a radio play by Sam Cooper and Bethany Markewich or Bethany Sam and Markewich Cooper or Sam Markewich and Bethany Cooper or Sam Bethany and Cooper Markewich

To the layperson in the park, squirrels -- those feisty rodents of Icelandic Mythology -- are indistinguishable from one another and themselves. But to the experienced eye, ear, nose and throat, these furry little creatures of yesteryear can each be picked out among a crowd of others of the same DNA strand. For some trained specialists this is a matter of politics; for others it is simply a matter of an incorigable curiosity for the depths of the sea. Tonight we bring you an historical montage of matters when the depths of the depths of the sea are exposed in "TWO JAQUES".

announcer: Monsieur Cousteau, is this in fact an ordinary under sea mission upon which you are about to embark?

Cousteu: [french accent] You see, this is no the ordinary mission under the sea . Normally we--the crew and myself--we would simply put the, how do you call, wet suits, and submerge rather the swiftly ourselves into the depths of the sea. This, however, is quite a, how do you say, a mission avec le difference, and we really had not the knowing quite which to doing short of the world upsidedown to turn--which, as you will see, is what we have actually deciding to do.

Derrida: [french accent] It has been well established by those in the know that Truth, that the onto-theological unitary selfhood of the Squirrel is the logical outcome of Edmund Husserl's so-called "backwards premonition", wherein a matter of historical record is predicted with deftness of accuracy immediately after its occurance.

Announcer, cousteau:[trying to sound knowledgeable]why yes, of course, obviously etc.

Derrida: aha! Such was the case, for instance with Hegel, who, it has been noted, actually witnessed the deaths of both Art and of logic, (each of which is perported to have fired the fatal shot toward the other while engaged in a sword duel.) The squirrel is, then, of course, the logical outcome of this dualism. What those in the know do not say, however, is that they know no better than the lay-theologist or philosopher whence the squirrel originated or, therefore, ultimately even that it had an origin.

Announcer: absolutely shocking!

Derrida:The difference between the squirrel of yesteryear and the squirrel of the contemporary park is then obscured to the point of oblivion: one squirrel becomes forever a parody of the other and of itself in return and of the other in a flickering strobe through that circle called infinity. In short, Cousteu is crazy to think he can explore the origins of the squirel, and, indeed, as we will see, the text is riddled with notions of craziness, each word on the page shaking in the straight jacket of its own signification.

Cousteu: Merde! idiot! you do not understand ze significance of this mission! What we have concocted here is the special apparatus called "invert submarine". It is a basic scientific principle that on any sphere half the surface is upsidedown in relation to the other half, which is also upsideown in relation to the other other half. This quality of life on the spheres has not as of yet been seen in all its technological efficiency. In the case of this magnificent apparatus, the categorization of one's placement on the sphere may at any the moment be to infinity deferred! Are we, for ze instance, submarine when in ze tree? Well, in relation to the marine surface across the diameter of the globe, yes; in relation to our own marine surface, no. Yet, again in relation to the marine surface accross the world, to be above the sea level here is to be the further below sea level there than one would being were one below the sea level here. So, we simply put on how do you say, leisure suits and submerge our submarine upwards into the trees, wherein we will studying the origins of the squirrel! Do you not understand ze genius of zees plan???

announcer: [tactfully] well, ahhh...

Derrida: Within the confines of his own text, exploding as these are, spilling over their sylables and puntuation marks, Cousteau is forced indeed to acknowledge the deference of such a concept as "undersea fishing", of the very notion of "submarine". At what juncture in time and space can Cousteu be said to be speaking even of submarine as a signifying notion? Are we to trust that now when he utters submarine he is refering to being underwater and that now, over here, as distinct from over there, he is refering this time to being above water?

Announcer: well it seems to me that he was--

Derrida: Silence! it was a rhetorical question! [clears throat, continues.]Nevertheless, our undersea explorer insists on the discovery of origins: the origin of the squirrels, for instance. What we find, in fact, is that the notion of origin, of epistemo-submarination, of onto-oceanography is embedded in the cracks of Cousteau's words. His language itself generates its own submarine text, yet the submarine, shall we say, has leaks, and it is these very leaks that we must dive into, hurling our analysis through the crevises, thin slits of water flowing until the walls break down from the pressure that has built up behind these flowing wafers. Cousteau himself is riveted by the notion that his words are those of the colonizer, searching out origins in the fetid, miserable parks and trees of yesteryear, as if these trees and parks were that vital kernal of being that Seurat already some hundred years before had shown to be the dwindling remains of that day of leisure so missleadingly called "Sunday". Yet again, Cousteu must be credited for pointing out to the more naive diver that after "Moby Dick" it is no longer possible to search out the glorious past of diving on the high seas, and that diving in trees in search of the tattered remains of history in the origin of the squirrel might be all that is left.

Cousteu: I admitting that zees le paper of Derrida's is of the great importance, for it points out the plight of le diver in its grave detail. The movie "Orka" is afterall nothing if not the truth ripped out from underneath the diver, the great aftermath of despair brought on by "Moby Dick" and later by "Doctor Faustus". Squirrels are all we have left in the sea of infinite signification: where we can't to be telling with the divine right to definitive truth that a whale is indeed just that, the world has been turned twice topsy-turvey, unitl the up is down and the down is up and vice versa, and we know no better that a squirrel is not afterall such the whale and a whale a squirrel. As a scientist, I only disagree with the philosopher Derrida in that I think it possible that by as you say searching to be doing for the origin of the squirrel we might actually, through that origin's own differing by defering, discover the origins of the whale and return oceanography to its proper, though contingent, situatedness in the shattered remains of the historical narative!

jacques futrelle: [storming in] gentlemen, this is where you are wrong!!! In my next novel, " the thinking machine", the thinking machine himself will derive the origins of the squirrel simply by sitting in a chair and thinking about it!!

Announcer: ladies and gentlemen of the audience we have just been joined here on "jacques on jacques" by famed mystery writer jacques futrelle. unfortunately we are out of time... Well, gentlemen it certainly has been fascinating having you on the show this evening. Tune in next week when the rent is due and Steve and Eddy can pay it noooo problem when we return to our regularly scheduled programming with the exciting season finaly of "Two Rich White Guys".