"You wanna see who can scream the loudest?"

"You wanna see who can scream the loudest?" said kid number one. "Sure!" said kid number two, and together they set about to ruin my eardrums, and my life.

I thought I had learned my lesson last time I had attempted such a task. All preschool teaching had done for me was generate my hatred and bloodlust for minors. I sat the children

down on the "snapping stool." I asked the first child to stick out his leg, he obliged. I grasped at the kneecap and the ankle and swiftly snapped the leg in two. I glared at the

glare coming off the IKEA stool. "Stupid glare," I thought. Then I took the broken-legged child to refrigerator behind the building and slammed a ten pound sack of

Horse manure on the slabs.

There were mandibles in the shallows -- mandibles without maws, according to the more sensational journals of shipping news. News that sometimes roiled the conscience of Captain

Ahab, notable animals' rights activist, and proponent of fishing abolition. "Those baby sharks had feelings like everyone else," he intoned during a White House interview, a tear

in the fabric of space and time had brought him 200 year in the future, making Ahab's search for the White Whale fruitless. Maybe protecting sea creatures would give him a new life

. Being an activist was good therapy until he discovered one of the whales was Moby Prick, the 6th descendant of his arch enemy. It disappeared suddenly, along with Captain Ahab.