When you think cute, playful, and snuggly in animals, the logical choice of pet is … trout?  That’s what PETA thinks, anyway, in its new campaign to propagandize children into avoiding meat.  They now want to call fish “sea kittens”, because then no one would ever think of eating a kitten — right?  It’s almost good enough to be an Onion parody:

People don’t seem to like fish. They’re slithery and slimy, and they have eyes on either side of their pointy little heads—which is weird, to say the least. Plus, the small ones nibble at your feet when you’re swimming, and the big ones—well, the big ones will bite your face off if Jaws is anything to go by.

Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You’ve done enough damage, buddy. We’ve got it from here. And we’re going to start by retiring the old name for good. When your name can also be used as a verb that means driving a hook through your head, it’s time for a serious image makeover. And who could possibly want to put a hook through a sea kitten?

I actually like fish.  Broiled, fried, even grilled on a cedar plank, they make for tasty eating.  Changing the name to “sea kittens” won’t make them any less tasty, or for that matter, any less slithery and slimy, either.  It might give people a few ideas about land kittens that PETA may not like, however.

Britney Spears doesn’t get the worst of it, however:

A University of Edinburgh study found that sea kittens can retain information that they learned up to 11 months earlier, which makes them cuter and smarter than the president of the United States!

But not smarter than PETA activists who come up with silly euphemisms like “sea kittens”.  And which POTUS do they mean?  If this is still up on January 21st, I’m prepared to officially call PETA a racist organization, following the 2008 presidential campaign rules!  (via Doug Ross)