Tuesday, December 16, 2003

FREE MUKTUK! (AND/OR WILLY): In a strange end to the strange life of the planet's most celebrated not-a-fish since Moby Dick, reports came in today about the demise of Keiko, the cetacean sensation who starred in Free Willy.

Believe it or not, they buried him. Obviously to prevent ravenous fans from making a celebrity muktuk of his noble remains.

In the grand scheme of things, burying a sea mammal in the frozen tundra strikes me as about as appropriate as knighting Mick Jagger, (and/or using a captive whale to make a movie about why whales shouldn't be kept captive). But actually, it does nicely sum up the contradictions that are layered into our species' all-too-human treatment of this single, long-suffering creature.

Considering the whole sordid story, I speculate that Keiko may have been the first non-human animal to directly experience irony. He may even have died of an irony overdose . . . they just called it pneumonia.

(And if you think this was a tendentious bit of windy commentary thinly linked to it's alleged subject, check this dude out.)

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