Oh ugh! I do NOT want to think about this science lab problem seeping into the Aqua Dorms and our canals. After my cleaner waterways initiative (NOT the AquaDarlings', as erroneously reported in Orca Teen Magazine) we created a campaign to disconnect waterspouts from the storm drains, thus reducing stormwater overflow into our system.

I haven't sensed anything in my gills, but I'll check in with the freshman mudskippers all the same.

Thanks @Klarya!

I am so totally cancelling my subscription to Orca Teen Magazine.

I just knew those sea-nymphs were up to something.

The AquaDarlings - Stephanie and Ashleigh - started to hold dances in the common area of the Aqua Dorm. Of course EVERYBODY wanted to go (gag!) so after a few I started spying. Ok maybe it was sour grapes but what I found out made it SO worth it.

I'm peering through the fake seaweed and dead band members and see that everybody there is doing this big chant, and Stephanie and Ashleigh are leading them. I thought, well, spirit-team rah rah rah, whatever. But they KEEP doing it and all the students are looking really drugged out and whatever language they're chanting in doesn't make any sense to me. And then Ashleigh brings out this giant weird spider-crab puppet and starts marching around and everybody follows them right out the door and down the canals. So I swim after them (from a safe distance) all the way down to the lagoon - where they all go under!

At that point I'm freaking out so swim back to get @Jenny Haniver but by the time I find her, everybody's back in the common area, dancing around like normal mer-person party, being COMPLETELY NORMAL!

WTF? Those AquaTwits are really driving me crazy.

We sea-nymphs are supposed to stick together, right?

So why do I get the feeling the AquaDarlings - Stephanie and Ashleigh - get off on taking all my work and my promotion and making it their own?

If you've been to the Aquadorm lately you've seen all their "great" work decorating the common area. They took ALL the garbage and made it into a Jazz-age era shipwreck ballroom, so there's wispy walls of plastic bags knotted into phony seaweed decorations and a bloated drowned swing band orchestra made out of old hangers and garbage sacks. Somehow they even found real trumpets and saxophones in the trash. Sheesh.

And THEN what do I do but open the newest issue of Orca Teen Magazine and see a whole spread on them, and how they motivated "the whole student body at their school to take a stand for the environment"??!!! PUH-LEEZE.

They didn't swish their tails once to get all that trash collected, but they want to take all the glory?

I hope those girls know that this means war.

Orca ninjas go Rambo! Killer Whale, Killer Whale, Killer Whale, Killer Whales!

Ok I talked to @Jenny Haniver and maybe I was getting a little too energized about all of this. I mean, the death of the seas and the planet - no big! ;)

But seriously, going too hard too soon probably isn't in anybody's interest. I blame my self-radicalization on doing too many quizzes from Orca Teen magazine. For a crafty girls magazine they seem to have quite an editorial stance.

So for now it looks like we're going back to the arts and crafts plan. Jenny has some ideas about making cool parkas or something out of all that junk. @Blach, thanks for doing your part in the clean up and that's really sweet but you can just leave the garbage you've collected in the lobby of the Aqua Dorm and my underwater squad will grab it.

In the mean time, there does seem to be a little less crap floating around in our waterways. Keep it up, fellow Killer Whales!!

I'd like to say I'm really happy for everybody's support of my cleaner waterways initiative.

Except I can't! Jeez guys, can't you get a little spine in those mammalian backs of yours? "Oh, I really support your cause, but maybe you could put our garbage somewhere, oh, out of the way, so it's not really a bother?" GRRRRRRR!

@Nobody, as a "healer," thinks your own garbage dumped in the cafeteria wouldn't be sanitary? Me and my subaqueous kin are literally SWIMMING in it every day. BREATHING it! I can't even count the number of times I've had to pull gum wrappers out of my gills.

And the dork lord @Blach wants to keep it out of the cafeteria too, and thinks the garbage you people are dumping BY THE POUND each day into my undersea atmosphere might be too "nasty" and "icky" for the Great Old Ones? Listen here, my furtive, tenebrous, classmate: my people have been avoiding the cesspool of Dagon's Temple for centuries -- because it's a putrid crap pit! If anything, it seems you're all TRYING to turn the submarine world of my sisters and I into a poisoned land of indescribable squalor and stench - and likely spiraling, cyclopean edifices to boot! Ok, actually I like the spiraling, cyclopean edifices. BUT I WANT THEM CLEAN!!!

At least @Matching by Mattie doesn't offer condescending advice about the "best way" to make our point. @Jenny Haniver is about two steps away from declaring a full-fledged mutiny on you land people -- or "Dry Ones" as she calls you. You've seen her teeth -- you don't want to see her with a knife.

Maybe I can recruit another student to dump these sacks in your cafeteria. I'm thinking @belle_tori might have the gumpshun. Or, of course, @Emily Marie, because she kind of owes @Jenny Haniver. But obviously it's not going to be a way to make any friends around here.

Look, it's your garbage in the first place. As long as it keeps sticking in my hair and getting sucked up my nose, I think it needs to get returned to you in the most impactful way possible.

Don't let @Jenny Haniver scare you, @Emily Marie. She's just playing around. Playful! Like a dolphin! Or a seal. Or a school of piranha! She is from a more carnivorous clan, it's true. But she can't jump very far at all.

But what are we going to do about all this garbage? I'm serious! I've been scooping it up with an old colander I found at the Sea Shell Shoppe and filling bags and bags with it. Bottle caps, notes from somebody's psychogeometry class, smashed phones.

I want to dump it all in the cafeteria! That would be a cool protest, right? I just need somebody who can move around on land to help me out. I tried to talk Octagona into it, because she can actually skitter pretty fast across stuff, but she was afraid she'd get busted and sent back to her evil mom's undersea kingdom.

Anybody want to stand up (ha ha get it?) for cleaner waterways, come find me in the Aqua Dorm!

I was reading through Orca Teen magazine, looking for ideas about decorating my room, and there was a whole article about using sea garbage and all the cool stuff you could make out of it, like hammocks and swaying trees and shimmery nets. I mean, you've got to be careful that it's safe and you don't get tangled up in it, but it was pretty cool.

I'm going to start collecting all the garbage and try some of the projects from that article.

And anybody can come down and visit me any time! The Aqua Dorms are totally land-lubber friendly. My old boyfriend @Karpie DM used to come by a lot but then we drifted apart. Ha ha get it? Drift? Yeah, hmmm.

I wish they'd clean the canals a bit more. I mean, it's great that the scales & tails students to have a way to get from the Aqua Dorm to the school buildings and down to the lagoon - most schools don't offer that. But have you seen the way the garbage builds up in those narrow concrete ditches? Laffy taffy wrappers, paper cups, old shoes, clinging to the sides or swirling right in the middle of it all...

Students should litter less, but if I could get my own skimmer net I'd be happy to start cleaning them out myself. It'd kind of disgusting.