Captain’s Logos

I like it because when you walk in, the air temperature is set at a moderate and consistent temperature. The floor is clean, and the decor is sparse, outside of a few posters on the walls reminding you that your supplemental tax bill has changed or you have sex offenders in your neighborhood.

I like the fact that when you walk in you see all the PO boxes on your left, and it makes you feel good because every time you see a PO box on a mailing address, and you feel confused and intimidated because you don't have a PO box or even know what one is, that is where they end up and, hey, it's not so bad.

Even when the line is long with disgruntled and impatient customers, each with mailing problems so complex and distressing they forsook the safety of their home or place of work, the tellers are stoic. Each customer walks to the front of the line and presents his or her situation to the teller as if they were defending their motive for sending this particular piece of mail.

"See all I want to do is send this package here, and I can't do it from home because I don't have the right postage. At least I don't think I do. And I filled out this address box here, see just like it says, and I've put my return address ok? So...you know, just send it."

And then they brace as the lady in gray looks over the package, waiting for the inevitable rolling of the eyes, 'why did I have to get this customer' look, and calling for assistant manegerial aid because this is outside of the scope of their training. Then the assistant manager, angry with life, arrives to point out in dogmatic reprobation how we missed this box and didn't we know that their policy clearly states that you must insure your package a minimum of the equivalent of the co-efficient of the gross weight of the package minus packing tape.

We are ready for this and more, because, hey, this is the way a bureaucracy works.

But the tellers do not do this.


Package going to Sri Lanka? No problem, just fill out this customs form, check this box, lick this stamp and your on your way. I'll help the next customer in line.

Two dozen packages of different weights going to different zip codes? I do this in my sleep at night. Next customer in line please.

Priority or express? We know every nuance of each one, and will happily explain it to you in precise, efficient sentence constructs. Next.

Soon you are at the front of the line, and you feel a affinity for the rules now. You want to be part of the system, you want the stubby teller with a mole on her chin to look over your box with her discerning eye, look at you through her glasses and say, "son you've got it."

All this anti-establishment propaganda our hippie parents breastfed us, along with Seinfeld has made us regard the post office with disdain. A Bunch of crabby old lady with sticks up their butts, we say. We laugh at what most would say was inordinate attention to trivial regulations, we feel superior and liberated because we just go with the flow, and then we bitch at them if our letter wasn't delivered cross country in three days or less.

But they know better. They know what it takes to keep the world's postage running smoothly, and they're damn good at it. And they'll keep stamping, clicking, licking and posting away until precisely 5:30 Mon-Fri, 12:00 Saturday, and just you try and stop them.

People don't really ever grow up. And I don't mean that in the Peter Pan type of way - a perpetual starry-headed child that is in awe with the world type of way - rather the opposite. It seems the people that do grow up learn, as they mature, that they have to strive to retain that wanderlust approach to life, they have to work at it, and some achieve it. The people who don't, well they just remain children in a very snotty way.

Like the kid you knew who, while out on the playground, would steal a steamshovel from right underneath you, and then walk only a few feet away in the sandbox and start playing with it like you don't exist. Now he's your neighbor. You see him from time to time, wave hello in passing, but you can tell he's the same kid. He's cruising into his garage every evening at six-thirty in his convertible mercedes C330l or whatever he's leasing at the time, dark sunglasses and bad comb over and you can almost smell it.

And then one day this picture of self-absorption looks down from his Men's Health magazine and realizes that his blue barrel trash bin, the one the city gives you and picks up once a week, is missing. Or maybe it's cracked, or he just wanted a new one. Whatever.

So after trash day when you walk down to the street to pick up your bin, lo and behold, you don't have one anymore. You are perplexed because, in this orderly society of homeowners, who would be so petty and thoughtless to rob someone else's means of disposing garbage. It must be a mistake, someone must have accidentally grabbed yours.

You puzzle over this on the way back to your house and then you see it, blatantly sitting in your neighbor's driveway, right next to his other cracked one. Never mind that you have your name written on it in bold, black, sharpee letters. There it is, already with a day's worth of fresh trash inside festering. Forget the fact that you no longer have a place to put your trash, and it will stack up in your garage attracting ants for the next week; that steam-shovel stealing prick had a crack in his old bin and needed a new one, what's the big deal. It's totally selfish. And childish.

