Humor by John Christmann
Reality Shopping
I was overjoyed to learn last week that a 40 ton whale jumped out of the water near Cape Town, South Aftrica and landed on a small sail boat. It offers real hope for the unusual.
But my enthusiasm quickly waned after it was suggested that the image of a hurtling whale over a small boat might have been Photoshopped.
It means that Photoshop is now a verb. It also means that my whole notion of reality is called into question. Particularly when it involves large fish.
You see, I grew up believing in the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster. This enormous sea creature had been spotted from time to time emerging from a long inland lake in the Scottish highlands, often by tourists who frequented the surrounding pubs. For years a slightly blurred, black and white photograph taken by a credible surgeon offered irrefutable proof of the monster’s existence.
With every reported Nessie sighting I pictured the photo in my head. My imagination soared and my faith in the unreal burned incandescent.
Years later it was revealed that the famous shot was crudely staged. The real photographer admitted to fabricating a dinosaur atop a toy submarine and dragging it through the water, thereby capturing a misleading, if perfectly authentic, Kodak moment.
In a flash, there was no Loch Ness Monster. There was no legend. There were no tourists drinking in Scottish pubs. Heck, I couldn’t even be sure if there was a place called Scotland. For all I knew, country maps of the place had been Photoshopped, Xeroxed, and BPed to the news media in a well-coordinated political oil leak.
A number of years ago, when my son was little, he plopped in front of the TV as my wife and I were watching the evening news. Believing as I do that television news is not wholesome for young children, I quickly tuned to the Discovery Channel which, as it turned out, was airing an award-winning BBC special exploring the phenomena of raining fish.
My son intently watched a professionally staged video of wiggly, wet Mackerel plummeting from the sky into the beer mugs of astonished tourists in Scotland. It turns out that raining fish is a phenomenon that has been recorded throughout the ages, and thanks in part to the BBC, is now fully documented on YouTube, along with an amazing video of Jonah taken from inside a whale just before he was miraculously regurgitated onto a small sailboat.
Since it was winter, my young son was concerned that he might be crushed to death by a frozen Beluga if he ventured too far outside. I was secretly hoping that I might be shoveling caviar, but I allayed his fears by rationally explaining that it can only rain fish in the summer time.
What about cats and dogs he wanted to know. I told him that was nonsense. And as proof, I took his picture out in the driveway during a winter storm. No cats. No dogs. No fish sticks.
A picture these days is worth a thousand words . . . of explanation. We can no longer trust what we see. I am not even sure we can trust what we remember. Particularly since Adobe just released Version 1.0 of Memoryshop.
So I might as well delete that old winter photograph. I can’t prove it is authentic. Sure my son is a teenager now, but how do I know he was a real boy back then? For all I know, he could have been Pinocchio. For all I know he could have been Photoshopped from inside Monstro the whale to a snow-covered driveway in New Jersey.
I can hear myself as an old-timer reminiscing with my son, “Do you remember that thunderstorm when I was struck in the head by a jellyfish?” or “What about that time in Scotland . . .”
“Dad,” he will interrupt showing real worry lines across his face, “there is no such place as Scotland.” And I will suspect it is the truth because his nose isn’t growing.
But what about the pictures?
So you can imagine how pleased I was to learn 24 hours later that the boat-seeking whale off the coast of South Africa was indeed authentic.
Of course it would be more believeable if Glenn Beck released an accompanying video clip of Moby Dick checking into a Cape Town hospital with sore ribs, but for now I will happily accept that the photograph of an airborne sea monster rising up over a tiny speck of boat in a vast body of water is real. And refreshingly unusual.
But in the future, I sure hope we get reality right. Because it’s over ninety degrees outside and I could really use a good whale storm right about now.
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