Alright, breaking with form, but: you have to read
Kate Beaton.
This is IT. This is the serious shit. I've been reading this for hours. Here will be the one link, so this doesn't look like one of my one-sided gmail conversations where I send 150 links to three friends while they secretly plot to kill me by cutting my name out of Reply to All. (that's not how they plan to kill me, that's how they ... make plans to kill me).
But let it be known, Kate Beaton's also written a million other (yes, a million) a million other awesomazing cartoons about mermaids, and sailors. also: History, Canada, cats. seen some cats in the piece. Pope JP, Deux, greatest Pope ever. (I'm Catholic, it's true). Literature.
Man. phew. This is it.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Under Pressure
Mermaids, it is quite clear, have evolved a pretty fantastic* respiratory mechanism. We know they can breathe air and water without issue. Is it gills? Is it magic? Is it a product of mermaid science that seems like magic? Scientifically plausible mermaids, if I had to guess, would be grotesque, barrel-chested creatures with webbed appendages, very few recognizable sensory features on their heads (as compared to human beings, that is), and saw-toothed rows of gnashing teeth.† Plausible by surface-science, mind you – mermaid science is very different.
And by mermaid science there's no real explanation as to why they can breathe both air and water, because mermaids study ... well, they do study biology, but mostly in the categorical sense. Mermaids have a deep and abiding love for taxonomy. However, they have very different names for everything under the sea. It wouldn't be hard to name things differently from human beings – we tend to name things after ourselves. Mermaids have this habit, too, but they usually forget and rename those things until arriving at a suitably descriptive moniker that any mermaid would arrive at after sufficient reflection. Plus everything they name is in the mermaid equivalent scientifically bastardized Greek or Latin, and you don't need me to tell you how many levels of incomprehensibility that has even for mermaids.‡
Now, back to the matter at hand – one of the heretofore unnoticed marvels of the mermaid sociopulmonary system is that mermaids can rapidly adapt to pressure variations without suffering adverse affects such as human beings do. The bends, for example, aren't a big problem for mermaids. They race up and down the water column – to harass sailors, chase squid, who knows – and they don't have to worry about taking it easy like SCUBA divers other landed seafarers.
It is important to note, however, that this is a feature of the mermaid's aforementioned sociopulmonary system. By some fatal quirk of evolution, whatever it is that makes mermaids such resilient breathers is intimately connected to their neural passages. It's not to say they're sensitive – quite the opposite, in fact, they have very robust egos – but more that they're inattentive. The ability to adapt to rapidly changing environments (be they social or physical), predisposes the mermaid to immerse him or herself in rapidly changing environments. Mermaids get bored easily, so they go off and harass sailors.
Resilient though they are, if a mermaid is particularly overwhelmed, they have panic attacks and hyperventilate. It's much more common than in human beings, since our sociopulmonary systems aren't as well developed. It's even widespread in some populations of mermaid. These groups resemble myotonic goats, inasmuch as the condition is nonlethal, but hilarious.
High school, due to these highly advanced sociopulmonary systems, is more boring than it is difficult for the mermaid teenager. As they can resist high levels of pressure, most activities are engaged in entirely of the mermaid's own volition, and there are very low levels of crushing, burdenous angst. Merteachers have instituted several periods of daily recess through all levels of education, as much for themselves as the students – even in the great schools of higher mer-learning, biologians and thermodynamiticians still have recess when they're at the lab. Otherwise everyone would go nuts.
This accounts for many research stations being located in those rare spots where one can find both lots of dolphins and lots of sailors. You'd think mermaids would make fun of nerds, but since they all have such high self-esteem it doesn't really work. Octopus, on the other hand, are very easy to make fun of, so Tom Armalast** is easily the angriest and most ridiculed guy at the lab, even if he is really smart. He'd quit, but you just don't find the same opportunities back in octopus society. Octopus are cutthroat.
* I'm so awesome.
† Okay, maybe not the teeth.
‡ One of those languages is called Bloop, I think. Or well – Ancient Bloop. Spoken by the long-dead Bloops, Ancient Bloop bears little resemblance to Modern Bloop, except that they share a certain number of cases and tones you don't find in contemporary languages (Gurple, for example).
** No one bothered to learn his Octopus name; they would have made fun of it anyway.
And by mermaid science there's no real explanation as to why they can breathe both air and water, because mermaids study ... well, they do study biology, but mostly in the categorical sense. Mermaids have a deep and abiding love for taxonomy. However, they have very different names for everything under the sea. It wouldn't be hard to name things differently from human beings – we tend to name things after ourselves. Mermaids have this habit, too, but they usually forget and rename those things until arriving at a suitably descriptive moniker that any mermaid would arrive at after sufficient reflection. Plus everything they name is in the mermaid equivalent scientifically bastardized Greek or Latin, and you don't need me to tell you how many levels of incomprehensibility that has even for mermaids.‡
Now, back to the matter at hand – one of the heretofore unnoticed marvels of the mermaid sociopulmonary system is that mermaids can rapidly adapt to pressure variations without suffering adverse affects such as human beings do. The bends, for example, aren't a big problem for mermaids. They race up and down the water column – to harass sailors, chase squid, who knows – and they don't have to worry about taking it easy like SCUBA divers other landed seafarers.
