Iran’s Navy, a fearsome juggernaut of nautical supremacy, has terrorized the seas since the 1200s, when Iran began conquering coastal lands at will and making pirates eat their own hats. With coastal access to the crucial Arabian and Caspian Seas, the land mass of Iran was ideally located for maritime dominance. Even geographical limitations such as a lack of access to the Pacific Ocean were laughed at by the Iranian Navy, infamous world-wide for carrying their huge warships by hand overland when doing so would be more impressive than simply sailing around the Cape of Good Hope or even around small islands.

Massive blockades of Iranian warships crippled the world economy numerous times in the 1500s, with the entire Spanish Armada going to their deaths in a futile attempt to import much-needed Spanish rice in defiance of Iran’s wishes. The Iranian people, though poorer than a record executive on land, have nevertheless lorded over the seas for generations, with an iron fist and a wooden bottom. Because an iron bottom would sink like nobody’s business.

This latest development came to a head when 15 British sailors were captured by the Iranian Navy while conducting a routine search of a cargo ship carrying fuses and detonators in Iraqi territorial waters.

“We had just finished inspecting and signing off on the Iraqi freighter,” explained naval officer Roger Phillip, communicating through a photograph released by the Iranian Navy via holes ripped in his sweater forming the message in Morse code. “When suddenly the very sun was blotted out by an armada of fearsome warships, and we knew our own doom had engulfed us.”

Though the unconditional surrender of a world power over a small naval skirmish over 3,000 miles away is unusual, few consider Britain’s move premature, given the unbelievable hurt the Iranian Navy could rain down on the U.K. should they get their dander up.

A few foolhardy souls have suggested a death-before-dishonor approach, unwilling to bow down to their Iranian masters so quickly.

“I think we could take ‘em,” grumbled brave sausage peeler Roscoe Euclid of Saxby, loading supplies into an inflatable dingy moments before going to his certain death.

Final plans have not been announced as to what Britain’s new Iranian overlords plan to do with the country, though early indications point to a bonanza of beheadings.

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Not exactly the Maserati of reader questions, but it is the least stupid one I’ve received this month. Roll that factoid around in your head when you can’t sleep at night, and see if suicide doesn’t appeal. So before you roll your eyes too violently, remind yourself that in an alternate universe, you’re reading my latest column on why some ninjas wear red, and whether or not that’s supposed to be camouflage for fighting inside volcanoes.

I’ll begin by answering one of the questions that came up later in the above caller’s ten-minute ramble: Yes, if God took a piss, he’d probably take it in the ocean. It only stands to reason. As a matter of fact, everything that has ever taken a piss, ever, eventually all that ended up in the ocean. Keep that in mind the next time you’re water skiing.

How do marine animals cope? Well, they’re pissing in there too, so it’s not like they can throw stones. The ocean is basically like one gigantic hot tub, and you know nobody crawls out of a nice warm hot tub and scurries wetly into the house just to piss in the sink like a civilized person. The ocean is like one big let-it-all-hang-out party where anything goes, which is why the church has always taken a hard line anti-ocean stance.

The reason all the animals in the ocean don’t get diseases from swimming in pee all the time, like you or I would from using the pool down at the YMCA, is that ocean water is jam-packed full of phytoplankton, which is nature’s answer to 2000 Flushes Blue. Phytoplankton are tiny, microscopic bugs that don’t care what they eat. Seriously, they’re so small everything looks like food to them. Try shrinking yourself down to one-tenth the size of a pinhead and see how well you can tell the difference between a turd and a Coney Island corn dog. Hell, try to tell the difference at your normal size.

Phytoplankton turn the world’s shame into the basis for the oceanic food chain: themselves. Everything eats phytoplankton, usually on accident since they’re so tiny and the water’s packed with them like pedophiles at an Aaron Carter concert. Lazy fish just swim around with their mouths open all the time, receiving sustenance from the millions of phytoplankton that get stuck between their teeth. This provides a golden opportunity for marine pranksters like the sea otter, which love nothing more than floating unwrapped candy bars on the ocean’s surface just to freak out open-mouthed-swimming fish.

