Gasteier - F u, penguin : telling cute animals what’s what

A Villard Books Trade Paperback Original

Copyright 2009 by Matthew Gasteier

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Villard Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

V ILLARD B OOKS and V ILLARD & V C IRCLED Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Portions of this work were originally published on the authors blog.

Image on of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Image on page xiv of The Random House Websters Unabridged Dictionary, 2nd Edition by Random House, Inc., copyright 2001, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1993, 1987 by Random House, Inc., used by permission of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-52765-3

www.villard.com

v3.1

y the time you read this, I may have already saved the world. Actually, the mere fact that you purchased this book absolves you of all your sins, and you can basically do whatever you want for the rest of the year. Might I suggest drinking more and throwing your trash away less?

Yes, you have become part of a great worldwide movement, a step toward stemming the tide of cute animals taking over our lives and our computers. Just in the past five years alone, cute animals have overtaken pornography as the number one thing clogging the Internet. (See ) Do you realize what this means? I cant even shop for a daily calendar or watch Animal Planet during halftime of the Super Bowl without having to look at puppies and bunnies and kittens, completely out in the open for the most unsuspecting children to stumble upon, tainting their innocence for the rest of their lives.

That is, after all, why I started Fuck You, Penguin: for the children. I wasnt always this strong (thank you for noticing, by the way). I used to spend hours looking at pictures of cute animals. I ruined relationships, I stole from my friends to buy plush toys, I even got arrested one night trying to light myself on fire in the driveway of movie star Bart the Bears Beverly Hills estate.

But my lowest point came a few months later. I was vacationing in the arctic, desperate to get closer to my favorite animal, the elusive emperor penguin. After spending months searching for the animal and getting frostbite on three separate fingers on four separate occasions, I discovered that they rarely come to the Arctic Circle. In reality, they spend most of their time in the more exclusive, penguin-only Antarctica.

You can imagine my disappointment. But in that moment, one of the darkest I have experienced in my life, I began to realize what effect this obsession was having on my life. I thought back to something an old friend had said: I can has cheez-burger? And I realized, that makes no fucking sense. If you are going to ask for a fucking cheeseburger, I thought to myself, the least you can do is spell it correctly, you stupid, stupid cat.

Suddenly, I knew what had to be done. These animals had gotten out of control. They were growing more confident with every passing day, as more people added them to their Facebook profiles and more grandmothers forwarded stories of the real-life Bambi and Thumper with notes attached like Smile! It makes your heart feel good! (Oh, Im sorry, Granny, are you a fucking doctor now?)

And above it all, there were the penguins. The penguins, with their Oscar, and their spin-off cartoon sellout movie. The penguins, with their freeware computer operating system and their overpriced stuffed animals that I was forced to purchase (and that I do NOT still cuddle with). The penguins, the penguins, THE PENGUINS.

I quickly caught the first polar bear back to civilization, where I started what would be my lifelong passion (sorry, ladies), my gift to society (again, very sorry), and the greatest blog ever created: Fuck You, Penguin. The world hasnt been the same since.

And penguins? They know. They pretend they dont care, but I know they do. Every once in a while, Ill get a hit from Antarctica, or a remote area of Chile. They are keeping an eye on me, checking to see if this movement takes flight. Because if theres one thing penguins fear, its flying. Lets make them afraid, people. Lets do it for our children and our childrens children. And one day, together, we can look at a kitten cuddling with a parakeet and say, Enough! And the kitten and parakeet will know exactly what they have done. And they will be ashamed. And all will be right with the world.

Figure A

To give you an idea of how important this book is, Ive put together a modest collection of literature that has had a similar impact on humanity. I wouldnt presume to say that my book is anywhere near as good as these all-time classics, just that it is as important.

The Bible
By: God

Just as F U, Penguin has become the bible for people who want to put cute animals in their place, the Bible was, in some ways, a bible for many people in its own right. I suppose, if you really think about it, God in general has arguably had a larger impact on human history than I have, but just comparing whats on the written page, its pretty much a draw.

Thats not to say that there arent some really great things about the Bible. In fact, I think the Bible is pretty similar to F U, Penguin, most notably in the second, more kid-friendly half, because Jesus never took any shit from penguins.

The Jungle
By: Upton Sinclair

This book is hugely influential in making high school students really bored, but before that it was a big hit with people who wanted to eat food that didnt have the proletariat in it. Sinclair also wanted to make people think about the horrible oppression by the robber barons, and thats where it gets interesting, because penguins are kind of the robber barons of the twenty-first century (except for the actual robber barons of the twenty-first century).

While I think The Jungle is pretty good, I think my book is a little bit more hard-hitting, without being so goddamned preachy. I actually originally wrote this book in the form of a novel, but then I realized that novelty picture books sell much better, and Im no fucking commie.