Captain’s Logos

So here’s a fun fact.

Did you know that if Alaska were to be cut in half, it would make Texas the third largest state?

Well I did. Because my girlfriend happens to be from Alaska, and apparently most Alaskans are very cognizant of the geographical implications inferred by dissecting their beloved frontier-land into more manageable chunks (what else do you do when it’s -50 degrees for 3 months straight? How many times could you slice it to have every parcel look exactly like a Mr. Planter’s peanut man, top hat and all? These are the issues!). So when this glorious schism takes place, Old Alaska would remain the largest, and the newer, more improved Alaska, which suddenly received state annexation despite its secession, would rank second. The end result of this imaginary process is that every time I talk to someone from her family they will invariably say to me, “So how are things in the third largest state?” (upturned noses and country club guffawing aside).

“Well, they are good,” I reply, and leave it at that. Because they are good, and even if they weren’t I wouldn’t admit it thereby lending even more credence to their hinting at our inferiority.

But what I’m thinking on the inside is, “You think you're special permafrost brain? Just because your stupid territory happens to be one of the largest land masses in the world outside of Siberia, which furthermore was all but barren and deserted except for various indigenous natives until along came William Seward, who against all conventional wisdom purchased this wasteland from Russia in 1867, and then America annexed it in 1959 so as to create a military buffer zone between US and then arch-enemy soviet Russia coupled with the fact that oil was discovered off the Kenai peninsula, you think you’re sooooo special. WELL YOU’RE NOT!”

Sometimes my mind harps on the historical.

Do I have a point here? Not really, except for the fact that we Texans don’t even like our State being called the second largest, much less the third. Truth is we were the absolute largest until these jonny-come-latelys sashayed into the mix. To me Texas is like Hank Aaron and Alaska is like Barry Bonds, and 500 years from now, when people are searching through the annuls of history looking to see what the largest state in the Union was, it will show Texas every year up until 1959, and then there will be Alaska, with a big asterisk next to it which would read:

*Although Alaska was technically the largest State in America there is growing evidence which suggests Alaska used performance enhancing techniques to obtain the record such as pretending icebergs were part of their land mass and coercing surveyors to lie about the acreage with false promises of igloo sex (which is sex in an igloo not with an igloo, which would almost certainly result in the comical Dumb & Dumber ‘frost’ dilemma, although not involving the tongue).

Or something like that.

So the next time someone says to me, “So how are things in the third biggest State?” (snicker snicker) I will say to them, “Well, they are good.”

But at least you know what I’ll be thinking.

One Night Stand Goes Wrong..... Funny things are always good.

Because I have my suspicions.

FACT: New Orleans was devastated last year by hurricane Katrina, uprooting thousands upon thousands of LOWER CLASS to lower middle class urban dwellers.

FACT: Superdome became symbol of New Orleans devastation

FACT: New Orleans Saints, also uprooted, had dismal season w/ poor qb, bad coaching and vagabond schedule. (Although when was the last time the Saints were good? Does anyone even know?)

FACT: Bush administration (read: media) was heavily criticized by people (read: media) for a slow and inadequate response to the hurricane

FACT: Promises were made that New Orleans would be restored to its former glory by many high-up people.

FACT: Sports in general and football in particular has great potential for forming ethos, especially among mass audiences (read: lower to lower middle class urban dwellers)

FACT: in 2006 NFL draft, Houston surprisingly took DE Mario Williams in the first round, leaving consensus # 1 pick Reggie Bush for...guess who?

FACT: All of a sudden, Saints have new high-powered offense, new qb, two new rb's, Reggie being one, and seemingly a lot of money to spread around.

FACT: Next Monday night, the Saints (2-0) will be playing the Falcons (2-0) in the newly refurbished Superdome, once a symbol of destruction and devastation, now the symbol of triumph, on ESPN's (read: ABC. read: Disney. read: MEDIA all caps) first year of hosting.

Haven't checked the odds on this one, but wouldn't be altogether surprised if the patron saint of New Orleans (read: whoever it is that really controls our country. read: once again, the media) bestows a benevolent blessing upon the indefatigable people down in creole country...And then buys the movie rights.

Now how is THAT for a conspiracy!

So to pick up where we left off yesterday…what is good?

I had an overwhelming response by my loyal readers to the question I posed, and I wanted to thank them all for that. Christopher, you are right, sitting on the couch watching football is good. Well done.

Amy, you continue to try and trip me up in every direction I go with your sophistically inclined semantics and it will get you nowhere.

However, kudos to everyone who got involved and was heard!

So, (be happy Amy) are we talking about things that are good, put so well and concisely by Christopher, or are we talking about the definition of good itself, and does it matter?