Even phytoplankton won’t touch whale shit, however. Once they settle, these colossal loads, known as “coral,” provide shelter for thousands of other marine organisms that have no idea where coral really comes from. Everything else though, stupid phytoplankton gladly devour and ask for seconds.

So, the obvious question is, could you just buy a bunch of phytoplankton to keep in your toilet, freeing you from the constant daily grind of flushing and refilling the tank with a hose from the yard because the water company cut off just the water to your toilet to spite you for an unpaid bill and it doesn’t rain enough this time of year to justify leaving the lid off and your bathroom window open? In theory, you could. In theory, you could also collect all the little broken bits from the bottoms of bags of pretzels and repackage them as a salty new breakfast cereal, but I wouldn’t count on that ship coming in any time soon.

In actual practice, the problems with the phytotoilet are two fold: One, they stopped selling little packets of phytoplankton through the mail after Sea Monkeys really took off and fickle kids forgot all about the magic of microscopic pets. And two, even if you could get them, eventually your toilet would just become completely clogged with phytoplankton themselves, and then it’s back to the soul-deadening grind of flushing after each use. Unless you trained your cat or ferret or something to eat phytoplankton, but that might be messing with evolutionary forces that could have disastrous effects millions of years down the line, I don’t know.

So the next time you’re swimming in the ocean, look for phytoplankton. Because if you don’t see any, you’re probably swimming in piss. I’m just kidding, they’re microscopic and you’re definitely swimming in piss. Until next time, I’m Griswald Dreck.

º Last Column: Flinging Out the Dead
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All my queries to fearless editor Red Bagel were returned unopened, with little crudely drawn maps to pirate treasure on the envelopes. But I sought something more—the glib satisfaction I get from knowing I stayed informed with the world’s most controversial and scoop-tastic alternative news site! Hmm. I guess it does kind of warrant laughing, to read it all laid out like that instead of just yelling it at city hall. Regardless, I was not going to take the disappearance of the commune lying down. I jumped onto the phone (quite literally, since I’ve been living without furniture in my apartment after losing my job last year) to organize all the individual commune Enthusiasts Clubs into one massive coalition to raise money, threaten the Illuminati, save the world through video games—to do anything, in short, to get the commune publishing again.

Well, stop me if you guessed where this is going: The Shanesly, Vermont commune Enthusiasts Club was the only club out there! I mean, I’m sure there are others, but they sure are hard to find. Not very well-organized.

So I’ve taken it upon myself, as the world’s single biggest commune fan (though my friend Rudy with the crippling depression is starting to come around in a big way!) to form the world’s first National commune Enthusiasts Club. Or NcEC, for those of you who like odd acronyms.

I actually did all this about 8 months ago, and I have to say the result has been really overwhelming. Or just whelming, maybe. We are getting responses, and not just from those pricks at the “Do Not Call” list headquarters. I have over 15 interested potential members already! Most of them have the same thing in common: A thirst for the undiluted truth, as only an anti-corporate website can deliver. They are also all single and live with a great number of cats, which I find curious. What is it about the commune and its many feline fanciers?

Whatever I did, even if it felt unproductive at that time, it’s worked! The commune is back in business, and better than ever! Or maybe it could use some improvements, but that’s hardly my call. However, if they do want any insightful critiques from me, they’ll find me living in their very own local Flatbush, N.J. Y.M.C.A.

In all honesty, though, it’s not as much fun as the song made it sound. I have to sleep very lightly to keep from getting a kidney stolen in the night. But what’s a kidney as a price to pay, really? I have two of those, despite that awful Guillermo’s insidious intentions; there’s still only one commune.

º Last Column: The Seventh commune Enthusiasts Club Meeting
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