Recently, I've been considering switching from aluminum siding to vinyl siding. My wife says that the aluminum siding is better, because it keeps out harmful radio waves and foreign signals. I prefer the vinyl siding because of its "Real-Wood" look. Can you clear up this disagreement?

Truman Pugh
Milford, Michigan

While monitoring your vast communications networks for a sign from beyond last week, I happened upon an odd program. It seems that your human navy has been experimenting with ultra-low frequencies and their supposed communicative abilities. Pugh, I must say that I abhor this idea, for low, guttural hums are how the filth of the deep speak to one another.

Whales.

Curse their fatty, warm-blooded bodies. Curse their crushing, scooping jaws. And curse their bellies, bellies plump with my brethren's tender head-sacks. Your submariners learned from the filth how to communicate using ultra-low frequencies. This, to me, was the final proof that you humans were in league with those hideous, bloated ex-patriates of the Land (Mammals do not belong in the Deep, Pugh.) Prepared I was to summon forth my multi-limbed relations. That would have been a sight, Mr. Pugh, thousands coursing to the surface, thrashing and crushing with hunter-tentacles until their tender bodies gave into the dearth of pressure and concussively burst, tearing the foul monkey-men to bits with the shrapnel of their stiffening spines and beaks. We would have feasted on your eyes, your delicious salty eyes.

But, I observed later in the very same week, while my fellow cephalopods were readying for war, that your submariners had also experimented with ultra-high frequencies. When my tympanic membranes first buzzed with this news, I shivered with delight. I unfurled my massive tentacles and thumped on the glass of my studio walls. I could have choked a man, so happy was I. When the navy let fly their cacophony, they deafened many hundreds of the Scum of the Deep. The vacuous, phono-maddened whales beached themselves and became prey once again for the 33rd Airborne Seagull Division. (Ah, how I love the feathery inconstancy of the fowl . . . twittering this way and then that on a whim, fluttering from carrion to candy-wrappers to the quiver-flesh of my enemies. It warms even my briny heart.)

Humans were saved by mere hours from the wrath of the squidly kind.

My point is this, Mr. Pugh: If the whales had had Aluminum siding, they would still be alive and devouring my children and friends. I am quite confident that you never could devour my children or friends, so go for the aluminum. Its armor should lend your body a pleasant boxy line, quite like one of your medieval Knights or those antiquated brass diving enclosures that were such the rage when I was a squidling. I'm not sure how your countenance would appear encased in wood, but I would assist any attempts to discover such.

GS