O Lord Architeuthis!

Spare Tom, for is there not a sort of mud-monkey lyricism in his appreciation of the sky-rats known as starlings? As we none of us are capable of plumbing the mighty depths of Your knowledge with our feeble understanding, is it not better to have one who might approximate the leap with his "soul"?

You accuse him of cowardice. This is unjust, for when have You dared to face Your simian undoer, the measurer of Your childrens' head-sacs and hunting tentacles? The one who swore You were no myth, and hounded You to Your shameful exposure? The one whose website discusses bringing You to earth as if You were a pachyderm-rodent?

Oh yes, it is of Doctor Roper of the Smithsonian Institution that I speak. And You dare not face him. As Tom dares not face You.

Genie.
Virginia.

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For ambulatory sacks of salt-water, you humans can occasionally bootstrap yourselves up to something of a literary standard. This impassioned plea quite nearly caused a briny tear to tumble down my smooth, chromatomorphic visage . . . but then, I could say the same for an almighty stink, now couldn't I. Genie, your beseeching had nearly the affective strength of a strong olfactory presence. You are truly a credit to your species.

The first thought to race through my axonic river, oh my sippy-straw wired monkey-host (With such narrow dendrites, how is it that you think at all? Easier one should draw a bowling ball through a garden hose then coax a coherent thought threw your angel-hair axons. I ponder now and again: how can you possibly think?) was that your pathetic votes should be ignored, tossed. Do we care what fungus thinks? Do we poll grass before it is mowed? Do you ever seat yourself within your speedy-mess-halls, round the great, fetid troughs and wonder "Golly and heck; does the there steak approve of my course of action? Is the salad unhappy in its social station?" Some things, it must be said, do not matter.

But then my optically perfect eyes fixed upon my cathode ray tube and I bore witness to the shambles of your latest election.

My torture and wrath, when they come and when I choose to bring them to bear upon you filthy chumps, always take a unique form. I detest repetition, and pride my squidly axons for their never-ending creativity.

I realized that I could not fix or tamper with this vote, simply because I am higher than you (higher! ridiculous adjective! Is the moon higher than a crawling worm? It is an absurd scale!) because your American leaders have already done so. I will not revisit torture, nor will I play second fiddle to pasteboard punch-cards and litigious sleight-of-hand. There are nearly four million varieties of biting and stinging dweller in the deeps, and I fully intend to use each, alone and in concerted combination, before I repeat myself. Call it a point of pride; the mighty needn't pocket votes or short sheet beds. Do you know why sharks never use guns, me dear? Because guns are for sniveling little sea-squirts.

With all honesty, the votes were:

Let the disgusting mud-chimp be devoured by stinging rays, because he smeared his offal on his lord Architeuthis' column: 7%

Spare the lice-ridden, warm-blooded, cavorts-in-the-nude-with-his-own-progeny Tom from immediate death, and prolong his suffering for one more day: 93%

The people have spoken Genie, and for once their discourse was intelligible: Tom shall live.

Which is not to say he will not live in agony. Ha. I shall spare him— but I shall not spare him much. To format my further response in the form of a simple American riddle:

Why did the chicken traverse the thoroughfare?
To peck at the many skin mites which take up residence upon Tom's hide as he lay staked out under the searing Ohio sun!

Ha ha ha.

As for my colleague Herr Doktor Roper— you, my dearest lemurette, have not the slightest clue.

GS