That lusty, almost trademarked natural form so commonly metaphored as a tuxedo, birds in tuxedos goddammit, it's like they're wearing fucking tuxedos! I see! So many cute tuxedoed birds chirping together all huddled up crooning stupidly to each other. I think I'll make a "major motion picture" about it. Wow, it's just like a tuxedo I think, so point it out for all to see and depend on. "Oh yeah, penguins, I heard of those..." slow internal silence/panic... light bulb! "...them's those tuxedoed birds! They wear them like darned ballroom danssers. Mighty elegant foul if ya ask me, yessireee."
"Make a CGI penguin for the masses ASAP, Harold, give it an attitude and so forth, one of those punky, sarcastic personalities off the assembly line, get some drying out celebrity with children to please to do the voice, parade them out on the synthetic red carpet for all to see, plastic surgery already starting the mummification process, remove the organs, throw the brain away, if possible get them a life sized cardboard cut out, take that with them everywhere, stand those the disposable cultural tombstones outside the theaters then let 'em gather up in landfills on the flows of garbage they'll spread out evenly just like the south pole complete with winking penguin cutouts huddled close together, tipping their hats to you, I guarantee $10 million box office first day, if you keep the penguin."
"OK, boss."
"Cute, cute cute, cute cute cute penguins... everywhere!" says the daughter of an unprincipled explorer, so daft he has brought his three-and-one-half-year-old along on this soon-to-be-bloody trudge through the antarctic, without much hope of survival and with only a couple days worth of provisions left since he thought the money better spent on one magnificent harpoon elaborated with iridescent points without perfect symmetry, contorted madly about the center in spirals and sharp, cursive hooks which hypnotically carved into his brutal ape mind before ever grasping it and firing to roughly slough off layers of diaphanous flesh. The point so beautifully etched within eye sockets, trigger fingers tensing already, and the spring behind the catch causes two seasoned sailors to strain and tear their forearm muscles when they cock it, and for three or four infinitely precarious seconds the coiled metal strains back with mathematically even pressure as the shaft shivers in tension before it catches... their hearts rain beats of uneven syncopated rhythms in response to the pluming waves of loose adrenaline meandering through their knots of gnarled tree root arteries, and if a finger slips the harpoon will have already punched through the ship's hull, or, if it swings a different angle, up into the base of the jaw to brandish out through his head in a jagged intersection and always the chance of his daughter watching on with her very first pair of bloodshot eyes (awww) so tense and frighted her choked sobs tear her throat as a garrote from inside out.
Oh, how he wrote out the check for that heroic weapon! Swiftly, with a quill, in ornamental longhand, his signature sitting on a mat of baroque underlining loops, all courtesy of The Crown. "A necessary expense, necessary expense? Absolutely!" he says to himself in a gruff voice through wayward strands of mustache. As he holds it against his moistening palms for the first time, it presses down forcefully with twenty pounds of unexpected weight tucked away invisibly in its thick metal, his fingers automatically pivoting it in slow revolutions to display its wicked projections sculpted like long locks of a petrified maiden's hair swaying as if on their own before his widening eyes which salivate wondering tears that don't drip and build on his lower lid, the surface tension winning out, his vision undulates with that millimeter of liquid lens shaking with a blurry vibrato in time with the delicate quiverings of eyelid muscles, of blood cells' metered pumping in single file through capillaries between translucent films of skin.
But we're back on deck now and it's not nearly so useful when there's no food at all anywhere, the last biscuits nothing but crumbly fragments of dusty stale grain mixed with roach feces (Yes, even here! The cockroach is by far the greater explorer!) purchased at quarter price from some wily half-breed merchant who still made off with more than he should. The ship goes on, breaking through ice which closes up behind it just as the puzzle pieces scattered across the folds of his daughter's flowered dress sitting on the floor of his cabin smiling that eternal grin of youthful enthusiasm, a grin which matches the curvature of the gibbous moon overhead and curls vibrantly with the same zeal as the child's, but when viewed from the portholes of the ship issues a Cheshire malevolence. So the heavens peer down on the limp sails as the first stars emerge from the purple sky and become the grin's eyes which shimmer more like the captain's, who now strides across the frost encrusted deck to finally mount his harpoon on the bow, take his aim and instantly skewer thirty-odd dirty waddling tuxedoed penguins through necks and chests and beaks and wings and ovaries in an exact chord through their huddled discoid mass of feathers just before they scatter, flailing bodies left behind in a line ripe with freshly steaming, savorless meat made delectable by starvation. They feast on the fat especially, letting it drip steaming down their mouths and into the miserable beards pasted to their gaunt cheeks, tasting life returning to their bodies. And when they are filled they themselves waddle out onto the deck and take turns firing the harpoon into the tuxedoed colony, feathers and blood coat the glaciers like a paper mache of static, white and black, on and off, red-stained snow sopping with it, they made elaborate sculptures with it that the orca later nibbled on like hors d'oeuvres after the ship turned away and broke back through the thin ice refrozen on the surface like lost plate glass.
But some of the boys are getting impatient and they bound off onto the ice, as the ship makes its slow way back carrying the makeshift clubs of stool legs brandishing rusted bent nails and sizable splinters. They're off smashing the tiny penguin heads like kids at a tee-ball game and just laughing at the sport of it, seeing who can get the most, gently ribbing each other, "You can do better than that!" and the harpoon stays locked in place on the bow observing the events approvingly, behind it the little girl looks on mesmerized by that horribly brilliant point, eating she knows not what strange and delicious dish provided for her, by her father, which he prepared to resemble a smiling face. She eats it and giggles and asks for more with penguin smeared all over her face, a loose feather rests burnt on the plate.
"Cute, cute penguins!"
This begins to characterize the current state of human/penguin relations.
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