[As August 2009 marks the close of our eighth year of weekly publication, we shall spend this month enjoying "the blast from the past" with selections from Poor Mojo's Almanac(k): Year Two (issues 51-100). Please, enjoy!—Your Giant Squid, Editor-in-Chief, PMjA][originally published in issue #85]
Dear Giant Squid:
Tell me every thing there is to know about giant squid.
Yours,
Robert McWatts
We have now come to the finale of my little found triptych. If the soul is indeed to be found filling the aqueous humour of the eye, then my soul must be huge and awe inspiring. The vision of that soul must therefore be equally huge and complex. While my have struggled in the face of this monumental task, I hope you will agree that their efforts have been edifying to say the least. (very, very edifying Mr. Sang).
And now, on with the completion.
For All the Best,
Your Giant SquidFor further info on the Squid Gigantus, please review the Squid FAQs One, Two, Three, Four and Five.
The Squid? Man, Giant Squid gots the fat stacks, know what I'm sayin'? Mistuh Squid be needin' it, and His Many Devo be makin' it happen, all the time. Pressurized tank? That's me. Freight elie-to-the-telie, take you from the garage all the way to the penthouse suit laboratory? That's yo' man right here, too. Video hookups all throughout the squidly hizzouse, CAT-5 cable and fiber optics for the heavy broadband action? Every last run snaked by the man right here, D-to-the-Evo, Devo the Evo Kenevo. And a tricked out Cadillac Escalade? Daaamn! All-y'all knows that pressurized nigga gots to be gettin with the many and several fiiine ladies. Oh, fo' sho'.
Right. So he be all staring and shit, right? All the time, G the Squid be wantin' to see what he sees, check it out his self. He be wantin' to see it in person, with his own damn eyes. That's what he say. But that environmental suit, I wish I never built that damn crab suit. G Squid in the tank, orderin' you 'round, bein' creepy and knowin' and shit—that one thing. But the Squid struttin' in the air, rollin' like a eight-legged titanium pimp? That's some different shit altogether, 'cause he be all clicking in on them sharp pointed legs, moving like a spider that drunk. You don't hardly wanna put your back to a thing like that, not even for a second. Don't wanna sleep at night, knowin' he may be wanderin' on your block in that shit. The legs hold him up, right, but he ain't meant to be balancin', so the metal dome, the carriage where his head be, it sorta rotates 'round the middle point, like on a gimble? You know what I'm sayin'? But to watch it, feels like he always about to fall over but he somehow move the center of gravity 'round just in time. It be like watchin' some nigga leaning back in the chair, 'bout to topple, but rights his shit just at the last second. It craaay-zy, dog.
But, even though he be stumbly joe, all the time, while he does that fallin'-swivlin'-somehow-keepin'-goin' shit, he keeps his big-ass eye right on your face. Or, more proper, on your forehead, right in the middle where that damn third eye should be if you were, like, the reclinin' Buddha, shit like that. It the third eye G Squid be watchin' all the time, just like the gunslingers in the movie always watch yo' hands. Just like it.
But the eye, eye was the hardest part of that damn suit, know what I'm sayin'? Only reason I did it, I think, was to get the eye right. Ain't no one gonna say Devo the Mechanic bounce when a challenge make the scene, know what I'm sayin'? Fo' sho'. It can be made? Devo find a way to make it. The port-hole I made, for the Terrible Eye of G Squid, it be optically perfect. The curvature, she smooth and just so—like an invisible eight ball. Probably you could check a geometry prof's compass off it. Probably, if God wanted to make a circle, He'd do it by tracing my port-hole, know what I'm sayin'? And when G Squid be looking down on you, you all thinking, "Man, what does he see?" Know what I'm sayin'?
I think about that Eye a whole lot. Cornea so clear you can see every part of the lens beneath, into the iris and on to the back. It look like a glass thing, or more perfect—it looks like good ice in water. Like when you get a cube of ice that got no bubbles in it, like in Morton's or one of them other highroller restaurants? And the waiter slides that perfect ole cube into yo' water and, as he slip it in, the refraction index all perfect and shit, so the cube vanish right there as it slips into the water. But you know it be there. You can put your finger down in and poke it around. But so long as it be in the water, you can't even see it. That be what his Eye like. That shit is tight.
That shit is Perfect.
So, how the hell you put a damn pressure suit over that eye? Man, ain't no way, be an insult to God's glory, do a thing like that. 'Sides, you got glass or plexiglass with fifteen atmospheres of goddamn water behind it? Godamn engineerin' nightmare. Who gonna true that damn refraction index? God make for him a perfect damn eye, and my suit gonna screw that up? Nu-uh.
You see me wearin' a white coat? You hear me askin' "Which one betta', this o' this? What kinda frames you wantin'?" Naw. I ain't no optometrist. I build stuff, good with my hands. I been trained by the best—I gots talent, but more than that I gots the skills, you hear what I'm sayin'? But optometry? No way.
I had to make some calls, right? Piece together the numbers without no one the wiser. This some smooth, undercover James Bond engineering. I tell the plexiglass company about the curvature for compensation, but slip them this line 'bout how it this new fish tank idea some crazy guy came up with, and I don't know shit, just his ole lab assistant makin' the orders, scoring plexi and shit like that, so they make it with no questions. And when G Squid comes down now, wobbling and clicking, his legs huge-ass knives piercin' the concrete, he looks out at me through the eye holes and his eyes are still perfect and true, and they stare at me, through me. Squid can see inside my momma, he look so far back into where I be from.
Damn. You hear what I'm sayin'? That all the Squid shit you gots to know, right there.
Giant Squid? I've never met the guy. I'm pretty sure he's someone Dave knows—someone from high school. Dave went to this snooty prep school.
Me? Naw. The first e-mail I got . . . shit, I can't remember who brought him in. He knew someone.
Wait, are you actually trying to tell me that it's an actual for real Giant Squid writing the column? That's nuts.
No, it was definitely Fritz. I mean, that story GS told, that's b.s., but it was definitely something like that.
Fritz said what?
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