I was at an all night diner, thinking about the thin air

Once you get them started, people can't stop thinking about giant squids and whales. But then, once you start thinking about something so interesting, why should you stop? They're at least sixty feet long! No, they're at least one hundred feet long! One guy on a ship saw one that was as long as the ship itself (because its tentacles were at the bow and its tail end at the stern)! The ship was one hundred and twenty feet long! They fight sperm whales, locked in mortal combat twenty thousand leagues under the sea! The whales eat the squids! We know that because we've found their heads in the stomachs of sperm whales (who happen to be the largest toothed predators on the planet -- although some other whales are bigger, those whales are baleen, not toothed). The squids drown the whales! We know that because some guy saw a squid drowning a "baby" whale. Being mammals, the whales can drown, eventually, so the squid's just got to hang on until his suckers and tentacles force the whale to stay down longer than the whale can hold its breath. Now that's mortal kombat.

After contemplating these facts, enjoy the story of Steve O'Shea, a man driven (mad?) by the desire to grow giants squids in tanks in New Zealand.

(The very astute will probably have noticed that the above image is not, in fact, giant. That is because we don't have any images of living giant squids and the dope picture of a guy (Clyde Roper) with his formaldehyde-breathing (dead) squid wouldn't display properly. So anyways, what you see above is a paralarvae from the same family, Architeuthidae -- that's a technical term, as giant squids. I'm not sure if its really a giant squid paralarvae or not, but its close enough. You get the idea. Baby squid. Giant squid. Rwarh.)

(In fact, I like this shot of the paralarvae so much I'm thinking about making it the background of the page. What do you say? Squid? Or Roads? Place bets now.)