Thoughts on Whales

Chiswick! Fresh horses!

W is for Whales.

What comes to mind when you think of whales?
 Proud beasts majesticly swimming through the oceans, wise leviathans who can see across the centuries of time?
 Or perhaps images on the news telling you that, once again another pod of whales have beached themselves "accidentally"  The volenteers are running this way and that armed with buckets and wet towels in an attempt to keep them alive long enough to get them back out into the water?

Of course nothing is wrong with this practice [1] and whenever it happens I always end up on the side of the people trying to keep the whales alive rather than the people who call up the talk radio and suggest that the whale "should be butchered and sold to the Japanese" [2]

The Beachings:

The main problem with whales that have been floated is that they will frequently beach themselves on the same or another harder to get to beach which means that the whole process has to start again.
The other,only slightly lesser, problem with whales running aground in the way that they do is that with even one whale on the beach sunbathing is difficult and if there is a whole pod there then forget about it completely. No matter where they end up the whale family will invariably hog the best spots on the beach.

Now whales as a species have been around for a long time but in the time that they've been here the continents have drifted apart and as it stands now no amount of therapy is going to bring them back together.[3]

To put it simply the whales are traveling around relying solely on outdated maps and instead of updating to the more accurate GPS they are wandering around saying

"there was never an island here before"
"Oh this is great. You can't stop and ask directions!"
"Who am I going to ask?"
"Well what about those little pink things making all the noise down there"
"Heh, they're just upset because I'm going to have a better tan than them"

of course the GPS problem only really applies to the older whales. the younger whales, while being "hip and with it" have been known to use the GPS and thus avoid those inconvenient beaches, or at least all the really good ones that are already taken by older whales. [4]

So instead of constantly refloating the beached behemoths back into the watery depths we should concentrate on learning their language so that we can put radio beacons in the water that broadcast a variety of helpful messages such as the following.

Japan - すべての控えをクリア
Latin - Vatican City nantes excipit diligenter
Spanish - ¡Peligro! se está acercando a España. Por favor, tenga los papeles listos
England – Hello, this is a recording. If you're not a whale you can disregard this message but if you are it does rather look as though your coming a bit close to our green and verdant land and thats really not on is it? Why don't you just pack it in and go home?

Admittedly its a work in progress but perhaps the way to understand the whales is by translating their music which leads us into the subject of

Whale Songs:

Every single culture on earth has created an individual music styling. the many different kinds of music are far too vast to list here but that is not the purpose of this paper, the purpose, of this section at least, is to bring the famous whale songs to the fore.
Whale song is how the whales communicate with each other, a long drawn out series of clicks and moans that vary in pitch and time [5]. Very stoned people in particular embraced whale song with a passion rarely seen in todays cynical world.
Deals were done, records were cut and Whale Song rocketed up the charts, [6] well, not really.
Around the natal area of humans is when they get yearnings for whale songs and these recordings will all be thrown out on the day the whale language is translated and it is revealed exactly what the whales have been singing about the whole time. [7]

Body Modification:

One of the most telling signs of adolescence in humans and indeed throughout the animal world is the process of decoration. Birds will fluff out their feathers, and strut around in front of the female. Deer will grow their antlers long and fight with other deer. Humans will, do pretty much the same. [8]

So it is with the whale. When a young whale reaches the heady teenage years and his mind turns to opposite sex young whales will suddenly sprout a collection of body decoration that people wouldn't bat an eyelid at if it walked into a club. [9]

The disguised humpback whale will attempt to look cool by having barnacles in strategic places, it will always go for the more indie crowd where strange designs etched into the skin are accepted and, as long as it can keep up with the conversation about the bands, it should do fine. [10]

Killer whales, with their shiny black markings and disregard for anything that isn't another killer whale generally frequent the harder kind of goth clubs although it is not unusual for one to add a bow tie and top hat to its disguise and take in a high class event such as the opera, especially if Phantom is playing

While they are normally shunned by other whales as looking stupid the young Narwhal would be able to fit into the strange crowd with piercings with relative ease and would quickly be talked into getting even more.
This is why the next day, when he wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror and thinks "I look like a puffer fish" He immediately gets back to his classes and settles down to become an accountant

Conclusion:

There seems to be no real conclusion to these thoughts. If the whales as a species were willing to meet us halfway on the whole beaching thing then we might be more willing to let them date our daughters.

Whales of the world the ball is now in your court.

Notes:

1. .Despite the fact that it is really nothing more than a cry for attention and by rushing out there and helping them all we are doing is negatively reinforcing the belief that whales are unable to help themselves.
2. This is the actual quote that sparked the neurons in my brain to think about this subject so thank you Captain Stupid.
3. This is the only joke in this paper.
4. Although a few of the younger whales have attempted to beach themselves on the more remote beaches they invariably find out that it is a short term gain and long term loss on their part.
5. Sounding very much like a few girls I dated.
6. They said that the band was bigger than Jesus and if you think about it they were right. 
7. I don't know and neither do you, unless you're a whale and if you are you're probably writing a nasty comment about this blogs obvious anti whale bias.
8. Although due to an evolutionary hiccup we have neither feathers nor antlers it doesn't stop us.
9. They might be a little concerned that a whale has just walked in but we can probably assume that its in disguise, possibly a false mustache.
10. Unless it makes the mistake of droning on about Whale Song, They split up, get over it.