Posted on June 30, 2022 by Jeff Thaler
Once upon a time, my College Sisters and Brothers, Mother Nature sensed a void in her world. She called upon her-mann in (a} dell aware, indeed, of his many talents, and lo— he set in motion a “butterfly effect” that has, unexpectedly, resulted in surging prices of life essentials such as oil, gas, clothing, building supplies, sriracha, and.,,,lobster. How did this happen? Who is responsible?
That is our tale. There was (and is) a powerful Russian Leader who, try as he might, could not sleep through the night, any night. Lying awake, he pondered ways to expand his power and empire, especially against his bitter foe known as US. Tossing and turning each night, he felt like something was poking, prodding, snapping at him—but what? Was it his conscience?
Alas not. One rainy morning, weary of damp sheets, he decided to turn over his mattress for a fresh start—but, lo and behold, what did he find? He found the source of his nightly torment—not Alexei Navalny, but rather a feisty lobster. Not just any lobster, mind you, but a giant carnivorous Maine lobster. The Leader said to the Lobster: “You must have come from Maine’s King. The pain you have caused me, I shall now cause to others by making you so, so expensive that people everywhere will have to pay $50 or more for a hot dog roll with teeny-tiny bits of lobster meat in it. Let them instead be reduced to eating fowl giblins, ha ha!” [The Leader had a bad sense of humor, by the way.]
But how? Who or what controlled the price of lobster, he wondered?
He knew it wasn’t the Glick of FERC, who tried to control certain energy prices (another fable). Could the Leader monopolize key lobster supply minerals, such as selenium, zinc, magnesium and chorash (he was not a great speller)? After online research, the Leader was enraged to find that the 3rd President of a famous and prestigious American College had, back in 2008 or so, hosted a lobster bake on a Portland, Maine island. And while the President had invited Maine’s King, he—the Leader of the largest country on Earth, the once and future King of the World—had been ignored, uninvited, disrespected.
This gaffe (in Russian, spelled “jaffe”) so infuriated him that, with ideas speeding like ternes and purple martens from near and farer, bruen and stewin’ through the field gates of his not-dinkin or crude brain, he devised an ingenious plan. A wicked bad plan. To do what, you ask?
To unleash the butterfly wings of chaos, and set in motion the destruction of the Maine lobster market and the rest of the West’s economy. As he looked into his mirror that morning, he smiled (not an easy thing for him to do) and said, “Ah, MacBeth, there are daggers in men’s smiles…including mine.”
But what was this diabolical plan to pervert nature? First—promote the West’s over-reliance on and burning of (his) oil, coal and gas (rather than the huffing and puffing of wind turbine blades), which would then 2) drive up greenhouse gas emissions which, without any warren(g), would 3) heat up the world’s air and oceans (and make Siberia a warm summer tourist attraction), thereby 4) causing places like the Gulf of Maine to warm faster than anywhere else in the world, which 5) would drive the cold-water loving lobsters further away from Maine toward Canada, meaning 6) the poor Maine lobstermen and women would have to use more expensive diesel fuel to go more miles from shore while chasing the lobsters fleeing the warm waters. But, the Leader still needed one more step—how to drive up the price of diesel fuel in Maine, so many miles away?
Of course—invade the Ukraine! Which, Sisters and Brothers, is the Ace card that he played on February 24, 2022, forcing millions into hock leading toward stagflation, inflation, recession, and all sorts of economic horribles too painful to tell. Yes, he used the butterfly effect to create chaos, uncertainty, and both high prices and low supplies of life’s essential needs and pleasures. Such as Maine lobster and its rolls, whose prices have gone up for all of his enemies, and even for his quasi-friends in China (who, by the way, scandalously refer to Maine lobster as “Boston lobster”). Oh, the nightmare!
The morals of this tale, my College friends: When choosing future ACOEL Presidents, think of poetic last names, not names with no rhyme (like orange, purple or opus); never pet a lobster or this may happen to you PINCHED by a LOBSTER! – YouTube nor leave one under a King mattress; and the next time you think to “butterfly a lobster”, first ask yourself: tomalley or not tomalley, that is the question.