OTTER'S PONDerings by Oren the Otter, November, 1998 ©1998 by Eric "Otter" Vary -- all rights reserved

What a beautiful spot this is, here at the edge of my little pond. I can sit here and do some "serious" thinking. As I think, an idea pops into my head. "Take over Switzerland," it says. "Get all the chocolate!" Realizing that this idea just plagiarized a popular super hero cartoon, I dismiss it and move on.

I think about TF's. I think about tender fish and tasty fillets and being totally famished. The letters also remind me that I have a column to write about initials in transformations.

What does it all mean? Well, that depends. If you're a fig farmer, this all stands for "Try Figs, They're Great At Receptions." However, due to the noticeable shortage of fig farmers in America, we are forced to look elsewhere for an explanation. Since this magazine is about transformation, I guess we start there. (Isn't it clever how I squeeze in the theme of the magazine?)

But...

I wonder for a minute about the proper usage of "TF." Is it supposed to mean "TransFormation" or "Trans-Furryism"? Does anyone really know? Of course, I could ask around, but then, I'm a science fiction writer. Why should I find out what the reality is when I can just make something up?

So...

Tf = Transformation, as in anything goes.

TF = Trans-Furryism, as in a change in species.

TG and AR are pretty straightforward. They stand for "Trout Gravy" and "Angelfish Rotelli." No... sorry. I guess I'm still hungry. That's "Trans-Gender," as in man-to-woman or woman-to-man; and "Age Regression," as in "I was so much older then, I'm younger then than now." (Apologies to whoever sang that first.)

Then of course, there's also AP for Age Progression, which is something that's getting older real fast. You can of course combine AR and AP into "Age Alteration," or AA for short, but if you did, someone might think you were talking about the transformation of alcoholics into non-alcoholics, sort of like near-beer.

SR is a whole other category. It stands for "Size Reduction," but can also be used to mean "Sexual Reference." To avoid confusion in the future, I propose that sexual reference stories, instead of being labeled "SR," be prefixed with Don't read this! It's dirty! It's unclean! I am so ashamed that I'm going to pluck myself bald and join a monastery! There! Don't you think that this would clear up any and all confusion?

SA, of course, stands for "Swordfish Almondine"... er, I mean "Size Augmentation," which is any story where a person gets really big, like in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid, (Please don't sue me, Michael) a classic tale of a titanic toddler which disappointed many movie-goers who expected to see a boy explode. (Which he didn't, you sick puppy!)

IA is one of my favorites. It stands for "InAnimate," which, I know, is one word. This involves transforming the person into anything non-living, even if that thing can move or talk. My favorite kind is transforming a live fish into a breaded filet.

AL is an angel who coaches a heavenly sports team. Oh, wait... wrong story. AL stands for "ALchemical," which is a transformation of substance, such as skin to iron or flesh to paper. Naturally, AL is closely tied to IA.

SM normally stands for "SMall," like the kid's size drinks you buy at Burger Bell. In this case, however, it is used to mean "State of Matter", which would be the transformation of a person into a liquid, a gas, a plasmoid, a true solid, or an Einstein-Bose super atom which can only exist at a trillionth of a degree Kelvin. Betcha didn't know that! See how smart I are?

For now, that is all that I can think of, so I am going to go and catch my dinner.

What am I having you may wonder? Alphabet soup! I'd better get right on it, too. Those cans are the dickens to catch.

Be here in sixty days for more OTTER'S PONDerings, because they haven't found a way to get rid of me yet.