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Squid #247
(published October 6, 2005)
Notes from the Giant Squid: On The Recent Sighting Of Lost Loves And The Feeling Of Having A Limb Forcibly Removed By The Japanese
Who is Poor Mojo's Giant Squid?
Dear Giant Squid,

Sorry to hear the bad news. Are you holding up okay?

Max M.


Dearest Max,

Your concern has been noted in my Ledger. You will be spared. When the Great Rising comes, the seas will part around you as they did for Moses, King of Juice, when he fled the Pyramidists.

How am I "holding up"? A curious phrase, possible only in this vacuous, gravity-wracked environ. But a fit and nimble phrase nonetheless.

I "hold up" as well as most would expect, given the enormity of my experience. The . . . revelation that swept across the printed magnum-zines (I had previously ignored MagnumZines as being irrelevant, a mere excretion of advertisements from the bowels of human culture, I had not realized that they were, in essence, the World Wide Interweb solidified and inked upon the pulped remains of trees. It is the Internet made real; the Word made Flesh. And flesh is ever so delectable, my dear Max.)

Here I reprocess for you the horror that was seen this week past:

Who amongst us has not felt that sharp pang when confronted with a lover of times passed and gone, one who had, for a short and dear expanse of moments, shared the nectar of time and supped from the well of experience? A joining of bodies. A co-minglence of essences. An entwining of tender tentacles. Will this joining, this pooling, lead to one-ness? To unification? That is the thought that flickers, lightning-like, illuminating the unknown corners of your own soul.

The observationing of a former lover, no matter what the condition, is a traumatic affair.

And when your former lover is shown in national print and on the Interwebs, naked, cavorting with the Japanese, trailed by vicious and demented Sperm Whales, well, the pain is ever sharper.

Spare me an aside, if you will.

Upon viewing the interwebs one very late SaturnDay night—this was several months past, afore I set to wander the backwoods of America, while I was still yet only running at being President of these Yet United States, when I was still headquartered in the Grand City of Detroit—my assistant Rob queried aloud to no one in particular, "Jesus fuck; what the hell is wrong with the Japanese?"

He had been doing his special stretching exercises—pantless—while looking at biological illustrations and anatomical demonstrations upon the monitoring eye of his computadora personal when he stumbled upon—like a Sporty conveyance striking a wall built of baked, hardened clay—Japanese images of pre-sexual females being forcibly made to copulate by an army of dark-suited businessmen. "I mean, here I am, cruising along just fine and shit and looking at some hot trim and then WHAM!, I find this shit. What the fuck is with the schoolgirls, and the rape, and the cock-crazed game shows, and the fucking tentacle sex?"

Ah, yes. The tentacle sex. Horror stories are told amongst my kind of this. Of fellow Teuthis who ascend into madness, and are found at the explosive edge of the sea, copulating with animals. Animals like you, dear reader.

Famed Nipponese wood-cut artisan Hokusai, he that captured the crashing wave with such sublime magnificence, did crave the erotic touch of the tentacle. Witness:

Note well, Gentle Readers, that this image is no forgery or invention on my part, but rather a bona fide exemplar of feudal Nipponese high art created by the most venerated visual artist that fetid and foul archipelago has yet purged up unto the surface world.

This is a habit of the heart old to Nippon's psyche; old and ingrown, twisted in among their roots like the barb-wired fence consumed by the old oak, rusted and scabarous and essential to the final form.So what could my former love do, when confronted with these lustful deep divers, when snagged upon their lust-hook?

Is it not the Japanessum who did receive that great conquering spasm known as the Bomb Atomique? Do they not, rightly or not, bear forthwith the grudge of that great un-manning? Were they not, prior to their atomic corn-holing, the very virile Rapiers of the Nancy-Kings? Did they not soon after fall to the terrible blows of the Awakened Giant Americanum? Is there not in that space a pent up rage which all should fear?

