some thoughts arise unbidden

For a while now, I've thought that Food Network superstar Giada De Laurentiis reminded me of someone. Then, as you see above, I finally figured out who it was.

The mouth, man! Da frickin' mouth! It's the kind of frightening orifice that my brothers might refer to as The Mouth of Madness, an oblique reference to this bizarro film. Giada's a pretty lady, but you can park a car inside her head. I'm worried that other members of the De Laurentiis clan share this trait, a bit like the Habsburg jaw. We know their clan is hungry for power: Giada's grandfather, Dino De Laurentiis, made his name producing movies like "Barbarella" and "Conan the Barbarian," among others. The pups and elders have placed themselves in key positions within American and Italian society, probably ready to enact some terrifying global plan.

I can easily imagine the whole De Laurentiis family at the beach-- several generations of them. It's twilight, and they all slip silently into the water, swimming in stately formation like a pod of whales. Then they dive. Mouths agape, eyes rolled back into their skulls, they placidly Hoover up plankton, seaweed, jellyfish, manatees, and the odd shark. They communicate with each other by making low growling/clicking noises in their throats, punctuated by occasional sinister vocalizations: underwater versions of Giada's delighted squeals when she samples her own cooking. Giant squid give the family a wide berth as the pod sinks down, down into the abyssal depths. The family cruises along lush sea-canyons, aware that they may be tempting fate, for this region of the great silent ocean is home to a massive, tentacled, bioluminescent predator, the only one who can strike fear in the heart of a De Laurentiis:

James Cameron.

Five miles wide and more vicious than any other creature on the planet, Cameron spends his free time sprawled out on the ocean floor in his true molluscan form, irritably devouring random sperm whales and undersea mountains, his multitude of enormous, bloodshot eyes glaring frighteningly at everything around him. Make no mistake: James Cameron has hated this world ever since he crash-landed here centuries earlier-- has hated it with all nine of his powerful, monstrous alien hearts. And soon, very soon, he plans to rid this pitiful spheroid of its human infestation. No longer will he have to assume human form and make movies about death, drowning, and the color blue.

The De Laurentiis family pauses, sensing Cameron's constantly radiating aura of naked fury somewhere ahead. Unwilling to challenge him, they turn around and begin heading back to the beach, giant mouths agape as they scoop up luckless krill. Before they break the surface, their bodies renormalize, their dark and alien secret still safe for the moment, their near-encounter with Cameron already a fading, unpleasant memory.



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