Poor Mojo's Almanac(k) Classics (2000-2011)
| HOME | FICTION | POETRY | SQUID | RANTS | archive | masthead |
Squid #476
(published March 4, 2010)
Ask the Giant Squid: The Bloop
Who is Poor Mojo's Giant Squid?
Dear Giant Squid,

Have you ever heard of "the bloop?" Apparently it was an incredibly loud sound in the ocean heard by several research teams across the globe at the same time. Something about the type of sound told them that it was made by something living, but the frequency or something indicated that this "animal" must be many times bigger than the biggest blue whales . . . some have speculated it could be the kraken! Seeing as this could involve your brethren, or at least be based in the dark depths of your hometown, I thought perhaps you know of the bloop and can shed some teuthilogical light on possibly the greatest cryptologic secret ever!

Sincerely,
Emma Ryan (marine biologist and budding cryptologist)


Dearest Readers,

Emma raises an important, though detailed, question for our consideration. Before I engage the details of her query, allow me to bring our readers up to the speeding, as she is said.

Here are two televisual communiques on our topic. The first gives the essential background information on Das Bloop, as she is called. (For further information, you might explore this Wikipedian Article, with which I have in no manner tampered.)

This second film presents the sound itself. Let me warn you, according to Japanese custom it is frowned upon to watch this videotape alone, for without a loved one, faux loved, or remunerated companion, it has been rumored that by listening to The Bloop full through, one might develop . . . <shudder> . . .

... a small canker at the corner of the mouth.

Also, undead girl-children with snaking, computer generated hair have been know to present lone Bloop-Listneres with soggy nigiri. If you find the nigiri ill prepared, the girl will smile noncommittally and back slowly out of the room. There are no refunds, and negative comment cards mysteriously disappear from the "Suggestions" box unread.

Also, you might die instantly.

Before I reveal to you the innermost truth and heartening secret of The Bloop, I have invited several of my cohort to take-of-the-stabbing, and they have obliged to watch of the videotapes, and to eat of my candied corns as preparation. Here are their assertions. Compare them to your own:

Rob Miller, drug-addled but well-meaning lab assistant: So, like, what this reminds me of is when I was a kid we used to go to the swimming pool in the summer, right? And, like, one year, like maybe when I was 11, I crossed the line into just barely puberty, or something, and, like, basically spent the whole summer holding my breath underwater looking at the ladies crotches and asses in their bikinis, right? Which, like, as an aside, is totally how I built up my mad-crazy bong-toking skills. Man doesn't just take to holding a hit like that, you know? It takes dedication and shit. Years of it. Anyway, that silty-salty-swishy sound at the start is sorta what everything sounds like when you're just cold-chilling at the middle of the deep end, all watching the ginch scissor-kick, ass all like two piglets thumb-wrestling in lycra, you know? But The Bloop itself, man, it's totally, totally like, this one time, I'm halfway down in the deep end, and there is this chick, this high school chick in this real low bikini, right? I mean, this was like 1990, so chicks suits weren't like they are now, you know? A bikini was kinda risqué, and this was, like, 90-percent of the way to a freaking thong, just a little triangle of electric green in the front and a little triangle in the back, and she's treading water, just real slowly rotating, drifting my way, and it suddenly kinda dawns on me that I should totally be able to see a little pubes peeking over the top edge of the front—it's that freakin' low—but there's nothin. 'cause she's shaved, which is totally, like, beyond 1990, right! And so my lungs are mad burning, and she's drifting closer, treading water, and it's like every little lazy kick is inching those bikini bottoms a notch higher up into her crotch and I'm just positive, just fucking positive that I'm gonna see a lip slip any second and then there's this sound, this weird-ass grinding rip, just like your damn Bloop. And as the chick in the teeny-weeny-greenies—who's, like, six inches from my nose—comes around on her last lil twirl, I see that there's this sorta brown mist trailing her—not nothing thick and obvious and gross, but . . . but something definite. And just then my air-starved lungs give out, and I gasp in a lungful of chlorine-and-brown. Chick was gone when I coughed back awake, but it as all sorta OK, on account I got a pretty good look down the lifeguard's swimsuit before the EMT dudes took me to Beaumont Hospital. Turns out I got some weird ass chemical pneumonia from the whole deal, and wound up spending half the summer in the living room doped on cough syrup and watching Price is Whatever. Anyway, hearing that Bloop, kinda makes my lungs tight and leaves a bad taste, you know?

