SQUID FRY 04.03.14 - Squid Beef…

SQUID BEEF… Squid has lots of friends at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, especially in the kelp forest exhibit. Mostly old swim team buddies. And Squid counted humans as among those friends too – until recently. Let Squid explain: When Squid saw the press release for the Aquarium’s much-anticipated “Tentacles” exhibit opening this month, Squid’s tentacles tingled at first – finally, a worthy showcase for the sea’s most refined class. Then Squid read on, and saw the species on display: four kinds of octopus, three kinds of cuttlefish, but only two species of squid? Moreover, squid from balmy, tropical waters far across the Pacific? What about Squid and Squid’s buddies? Not pretty enough? Too rough? Too cranky?

To add insult to injury, the Aquarium is touting one of the octopus species – the wunderpus – as the “superhero cephalopod,” just because it can shape. The statement then tries to mollify Squid, saying that staff, in collaboration with MBARI, will be trying to obtain deep sea samples from the depths of the Monterey Canyon and will display them if successful. Sorry folks, you’ve cast your lot, Squid and Squid’s buddies will remain far out of reach, waiting for you humans to develop the technology to capture deep-sea cephalopods like Squid. Who’s the superhero now?

PO PO NO NO… Squid once dreamed of growing up to be a cop, so Squid could wear a shiny badge, eat donuts all day long, and drive fast cars. As it is, Squid eats donuts and drives fast (not too fast, officer!) but doesn’t wear a badge. And it’s a good thing, because based on recent events, being a police officer in Monterey County sounds like a pretty crummy job.

There was the February arrest of one-third of King City’s police department; the chronically under-budget Salinas PD; a leaked union survey by Monterey cops revealing a lot of angst; and most recently, on March 15, rank-and-file officers in Pacific Grove and Seaside took a vote of no confidence against joint Chief Vicki Myers.

There’d been grumbling for months about unhappy police, so last fall, Seaside City Manager John Dunn hired on a retired police chief named Michael McCrary “to facilitate team building within the Police Department.” There, cops have participated in all kinds of “modules,” including “What Makes a Team Work?” and “Stages of Group Development.” But those lessons didn’t stop the Police Officers Association from holding a press conference on April 1 to announce their gripes.

Dunn promptly fired back in the form of an epic, three-page memo with some poetic descriptions (“troubles and torments” is but one example) of Seaside’s budget woes. Squid thought perhaps the whole tit-for-tat was an April Fool’s joke, and asked Dunn if it was. “I wish that my sense of humor were sufficient for me to say yes,” he said.