SQUID FRY 05.29.14 - Water Wasters…

WATER WASTERS… When Squid gets bored with trashy magazines and bad TV, Squid resorts to romantic poetry. And so it was that Squid steamed in the shower, recitingSamuel Taylor Coleridge’s account of James Cook’s 1772 voyage of the Pacific, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” Squid loves when the explorer arrives at the realization, “Water water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.”

Then yet another No on O mailer arrived. “Water, water EVERYWHERE,” it reads. “Measure O doesn’t create one drop of new water.” True, and the Yes on O folks advocating for a feasibility study on a public takeover of California American Water never said it would. Their goal is to study a public buy-out of a private utility, not to make water.

Then came another mailer, and another. One dismisses Measure O as “a pipe dream” (with a picture of… a pipe), another as “a runaway train” (with, you guessed it, a train). But Squid’s not only tired of bad metaphors; Squid’s also tired of tossing all the No on O propaganda.

Squid can’t help but note the irony: If it’s a risk we can’t afford, how can Cal Am afford all those glossy mailers? At last count, the company had spent $2.2 million – enough for at least three feasibility studies, and a cephalopod-sized desal plant for Squid’s long, leisurely showers.

CLASS ACT… When Squid went to college, Squid aced classes like Jazz in American Culture and Robin Hood: Anatomy of a Legend. If Squid’s college offered basket weaving, Squid probably would have majored in it.

That’s why Squid would make a pretty weak applicant at Monterey Institute of International Studies, where serious students study serious subjects.

Recently, however, Squid heard of a degree at MIIS that seemed to align with Squid’s modest academic ambitions: Manpants.

Sounded like an easy set of A’s to Squid, who can operate three sewing machines and type at the same time.

But Squid should have known better. “Manpants” is the student abbreviation for a Master’s in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies (MANPTS).

If a student were to be writing a paper on “The Young Male Problem,” it would sadly have nothing to with skinny jeans or boxer-baring sags, but rather how to address a sector of society that is biologically wired to be disruptive.

Squid hears MIIS administrators have instructed staff to quash its usage among themselves and discourage it among students. But the way Squid sees it, injecting a little humor into the most sobering of subjects is a smart way to steal some of its power.

Also, Squid just can’t stop saying it: Manpants.