Dear, sweet Giant Squid, my friend and I are doing a debate for our English class and have chosen the topic of what came first, the chicken or the egg. We were wondering if you could help us out.

Sincerely,
Evelyn and Cassie

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Clearly it was the Egg. Egg is mother to man, as to Squid. Egg is the envelope of the body, the whole being. This world, this consciousness, this sense of time, she all started as an egg in the ether, as a floating point in the blackness, the whiteness, the mauveness that was the center, and the periphery, the alpha and the omega, of all things.

It was definitely an Egg.

I said to Rob, my assistant laboratorial, election advisor and homme de guerre:

"What do you recall, Rob, of this egg which did envelope you and give you life? What recollections of the Terrible Tearing Out amongst the thousand Spawnkin of your birth can you share with our readers?"

Rob, was hunched, simian-like (for what-else-like could he be?), at his work terminal, the flickering light of the screen so pale and bright as to nearly beguile me into believing he had, over the evening past, developed chromataphors upon his own flesh.

"Rob!"

I spiked the volume of my speaker but a little bit, driving the amplifier up beyond the minimal threshold of harsh digital clipping, and he did jump in his chair. I was gratified.

"Fuzhuckles!" He shouted up from his slumber, "Fuck! What you need?"

"I was set to wondering, Rob: What rememberings have you of the time afore you spread fourth from your mother's feculent thighs, when you were a tiny little homunculus among your Spawnkin, and the time within your mother's egg, and the et cetera?"

"Oh," he grunted, and growled of the throat, and did spat forth toward— although not into— his rubbish receptacle a great green gout of some humor, plausibly phlegm or bile . . . semen? I am forever forgetting and confusing the humors humana, and the orifices and temperaments with which they are associated. At any rate, he did continue, "uh, hech, ahum. Yeah. Right. In my mom? And inside the egg? Man, some savage fucking shit, I'll tell you. You're just this little dude, right? Still gotta tail and shit, hardly know enough to shove your thumb in your mouth or up your butt, and already you're wearing a little helmet, and have to, like, climb around on the inside of Ma's belly like a little mountaineer, with caribeener clips and pitons and ropes and a little ice-axe and shit. And that's just the fallopial tubes. After that, you've gotta drive this lil' dune buggy around, dodging coat hangers and little yeasty monsters. And, man, every time Mom falls on her back and spreads, it's raining men, if you catch my drift. Place is totally overrun with lil jizzos, with jackhammers and boomboxes and shit. Total craziness. Savage. Savage, savage shit."

"This is all fascinating— nary a day passes that learn I not some new and heretofore entirely unexpected strangeness of your kith and kine."

"No problemo. Why'd you wanna know?"

"It is a matter of some small import, as a reader has asked for clarification on the matter of which is primary, the chicken or the egg?"

Rob did, at hearing mention of the chicken, bolt upright in his chair. "Fuckin'-A! The chicken? Don't even get me started about that fucker! Man, you think the jizzos and mountain climbing is bad, not to mention trying to change the oil on a dune buggy up in your Ma's cooze, you don't even wanna hear about the chicken!"

"No," Rob winced with the pain; I had shouted perhaps a little overloud, having been drawn into the excitement of his telling, "Rob, please do tell!"

"O.K., chill. Just when you think everything is about as fuckrazy as it's gonna get, with a helmet on your head, a rope hanging off your ass, ramming your buggy full throttle with a bunch of crazed, jackhammering guinne jizzos on your ass— BAMN!— this fluffy lil chick pops out of nowhere and, dude, a fucking cute ass lil yellow chick ain't so cute ass when you're a 43-day-old thinking fetus, which is basically a worm in a goddam helmet. That fucker comes on like Godzilla noshing on Nagasaki, and it's just stomping and tearing and crushing your dune buggy, and you're squirming for your life all over Ma's uterus. Bad times, Lord Architeuthis, bad times. My emotions and shit are still totally scarred from that shit. Maybe the egg is the first thing for me, but the lil fluffy chick, he's the nightmare from before the egg, you know? Even when you're still locked up tight in your lil nutshell, safe, with no idea of what fear is ever going to be, the chick is out there, waiting. You dig?"

"I do indeed dig, Rob. I do indeed."

So, then, finally, Evelyn, Cassie, I answer you this: The Egg, she is Primary, but the Chick, she is Primal. Venerate the former and Fear the latter, everhence and forevermore.

I Remain Your Advisor
and Ruler-to-Be
The Giant Squid
President Elect

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Posto-Scripto: Rob here. Yeah, I was yanking Lord A.'s tentacle but, you know, what the fuck? He's been kinda intolerable since he won that fucking election, and sometimes it's just a lot goddam easier to play along then to try and set his shit straight. Know what I mean? Rob Out.