so slightly, as tears pucker from ducts I long thought dead.

When, many moons and paragees and apogees ago, contact was made between myself and the editors of this humble and hirsute Almanackicka—the fiendish Fritz and his sailing crew of barnacled no-good-niks having located my great and ominous form, slowly perishing in the shipwrecked and pain-wracked depths of Superior Lake—One sole desire burned in my many hearts: to conquer America for all of the Architeuthian and Benthic kind.

Watching the many televisual screens at my disposal, and reading the great many—nigh unto-infinite—newsfeeds that comprise the Interweb, I despaired. The Great Beast, the DubyaBush, ravaged the treasuries of the nation that was to be mine. The Army Services, and its serviced men—Men that were part of many of my schemes, like the cogs in the watch, or the herring in the penguin-lure—were being wasted, like the vitae Rob spills while watching his biological/anatomical films.

My holy and spleen-filled crusade was leading nowhere. My kind was mocked.

Hope was dashed upon the rocks of perceived reality.

But then, dearest Mason, your letter arrived. True, it was not the sound of the scuttling crabs devouring the CheneyDick, but it was the strangled gurgle of victory, nonetheless!

The deboning of your mano derecha was an admirable step on your long and painful journey to squid-dom, but it was only the tiniest of baby steps.

Forsaking your 23-chromosomed-gamete, brachiating nature must come next, sweet Mason. Your ancestors, the stink chimps and neo-anderthals, the Bonobo and even the noble savages of the Detroit Zoological Garden's own Monkey Island must all be forsook!

Spread the gospel of Teuthis. Encourage others to your flock. We shall build a schemic pyramid, not unlike the masters of AmWay, MaryKay and Friendster. For every ten disciples you bring unto mine fold, one step forward shall you take on the road to perfect Architeuthis-dom. And every ten disciples one of your recruits enjoinders to my flock of acolytes, shall also be a step forward for you.

Caution, though. For every primatological behavior you engage in shall be not unlike the taking of the two steps back, the regression unto monkey.

The Great Religiousities of this unwatered world we inhabit together prohibit many things, and so shall those who seek to become like I, perfect beings, also be denied base and unworthy actions. I provide to you on this Mardi Gras a list of things you shall not do, anti-Mitzvot in your quest:

You must not: engage in Arboreal swinging; take the epithet of Architeuthis in vain; allude to the existence of a mythical and laughable "colossal squid"; Vote for the Great Beast DubyaBush; clean the furs of your fellows; shy away from your reconfiguration of body and mind and spirit.

These are but a basis for the foundation for the laying of the path Teuthic-ward.

So, go forth with these commandments and array around yourself a brothersisterhood, a Simian-Squid Auxiliary. You shall be the soldiers-grounded and dry of my campaign. You shall be the roots of my grass invasion! Green and nefarious, like the inland prairie-sea!

As your army grows, it shall accumulate the knowledge, the technology, the money, to promote your noble body-modification. Cut, mold, re-shape! You may take upon yourself a new birthright, a Squid-Right, and through it find a re-shaped self!

And you shall bear this symbol:

And by it you, and your army shall be known and feared.

Vote Often! Vote Squid!

I Remain,
Your Giant Squid

The squid doesn't know that I can post shit after he posts his column, but, well, you pick up things, right? I watch shit. I'm not always sleeping. Anyway, like, I just wanted to say to everybody out there, like, I mean . . . damn. Did shit just change? Probably not. Always back to the ground-state by the next episode, right? Just like Family Ties. Yeah. Everything's fine.
—Rob

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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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The Next Squid piece (from Issue #169):

Notes from the Giant Squid: Comestibles, They Are A-Coming to Get You!



The Last few Squid pieces (from Issues #167 thru #163):

Notes from the Giant Squid: My Democratic Debacle


Notes from the Giant Squid: I Accept! I Accept! You To Me Bring The Liking, You Really Do! OnWard!

Notes from the Giant Squid: The Primary Architeuthis


Notes from the Giant Squid: A Clark to Call Mine Own


Notes from the Giant Squid: Moonward, the Singing Squid Goes.



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