Feminine 101

I’m trying my hand at children’s writing. I even recorded an audio file of the story which you can listen to.

My name is Barnaby. For the past bit I’ve been trapped in a lab by the earthlings. I mostly hang out in a secure tank away from the window. The tank was, shall we say, “less secure” when I first arrived. But my biped keepers got so sick of running me down on one escape attempt after another that my home is, officially, the safest place in the lab. 

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Heh heh…ah I’m a slippery one and no mistaking. It’s only a matter of time before I make my move. Then I’ll be starhopping once again. Ah! To feel the solar winds in my tentacles and the g-force in my gut as the hyperdrive engages… See I wasn’t always an exotic pet in a saltwater aquarium. No, I was once the captain of a mighty vessel that sailed proudly across the black beyond your sky. My crew numbered nearly fifty. Every one of them worthy sailors, each more capable in his smallest tentacle than any human I’ve ever met. Why one time, we were ever-so-carefully navigating the Kuiper belt in search of the mythical lost keys of Mylanta… 

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I can tell by the way your eyebrows are scrunching toward your nose that I’ve lost you. That’s okay. You are not the first human for whom I’ll have set the record straight. And you certainly won’t be the last. Sit back, earthling and let me slap down some knowledge on you. Prepare to be amazed, stupified, astounded, eh… Maybe just try to keep up.

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See there’s a lot, as in, a LOT you don’t know. Trust me, it’s even more humiliating than you could imagine. But it’s okay, Octopii are some of the most intelligent of earth’s creatures, so don’t be too hard on yourself. 

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Oh, where to start…I suppose with the sun.

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Burning balls of gas. Because I’m an octopus and lack your expressive eyebrows I cannot arch one in mock skepticism, but if I could, rest assured, you’d feel properly silly.

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Gas! Indeed!

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Try glitter. I mean, giant glitter, but glitter none-the-less. A long time ago, little Annie (who mind you isn’t actually little because, you know, the giant glitter) was mad at her big brother, Drew for plugging up her black holes with his toilet paper so she painted his bedroom black, then glitterbombed the whole thing. He’s been trying to clean up that mess for years. 

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Oh and black holes…let’s just say that glitter does not get so massive that it collapses on itself sucking in everything that just happens to wander a little too close. Don’t get me wrong, glitter is a vile, insidious substance that should be banned across the solar system, but it won’t suck you into its gravitational vacuum and spaghettify you for a few milliseconds before you die. That would be truly awful.

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Oh and forget this notion about the sun being necessary for all life on earth. A few gummy bears and a good space heater will do all the same basic things, or near enough. 

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Next up, let’s talk about Mercury. Okay the earth nerdlings are right that it has an elliptical orbit. Hey! You would, too, if a nasty space hippo once stood on your train tracks! But this is where those guys with the glasses and pocket protectors get all screwy. They want to say that, because of the elliptical orbit and the way that lil’ Merc swings around your glitter–er Sun–that its speed varies for surface-dwellers based on perihelion and aphelion. 

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Your eyebrows are doing the thing again. Don’t worry, I can slow it down for you. Pair-i-hee-lee-yon is where the sun is closest to the body in question. In this case, Mercury. Ap-hee-lee-yon is when it’s farthest. Your scientists want to say that the reason the sun looks like it’s moving forwards, then backwards then forwards again is because of the varying speeds at perihelion and aphelion. 

As per our usual arrangement, they are wrong. It looks like the sun is waving back and forth because–drum roll please–it is! I see you doing the thing again. Yes, I know the sun is glitter. But who says glitter can’t have arms? I told you it was insidious.

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The fella that named Venus was onto something though. But all the other blokes who’ve ever had something to say about her were downright insulting. Hellish indeed! Just because you couldn’t survive the surface temperatures that could melt lead does not mean that her sulfuric rain wouldn’t do wonders for your complexion. If these blockheads ever figure that out, the cosmetic industry will be tripping over itself in the scramble to set up spas and beauty retreats there. 

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They could set up a planet wide health and fitness center. I can see it now! Mountain climbing to collect precious metals. The fact that it spins backwards could be marketed as a mental reset. And the ads for an equatorial fun run practically write themselves. 

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“Run faster than Venus!” 

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Admittedly the heat poses a minor conundrum, but for all your huge feet and skeletons you humans can be quite ingenuitive–you know–in your own way. 

No, that was not a compliment. Before you go wondering whether I think you could possibly be like me, allow me to disabuse you of such ludicrous cogitations. 

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I can see by your wriggling eyebrows, you doubt me. Perhaps you even dare to wonder how I, a lowly cephalopod, would do such a thing. Well, listen up, biped! It’s time to talk about Mars.

