My Wife Has Surrendered to the Crabs and I Find That Embarrassing

(My husband responds to a question nobody asked him)

Guest Post By Kurt, the Husband My lovely wife Sarah, just four posts into this new blog, is already trying to pull some bullshit on you. She frames her recent post, “The Five Albums I’d Take to the ^footnote0 Desert Island Where I Guess I’d Die Alone?” as a thoughtful--even loving--discussion of music, but it’s obvious that the real topic is her contemplating, imagining in great detail, and ultimately bemoaning her inevitable consumption by coconut crabs. Which, fine, but at least have the courage to just call the post “Why I’m Sad that I Will Be Eaten By Crabs While Art Garfunkel Moans At Me About How He’s ‘Feelin’ Groovy’.” ^footnote1

[Sarah's artwork based on Kurt's request: Picture of Garfunkel being eaten by coconut crab, preferably the crab will have googly eyes to show how stupid they are]. Photo: Wikipedia + Canva assets

I’m discouraged by her fatalism, and I refuse to indulge in it.

Good rule for life here: when someone tells you that you have no choice but to be chummed, you go ahead and reject that premise.

There’s such a thing as the food chain, and humans--despite our many flaws and failings--are at the tippy top on account of our big brains, opposable thumbs, and capacity for sudden and shocking acts of violence. And I’ll be goddamned if I let a scuttley little rock creature reverse the entire goddamn food chain because I happen to be unexpectedly at the beach.

Sure, I might be stuck on an island in this scenario, and, sure, coconut crabs might think they’re so fucking special because they’re the largest living terrestrial invertebrate, but that just means they have no fucking spine. And we’re supposed to just give up? Please. Stand up for yourselves, fellow deserted sailors. Have some goddamn respect for yourselves.

[Sarah's artwork based on Kurt's request: one of those scale silhouette pictures showing how small coconut crabs are compared to a grown human.] Canva stock + assets

As a former Boy Scout and an occasional viewer of Batman: The Movie ^footnote2, I understand the importance of being prepared. And as Lao Tzu taught us: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” Or, in the pithier words of GI Joe: “knowing is half the battle.” And thanks to skimming Wikipedia, I know the coconut crab. ^footnote3

So here’s the hypothetical: Mr. Coconut Crab comes creeping up with a friend or two and is all like “you’re in the wrong neighborhood, bro” and his friends are like “eh heh heh heh” but keeping their distance cause they’re, like, his crabby little sidekicks. Well you look that goddamn crab right in his gross little eyestalks or whatever and say “NO” in a stern voice, low enough and loud enough for him to feel the vibration of your power in his knobby old carapace. If you have a smart crab on your hands, he’ll be like “OK OK, we were just playing bro” and then you can go about your day listening to music or spelling out “HELP” in seashells or whatever.

If you have a dumb crab, though, it’s time for plan B, which, as it often is, is ultraviolence. ^footnote4

When you’re prepared, you know that the coconut crab’s breathing organs “require water to properly function, and the coconut crab provides this by stroking its wet legs over the spongy tissues nearby.” Hm, interesting, you think. And you know that “[c]oconut crabs use their hindmost, smallest pair of legs to clean these breathing organs and to moisten them with water.” And so when Mr. Coconut Crab (Dumb Variety) steps up, you stomp the shit out of those hindmost, smallest (and therefore weakest) pair of legs. Stomp ‘em into crab salad. Stomp ‘em like you’re Mario, being an absolute menace to fish and octopuses and turtles and, presumably, tortoises. From that point, just keep your distance as Mr. Crab’s lungthings slowly fill with sand and dry up.

But look, I’m not an idiot. I know that some of the crabby sidekicks are also Dumb Variety, and they won’t necessarily learn the lesson. And, I suppose, there’s only so many crabs you can stomp before it gets repetitive.

Luckily, you also know that “coconut crabs cannot swim, and they drown if left in water for more than an hour.” And your resources might be minimal--5 albums, some sand, maybe a tree or bush or something--but one thing you have in abundance?

Water. Just shoo these little fuckers into the water and they’ll drown. This is not rocket science.

And as you stomp and drown coconut crabs by the dozen, you understand the importance of both survival and leveling up. So you turn their exoskeletons into armor to protect yourself, and fashion their claws into weapons to make it even easier to keep killing and killing and smashing and seeing blood and gore and guts and veins in your teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill. Kill. Kill! Kill! And you start jumpin' up and down yelling, "Kill! Kill!" ^footnote5 And that’s when you eat them, and because coconut crab meat is known to be an aphrodisiac shit’s about to get weird on your desert island journey.

[Sarah's artwork based on Kurt's request: picture of the Coconut Crab Restaurant Massacree.] Canva stock + assets including excellent googly eyes

Anyway, to answer the question:

(1) and (2): J Dilla’s Donuts and King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Nonagon Infinity because both are designed to repeat seamlessly when put on repeat.

(3) Tool’s Aenima because it absolutely rocks and it will keep me pumped for all the hours of stomping and drowning and such. Bonus: it will allow me to act smug to whoever eventually rescues me because they’re obviously less smart & sophisticated than me. They just don’t get it, man.

(4) A custom bootleg with Side B of Puscifer’s ‘C’ Is for (Please Insert Sophomoric Genitalia Reference Here) E.P. on one side and Side C of Portishead’s Third on the other side. “Machine Gun,” yo.

(5) The Grateful Dead’s SEVENTY-THREE (73) disc Europe ‘72: The Complete Recordings which contains just under 71 hours of music, including 19 versions of “Dark Star” (which on their own: basically infinite music if I find some kind of hallucinogenic on this desert island). This collection comes in a large leather chest, which I assume would be great for whacking crabs in their stupid crab faces. You could also use it as a little chair, I guess, just to shake things up.

fn0: “The” desert island? Like there’s only one? Or she already has a specific one in mind? I don’t know, man, I just work here. And actually, I don’t even work here.

fn1: Yes, I know “The 59th Street Bridge Song” is not on Bookends, but as a matter of principle I will not pass up an opportunity to make fun of that ridiculous song. Pedantry is the enemy of humor. Or the heart of it, depending.

fn2: In which Batman pulls shark spray out of his utility belt in a demonstration of his true super powers: obsessive planning, exceptional ability to catastrophize, and enough money to buy anything that he thinks about. He’s Super Prepper, and the Bat Cave is his survivalist bunker.

fn3: Not, I hasten to add, Biblically. Although, I don’t know how long I’m stuck on this island and anything can happen when you share a cell, cuz.

fn4: Like in A Clockwork Orange, but with less rape please. Or none, even.

fn5: I would say something like “with apologies to Mr. Guthrie,” but honestly he sounds like a fucking maniac and I’d rather not speak to him.