A useless guide to underwater life

A couple of years ago, a team of Danish Scientists have discovered a Greenland shark that is 400 years old. It was found a few hundred meters away from its school, lost and dehydrated from all that crying. The research team offered it soup and tried to make contact, but their attempts were in vain, except for the soup. Its lack of response was attributed to its old age and the fact that it was a female, which is a bit sexist but can be true. Many moons ago, when I was a young support monkey I had an older colleague and she displayed the same grumpiness when subjected to stress. I tested that for 180 times and eventually gave up when she hooked up with a friend of mine that is no longer a friend of mine. Win-win, I guess.

The shark's age was determined by radiocarbon dating its eye lens nuclei. My colleague also had eye lenses in a small box on her desk, but since my experience with pulse of carbon-14 produced by nuclear tests is not that vast and equipment was not available nearby, I looked at her ID card lying on the very same desk and computed it in my head. I am not very good with large numbers either, so it took a few attempts and time.

Four hundred years is a long time. If you ask Christians, that is 10 percent of our planet's age. Which means that according to their schedule the shark's grandpa could have been contemporary with Jesus. Possibly. By that I mean that any imaginary thing is possible when evaluated through the lens of religion, no matter how stupid.

I imagine that sharks would be irritated by the noise of flip-flops when someone walks on water, as well as the applauses of its unwashed audience on the shore. Sandals and flip-flops make more noise on water, as sound propagates better than through sand. And on top of that, these are made out of wood. I guess it helps a bit with flotation. Oh, did I ruin the "magic" trick by explaining it? Either that, or that person is a carpenter and is too cheap to spend on havaianans.

If I were a shark and had to face such nuisance, I would give 25-30 pieces of silver to someone in the water-walker's entourage to get rid of the noise source. Like convince him to move someplace else, I guess. His pick, what could go wrong?
Of course, I could just move to other waters, but as a matter of principle I do not skimp on comfort. And 30 pieces of silver are easy to come by, I have 8 sunken pirate ships in my backyard and they are packed with that stuff. The bigger problem is actually finding someone reliable enough to carry the job through. I knew a whale that told me that once he had to bribe 8 people until he finally got rid of the noise. He had become so annoyed with the situation that one day he just couldn't take it and swallowed one of them. After some time, he got fed up with him and spit him back to shore. I did not wait to hear the rest of the story, but apparently that person became famous by embellishing the events to whomever cared to listen. It is complicated to deal with people, so it comes as no surprise that after a few hundred years one would just give up and move to a quiet place la Greenland. Sure, you need to pay attention to the big slabs of ice falling on your head from time to time, but overall it is a cool place to live.
And yes, I could just tackle the issue myself and out-perform the walking on water with a spectacular jump-and-grab and turn the water into red wine, but I find little satisfaction in sorting my own problems myself.

If I had to impress a bunch of gullible unwashed mob by claiming I can do magic, I guess an easy one would be to tell them I could turn water into wine, close my eyes for a bit, mumble some gibberish and then tell them it is done: white wine. It works every time there are no sommeliers in the audience. I heard once that before deciding on red wine, Jesus was working with prosecco until people figured out how he made the bubbles.

Where was I? Oh, yes. This is whom I'd gladly clip any time: Aquaman. I am a people person... sorry, I meant shark, as you know by now, but this prick is a horrible human being. Remember Ichthyander? Of course, you do not; you are too young and books are harder than movies. Well, Aquaman is the complete opposite. He is the under-water equivalent of Bono. Even if he did not talk so much you would always know where he is by the long trails of make-up he leaves in the water. Also, he spends ages in the shower and leaves more hair in the drain than Ariel. At least she could sing and... had other talents, too (and she tasted nice despite being intensely distressed after we broke up). But this guy? None. With Marvel getting so desperate about profits and coming up with so many franchises, I guess now there are now 5 to 6 superheroes per person already. I would not know what to do with so many. I could use the Strange doctor that can teleport me from place to place when I am too lazy to swim. He seems like a nice person. And he could tell me nice detective stories in the rest of the time. Sure, Stephen Fry has an even better voice, but his audio-book is still more than 60 dollars on amazon. And he is not so great at time travel, should the need arise. But the other super-heroes? I have no use for them. Maybe one to clean around the house and do the groceries, but that's it. I could keep Aquaman to do that, just for spite. But given how incompetent he is, he would probably make more mess than tidying and would get the wrong kind of sea weed. Oh, fun idea: I could also keep Hulk and unleash him from time to time on his ass. And when he's done being beaten up, he can start arranging the furniture back to where it was. Hulk would also be great when he is calm. Brilliant scientist, he is. He could probably fix the TV, post-smash. Which reminds me, MotoGP is on in 5 minutes. Well, children, this concludes today's guide to underwater life.
I hope you have learned a lot.