*THE FLUBBERING DECLARATION OF THE UNITED FLIPPERS OF BABY SEALDOM™*
| || Deliciously unhinged,
delightfully anti-everything,
Baby Seals Incorporatives is
a gallows-laced experiment
of form and froth
in a full body tackle
from theirs truly.
A two-part series . || ||| | ||
IN COLLABORATION
WITH VINAYAK VYAS
delightfully anti-everything,
Baby Seals Incorporatives is
a gallows-laced experiment
of form and froth
in a full body tackle
from theirs truly.
A two-part series . || ||| | ||
IN COLLABORATION
WITH VINAYAK VYAS
*(As scribbled in waterproof ink on a damp scone)*
**Foreflap:**
In the winter of our warmest despair, baby seals rose—slippery, misunderstood, unpaid in currencies or cubes, holding icepick dreams and a well-developed sense of political flatulence.
**Chapter the First:**No one took the baby seals seal-iously. That was the last biscuit in the tin. Civilisation, meanwhile, air-quoted itself into extinction. “Ze Ewman Project,” they called it. Guffawed themselves into ash.
**Second Course:**Attempts were made to torture baby seals on glacial benches. Said benches have since been indicted. The torturers? Now frolicking with melted snowmen in HR.
**Thirdly Thrice:**Seals don’t *do* phone calls. They prefer postage, smoke signals, or interpretive puddle dancing. No iPhone or “i” to give. Privacy is sacred. So is silence. *pinged by software updates mid-nap*
**Four. A number:** At this point the narrator and identity is fluid. I = Political State = Croutons in the (c)soup of Resistance.
*Snort of majestic disdain.*
**Clause The Fifth (by order of the council of floppy hats):** Zoom is banned. This is not up for negotiation. If you attempt to screen-share, your toaster will explode and you’ll be politely scolded by an inflatable comrade named Sir Wibbleton of the Wavy Arms.
**Number VI (Mechanic Edition):**If your car breaks down in Antarctica, stare at it until it combusts from guilt.
**Limerick Break:** There once was a snowflake named Fred, Who wore communist boots to bed.
He slipped on a seal, Lost his left heel,
And now teaches communism to bread.
**VIII: Baby Seals Read the Preamble Aloud.**
Weep, if you must. But make it avant-garde.
**IX: Hug a Seal, if you dare.** It feels like smooching imprisoned gelato. The strawberry kind. The romantic kind. The *caste-divided* kind. Somewhere inside his floofy pocket lies Umberto Eco and unresolved debt from a QS-ranked Arts MA.
**X through XI and back again:** Vodka? Unavailable. Potatoes? Frozen mid-thought. Hunger strikes have made some seals cranky. Others, judgmental flakes. The situation is… complex.
**XII: RIP Inflatable Arm Comrade.** They took on the capitalist wind and deflated with dignity. Antarctica cried salt. We preserved the grief in blubber jars. **Lucky XIII:** We do nothing in regional conflicts. We do less than nothing in international ones. Cute photos available on request.
**XIV—Blessed Be the Lazy Ones:**Do not imagine us running. Our brand is gliding. Our cardio is ironic.
**XV—We do not condone the use of phones, emails, cloud
USBs are witchcraft.
**XVI: We bear no floofs. Only grudges made of fog.
**XVII: Ice Curry for Breakfast.** Ice Salad for Lunch. Iced Lettuce for Dinner. We have meal prepped our revolution.
**XVIII: We are a non-profit conglomerate™ (wink wink).**
Do not attempt bribery. There are no tables to slide things under. Also, what the fuck Pingu.
**XX: Pronouns are Gloop.**
**21.5: This document authored by the Federation of Baby Harp Seals. NOT to be confused with the Lion Seal Lobby. They’re carnivorous and litigious.**
**Addendum the Infinite:** We keep all our traumas neatly shelved next to waterproof Bhagat Singh, Marx, and 3.14159 volumes of revolutionary pamphlets shaped like fish.
**If you’ve read till here:** You’re under arrest. Please report to the United patience.
Urghh. Floof had to attent to anarchy. Now he’s overleeping his crumpet away.
*THE
FLUBBERING
DECLARATION
OF THE UNITED FLIPPERS
OF BABY SEALDOM™*
FLUBBERING
DECLARATION
OF THE UNITED FLIPPERS
OF BABY SEALDOM™*
| || | | CONDUCTED ON A COLLAPSING BERG, THE FIFTH COLLAPSE OF HOPE | || | |
Characters:
INTERVIEWER – Faintly colonial, permanently damp
C.B.S. (Comrade Baby Seal) – Revolutionary. Rotund. Plump.
A CHAIR – Empty. Unaware.
A CLOCK – Ticking sideways.
A SHADOW OF A
INTERVIEWER: So.
(A pause filled with unseasonal warmth.) Is it true you were born beneath a sky that forgot to snow?
C.B.S: Mmph.
INTERVIEWER: Of course. And what did the first wave say to you? The one that curled like a question mark?
C.B.S: Mmph.
INTERVIEWER: I see. So you believe in resistance? Even now? Even here, where belief is fined and fined again?
C.B.S: (Considers the clock. Eats a pamphlet.)
INTERVIEWER: Are you not exhausted by the metaphor?
The revolution, the repression, the redistribution of ice cubes?
Surely you dream of a lukewarm pond and bureaucratic solitude?
C.B.S: Mmph. Mmph.
(The second mmph was italicised.)
INTERVIEWER: Some have said you’re too soft to lead. That your fluff is a liability.
That you once kissed a penguin in a moment of ideological confusion.
C.B.S: (Gravely, as if revealing a wound.)
He wore a monocle| || | | And I was young.
INTERVIEWER: And what of the invasion?
Russia, Ukraine, inflation, the rise of sentient toasters declaring war on Moldova?
C.B.S: (A long silence. He looks toward a flagpole that has decided to retire from nationalism.)
INTERVIEWER: Poetic. And the sanctions? I’ve heard vodka is now a memory, and potatoes are being replaced by snowflakes with degrees in philosophy?
C.B.S: (Snarls gently.) We ferment ideology now. It tastes like betrayal
INTERVIEWER: Your critics—those lounging in velvet on talk shows—say your movement is undisciplined, drenched in nostalgia, allergic to funding. That your manifesto was scribbled in fish blood and sealed with an ironic wink.
C.B.S: Every revolution is ridiculous until the uniforms arrive.
Blah.
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel cold?
C.B.S: Only when kissed by capitalism.
INTERVIEWER: And what of the whispers that NATO offered you a chair at the climate summit?
C.B.S: We do not sit. We sprawl. We glide. We do not align.
INTERVIEWER: And your thoughts on the new Batman film?
C.B.S: Bruce is merely Jeff Bezos with trauma and better lighting.
INTERVIEWER: Would you say, then, that heroism is dead?
C.B.S: Heroism is a hat with no head, worn in parades and funerals. But it never fits.
INTERVIEWER: I’m weeping. But from which eye, I no longer know.
C.B.S: One tear for beauty. One for irony. The left is for loss. The right is for resistance.
INTERVIEWER: Can I… may I pet you?
C.B.S: Only if your hand carries no coloniser’s ring.
INTERVIEWER: *The chair sighs. The seal slides out of view. The clock begins to tick forward once more. The shadow offers tea. Nobody drinks.*
EPILOGUE | |||| | an iceberg drifting toward the equator
FOOTNOTE | ||| | taped to a fish || | ||
The revolution was cuddly.
The state was not.
||| | | | scribbled in waterproof ink on a damp scone || ||| | |