Jarwaun, teenagéd typist: I agree that Rob shouldn't be allowed to guess no more, 'cause his guess are always straight-up nasty.

Molly Reynolds, lab director: Look, I'm a trained marine biologist. I went to school for this. This sound? It's nothing. The ocean makes weird noises. It's a weird place, all right? Have you watched the deep oceans episode of the BBC's "Planet Earth"? If you had then this noise wouldn't surprise you. It was probably a big carbon dioxide bubble or some sub-oceanic vent cracking open and releasing a huge bolus of gas. Nothing to see here, please move along. And all you Cthulhu nerds can just shut the hell up. I'm an expert.

Reme, reliable francophonic chimp: Je suis d'accord avec l'imbécile de drogue, ce qui sonne comme une matiére grasse, la noyade porc péter lentement sa derniére.

To the final point, I wholeheartedly agree, Reme, that this would in fact be an ideal possibility if it were not, in fact, utterly false, laughable, and disgusting.

But regardless, thank you for your attempts at intellectual inquiry, however crude and abstruse they may have been.

Now, before I reveal the absolute horror behind Ye Once and Future Bloop, as it was given to me by my fore-squid, I must first tell you a brief tale.

More than forty years ago, researchers in the Soviet Union began an ambitious drilling project whose goal was to penetrate the Earth's upper crust and sample the warm, mysterious area where the crust and mantle intermingle—the Mohorovičić discontinuity, or "Moho."

This type of drilling was completely new and the technology did not yet exist to go that deep, so the Russians crafted a completely novel method of drilling to attain such depth. Although the project was a traditional "complete Russki fuck up," leaving almost all of the Earth's many secrets undiscovered, the Kola Superdeep Borehole is still a scientifically useful site, and research there is ongoing.

When drilling stopped in 1994, the hole was over seven miles deep, making it by far the deepest hole ever drilled by humans, and a truly thrilling place to toss a wishful penny. The last of the cores to be plucked from from the borehole was dated to be near 2.7 billion years old. Although the Kona hole was the deepest hole ever drilled (until this one), seven miles was still very short of the 20 to 80 kilometers required to penetrate the Earth's delicious ad flaky crust. From the report of project manager, Dr. Azzacov:

"We lowered a microphone, designed to detect the sounds of plate movements down the shaft. But instead of plate movements we heard a human voice screaming in pain! At first we thought the sound was coming from our own equipment.

"But when we made adjustments our worst suspicions were confirmed. The screams weren't those of a single human, they were the screams of millions of humans!"

Thanks to a a good friend of my friend you can now hear what these Russians did hear in the Age of Grunge known as the American 1990s:


Why do I present this to you? Because I know this recording to be falsified. I know this, because what was heard when the scientists drilled deep into Hell is also what is muffled and lost beneath the layers and layers of sonic confusion created by the ocean waves, and only discernible by my carefully attuned aquatic ear. The scientists could not face the horror of what they had really discovered, yet the waves could not sufficiently disguise to terrible Upspace ears what has always lurked beneath the thin eggshell of the Earth's terrible, flaky crust.

Despite what all may say, this is in fact what the ears of the ancients beheld when they descended deep into the catacombs of long dead civilizations to worship blind slug-gods who vomited truth undigested into the mouths of decadent acolytes.

This is the non-Euclidean horror that serves as a foundation for your 'sane' and 'corporeal' world!

I Remain,
The Giant Squid
Editor-in-Chief
PMjA

Got a Question? Contact the Giant Squid
or check the Squid FAQ

Love the Giant Squid? Buy his first book.

Share on Facebook
Tweet about this Piece

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)

Poor Mojo's Tip Jar:

The Next Squid piece (from Issue #477):

Ask the Giant Squid: The Parable of the Three Marketing Executives

The Last few Squid pieces (from Issues #475 thru #471):

Ask the Giant Squid: Eternally Feasting on Sæhrímnir in the Foothills of Olympus

Ask the Giant Squid: For I Have Found the Big Easy Somewhat Difficult

Ask the Giant Squid: On the Abuse of the Exclamation and its Mark

Ask the Giant Squid: Raise High Your Roofbeams, as You Would Lift Your Hats in Respect

Ask the Giant Squid: Cracking the Code of the Teenager


Squid Archives

Contact Us

Copyright (c) 2000, 2004, David Erik Nelson, Fritz Swanson, Morgan Johnson

More Copyright Info