Dear Humans,
One word: plastics.
I won’t withhold everything I’ve learned. I’ll tell you plain. You will miss plastics.
Ned actually signs this letter as “Ned `the relatively well-liked former mayor of the town formerly known as Peterborough, NH’ Grimley-Groves.” He shows up a little later adding some stuff he forgot to mention in this letter. The opening line is an allusion to the film The Graduate in the famous scene in which newly graduated Benjamin Braddock is the recipient of mature advice from an older family friend delivered with all the gravity of being handed the keys to the kingdom. And, in a way, he was: the world of plastics had existed before the mid-1960’s, but it truly would exploded in the decades afterward and surely a lot of people did make money and a few people made obscene money. And then came the images of suffering and mountainous garbage peaks and plastics didn’t mean what it used to.
“I love this local company, especially because for every order—and this is so cool—they make a tax-deductible contribution to honor and support the world-famous Pacific Garbage Patch, in your name.”
This poem begins the image of a marketing executive under the pressure of deadline coming up with the tagline “A Rainforest for Your Face” for a company’s facial cream sold in a tube. What commences is a subtly drawn illustration of the link between consumerism and environmentalism. It is a link that often dares not speak its name because of, well, the obvious. But the punchline here which brings the poem to its conclusion should also be obvious relative to its real-world inspiration and yet, since this very kind of thing continues unabated, it would seem perhaps this is not so much the case.
It became clear that they, the COO (Cephalopod Octopoid Overlords) were taking over. While we were still marveling at the cuteness of YouTube videos showing early COO antics and enjoying the adorableness of their eight-legged smartypants brand,
they had reconfigured the ECOS language, and took over every computer, grid, and control center. We still do not know their language. We think they think we are too stupid to learn it and we know they know they are probably right.
The conceit of this collection is that humanity has been taken over by Octopoids. They are not fascistic overlords in the sense that the recognize the value of benevolence, but nevertheless the world is different and substantially changed. Hence, the necessity for an Octopus Museum. Because, of course, why wouldn’t there be a museum about the species which conquered the lesser species that had convinced themselves of they could conquer anything. Even a planet.
