Impressing the Ladies

Today I woke up to discover a message on my Facebook profile's wall from a high school kid named Avi. Or maybe he's not high school anymore. I don't know. But he broke one of my cardinal rules of respect for Facebook. He asked me to write on his wall. I don't think it's cool to make that request. You should just wait for it to happen. Granted, I don't write on anyone's wall unless they ask me to, but that's beside the point. So I wrote on his wall. He wanted advice on how to "impress chicks." This is what I wrote.

Flipper's advice column, episode #1.

So you want to impress the ladies. This isn't something I can explain well in a letter, but we'll give it a shot. It's also difficult because I don't really have a method. Ladies like me because I am famous and because I am a dolphin. Getting famous is hard; becoming a dolphin is harder, and I definitely don't recommend it (see that South Park where Kyle's dad becomes a dolphin--that scared the hell out of me). So if you want to impress the ladies but aren't famous or a dolphin, there's not a lot I can tell you. You could save some lives, I guess, but I've seen too many nerdy coast guards save lives and fail to get a lady to think that that's an effective method. I really think the best way for a non-famous non-dolphin to get a lady's attention is go Miami Vice. That's right. Stubble, pastels, undercover narcotics work. If Don Johnson can do it, anyone can.

Oh crap. Here comes the squid.

Your pal,
Flipper.

I can't tell if I was serious about the Don Johnson thing. Whether or not I was, I hope he does it.

Technology

Some of you may have seen the post entitled "Summer Begins" twice. This is a mistake, and it is not my fault. I accidentally posted it twice because of a system glitch. I deleted one, but thanks to another system glitch--perhaps the same one--it still appears. Blogger has no record of a second "Summer Begins" post, and yet it still insists on displaying it. This is not April Fool's day, Blogger, and I am no April Fool. I do not appreciate your abuse, nor do I appreciate you snickering and pointing at me behind my back.

The world shall soon learn a dear lesson: do not make an enemy of a dolphin.

Actually, scratch that. I'm gonna get a burrito.

Summer Begins

It's a little known fact: dolphins hate summer. It dehydrates us. It heats up our oceans and pools. It creates storms that make us dizzy. But worst of all: it brings out the bugs.

There haven't been a lot of flies or mosquitoes out yet this year--thank the Good Lord--but once they rear their ugly, miniscule heads, I FREAK OUT. It's like they've got some blood feud they need to settle against me. What did I do? I can't even swat the suckers because of the limited finspan.

I've thought of a few solutions, and I plan to try them out in the following order:
1. Dress up in a mosquito suit. If I look like one of their own, they might leave me alone. And that rhymes, so it must be true.
2. Migrate. I actually think some dolphins do this already, but I'm not sure. I guess I've been in man's world so long, I don't even know my own kind. I'm like a duck among swans, or vice versa.
3. Melt the ice caps. If the world floods, there won't be any land for the mosquitoes to live on! I haven't really thought this one out, though.
4. Cryogenic freezing. I can freeze myself for like 50 million years and hope mosquitoes are extinct by then. Or, considering how mosquitoes used to be huge in the prehistoric times, maybe the trend will continue and they'll get too small to be bothersome. And if cryogenic freezing isn't perfected, there's always time travel.
5. Kill everyone. Mosquitoes can't survive without people to suck on, right? So we get rid of the people, we get rid of the mosquitoes. End of problem.

Some small part of me hopes I'll get to number five.

Insomnia and the Breaking News

I can't sleep. My total sleepless time is now...actually, I can't figure out how many hours it's been. But I'm really freaking tired.

People seem to have this idea that fish don't sleep. This is not true. I've known a few fish really well, and they sleep a lot. They're good at it, too. Sometimes they're asleep even when their eyes are wide open. Sea mammals, on the other hand, have to close their eyes to sleep. I don't remember exactly what that had to do with what I was saying. I'm so tired right now.

But there was something else I was going to say. People are starting to abuse my mailbag. Both Scott McClellan and Princess Juliana somehow got my email address and sent me messages about lowering my mortgage and saving someone with cancer or something. I would like to point out that neither of these emails were questions, and I will not stand mockery. I served my country. I have my dignity. And whether or not those last two statements are true, spam sucks.

I was going to explain why it's impossible for me to blog without sleep, but I can't remember how it's possible for me to blog in the first place. These fins make typing cumbersome. This entry took me 12 hours to write.

Don't Ask Flipper

After four glowing successful weeks of Flipper's Mailbag, it's time for the experiment to come to an end. We all have to shoot our own Ol' Yeller at some point in our lives, and now is my time to kill my beloved pet.

Of course I wouldn't have to do this if the masses hadn't failed me. I don't include you, dear readers, in that. You didn't fail me. You sent me questions, and I rewarded you with answers and laughter (I imagine). But everyone who doesn't read this blog really let me down.

So four weeks and four questions later, here we are, without any more questions asked and without any for me to answer. It's been a good run. Now I'll go back to my original mission, as stated in the subtitle. Soccer, world politics, beer: here I come.