And doesn't really leave you any other choice but to take one of the other cans that still has yet to be retrieved by it's rightful owner. I mean, it's not your fault that someone else stole your trash can, is it? It's really their fault for being so damn lazy they waited till, what, Saturday evening to pick up their can. And trash day was Friday!

Childish is what it is, all of it.

Two park rangers walked slowly, steadily up the path as the crisp morning sunshine made it's way down to the forest floor. One ranger, a tall gaunt man with a neatly ironed pair of pants and shined boots was leading the way, keeping pace with a rhythmic march. The other, smaller and less kept, with tousled hair and a pair of crooked glasses, was scurrying behind the ranger with quick movements, taking a few steps off the path one direction, then off to the other side, then in front and then behind.



"They said it was about a mile up from here they last heard from him," the tall man said. "Must've been a hell of a way to go."



They came upon the body in a small, flat clearing where the trees receded from the path in a symmetrical ovular shape, and the snow had been trampled down. What was left of the mangled corpse lay cold and stiff, reminding the smaller ranger of half-eaten enchiladas left out all night.



"What's all over his hand?" Said the tall ranger. "It looks like he shit his pants or something."



The smaller ranger, now leaning down over the corpse, looking at it through his crooked glasses noticed a bit of tin foil hanging out of the torn and bloody pocket of the boy. "I think it might be chocolate," he said.



"How 'bout that." Said the tall man. "Poor little chunker had to have one last snack. I've heard of chocolate after a bad date, but you gotta really love it to have the presence of mind to sneak some before you get mauled," he chuckled. "Well that's Darwin at work for you, kid didn't have a chance."



"It doesn't seem like he should have been this far behind," said the smaller ranger. "I mean, if you stay with the group, you're safe. If you get on your own though, there are a thousand ways you can get ravaged by wolves out here."



"Let's clean it up and get out of here," said the taller ranger.



The two rangers did there best to wrap what was left of the body up in a tarp and they began carrying it down the mountain. As they left, the shorter ranger, though struggling to hold up his end of the bag, briefly saw what looked like an eyeball laying in the snow.

Paranoia changed quickly to full-blown fear as the rotund scout watched his fellow campers separate themselves further and further from him. He hobbled along as best he could, but he had no chance of keeping up with the group. He could barely keep up with them when he was walking fine.

He knew that something had been in the woods the entire time. No one would listen to him, of course. No one ever listens to the fat kid, he knew that. He was just some lazy pathetic chunker, out of his element and oblivious of the ways of the wild. Far be it for some couch potato to have the ability to see and hear imminent danger. These angry thoughts flew through the boy's head, along with many others as he traversed the ever-darkening path. His footsteps grew surprisingly sure, as he worked his way down, and although he was still wincing every time he planted his left foot, he was doing so with greater speed and accuracy than ever before.

Not that it mattered now. He was far enough behind the herd that he knew his chances of being singled out were all but certain. He wanted to stop and get the bowie knife he had used for whittling saplings out of his pack, but he could not. His legs would not allow it, and even the thought of slowing down sent a wave of fear and adrenaline through his body that made him shiver.

He could hear it all the time now, once to his left, then on his right; snorting and panting and then a low rumbling growl. Now it was behind him, he could feel it bearing down on him. He lunged forward haphazardly, clutching onto anything his blind hands could find to balance. Now it was directly in front of him. He froze, short of breath, and watched two yellow eyes floating in the darkness, eyes that knew; eyes that were reasoning and calculating every move he made. Clutching his pocket, he searched frantically for anything he could use and found...chocolate. The cynic deep inside him could not let this ironic moment pass without a quick mental jab, even as his heart-pounded through his rib cage he thought that it might serve as a fitting last meal.

Then he had an idea. Still in his pocket, he unwrapped the chocolate bar from the foil covering and began crushing the chocolate inside his pants pocket. His chubby fingers, gorged with blood and adrenaline, began softening and then melting the bar. All the while, he watched two eyes move closer and closer until a dark, hulking figure emerged around it. The wolf, fangs bared, hair bristled, moved slowly and assuredly closer to the boy, each step more intent then the last until he was almost in a full crouch with both hind legs coiled and cocked for attack, his head so low his slobbery saliva hung off his fangs and reached the ground, melting the snow wherever it landed. His rancid breath hung in the air as water vapor like a dragon fuming smoke.

The boy wanted to run. He knew that was exactly what the wolf was waiting for, but each grueling second the desire became stronger and stronger until he felt he was ready to burst. Still he kept still and silent, his hand deep inside his pocket massaging a blob of melted chocolate.

