Humpback mounting

Tastes like chicken: Alas! As this issue goes to press, the case of the wayward whales has yet to be resolved. There were signs that Delta and Dawn were headed in the right direction, but who knows? By the time you’re reading this, the lovable-yet-senile cetaceans already may have succumbed to their injuries.

Should they expire, let us not cry for the bygone behemoths. Rather, let us adopt the entrepreneurial attitude of Japanese-born sushi chef Aho Busaiku, whose name appears in no phone directory, sushi-chef roster or birth-records office anywhere on Earth. Busaiku hopes to transform tragedy into a culinary craze that’s sure to drive the politically correct mad with righteous indignation.

Kujira nigiri, anyone?

That’s Japanese for “whale on rice” and also happens to be the name of Busaiku’s proposed Midtown sushi restaurant, whose business license appears in no city, county, state, national, international or intergalactic hall of records. Inspired by the infamous “lost episode” of the Food Network’s Iron Chef, Busaiku is confident Sacramentans will take to the raw, blood-red steaklets he intends to slice out of the whales before their warm-blooded carcasses cool.

Only one hurdle stands in his way: the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, which forbids the trade of whale meat in all countries except Japan, Norway and Iceland. Busaiku, whose name, roughly translated, means “ugly dumb-ass,” believes the whales’ natural deaths will allow him to circumvent the decades-old law.

“I know, it sounds bad,” Busaiku told Bites. “But dipped in a little soy and ginger, believe me, it’s delicious!”

Melting pot: On the other fictitious fin, Richard Pombo, who formerly represented San Joaquin, Alameda, Contra Costa and Santa Clara counties in the House of Representatives and now heads up the Partnership for America, a quasi-fascist nonprofit organization that preaches the love of God, guns and barnyard animals, has proposed another use for the maimed marine mammals.

“I say we load ’em up on a couple of flatbed trailers and parade them through the capital,” he said between noshes on a bagel topped with cream cheese and smoked Delta smelt. “Then we hack ’em to pieces with whipsaws and axes and boil their blubber down for the oil.”

Only in this way, Northern California’s most-embarrassing-politician-ever insisted, can the United States end its dependence on “them damn furriner ragheads.” That, he added, and “opening up the California coastline and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to full-scale oil exploration and drilling.”

Frankly, Bites doesn’t know which is more bewildering: the mystery of the misguided whales or what to do about the skyrocketing cost of gasoline. If Pombo’s plan was actually real and not made up by Bites, no doubt it would enjoy support from at least some long-distance commuters.

Back to the Führer: Meanwhile, our fearless celebrity-in-chief, relishing his latest role as reborn environmentalist, offered up his own solution for rising gas prices, causing the rabid canines at oilwatchdog.org to take a great big bite out of the Guvernator’s pimpled ass.

Actually, it was California Environmental Protection Agency secretary Linda Adams who got her butt munched. Adams wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times disputing Oil Watchdog’s claim that high gasoline prices are being caused by oil companies purposely restricting refining capacity.

Despite the fact that prices at the pump have been rising nearly five times as fast as crude oil—confirming suspicions that Big Oil is gouging the fuck out of Joe and Jane consumer—Adams insisted that the spikes mostly are determined by the cost of oil. She then averred that the low-carbon fuel standards signed into law by Schwarzy last year will offer “protection from continuously escalating prices by expanding fuel alternatives.” That’s when the real ass-chewing began.

Under the governor’s proposed solution, Oil Watchdog noted, “it doesn’t matter what people pay, or how badly the state economy is dinged, for at least the next 10 years.” Why, the nonprofit asked, is “Adams writing a letter that should have come from someone who at least knows the oil and refining industries?”

Ouch!