In an effort to stick with the platonic realities here, and not try to divulge into philosophy, where a lot of talking gets done and not a lot else, here’s some good reading for anyone so inclined:

The dog sensed them first. Dark as it was, Ian Murray felt rather than saw Rollo’s head lift suddenly near his thigh, ears pricking. He put a hand on the dog’s neck, and felt the hair there ridged with warning.So attuned as they were to each other, he did not even think consciously, “Men,” but put his other hand to his knife and lay still, breathing. Listening.The forest was quiet. It was hours ’til dawn and the air was still as that in a church, with a mist like incense rising slowly up from the ground. He had lain down to rest on the fallen trunk of a giant tulip tree, preferring the tickle of wood-lice to seeping damp. He kept his hand on the dog, waiting.Rollo was growling, a low, constant rumble that Ian could barely hear but felt easily, the vibration of it traveling up his arm, arousing all the nerves of his body. He hadn’t been asleep–he rarely slept at night anymore–but had been quiet, looking up into the vault of the sky, engrossed in his usual argument with God. Quietness had vanished with Rollo’s movement. He sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the half-rotted log, heart beating fast now.

And now:

If a deponent fails to answer a question propounded, or a party upon whom a request is made under § 4.70, or a party on whom interrogatories are served fails to adequately respond or objects to the request, or any part thereof, or fails to permit inspection as requested, the discovering party may move the administrative law judge for an order compelling a response or inspection in accordance with the request.

The first is from a book that I will not reference for the sake of plagiarism, the second is from a legal document. Which one is better? Which one is good? WHY???

Stay tuned!

I will now introduce a topic that I will be talking about for the next couple of posts. This will be an interactive type of thing, unfortunately nobody reads my posts (YET!!!).

But to start things off, and why not start things off this way, I want to ask a simple question.

What is good?

Seems pretty simple eh? Well, maybe so, but we will wait and find out if it is as simple as it sounds. And if the answer is what I think it is, it may be something very good indeed!

So chew on it awhile, ask your friends, ask your relatives, hell ask Ann Landers if you want to what do I care? Geez.

And we (read: I) will return to this little discussion next time.

I would like to dedicate this blog to the degenerates out there.

Those lackluster do-nothings who complain about the world yet make no attempt to make it better.

Those nincompoops who will never know true happiness, but find enough temporary joy to get through the day by ridiculing others, throwing mud in people's eyes, and all around being difficult.

The frail, the emotionally devoid, the copy editors.

Amy, this blog is for you.

Today there is a fire.

And by today, I mean this entire last week, and by fire, I mean thousands of acres are being burnt in Santa Clarita every day because all the grass is dead.

I have seen the smoke for the past week, I have heard (very little, but still have heard) about it on the news, but today I really stopped to consider it. Why? Well because they are shutting down the freeway because of it.

You mean to say, Nathan, that there has been a fire ravaging your fair countryside for the better part of September, and you haven't thought about it? And now the only reason you have let it even seep into your consciousness is because now it is causing traffic?

Well, yes. But we have fires all the time here.

And then I stopped to wonder. Where do I live??? And following very quickly from that. WHY??!!

Right now our culture is in pretty desperate need of some self-examination. Which is hard to do, because our culture is busy right now putting up halloween decorations, so I decided to go ahead and examine it for all of us.

And after minutes of intense scrutiny, I came to this conclusion about the culture at large. We are either the laziest culture in history, the stupidest culture in history, both, or the most brilliant culture in history.

Please allow me to explain.

If you go to Wendy's you will notice something. When you go to get your ketchup, you grab the little dixie pill cup, and you press down on the ketchup lever, and presto! the ketchup fills the little dixie pill cup to the brim. No more, no less. And I imagine the same exists in most fast food chains across our fair land.

aside: if the old addage is true that you are what you eat, then one need look no further than the fast food industry to see what a perilous predicament we are really in.

Now this is the height of civilization, you might be tempted to think. We, as a culture, have evolved to the point that we no longer need to trouble ourselves with the inconvenience of actually having to worry about overfilling our ketchup. It is all ready, right there for us, the only way we could screw this up is if we decide to: a. move pill cup out of ketchup path mid-ketchup descent, or b. apply second ketchup lever squeeze once pill cup is already filled to the brim with first lever squeeze causing ketchup to overflow. I'm sure these have both been done, but one cannot judge a culture by its lowest common denominator, so we must forge on.

"So what's the" - belch - "problem with that?" Culture at Large asked me as it was checking it's myspace account and scratching it's bald spot with a spork.

