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Letters to Heaven: A Most Gnarly Situation

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    The letter is written in blunt pencil on a slip of Surfer's Inn stationary.

    Hey Pilgrim Dudes!

    We have a most gnarly situation here at Mussel Beach. Me and some of my friends were surfin' after a storm (really insane clouds!) when Brad and Thom found this really freaky statue floating around -- it was some kind of a fish-squid-ape-dragon-guy thingy, about ten feet tall and made of black rock. Anyway, Brad used his big jeep to haul it down to the beach, and set it up back at our shack. Most of the crew thought it looked real bitchin there.

    Anyway, I just thought it was an awesome piece of, you know, decoration, but some of the dudes and dudettes started rubbing it for luck on their way to the surf trials. And you know what's really outrageous? Those guys started beating everyone else out in the trials.

    Well, it wasn't long before, like, everyone was rubbing the statue for luck, which made things kind of even out, which I thought was cool. I mean, a dude should rely on his moves, not on help from some weirdo statue. Then someone got a real bummer of an idea -- cutting the heads off of live chickens and tossing the body at the statue's feet (or whatever it had).

    Well, pretty soon those dudes who were willing to pull such groady trick were taking all the prizes. And pretty much all of the dudes here at Mussel Beach are, kind of, you know, competitive. So, aside from me and a few righteous dudes who maintained that this behavior was mighty offensive in the eyes of the Great Kahuna, every serious dude or dudette was doing in chickens.

    Now, the situation is gnarly enough, but some of the most competitive dudes are looking at the beach bunnies and gremlins sort of sidewise and considering like, and I'm afraid someone's going to go a bit too far soon. And since no one is listening to me any more, I hope you most excellent guys could send someone to stop things before they go too far.

    Dave
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    Hmmm...! This brings up a common thing I've come across when thinking about the terminology and lingo for worldly folks. Like, take air whales as an example. To call it an air whale implies that the norm is regular, seafaring whales. That's certainly true on Earth, but would it be the case in the Do-verse that they'd consider the flying giants whales while making special qualification for "water whales?"

    To get around this, I'd probably cut down on the use of "air-this" and "cloud-that." Just using the surfer slang is enough to get across that this is a totally awesome dude. "Sky surfin'" is cool, but "air jeep" and "cloud waves" might be a bit much. :P

    Maybe they surf on the rockin' gusts and currents?

    Also you can suggest that the jeep flies by saying "Brad used his jeep to haul it down to the surface."
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    Are you actually advocating ... subtlety in these letters!?

    Actually, those are some good suggestions and I've applied them.
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    Totally radical edits, dude. ^_^
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    But gnarly means good or impressive... right? I think you mean bogus. :P
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    Well, according to at least this dictionary of surfer slang, it means
    Treacherous; large and dangerous. Also bitchin
    So it's one of those terms that can mean good or bad.

    Actually, some other sources, such as The Riptionary just describe it as bad:
    Depicting an unrideable or intimidating wave or something really bad.

    But I think the ambiguous definition is more common, such as the first, or Harms Archiefkast's Surfer Slang:
    Dangerous, rough, out of control, huge, good, bad or ugly.

    In any case, bogus would be too mild a castigation to describe the letter writer's righteous wrath at his fellow dude and dudettes' behavior.
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    MMm, no, I have to put my foot down, gnarly is basically a synonym for awesome. "Treacherous; large and dangerous." waves are awesome. Saying "gnarly man!" is good. Maybe its gnarly that someone hurt themselves on a wipe out, as long as it was an AWESOME injury and an AWESOME wave. Really it means "impressive" but with the connotation that it's "cool" as well... like talking about something horrible and smiling the whole time. Which doesn't have to be what you'd assume is good, but basically the speaker thinks it's fun. It's a good challenge. You can technically say it for bad, but I the authentic surfer would say bogus which means it's completely undesirable.
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    Slang tends to vary by region and generation -- I think you have encountered a subtly different form of gnarly than I did in my (oh so distant) youth. However, you are unlikely to be the only one uses it that way, so the current title could be confusing for any number of people. But bogus also means false or phony, which doesn't work here either. Would "A Most Bent Situation" or "A Most Unclool Situation" work better for you?

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