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Squid #220
(published March 31, 2005)
Ask the Giant Squid: The Biggest Squid, A Clarification
Who is Poor Mojo's Giant Squid?
Dear Giant Squid:

How big is the biggest giant squid? Where do they live?
I wish we found the Biggest Giant squid in the world. Bigger than the blue whale!

Anonymous

P.S.: Godzilla.


My dearest readers. A veritable flood of the questions pertinent and strange have flooded the labs, lo these many weeks of my absence, and it is only now that I am able to turn my attentions from those most presidentially important matters Legislative, Militaria and Bureacratica which heretofore have occupied my vast, deep and terrible mind.

But turn from the ship of state, have I, so as to remind you all, gentle readers, that you are my core and base politéque. Allow me now to answer one such query from the frothing mass.

The Biggest Giant Squid lives in Topeka of Kan's Ass, where he runs a detective agency. His staff consists of a drunkard plumber named Dodi, an angry Mongol named Hong, three French Canadian mechanics and five wise crows.

This simple declaration did, of the course, invite confused interlocutive grunts from my right-handed man, lab assistant, press secretary and all about go-to-the-gopher, Rob, who happened to be in the Washington Deca for a brief interval, making a delivery, afore his return to Detroit. He stood in the glassed vestibule I have had crafted just within the doorway of my oval office, so that my human staff— ill-evolved for the stresses of several hundred atmospheres which I call home— might address me more directly. He tapped upon the glass— which seems minor to you outside the tank, but, the vibrations being amplified by their direct transmission to the tympanum through the willing conduit of the salty waters, is enormously vexing to we within— and held up the week's question request printout.

"Dude!" he shouted— and why does he shout? The intercom, she does serve well, "Lord A! Dude! You already fielded this question, like, a year ago. The biggest squid was Bernard. Remember? Bernard?"

"I remember Bernard, Rob. But, nonetheless, the biggest squid is Rolls Brick-Hoess of the Topeka."

"Dude, I just pulled it up on my laptop— see, issue #161 of the Almanac(k)," he held up the lapping top so I might view of its liquefied crystals monitor, "See? Giant Squid: Ask the Giant Squid: The Biggest Squid, and it's all about Bernard fuckin' humping a Chinese superjunk or some shit."

"Notwithstanding, Rob, the biggest—"

"Black and white, Lord A.! It's in fucking— OK, it's green and darker green, but the shit is the same: Fuckin' Bernard, biggest fuckin' squid!"

"Rob!"

"You never fuckin' listen, dude! Not even when it's just the most obvious shit!"

Throughout this exchange there had been much new, vexsome tapping, which I did then realize was emitting from my oaken, waterprooféd Cabinet, in which I keep my current advisor premier, ex-President George the Double-Yew Bush.

"If I could get a word in," he noted stumblingly, "Now, Squidgy, I'm firstly inclined to agree. I'm not the, um, most eruditious student of your wisdoms, but I think the boy is right. Bernard sounds right. But—"

"You, shut the fuck up One-Term! I hardly need your help when I'm fucking right!"

"But, respecting his passion for the truth— and if you'll let me finish— I feel duty-bound to clarify that you two fellas are talking right past each other— like a Ariel Sharon and a Arafat talking baseball. What I'm hearing is that Squidgy is talking about who is the biggest squid, and you are talking about who was the biggest squid. Apples. Oranges."

A silence did pervade; George the Double-Yew was right. Simply an error in communication, I misunderestimating of what was stated and what was meant. Lucky we are that the smoking gun came not in the form of the mushroom cloud, but rather in the luminous, numinous substancelessness of a webbed page of one of the many Internets.

"Will you let me outta this box now?"

"No!" Rob snapped.

"I am sorry," I did agree, "George the Double-Yew: It cannot yet be so."

Rob did nod of the head, muttering "Yeah, bitch," although I doubt George the Double-Yew could see such a nod, as his single portholed knothole does give the limited view.

