http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/270 ... m#2HCH0075

After a two month hiatus, I've decided to return to Moby Dick, after the mysterious bumping of the threads which indicated that comments I made in June were in August. I consider this writing as a blog, and am hence sublimely indifferent as to whether it is read or not. It is a form of research for me, as I consider writing a novel beginning with the line 'Call me Shimela'. Melville's xtremely eironic humour is really the way to write. So Moby Dick is my template for a novel set in the near future exploring the sea, looking at such arcane topics as global warming, algae biofuel, floating islands, various other ideas of new technology, and discussion of a paradigm shift to a new religion based entirely on science.

The right whale is a monstrously ugly beast, covered with blistering barnacles, as Captain Haddock might have said. Melville said its head bears a rather inelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe, or a shoemaker's last in which an old woman might very comfortably be lodged, she and all her progeny. Like the trunk of some huge oak, with a bird's nest in its crotch, nestling live crabs, this sulky diademed king of the sea has a hare lip a foot across, with a sulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.