Of course, there's the off-chance that I get another question sometime in the distant future, in which case Ask Flipper will be resurrected, but until then, ask your parents.

It's a Conspiracy

OK, I've had just about enough of the blatant dolphinophobia in this country. Today I had two--TWO--hate crimes committed against me. This brings the total of dolphin hate crimes I've heard of to a total of, um, 4. Wait, I mean 2. I accidentally counted them twice.

The first one happened this morning. I was walking down the street to visit my bank, minding my own business, and somebody stuffed a banana in my blowhole! Who does that? Who walks around with bananas and hopes to find a dolphin to harrass? Apparently a lot of people. Or at least one person, but I've found that wherever there's one person, there's maybe some more. I almost suffocated, and nobody did anything to help me. I had to go to the hospital.

Which leads to the second thing. Instead of taking me to the real hospital, they took me veterinary hospital! Hey people, I'm a mammal like you! I get to go to the mammal hospital! I've seen people take dogs and children to the ER, and next thing you know, they'll end up at the dirty, smelly vet's too.

This is a national travesty. I urge you to write your congressperson and tell them to include dolphinophobia in their hate crime legislation. I've already written Russ Feingold a few times, but he asked me to stop. Can that count as hate crime #3? Yeah, let's do that.

Nostalgia

This doesn't happen very often, but every now and then I find myself longing for the ocean. There's not a whole lot I miss about the ocean. It doesn't have much...well, land, and I've become fairly attached to that. Land is pretty sweet.

But sometimes it just hits me: I belong in the ocean. Not just because it's where I was born (actually, I might have been born in outer space, but there's no documented evidence for that), but because it's so free. I wish it was an easy place to visit, but it's one of those places that you can't bring yourself to leave once you get there. I miss swimming, I miss beating up the starfish, I miss those scenes I used to do when I would jump out of the water just as the sun was setting and they'd do a freeze frame so you could see my silhouette in front of the sun. And I guess I miss other dolphins. Most of the time, they're jerks. The rest of the time, they're...you know what? I hate dolphins.

Actually, screw the ocean. I think I'm gonna take up littering. Or oil spilling. How do you like them apples, dolphins!

Flipper's Question Corner

I didn't post much this last week because I've been busy. Actually, that's not true. I've been in jail. Actually, that's not true either. I've been lazy. But we're at another "Question of the Day" day, so here's the question. It's from my pal Jodi.

Flip - Can I call you Flip? I'm going to anyway.

I saw your mug shot on Smoking Gun. What's the deal?

Remember - your restraining order for me is 100 yards. I've got my poking stick out.

The first time I read this question, I couldn't really tell it was a question. No offense, Jodes. I wrapped my dolphin brain around it eventually.

Yes, you can call me Flip. Most people don't, but I'm pretty sure it's because those people are not creative. The Spanish-speaking people call these people aburridos, I think. (I learned a little Spanish from a crab. Not a treasured experience.)

Before I get to question number two, I should probably explain that I don't know what Smoking Gun is...unless it's like America's Most Wanted. Because they caught my cousin Ripper for killing a lot of people. In which case, you probably saw Ripper and not me.

But if it's something different, I don't know what the deal is. When in doubt, chalk it up to fraud. Or libel. That's one of the rules I learned from being a celebrity. So the deal is probably fraud. Or libel.

Thank you for your question Jodi!


I'd also like to give a friendly "what's up" to my bros at www.askaninja.com. The Ninja answers questions; I answer questions. We've got something in common. Unfortunately I can't do the audio thing cuz I don't have any of those human speech organs, but props to the Ninja on that one. I'd like to see us team up. Maybe do "Ask a Ninja Dolphin," or something. But he'd probably have to kill me, and I probably wouldn't appreciate that.

Ask Flipper...Again

Thanks everybody for your outpouring of questions! I've received dozens of replies, and they're all much more interesting than I expected. Take this one, for instance, from Mark.

Can you tell me what you slapped those douchebag hippies with? Like,
was it your tail? Or your long mouth? Or your huge genitalia?

Before we get to the actual question, I feel like I should clarify something about dolphin anatomy. It is actually very difficult for a dolphin to move his head in a side-to-side fashion that would result in slapping someone with the "bottlenose" (which, thank you Mark, is actually a mouth). It involves a full-body motion that most dolphins tend to avoid, except for extremely dangerous situations and parties.

But to answer your question, I actually slapped the hippies with fins. Considering our positions in that vehicle, the fins were the easily the slappers of choice. After a while, though, I got bored of the same old fin slap, and I started to make it interesting. Sometimes I'd wave them to come nearer so I could tell them a secret, but then I'd slap them. Sometimes I used misdirection, waving one fin to keep them distracted and then slapping them with the other. There's really no end to the fun one can have playing with hippies.

Thanks for the question, Mark, and the rest of you remember to send your questions to flippersmailbag@gmail.com!