Change You Can Narwhal In. . .

Last week, I assaulted the finer sensibilities of my fair readers with mindless and uniquely bizarre video ditties by mrweebls, which include none other than the infamous Badgers, Somalian pirates and the utterly fantasmagorical Narwhals.

I laughed, along with many others, at the silly, repetitive lyrical structure and catchy melodic ode to the sea-borne Narwhal. Little did I know that the mystic water creature would pay another visit, this time from the ludicrous and insanely over-the-top Will Ferrel movie, Elf.



After this, I found myself scratching a body part and wondering if there was the slim possibility that there might be something more to these Narwhals. And let me admit beforehand that I pride myself on the vast stores of useless knowledge I have compiled over 38 years of living: facts, figures, useless trivia, technical jargon, witticisms, analogies, quotes, raconteurial stories of personal events, statistics, historical notations and current events.

If the world ended tomorrow and I survived, I'd be like one of those underground bunkers of seeds, waiting to have my catalogue of knowledge spread throughout the planet. It might just be me and the cockroaches, but at least. . .well, that reminds me. Did you know that scientists removed the head from one cockroach, the legs from another, glued the legless one to the headless one, connected the two so that their body fluids mixed and turned the lights on and off and observed that the when the lights were on, the pair, controlled by the brain of the legless and the legs of the brainless, scurried away as if to seek shelter from the light?

See what I mean? Who the hell can live without that knowledge? Ok, they weren't really just flipping the light on and off, far more scientific and complex (see Herker's parabiosis experiments), but this ain't no science blog and it sure is hell ain't no fucking bread restaurant!

Anyway, I took it upon myself, on this dreary Monday, to further investigate the mystic Narwhal. And guess what? Well, for one thing, THEY EXIST!! Secondly, I didn't know this! And on top of that shocking knowledge, they have a giant tooth that grows out of their faces! Holy mother of baby Jesus! What in heaven's name was God up to when he threw that one up on the deep-sea water-mammal drawing board?

"Big fat water glob? 15 foot tooth? Yeah, that'll be a winner! Hey hon, come look what I just created. . ."



So Narwhals exist. How did I miss the memo on this? I can only conclude that this must have all happened while Nils and I were writing our thesis on raw sugar cane liquors and the effects upon the neuropathic and endocrinal systems of expatriate gringos in Central America.

Yes, Narwhals exist and my day has been brightened by their sheer oddness. They remind me of a childhood memory. My mother and I were in Destin, Florida when I was age 10. We met my dad there, who had driven down from Mississippi to visit with me. We spent a few days at the beach and my divorced parents ended up in some catastrophic fight as usual, yet I remember a very bright highlight to the whole episode.

After about 42 games of Skeeball, I finally had enough tickets to get some piece of crap from the prize counter and when I approached the counter, I saw exactly what I wanted. It was a tiny, stuffed animal in the shape of a parrot. He was six inches tall, black with a white chest and some red markings around his neck. A rather nondescript little bird, right? Well, the catching part of my little bird was his beak. Instead of being properly positioned just below the eyes where a normal parrot nosebeak might reside, his was actually sewed to his forehead so that it jutted upward at a 45 degree angle above the eyeballs. He was the most absurd looking creature, with his dumb proboscis pointing up with a miraculous skew. Twenty-five tickets for a midway prize reject.

He looked so stupid, so damned ridiculous, but deep down inside, I summoned up sympathy that only a child could and I was determined to breathe life into that foolish looking parrot. I felt sorry for him, for his deformity, but that wasn't going to stop me from giving that bird the time of his life. His shortcomings only solidified my bond with him. For the remainder of that trip, I toted that stuffed bird with me everywhere we went. To the beach, riding bumper cars, everywhere I was, there he was too. I named him Pete. And Pete the Parrot was the gin to my fizz, the lemon to my drop, the cottage to my cheese.

My mother and I left late one evening for the return trip to Clearwater. We were cruising down I-10 East as we reminisced of our fun times in Destin. Dad aside, we had a wonderful time there. As boredom strikes a child like lightning, I decided that I would liven up Pete's trip home by opening the sunroof of the Cadillac and then closing it ever so gently around his neck so he could feel the rush of speed against his erect bird beak as we cruised at 70 miles per hour through the night. It happened so quickly that neither I nor my laughing mother could do anything about it. The pressure gradient of the moving car was too much for little Pete and although I thought I had him thoroughly wedged in the sunroof, he was sucked out of the car in an instant into the infernal and dark abyss of the central panhandle of Florida.

I immediately exploded into incoherent psychobabble as I cried, screamed and flailed around the front seat. My mother, equally disturbed by the ejection of Pete, was crying also, but more so because her son had instantly converted from a happy-go-lucky boy to an emotionally unstable and raving wild animal. I demanded that we stop and go looking for Pete. My mother tried to reason, but reasoning with a child on a mission is like reasoning with box full of hex bolts. I was devastated. Destroyed a million times over. My world had been shattered by the laws of physics and all I could think of was Pete, lost and out there all alone. Forever.

So, if anyone is traveling I-10 between between DeFuniak Springs and Bonifay, please keep an eye out. Pete's much older now and probably a little dirtier.

As part of my Narwhal investigation, I also discovered that Narwhals have been the recipients of Untied States taxpayer monies in the form of $25o,000 in stimulus granted to study the Narwhal's tusks and its uses. Hell, just give me that money and I can tell you. Narwhals invented the shish-ka-bob! Stupid dumb Harvard people. And really, before anyone goes a bitchin' about how we waste money, it works out to one-tenth of a penny per paying taxpayer in cost, which is almost as cheap as a shot of unrefined cane liquor in Central America. Isn't that right Nils?

Nils? Nils? Get up off the floor you drunk, you're laying in some Narwhal junk!

The Narwhals and Pete are alike. Nils too, for that matter. Oddities. Unique. Unknown and unloved. I loved Pete and I now love Narwhals. And if the world ever comes to an end, I and my new friends the cockroaches will rewrite the history of man. We'll probably leave out all that stuff about religion, war, violence and poverty and we will raise our hands up to the heavens and hum, "Mmm, mmm, mmm. . .Nar-whals."

This is the new beginning.