The Literary Works of Socialist Dolphins, and the Political Affiliations of Sea Creatures

Modified from an image posted on http://www.hitech-dolphin.com/image-files/dolphin-ocean-picture.jpg. Used without permission; any cease and desist orders or other similar legal papers should be forwarded to thebigniceguy@live.com. I will read and comply with any such e-mails.

This is a Review Request; trust me, I could not make this up. Thanks, Caleb!

I have a certain routine as I go about my day. I wake up (progressively later and later, but that's neither here nor there), brush my teeth, head out to the kitchen, pour myself some cereal and orange juice (today it was ginger ale; what can I say, I was feeling adventurous), and then check the news and my e-mail.

I've done all that today, and it went rather well. Or at least it did until I checked my e-mail, and I got the message that has led to this very review request. I'd put it up here for your enjoyment, but the Blogger.com post editor seems to have trouble with copying and pasting text today, so whatever.

To make a long story short, today I've been tasked with reviewing the literary works of Socialist dolphins, and to write a segment on the political affiliations of sea creatures.

Literature has long been a passion of mine, and as such, I was rather suprised to discover that there was an entire subsection of literature that I had never even heard of before. I figured I'd Google "the literary works of socialist dolphins" and see what came up. Here are the top five results:

• "THE LIBERAL MANIFESTO; ITS CONTENTS DISSAPOINTING TO THE WHIGS. THE EGYPTIAN BLUNDER ACKNOWLEDGED-- JUSTICE TO IRELAND BUT NOT DISUNION-- STEAMERS IN COLLISION." An article in the New York Times, and yes, that whole thing was capitalized. I still don't know what it means.
• "Great God Pan: The Western Reader Archives. Read all about some of my favorite West Coast Books, an undiscovered cournicopia of dolphins, gold miners, weed dealers, pirates and elves..." Sounds maybe interesting, but not particularly political or anti-shark.
• "An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum... Her books of poetry include Poems of Dedication (1946), The Edge of Being (1949), The Generous Days (1969), and Dolphins (1994)..." I got quite enough poetry in my Intro to Literature class, thanks.
• "For an English Republic: Worlds [sic] tallest man saves dolphins." British politics are apparently much more interesting than American politics, if some of these headlines are any indication.
• "JSTOR: The Place of 'Martin Salander' in Gottfried Keller's Evolution as a Prose Writer." Apparently you have to pay to read the rest of this article. Not that I really have any desire to.

Okay, so that didn't really work out. But what about the political affiliations of sea creatures? Well, as it turns out, Google didn't do much for me there either. I got a lot of links to how we can help save sea creatures by writing to our local congressmen but not much else. So here's what I think various sea creatures' political affiliations would be (and yes, I love bullet point lists):

• Dolphins: I've always figured that they'd be the sort of hippieish, free spirits of the oceans. They just want to have fun, maaaaan. They don't want the man puttin' them down, y'know?
• Sharks: If dolphin sentiment is alledgedly anti-shark (as I've learned from the e-mail Caleb sent me), then I suppose sharks would represent the more conservative side of things. They're for the war (if the undersea creatures are having one) and can't possibly play around like those stupid dolphins do when there's hunting to be done.
• Fish: These guys have got to be the moderates. They're eaten by both dolphins and sharks in the same way that moderates generally vote either one way or the other. I can't really think of fish as having a strong opinion, anyway.
• Octopi: The corrupted politicians of the ocean. They talk out of both sides of their wierd beak thing, and each of their eight tentacles is stuck in a different pie, so to speak. Though I guess it wouldn't be 'pie' in the ocean. What do octopi eat for desert?
• Walruses: The protestors. They park themselves in one place and don't move until they get what they want, whether it be more fish, less polar bears, or more representation in Undersea Parliment.

So, thanks again, Caleb, for this most interesting Review Request. Now, how on Earth am I gonna score this one...

The Rundown
UNSCOREABLE. I literally made most of that up just now. I can't give it a score. It was really fun to write, though.