WELL THE PROBLEM IS you have to understand that for this event to occur, this seamless consummation between ketchup and pill cup, that sacrifices were made, jobs created, thousands, TENS of thousands of dollars were spent. Dixie Inc. had to form a committee called the 'ketchup pill cup committee' and they had to find out who was in charge of things over there at Ketchup Levers Manufacturers and propose this revolutionary idea. And then KLM had to make their committe, the 'Pill Cup Committe' (or PCC) and these committees had to meet on a bi-weekly basis, maybe even WEEKLY, to determine the optimal size for a pill cup of ketchup, and how large a lever would be needed to provide enough ketchup to fill said cup, and they had to bring in phycisists, astrophysicists, to create a prototype, and then beta testing, and then implementation. And then they had a party, catered by fast food conglomerates throughout the country, where this product was pitched by paid salesman, who earned commissions which were split fairly between contributing committees, and then this new product was installed in fast food restaurants across the country, and all this was done, all these hours of labor, months of planning, thousands and thousands of dollars were spent so that YOU, mr. consumer, didn't have to THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH MOTHERF*****G KETCHUP TO PUT ON YOUR TRAY.
So, that leads me to believe that we are:

A.) The laziest culture on the planet. Which somehow doesn't seem to add up, because after all, we worked very very hard to be that lazy, and working hard and being lazy are contradictory and thus cannot co-exist.

B.) The stupidest culture on the planet. Also a problem, because although the device is pointless and almost excruciatingly so, it does work perfectly, and we are the ones who made it work.

C.) Both. Potentially so, but still leaves the question, how come we don't hear cases, daily, of people either forgetting or forgoing the effort to breath anymore while watching daytime television?

D.) The most brilliant culture in history. This wins by default. Something still doesn't check out, but there's a 9/11 tribute concert on FoxHD featuring a touching duet of "I Can Only Imagine" with police radio footage in the background sung by Lil' Kim and Enrique Iglesias, and I need to grab something to eat beforehand so I gotta go.

Wendy's sounds nice.

Because of the chips and salsa.

I think that everyone, to some extent, possesses some sort of ingrained idea that reality is not 'real'. What I mean by that, without getting too philosophical, is that everybody, no matter how grounded they are in the day to day, cold hard facts of life, at some point has questioned reality.

For example, yesterday I was using a public restroom at the mall where they have the little automated hand washer things so when you stick your hands under the faucet, water magically emits. Well, the one I was using must have been broken, because no water came out when I stuck my hands under it. However, (and this isn't the first time this has happened) when I stuck my hands underneath the faucet and nothing came out, my initial reaction was not to assume the faucet was broken, my initial reaction was to question whether or not this meant that I existed. Now eventually that thought subsided, and I moved one faucet over and cleaned my hands.

"A trifling matter!" you might say. Well, maybe so, but it troubles me a little bit to think that my knee jerk reaction to something like that would be, instead of assuming the faucet is broken...very probable, to doubt my very existence upon the earth. Where does this come from? If all I know and all I have ever known is my own existence, what is wrong with me, 23 years in, to let a broken infrared monitor on a water faucet give me cause to doubt.

And furthermore, why do they use those infrared things? It seems to me that if you are so concerned about sanitary issues that you wouldn't even want to touch the handle of a faucet, then you are doomed when it comes to getting soap out of the dispenser. And the soap dispenser has more bacteria potential anyways, because let's be honest, if you actually use soap after going to the bathroom, not just a simple 'wet&dry', then you probably had some issues. And that soap dispenser is going to be the bacterial stomping grounds of said issues. But nobody ever thinks of that.

So what is reality? And what is the most sanitary way to use a public restroom? And is it actually more sanitary in a public restroom to not use soap? And if that is true, does that mean that public restrooms are some sort of metaphysical wormhole that traditional reality and reason do not exist? Because if so, then maybe those infrared scanners do work.

These famous words (see title) once uttered by yours truly as I stood completely naked on my 3rd story apartment balcony after being de-toweled by a roomate, may prove apt here as well. (maybe not)

However, I must admit that I enter the blogging world with a certain level of apprehension. Because it seems to me that a blogger, by very nature of being a blogger, is willing to concede a few things that I am not sure I am ready to concede. It seems to me that if you are willing to create a diary open to the viewing public you are either:

• Showcasing your unbelievable writing ability
• Screaming, "Look at me, look at me world! I AM important, I DO have something to say."
• Filling up a void or a hole in your life
• Bored

Not that there is anything wrong with these things, that is if you do have unbelievable writing ability to showcase, or if you do have something to say, or if it is filling up a void in your life, or even if you are just bored. However, I feel that I am none of these things, thus the apprehension.

HOWEVER... and this is why I feel so good about what I am now undertaking, I have discovered a new reason to blog, one that does fit me, and one that I think is altogether important, maybe even fundamental to my existence.

You see, I live far away from family, many friends, and for the most part those who know me best. I have always kind of toed the line between, dare i say, genius and insanity, and have counted on them to sort of keep me on the map. However, now that they are gone, I feel that insanity is prevailing, which is not altogether bad, but I would like to keep some sort of record of my descent into madness. That way one day, when I am removed from this world, people can look back at this blog and say, "Ahhh, that's where he snapped, November 18, 2006 when he spoke at length about the urge to be a pirate and then fell asleep on the letter 'r' causing 35,000 consecutive 'r's but decided to post the blog anyways because of the overall piracy theme".

So with that said, and hopefully much more in the future ... hello world.