An arena of geologists, examining the rocks before they throw them. How are whales in tanks indecent, anyway?

What gives? On the very day its founder, Donald Wildmon resigned because of all the ailments God has smitten him with, The Palmetto Scoop, which lines up perfectly with the American Family Association's "no 'mos" stance, is dissing the Tupelo, MS-based corporate boycotter after one of their hacks called for the stoning of the killer whale that ate a Sea World employee, and its trainer as well.


He calls it being, potentially, on "the receiving end of a petrological execution."


Waldo, typing furiously in his bath, sighed. "Is Mande Wilkes moonlighting?" he asked of FITS News' imaginary friend whose word salads leave dictionaries frazzled and readers baffled.


"Petrology," Waldo's old friend and arbiter the OED reminds us, is "the study of origin, structure, etc. of rocks, so petrologic [AL], adjs -IST (3) n. [f. PETRO + OLOGY]."


That's the Concise OED, mind. We thought about dragging the Big OED down to really grind the point home, but the real point, which seems to elude Scoopy, is why enormous marine animals should be kept in tanks to perform simple tricks to simpletons who pay money to see it.


Somewhere, Shirley Jackson is laughing.