Thursday 12 January 2006

Careful with that harpoon, Eugene!

Want to jump on to the back of whaling boats and spike their harpoons? The entertaining Generation XY blog has conveniently linked for you a game put together by Greenpeace to give you some practice. And once you've had your fill of all that political correctness, you can get out the Hawaiian Harpoon and do some serious fishing. Sadly, no game as yet apparently to give you practice with sinking whalers by ramming them with a 'can-opener,' or shooting at said rammer with the guns of a Japanese frigate. Until then, visit the XY blokes to get your kicks with the games he has linked.

While we're talking entertaining blogs and insanity, if you've ever been entertained by the certifiably insane unhinged brain-damaged delightfully contrary ravings bayings at the moon opinions of one Oswald Bastable, then you owe it to yourself to give his novel a go (serialised online here). Appropriately enough for a novel about time travel, you have to start reading from the bottom of the page. If it's half as convulsively endearing as Oswald's daily posts, it'll be worth your efforts. I plan to start downloading and printing it out just as soon as I install a new printer cartridge.

And of course I couldn't mention whales, novels and dripping wet political correctness without giving you a link to an online copy of Melville's great novel Moby Dick. "Call me Ishmael..."

[UPDATE: Samizdata contributor James Waterton makes socially responsible whale-meat of the arguments against minke-whaling. "Soft-headed, shallow and emotionally driven," he calls the points raised by Greenpeace's eco-pirates. And you thought I was harsh.]

Links: Whaling Games
Novels - Meddlers in Time, Moby Dick.

7 comments:

Oswald Bastable said...

Thanks for the link! If anyone can't wait for the serial, the whole thing is available over at:

http://groups.msn.com/MeddlersinTimePreview/_whatsnew.msnw

In Word and txt formats.

yes, you will find typos- I find one every time I repost a chapter!

Anonymous said...

One of the really amusing points that James Waterton makes is that the consumption of Whale meat is going down in Japan.

I presume that this is because that young Japanese people prefer Big Macs and Mcnuggets to Minke gibblits and Whale Blubber sandwiches.

How ironic, globalization saves the whales!

Ahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Anonymous said...

So there is no moral dimension in our dealings with animals.

No doubt you have never had any pets. Oh hang on - you have a cat right? So when it dies let me give you a recipe. My cat died on Xmas eve - but who gives right - it was just a piece of shit animal with no rights or value.

You make me sick. Thank god for ppl like Mark Firestone.

Peter Cresswell said...

The only camment to make about this last attempt to put words into my mouth is to say I'm sorry for the loss of your cat. I would be distraight if anything happened to my cat.

Well, maybe one other comment. You said: "So there is no moral dimension in our dealings with animals." Well, as I believe I've indicated here many times before, yes there is.

ZenTiger said...

There are four groups in this whale of a story. There's the Japanese Scientists (aka Fishermen with big harpoons). There's the sea police (aka Greenpiece and Sea Shepherds). There's every-one else sitting on the sidelines (aka us) and there is of course the Whales (aka lunch).

Personally, I'm for the Whales.

Nice reference to Pink Floyd.

ZenTiger said...

oops, "Greenpiece" must be one of those Freudian slips people dream of.

ZenTiger said...

You just gave me an idea for a post Robert. I've stuck it on Sir Humphreys and Zen State, if interested.