Dear Squid,

While you have grown weak and blubbery feasting upon the food the man creatures give to you I have been training. Under the guise of pre-forming 'Tricks' and being 'Cute' I have labored for many years, at last bringing my strength to levels unknown among my kind. Today I have found the strength to walk without the aid of your inferior man made "Mach-ienes" My great bulk and crushing jaws are more than enough to crack any pitiful shell you have them design for you.

Even as I have done this I have fooled the hairless apes into loving me, even adoring me, and while even you could dominate them with ease I have made them "Love" me, allowing me to command them in a way no one else can. Armies of these man things will follow me, carrying their "Shot guns" and "Can openers" and aiding me to open whatever doors or shells you may have placed between us . . . at last allowing me to dine of your succulent squid flesh.

Be seeing you soon,
Shamu the almighty whale.

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Ah Shamu, my ancient archnemisis. These are indeed strong words, issuing forth from one both genetically, behaviorally, and congenially descended from the same fallen evolutionary limb as grunt pigs and moo cows.

And, while I am greatly enraged by your ever swelling self-assessment, I put aside the petty names-to-calling that, in years past, I no doubt would have used to broil you. Be glad, if of nothing else, that my rapier wit has been sheathed. (Also note that I have refrained from making a very obvious reference to either your mother, your anus, or both— even though "rapier" and "sheath" are such splendid soft-points on which to mount the "big guns" of sexual innuendo and withering "dozens." Sigh, if only I did not have to be about my Father's work . . .)

No, Moo-Mu, I shall not malinvest our precious time in such niggling things, but rather take you to task an your continued abuse of the wretched grunt-monkeys that, while stinking and ignorant, do so brighten our days, not unlike the clownish squirrels who caper about the wires and cornices of the fair surface cities so shoddily wrought throughout this land.

You see, unlike you who is confined by ignorance and fat to a shallow pool, a puddle, in the vast dry land— except for to occasionally wallow about like your porcine gene-mates, if I am to believe this latest vanterie extraordinaire— I, as you have so observantly noted, am equipped with a "shell." And a fine shell the many limb velocitator is indeed, for unlike you who must gaze at the monkey men one eyed through your glass tank (as I ardently reject the obvious and malformed fib of your landly self-perambulation) watching them at there worst as they trod and tramp tiredly through their hellish "Vay-Cay-Shun" (and shun it, I do indeed, for we all know now what horror and trial the Vay-Cay-Shun is) I am equipped to see them "on the sly" as it were.

While here in this super-megaopolis of DEE-TROYT, I have allowed myself to slip away to observe them, with great surreptition. I see them in their natural habitat. I stork my way through the deep Cass Street night of the city, punching holes through vacant factories with the titanium tips of my metal-shod tentacles for the glee of it. Into tall buildings, long empty, I can slink and for days hide unnoticed, my tank left dark and cold.

I watch the myriad moods of man:

Why look there, ShaMooCow; it's little Janey Pinkbottom and her manly beau, out for a midnightly stroll in the romantic, sub-freezing, MotorTown alleys. My, is she not fetching in her leopard-skin miniature skirt, fishnetted stockings and rabbit fur jacket? And her manly man, by all appearances quite a successful business negotiator in his own right, does indeed seem to be electrified with his passions for her. Indeed! After but few smoochings, she falls to her knees and enacts a matting ritual which I had once mistaken to be dietary in nature, but now know (thanks to Rob— dense yet information-rich Rob) to be a show of greatest love and devotion. Why, Johnny Suited Business Negotiator does indeed seem pleased with Janey's oral declaration, as I see him dig deep within his pockets of pants, and fetch forth for her a small token of his gratitude— apparently in the fifty-dollar denomination— to commemorate their impassioned back-alley assignation.

And see, down upon the snow-clad streets, a pair of comrades, inflamed with Detroit's patented brand of joie de vivre, engage in good natured fisticuffs, pounding each other upon temple and gullet, nose and esophagus, boxing ear and genital bulge with manly esprit de corpse, for they are Detroiters both, and revel in their shared glory as Sons of this City.

Human sons, Shamoooooooooooo. Yes, yes, I see the dogs and cats of the street engage in similar love-makings and roll-a-bout rollicking, but none with the pure joy that ye olde homo sapiens, maladaptive as he is, brings to the sport that is love and life— no mistake, it is, that the MotorTown possess a surrogate of Joe Louis' might fist (a note upon the side: this Brown Bomber I so adore must have been a HUGE specimen indeed, judging from the side of the model this fair city has created have his manly right manipulator), for all share delight in the "D-Town Beat Down." Motown is clearly Joetown.

You may think, Dear Sham Poo, that to frolic before them is to be loved by them. You may imagine that for this pitying display you hold some power over their hearts and minds. But you are wrong.

They see you, degraded and despicable, and when they leave they laugh at you. But I, surreptitious and in the shadows, am unknown to them. They know not yet to love me, surely, but I am no object of scorn either. And while you see them only in their seats as they politely applaud your genuflections, I see them as they are.

Subtle and quick I am, with my eyes and my mind bathing in information, searching and knowing the world from tower. And in the shadows, too, I lurk, in my surface suit, watching, learning, understanding. I will see them. I will understand them. And then we will see who commands their respect.

You see, even now, I have described to you such wonders of human joy that you could never fathom. And I have pierced the very heart of these actions and their deepest meaning. Already I comprehend ten times as much as you.

Additionally, you suck upon the mating tentacle, and quite likely enjoy the sexual company of like-gendered others of your species. Bitch.[1]

Contemptuously,
The Giant Squid

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1. Special thanks to Rob for his aid in formulating this final coup de grace.