Despite what this looks like, it is not a picture of a man kissing a very large disembodied dong. It is a picture of a man pretending to kiss a geoduck.

The geoduck, or Panope generosa, is not a duck. And it is NOT pronounced "jee-oh-duk," i.e., the way it looks like it ought to be pronounced. The word is "goo-ee-duk," and it refers to an enormous saltwater clam. According to my research, the word "geoduck" comes from a pidgin language known as Chinook, developed by the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest as a trading language with white settlers. The word means, "dig deep." Also, the geoduck is not only native to this area, but is found ONLY in this area, on the coasts of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. They can live to be over a hundred years old, with the oldest known geoduck to have been 168 years old. They often bury themselves about 60 cm deep in sand. I don't know exactly how deep 60 cm is, but it sounds pretty impressive.

There are two very important facts I would like you to know about the geoduck.

One: the geoduck is the official mascot of The Evergreen State College, which I attend. Indeed, there is even a geoduck fight song, which I will reprint for you here:

Go, Geoducks go,
Through the mud and the sand,
let's go.
Siphon high, squirt it out,
swivel all about,
let it all hang out.

Go, Geoducks go,
Stretch your necks when the tide
is low
Siphon high, squirt it out,
swivel all about,
let it all hang out.

(words and music by Malcolm Stilson, 1971)

It should be noted that most of the geoduck's body hangs out of it's shell. Hence, The Evergreen State College's motto: "omnia extares," or, "let it all hang out."

The second important fact you ought to know about the geoduck...

IT LOOKS LIKE A BIG OLD DONG IN A SHELL...

Heh!

I love my school.

I also love geoducks. In fact, inasfar as one "is" one's mascot (i.e., I was, for awhile, allegedly a "Johnson City Wildcat,") I AM a geoduck.

I also love the man in this picture. For the sake of this journal, we shall call him Jake. Jake is a very heterosexual man who happens to be pretending to kiss a large phallus-like animal. Why? Because Jake knows I like geoducks. Because Jake recognizes that, in a sort of stupid sense, I AM a geoduck. Because Jake loves me. Jake loves me so much, he'd kiss a big, slimy, muddy dong. For me. Well, he'd pretend anyway. Reportedly, he didn't ACTUALLY kiss it.

On our bedroom door, Jake and I have three pictures. One is of Jake, wearing air force stuff and standing in front of the American flag. One is of me in the Santa Fe desert, staring blankly into the camera, holding a big old rock, and looking like a total hippie. The third is a postcard of a boy sitting on the back of, and attempting to beat the hell out of a geoduck with a large bat. The caption is: "geoduck hunting," or something. Jake and I supposed those pictures suited our relationship well. But I am here to show you a softer side of Jake... Not the side that mock-beats geoducks, but the side that loves them, and mock-kisses them.

[Psst... Jake, I KNOW you're gonna flip out on me for putting this online, but you're SO damned cute, and you know I think geoducks kick ass, and I DID tell everybody that it wasn't a dong... and that you weren't REALLY kissing it, anyway... *smile* Love ya, baby... Your Geoduck, ~Helena*]

Oh, and one more thing about the geoduck... I KNOW they're supposedly a delicacy and everything, and people do actually eat them, but... I'll warn you now, they taste like CRAP... Just FYI.