Bullshit Detectors...how good are yours?

Moronic morning radio-show hosts! As if incessant snorts and guffaws to make like they’re funny isn’t bad enough, they also spew optimistic misinformation to the public under the guise of news! Explanation:

Friday morning I was getting a lift to work with my new friend Ahcene, listening to some news about an ex-two-year-old girl whose throat got stuck in the rear-door power-window of a car while her mom was running unspecified “errands” for half an hour, when back to back with the macabre tale of the dead toddler, the host announced a cheerful tidbit of info in the form of this question, “how large are the biggest suction-cups on the tentacles of the giant squid that was discovered off the shores of Antarctica yesterday?
Are they…
A.) the size of an adult male’s hand?
B.) the size of dinner plates?
or C.) the size of tractor tires?”

In my heart-of-hearts I wished for them to respond with C.) they are the impressive circumference of tractor tires, because, as with most sane males my age, I long for there to be monsters on this planet that could massacre hundreds of people in a single ravenous attack. When the host broadcasted the final answer, I came so hard it almost triggered the airbag.

Imagine my delight when they announced that the colossal-squid’s suction cups (or “flat-pads”) were John Deere tire-sized; I felt the glee of a seven-year-old on Christmas morning; the joy of finding a thousand chocolaty Easter surprises; the wide-eyed fascination of watching the likes of claymation marvels such as Sinbad or King-Kong come to life, but for real, in our actual oceans! Vivid images of the Kraken effortlessly snapping yuppie’s yachts in half, or slapping aside ridiculously invasive sea-doos with the leisurely flick a single tentacle thrilled me to no end! For a fleeting moment, I was young, and full of hope and happiness.

The wondrous spell lasted about as long as programming between commercial breaks on cable. My bullshit detectors tingled in at an alarming pitch. There on my lap was the morning paper, and in it was sure to be reference to what would be considered the most important discovery in the natural world since 4:40am MST on Monday, February 19th 2007 when my unbelievably gorgeous niece Kira Isabelle was born.

To my obvious dismay, the story in the paper ran as follows, “…the body (called the foot) of the colossal squid is so large, that if it were cut into classic-style calamari rings they would be the size of tractor-tires…”

Huge, certainly. But hardly monstrous enough upon which to base the childlike hopes for immeasurable deaths and massive natural destruction. Once again the media has succeeded in destroying the hopes of a would-be dreamer. Incidentally, in the end, the photo of the squid revealed the suction-cups were just the size of an adult man’s fist, clenched and aimed at a moronic radio-host's larynx in the morning.