Now the wolf was within ten feet. Now seven. Each second passed like a decade but the boy did not run nor did he scream. He was close now, so close he could see each razor-sharp tooth in the wolf's mouth, he could hear he deep grumbling within the wolf's bowels. He knew he only had one chance, and he had to get it right or it was useless.

All of a sudden the boy felt calm, almost removed from the situation. This was it.

The wolf sprang forward both front paws aimed directly at the boy's chest, his jaws aimed at the boy's neck. Just as he did this, the boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and thrust it, as best he could in the wolf's eyes, trying to find the soft tissue between the sockets and the fur and the fangs. All the while he smeared the sap-chocolate concoction wherever he could - eyes, ears, mouth, nose.

Now he was down on the ground and the wolf was on top of him. Now he screamed and kicked and scratched but soon the wolf had his arms pinned down with his overpowering forelegs . He locked his jaws around the boy's neck and he felt a sharp pain and then the very strange sensation of skin giving way to tooth and insertion. The pain gave him a jolt of energy and he freed his right hand just enough to jab it one last time, all fingers extended, into the wolf's face. His thumb felt a strange wet softness, and he pressed harder. The wolf's grip around his neck relented enough for the boy to twist free, and for a moment he saw it's head, smeared with chocolate, his thumb one knuckle deep into the wolf's right eye. The wolf yelped and jumped back, shaking the boy's thumb free of it's eye socket. He shook himself off, whining and pawing at his eye which was covered in chocolate, backing up and then rolling in the dirt, visibly frustrated.

The boy had a chance to gather himself, and he watched the wolf perform this dance of agony, praying the pain would debilitate the wolf enough for him to leave; not only infuriate him. His left shoulder and neck were a mess of hair, dirt, blood and skin and although he could not see clearly, he knew that he was in bad shape. As his adrenaline subsided slightly, he could feel his pulse reverberating through his body as if each beat of the heart carried along with it an electric jolt. He tried to stand up but could not. He yelled and threw sticks and twigs at the wolf, who was now re-gaining composure, but even this effort was wasted as he could not muster enough strength to do anything but cause a scene.

The wolf, angry and hurt, looked at the boy with his one good eye. He saw him as a blur, arms flailing, yelling loudly, but in the same spot that he had been. He licked his chops once more, bared his fangs and leapt.

The boy saw the wolf come at him, fell on the ground with both legs kicking at the wolf, screamed frantically as he felt the weight bear down on him, and then black.

A broken, sticky branch lay conspicously in the middle of the dark path. An hour ago, it had been happily taking in nutrition from it's source, the tree, and doing it's best to contribute to the overall cause by using the synthetic quality of light to manufacture and produce sap.

Sadly, those days came to an abpubt end on that tragic day, and as it lay snapped and forlorn on the forest floor, a dark shadow passed quickly overhead.

The branch had nothing left to do but putter out the end of it's days, in sad silence, not a noise it could make, and no one to hear it even if it could.

The wolf paid little attention to the melodramatic branch, as it passed by, only noted that it too shared a distinct smell that he had been picking up and honing along the way. Six pink piggies, one with a musty scent, at least two had urine lingering odors, maybe three, one smelled like old cheese and one had a distinct smell of fried meat. One little piggie, his little piggie, smelled only of blood and sweat.

The wolf quickened his pace and took extra care to keep his shoulders square with the path. He wasn't worried about losing his target. His ears perked stiff, his tail worked in fluid motion with his trotting hind and front-quarters, creating the perfect harmony of speed, balance and quiet. He was on the scent now, and although the group were still fifty or sixty trees in front of him, and he had no way of seeing them, he knew exactly where each one was by the sound of their thunderous footstetps, and how fast they were going.

In minutes, the wilting sun would send it's last full rays of despairing light into the forest, each beam singularly visible as a bolt of lightning, and then as the sun elipsed behing the horizon, each beam, cut off from it's source would melt and twist and dim, creating a murky world of false shadows and deceptive movement.

It was for this half-light that the wolf waited.