It was at that point that clarity was leant— and from the most surprising quarter: a darkly varnished, perpetual-night besought wooden casket aside my desk, containing a man who, though charming to share an office with, was largely regarded as less-than-luminary in his own Term in the Rose Garden. But, the luminance remained: Rob was confused, thinking of who was the biggest squid. Clearly, that was Bernard, and clearly when we spoke of bigness in his case, we spoke of the psycho-emotional sort of largesse for which squids are too infrequently known. Exempli gratis:

Thus it came to pass that Bernard opened a clinic that counseled the creatures of the deep to stay away from the mysterious up space, for its danger were multiple and hidden. And so, the deep went into a great period of introspection and silence, never showing much of itself to the upspace. And Bernard was kind and gentle to the end of his days, humble to each creature, great or small.

He was truly the very biggest of squidkind.

But, Rob's logic did fail on two counts: firstly, this querier asks of who the biggest squid is, not was— for Bernard is dead. Secondly, Bernard was small of stature and large of heart, which contrasts him much to Rolls, who is quite the opposite.

Bernard is dead; his bigness was metaphoric. This biggest squid there is, the corpulent Rolls Brock-Hoess, lives withing his clay brick townhouse in sunny, flat Topeka. In point of fact, Rolls does not simply occupy his house in some limited and mobile sense— as one might occupy a vacant field— but rather he occupies his three story home as a fatman occupies a little boy's sailor suit: completely, overwhelmingly, and disturbingly. Rolls is so large that his supple and boneless form snakes throughout the entirety of the home— which is itself re-inforced and sealed much as my Oval Office, so that all the space which is not Rolls nor structural might be a-watered. Interestingly, these retro-modifications have left an interstice, between water-sealed and tastefully paperéd wall and brick veneer, which is moist and warm, yet dry, and does support a most unique population of tiny, webbed-footed cats— but really, that matter is to the side.

Rolls owns and operates a fine agency of investigations, which takes a great variety of cases, both in a pro bono and pro mammon variety. All audiences are granted in the sun-room— the only dryroom in the entire domicile, save the solarium perched high up into the terrible drysky— where he gazes upon his interlocutor with one optically perfect eye.

Where-as Rolls is confined to his home— which, upon reflection, is really something more of a mighty nautilus shell in function if not form— although I do recall his fine spiraling staircase— his man-of-arms (or, more pertinently, legs and endo-skeletons) to wanderlustfully across this fair globe, peregrinating in body to act upon his many fine ruminations mental. His soused plumber Dodi and the trois mécaniques Quebecois keep his home in fine— if somewhat leaky repair— and it is cross, sagacious Hong, always tugging upon his long and noble mustachio, and the pentaverate of crows who do the better part of the leg work.

Rolls is truly a gargantua of form— though stunted and dwarfish of spirit, and besought at all times by sloth, avarice, lust, pride, envy, gluttunousness and a most terrible wrath.

It is indeed curious that he has chosen to live not only upon the searing surface of this mostly-blue globe, but in such central and landlocked locale. Did I not know of so great his intellect, I might take this to be a simple eccentricity of spirit. But, he is wise (wiser even than those old crows,) and so I do not doubt that he has chosen to sequester himself away from his own moral and sentient Deep Kind in order to generally spare us the pain of knowing one so foul as he, and yet kin. The only act beyond suicide, for a squid, is taking up residence in the Kan's Ass.

This, of course, does open to consideration the fate and psycho-emotional disposition of a squid who chooses to live in a series of sky-scrapping offices in the midwest, and then retires to a rickety wooden-structure in a drained swamp to rule over that land with alternating iron and velvet mitts— consideration which, at this time, I leave for further private mediation (mine and yours alike.)

Yours,
The Giant Squid
President
the United States

Post-Scriptorum: GODZILLA! (With appreciative thanks to the fine and pious gentleman of the Godzilla-temple).

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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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