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Mars is a kickball. There’s no snow, no water, and no little green men! Okay maybe a few, but that’s because it smashed through a window some years back, scattering tiny shards of alien glass all over kingdom come. The little green men were just the house ants on the other side of the window. Who kicked the ball, you ask? Well, no one rightly knows, but as with all galactic mysteries, space hippos were likely involved. Agents of chaos, those.

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Another thing your alleged brainiacs got all wrong is that big red spot on Jupiter. A giant storm, huh? That’s your best guess?

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Try jam. Massive amounts of sticky, molten strawberry jam. I’m sure you’re wondering how. And, if anyone knew, I’m sure they’d gladly broadcast it in pompous know-it-all fashion. That’s not my style. But if I had to hazard a guess, those infamous galactic agents of chaos had a hand in it. They were probably trying to play a practical joke. Ole’ Jupee spins so fast they probably thought it’d just spray hot sticky jam everywhere. Joke’s on them, I guess because it just got sucked into a perpetual whirlpool amidst all the other weirdness that makes up the giant’s surface. As usual, your “geniuses” think it’s gas. I thought you homosapien types were supposed to grow out flatulence shenanigans after junior high. 

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Sure some folks never do. 

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Speaking of…I’m gonna skip to the elephant in the room. Who named Uranus? Because it should have been called “Stinky.” Heh heh! Am I right? 

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In all seriousness, the diamond rain is a thing of beauty. I mean, the first time you sail past those massive faceted bergs floating in the gelatinous soup that forms Uranus’s surface…ew…I just had a horrifying thought. Hazards of a vivid imagination. Ugh…What are you looking at? You never seen a cephalopod shudder? Just because I don’t have eyebrows doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings. Pfft…typical human. 

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Anyway, where was I? Oh yes: diamond-bergs. They’ll sink more than the Titanic, given the chance! Oh those cruises on the surface of King George’s planet are the essence of tranquility. You can see her hula hoops on a clear night. For once your scientists chose to mask the depths of their ignorance by not guessing wrong. They freely and unexpectedly admit that they have no idea where those came from. 

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Their suggestions that Saturn’s rings are moons that got destroyed and stuck in her orbit are almost comical. These scientist clowns are all death and destruction. If they can’t explain it, it was probably an asteroid a bajillion years ago. 

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No, people, listen up. The real story is not funny at all. It’s about a broken heart. See, Saturn used to be a party girl. Always had been. Ever played a game of horseshoes at a barbecue? Well the rings are kind of like a horseshoe. And Saturn? Well, let’s just say she liked to live dangerously. She got taken in by the fella from another glitter system after they played some pretty dangerous games. One of them was like horseshoes but with giant chakrams. And she was the pole. It’s all fun and games until someone gets horribly disfigured. That guy didn’t know what he had. Anyway, he had his fun then wandered back to his home system to settle down with some prudish ice planet. Poor Saturn has just never been the same, since. It’s a sad place, really.

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Huh? Well, what about Neptune? Your scholars demonstrated a rare bit of cleverness with that one. Since y’all can’t see it in the sky, it got discovered another way. See it was tugging at Uranus…hehe…okay, okay, I’m done now. But really, Ura…its orbit was all wrong unless there was something big out there pulling it outta wack. So this fella named Le Verrier did some fancy math and told the guys with the telescopes where to look. Sure enough, there was a dark blue planet lurking out there. It’s cold. The end.

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Pluto? Erm…yeah. It was definitely strange that it was a planet and then all of the sudden it wasn’t. 

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Weird.

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Doesn’t get much weirder than that.

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What do you mean it seems like I know more than I’m saying? That doesn’t sound like me at all.

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Oh, all right. I can’t say much, mind you.

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This is one occasion where your nosy researchers got more than they bargained for. NASA built a little probe called New Horizons–which is more than a little pretentious if you ask me which I note no one did. Anywho, they strapped it to a rocket and blew it into the outer reaches of Drew’s room to take a few pictures. 

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And pictures it took! Those pictures were, unfortunately, rather incriminating and scandalous. And before you ask, no I have not seen them. There’s rumors, though. They flew hot and fast after the little devil got demoted. The ones that got locked down and dismissed the fastest are most likely true. I have my own theories–ones that involve iron clad evidence of the existence of a nefarious shadow race of space hippos that have been wreaking havoc across the galaxy since the dawn of time… Ahem. Anyway, your scientists declared that glorious Pluto, with his wildly tilted orbit, heart tattoo, and exotic dance parties and whatnot, was not, in fact, a planet. 

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And that’s why we don’t talk about Pluto.