To amuse himself in the meantime, he began sizing up his opposition, testing the waters to see how close he could come to the fat little piggie without making him squeal. He crouched low and moved stealthily through the trees, this time on the right, next time on the left, getting closer every time. When he got just close enough, sometimes less than a tree length away, he would paw a stick on the ground until it snapped and then watch as the boy darted his head in all directions, eyes searching the trees wildly, breath quickened, stumbling down the path all the while. The wolf enjoyed watching the boys futile resolve to stay courageous melt away with the sunlight.

This was all part of it. This was like pre-heating the oven.

It was getting good now, the light was getting just right and, the wolf noticed, the group had picked up the pace a notch as well, leaving the blood piggie that much farther behind, limping along in with short, panicky breaths, clutching his pocket compulsively.

He sat motionless now, letting the group gain ground in front of him, even losing sight of them. After a few moments he bounded off the side of the path and up a small embankment onto a large boulder. He shook his fur once again, flinging droplets of flesh-decaying saliva out of his panting mouth like a broken sprinkler, bared his grisly yellow fangs, and howled a particualrly menacing howl; a howl that, in hindsight, the wolf was quite proud of.

The chunky boy scout was feeling worse than ever. Not only had he scraped up both knees after he slipped on a rock, but his ankle was twisted and, try as he might, he could not walk without limping. He tried bracing his steps against trees near the path, and to add insult to injury, his hands were now coated with sticky tree sap which made it difficult to use his pudgy fingers.



"Stupid camping trip," he grumbled to himself as he hobbled down the path. His toes were numb from the cold and his stomach was growling. He fingered the outside of the pocket, feeling for the last bit of a chocolate bar he had stashed after s'more night around the campfire.



The clear, thin blue sky was softening, and the shadows in the forest lengthened as the group pressed forward through the winding path. As the light began to fade around them, the leader quickened his pace in an effort to make it back before the dark enveloped them and they had no choice but to pitch their tents one last night. They weren't due back until the next morning anyways, but the leader reckoned that no one, most of all himself, would mind cutting the trip short by one cold, miserable night.



"Try to keep up back there." he said to the portly lad. "You're holding up the rest of the group."



"I'm tryyying," the boy whined. "It's kind of hard to speed up when you can't even walk" he said as he exaggerated his limp for dramatic effect. But the leader did not even so much as look back as he muttered something under his breath and glanced at his watch.



"Two more hours of light," the leader thought. "We can make this."



The frustrated boy grabbed for a branch to steady himself, which snapped off under the strain. "Stupid branch." He tried for a few moments to drop it but the sap stuck to the twig and he couldn't get his hands free of it. Every time he grabbed it with one hand, freeing the other, it would only stick itself to the next hand. Frustrated, he threw it as hard as he could, and it tore loose from his hand, but sent the gummy twig twirling up into his face and poked one of his eyes.



"DAMN IT!" the usually mild-mannered boy screamed in exasperation.



The leader turned his head. "Stop playing with sticks and march!" he yelled.



The boy decided that as soon as they got home, if they got home, he was going to write a letter to the entire scout organization about how, every night, his leader had tried to molest him in his sleeping bag.



A gust of icy wind rushed down the path past and through them, making all the trees, and all the boys, shudder as it left.

The wolf was taking a nap underneath a fallen Birch tree when he heard a snap. Although his eyes shot wide open, the rest of his body remained completely motionless, and his breathing quickened. After a few seconds of perfect stillness, the wolf roused himself and put his nose into the air, sniffed three times and shook the snow out of his fur.

He smelled them coming down the path, thirty or forty tree lengths away (wolves measure distance by the length of a fully grown Birch tree) making enough racket to wake up the whole forest, five little pink piggies walking in a row.

"Just what I needed," growled the wolf. "A bunch of kids running around playing Indian, scaring off all my dinner." The wolf didn't like people much, he didn't like children most of all. His fur bristled at the thought of their pink naked skin, walking around on their hind legs like it mattered, a ridiculous patch of hair covering their head and that's it.

"Hmphh." thought the wolf as he snorted in their general direction. He walked in a tight circle several times, trodding down the ground for his bed. He eventually curled his way down and laid his head on his paws hoping to get a bit of rest before the sun went down, and he could try to scrounge up a meal. He watched the group of campers pass him by, unknowing as they were of his solitary spot.

As his eyes began to droop, he watched as the last little piggie making his way down the hill, an especially plump looking one, slipped on a rock and slammed all four paws into the ground at once. He noticed it took him a little while longer to get up than he thought it might.

"Hmmm." thought the wolf.

"There it is again", the slightly chubby boy scout said to his leader.