Are they not the progenitors of a whole and untamed mind-world of the tentacular rapings? (My dear Rob, faithful assistant, has made much of making clear to me that many of my Readers likely do their reading while at their place of working vocation, and as such it likely well serves for me to note that, in this case, this most recent of linkages in the interwebs' chain is most defiantly Not of the Safe for Workings, for, as quoth Rob, "SHIT! That's fucking motherfucking crazy— fucking shit in your pants, cry-like-a-bitch porn, dig? You see that shit, and you're all like, 'Goddamn, why was I born with eyes?' and shit. Don't be showing me that goddamn shit. Not at lunch. I'm fucking eating lunch.")

And so, for my former love to face these surface-violating men of the deep . . . ?

The name of my former lover, featured in that firstmost photo above, is unpronounceable by any mammal. In the language of my people it is a slight rosening of the tips of the third and seventh tentacles that builds to a deep reddening. This is followed by slight crests and ridges to undulate back and forth across the back of the headsac. It is a beautiful name. To facilitate discussion, and to make concessions to your spittle-mouthed grunting, I shall refer to her as "Rosie."

She had an ineluctable beauty—this is true, for many times in our youths did I try and eluct her, and she was to have none of the elucting. A grace that mesmerized and bewitched time. A soul honed sharp by the brutalities of the UnderVille we grew up in, but which could be put to mercy or to pain not unlike the shears and scalpels wielded by surgeon and butcher alike.

There was a love of danger in her blood, though. The gleam in her optically perfect eye was noticeable at a great distance, when conversation would turn to risk, discovery and novelty. She said unto me once, in my youth, "Come, I wish to engage in mating with you in full view of that ravenous pack of Sperm Whales for the increased risk of harm to one or either of us is an aphrodisiac that quickens my blood and brings fire to my loins."

But I refused, saying, "While the prospect of your loins a-fire is of enormous interest to me, I do not wish to be gnawed upon by those gorillas of the deep. Their maws are larger than yours, and full of crushing teeth so while I would rather while away my day in your toothless, soothing maw, I refuse to risk theirs to do so."

And then, as you gruntchimps say, she did make the dump at me. So accurate, your funny little gruntings.

She took up with an older Architeuthis, one who possessed many fine things and consumed intoxicants with alarming frequency. Rosie spent much time with him cavorting on the wrong side of The Depths. We parted in savage anger, and never spoke again—I nigh onto was cost an eye in the thrashing exchange. At gatherings of both social and military importance, when we both would be in attendance, neither would meet the gaze of the either. And so it ended.

I did not hear of her still for several cycles. Yes, gossip like the whisper of the autumnal currents through the Straits of Yon'Sotuh did reach mine ears. Electronic mail was sent. I was IMéd, and did IM. Friends that we had shared spilt stories upon my mind not unlike one of your construction trucks built for dumpage flipping and jackknifing upon the Free Ways of America, salt and blood commingling under the conveyance crushed by its weight.

The stories painted a dark picture of my once dear Rosie. She danced upon the edge of the razor, drunk with the danger of the cut: Following Sperm Whales, racing close to their obliterating maws, and then scooting away before they took her.

She must have been playing her dangerous games with the whales, when the sordidly cupiditous Japanese—perverts for all things tentacled—came upon her, and ensnared her with their wily robotics.

I had loved her once. This is truth. And there is a hole upon and through my triple hearts with her name—that I must have needs to bastardize here as "Rosie"—that has never healed. Never.

To see her, naked, preparing to violate a submarine full of degenerate perverts was shocking, Dear Max. But ever more so shocking was the forcible removal of her Chief Hunting Tentacle—her 6th tentacle, which is to say the dexterous hunting tentacle, which is to say her Mauling. I was fond of that tentacle in particular. Who would not be?

The scientists claimed it was happenstance, no malice aforethought was involved.

But I say this to you: This was no boating accident!

Yours in Grief and Wonder,
The Giant Squid

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