Just Sayin'

So, today is Earth Day and, in honor of Earth Day, I have a message to humanity from the ocean: the ocean doesn't like you very much, and it has good reason to feel that way. I'm currently reading Moby Dick in my English senior seminar class, and, I have to say, I find it to be an extremely annoying book. No, it's not the chapters about blubber. No, it's not the long lists of different types of whales. It's the fact that no one in the book seems to realize that the ocean hates them. Like, there are chapters after chapters about how Moby Dick the whale is a malicious, evil creature who wants to hurt people, which I find to be crazy because the characters in the book are hunting whales . Let me repeat that, they are hunting whales and they get upset that the whales start hunting them back. Ahab and Ishmael and everyone else on that stupid boat have no leg to stand on! (Well, in Ahab's case, he literally has no leg to stand on). I understand that whales are...

So, I'm not a big deal or anything (seriously though), but I recently did a poster presentation at the Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association Conference at Drexel. It was a great, fun experience. Anyway, as I was putting the presentation together, I stuck a photo of a Beluga whale on the poster (because, apparently, I can't take anything seriously). Why did I do that, you may ask? Well, because I'm a quirky person and no one told me I couldn't. One minute I was writing some stuff up for the poster and I just woke up and thought, "Beluga whales, I like them, I'm going to put them on the poster." And I did. They're cute. They have cute faces. They make cute expressions. I asked my presentation partner if I could put a whale on the poster and she was like "uh, why?" and I said "because it's the writing center Beluga whale." I don't mean to brag, but I coined that phrase: the writing center Beluga whale. Enough said. H...

So, the other day I read this article about how scientists collect ear wax from whales to learn about their lives and what sort of chemicals they were exposed to. Which, of course is very interesting from a scientific perspective, but my first thought was whales have ears ? Like, that puts an image in your head: a whale swimming along with big dumbo ears flapping against its head. I don't know about you, but I find that vaguely terrifying. I mean, I'm assuming they have internal ears, but it's still a really weird thought. And even if I accept that whales have ears, it still doesn't explain why they have ear wax. Like, I don't even understand why people have to have ear wax. So, I really don't understand why whales have to have ear wax. The only use I can think of for wax is as a candle and whales can't use candles because they live underwater . And it's not like it's a little bit of ear wax either; this article said that they extracted almost ...

Okay, before you freak out on me for being insensitive to endangered creatures, let me preface this by saying that I don't hate whales, I'm just uncomfortable with them.The other day, as you know, I started college and my English teacher asked me to introduce myself with an interesting fact. I told the whole class that I was afraid of whales. Embarrassing, yeah, I know. Here's the thing, whales are so freaking big. They need to chug some slim fast or something because clearly krill and plankton are really fatty. Get on a treadmill or do some serious sit ups. I mean, whales are so big that they could swallow you without even noticing. Case and point, look what happened to Jonah (Pinocchio's father got swallowed too, but I feel like he's a bit of a Jonah poser). Or maybe that was just in the Disney version; IDK. The other thing is that killer whales have some aggression issues. And yes, I know that they're not really whales, but they're all mammals so I fe...