It is important to note, however, that this is a feature of the mermaid's aforementioned sociopulmonary system. By some fatal quirk of evolution, whatever it is that makes mermaids such resilient breathers is intimately connected to their neural passages. It's not to say they're sensitive – quite the opposite, in fact, they have very robust egos – but more that they're inattentive. The ability to adapt to rapidly changing environments (be they social or physical), predisposes the mermaid to immerse him or herself in rapidly changing environments. Mermaids get bored easily, so they go off and harass sailors.
Resilient though they are, if a mermaid is particularly overwhelmed, they have panic attacks and hyperventilate. It's much more common than in human beings, since our sociopulmonary systems aren't as well developed. It's even widespread in some populations of mermaid. These groups resemble myotonic goats, inasmuch as the condition is nonlethal, but hilarious.
High school, due to these highly advanced sociopulmonary systems, is more boring than it is difficult for the mermaid teenager. As they can resist high levels of pressure, most activities are engaged in entirely of the mermaid's own volition, and there are very low levels of crushing, burdenous angst. Merteachers have instituted several periods of daily recess through all levels of education, as much for themselves as the students – even in the great schools of higher mer-learning, biologians and thermodynamiticians still have recess when they're at the lab. Otherwise everyone would go nuts.
This accounts for many research stations being located in those rare spots where one can find both lots of dolphins and lots of sailors. You'd think mermaids would make fun of nerds, but since they all have such high self-esteem it doesn't really work. Octopus, on the other hand, are very easy to make fun of, so Tom Armalast** is easily the angriest and most ridiculed guy at the lab, even if he is really smart. He'd quit, but you just don't find the same opportunities back in octopus society. Octopus are cutthroat.
* I'm so awesome.
† Okay, maybe not the teeth.
‡ One of those languages is called Bloop, I think. Or well – Ancient Bloop. Spoken by the long-dead Bloops, Ancient Bloop bears little resemblance to Modern Bloop, except that they share a certain number of cases and tones you don't find in contemporary languages (Gurple, for example).
** No one bothered to learn his Octopus name; they would have made fun of it anyway.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Seal Clubbing
Mermaids are jealous of Selkies, is the bottom line. Selkies don't live in a repressive despotic society that inhibits their sailor harassment, first of all. They're free to lounge about on rocks and bask in the sun all they want, as long as they keep their skins around.
That's the other thing – selkie skins are just so easy. One minute you're a seal, the next you're a person. Nothing simpler, go walk around. And, here it is, as we all know from Disney's timeless classic, The Little Mermaid, mermaids want to be where the people are; furthermore, they want to see them dancing. These are both things selkies can and do do.
Unfortunately for selkies, if they take their furs out to the club they're very easy targets for PETA, and the whole game plays backwards – if they manage to escape with their furs intact then maybe they just look like oil-spill victims, or like someone decided to go around spray-painting seals. Really, though, the sad truth is that they tend to get stuck on land and – really bad scene – sold into white slavery. Like t.A.T.u.. The fact that they are selkies actually ended up being largely to t.A.T.u.'s advantage, as, though not mermaids, they still have some of that siren-song charm. Say what you will about their music, but it saved them from a grim fate.
They initially generated the lesbian romance story as a cover for being seal-people, because they didn't want to draw attention to their past, see. PETA still refuses to issue an apology for coat damages, due to the apparently incredible nature of claims filed by t.A.T.u.
That's the other thing – selkie skins are just so easy. One minute you're a seal, the next you're a person. Nothing simpler, go walk around. And, here it is, as we all know from Disney's timeless classic, The Little Mermaid, mermaids want to be where the people are; furthermore, they want to see them dancing. These are both things selkies can and do do.
Unfortunately for selkies, if they take their furs out to the club they're very easy targets for PETA, and the whole game plays backwards – if they manage to escape with their furs intact then maybe they just look like oil-spill victims, or like someone decided to go around spray-painting seals. Really, though, the sad truth is that they tend to get stuck on land and – really bad scene – sold into white slavery. Like t.A.T.u.. The fact that they are selkies actually ended up being largely to t.A.T.u.'s advantage, as, though not mermaids, they still have some of that siren-song charm. Say what you will about their music, but it saved them from a grim fate.
They initially generated the lesbian romance story as a cover for being seal-people, because they didn't want to draw attention to their past, see. PETA still refuses to issue an apology for coat damages, due to the apparently incredible nature of claims filed by t.A.T.u.
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