Lighting Technician
Catherine
Shields is the only crew member to have lived an entire year
underwater (though Julian will remind
you about his six
months "in the deep" every chance he gets), where she
studied cold seeps along the Oregon slope. She'd won
this
prestigious scholarly fellowship by winning a hot dog eating contest at
Harvard.
Upon her return to the surface, Catherine published her scientific findings in a series of 500 poems, which were compiled into five 100-poem volumes: "Pink Coral: Promethius Owes Me A Crowbar," "Submarine Oil In My Spanish Dreams," "More People Drown In The Desert: Data With High Biomass," "Skippy Chippy Gooby Wooby" and "Trannys Are Unaffected By The Bends: The Chip Martinwingle Saga."
While on a lecture tour, Catherine formed an alliance of hostile graduate students whose mission is to attain limited duck/goose hunting licenses and then don't hunt, thus "wasting" a perfectly good license. The society, Ducks Are Friendly Fowl You Dumb Ugly Cracker Kentuckian (DAFFYDUCK), was recently recognized by the WWF (yes, that one), the ALA and some guy who knows Oprah. They estimate they have saved 27 geese since 2002.
Everything changed for Catherine after her father, Marty Shields, was institutionalized when a long-latent genetic anomaly brought about a form of dementia so severe that he thought he was a successful TV show host. Catherine, the saint that she is, returned to the Marty's Corner compound to take control of her father's affairs. In her first month, she had all his writers castrated, set up a 401(k), razed the "Reeducation Center" and turned it into a organic rabbit garden (in which to feed the bunnychickens). By the time the doctors got Marty's medications equalized, Marty's Corner Worldwide Entertainment was in the black.
Because Catherine is still Marty's legal guardian, she keeps a close watch on her father's affairs. He is not allowed to go on television without her presiding over the control room with a broken bottle and her trusty whip.
Catherine is a Sagittarius. "Submarine Oil In My Spanish Dreams" spent three months atop the poetry best seller list (83 copies sold!) and got her a chair at the Banning satellite campus of Mt San Antonio College. She hasn't had a pickle since 1998. She has a Wii and a mummy. For fifteen dollars she will send her father to your house and, while wearing an undersized Wicked Weasel mesh thong, he will convert all your light bulbs to CFLs. She hates ottomans and Ottomans.