The wind was picking up now, channeling it's force through the small path etched into the forest. The trail, cold and white with snow, merely hinted at it's true direction and the group of weary travelers had more than once re-traced their steps after false turns. This year's early snow lay cluttered with brown and yellow leaves that had waited too long to call it a winter and fall from their perch. They were not the only ones, it seemed, the October snow had caught off guard.



"Listen. Dc you hear it? I think it came from behind us" said the large, rosy-cheeked boy. The scout leader, a pale-faced freckled boy, just turned eighteen, found it hard to believe the boy could hear anything aside from his huffing and puffing. He'd been at it all week, complaining that it was too cold, asking for more food than he was rationed, he really did not belong on this hike at all.



"It's the wind through the trees," he said, trying his best not to let the exasperation in his voice show. "Try to keep up with the group."



Of course he was trying to keep up. But it's hard to walk when your feet are blocks of ice and you haven't had a decent meal in three days. This was supposed to be a novice level hike, and when his scout group had planned it, he had been excited to go. And then, the very first night camping, the wind tore his tent up from its ties and brought along with it six inches of snow and the October from hell. He had wanted to go back after that night, but the group leader simply laughed and said that you couldn't let a little weather keep you down. After all, that was the point of the trip, to brave nature.



Well brave or not, he didn't have much of a choice at this point.



The leader, although he didn't want to admit it, wasn't feeling too much better about the ordeal than his portly charge. Looking after six runts for four days, in the freezing cold, having to wake up in the middle of the night, every night, because one of the little bastards was having a nightmare again, how he had gotten duped into this he could no longer remember. Something to do with looking good on a college application and ROTC scholarships. At this point, he didn't even care about college, all he wanted was a hot shower and a cigarette.

Now they were heading back, after three of the more unpleasant days most of the kids, leader included, could recall.

"There it is again!" said the boy.

"Now listen here. If you would spend a little more time walking and a little less time imagining sounds you'd make it a whole lot easier for all of us."

The freckled leader sighed and trudged on, pushing a fallen branch clear of the path, and quietly calculated how long they would have to march in the dark if they wanted to make it home without camping another night.

Lately I have watched two movies that I really liked. The first one is called "Children of Men" and is a science-fiction tale about the state of the world in 40 odd years. I liked it for two reasons, the first one was it's frightening plausibility, and the second for it's attention to detail.

If you've watched this movie, you may notice that whomever made it went to great pains to make sure that every smallest detail of every scene shot had some sort of significance. The bulletin boards they pass as they're heading off on a train, the newspaper clips that are panned over oh so briefly, the colors people wore and the attitudes they had, they were all deliberately planned out. It's one of those movies you could watch 10 times and still pick up new things along the way. I believe in the industry they call this a 'layered film'.

The scary thing about this movie though, is that although it is based in the not-so-far future, it is a completely different world than what we live in right now. I'm not talking about flying cars and robot servants, but just the quality of life and the ethos of life are, I'd like to think, more than a few years away from us.

However, everything that has gone wrong and made life so drastically miserable, can be traced to issues that we, as a global community, are dealing with right now. Immigration reform, separation of super-rich from middle class, threat and fear of terrorism, gluttonization of capitalization, all these things are issues that we are dealing with right now, which according to the movie, end up going horribly amiss.

The other movie I watched and enjoyed was "Pan's Labyrinth" which is an adult fairy tale. I have to say that I was a little bit disappointed though, because all the reviews made it out to be something it really wasn't. It was a fantasy, to be sure, but it was not a fantasy in the 'Lord of the Rings' sense, rather it was a reality/fantasy combo. Nevertheless, it was really good because of the cinematography and the special effects.

I can truthfully say I have never seen a movie more gory or less offensive. This is because it was not done in an effort to shock or disgust (although it certainly has that capability), rather it was done to portray a very very realistic rendering of the tale.

If you're reading a book, it's up to your imagination to supply the details, and if the book says, "he cut off his leg with a bandsaw" it is up to you to supply the appropriate graphic content. Usually when I get to one of these scenes in a book, my imagination conjures up more of a symbol for leg-being-chopped-off, then actually witnessing it. However, in this movie, your imagination doesn't get the opportunity to be squeamish, because it's right there in front of you.

I was also surprised at the amount of Judeo-Christian elements that were present. Many of the central ideas, themes and symbolism were rather easily traceable to Christianity. This surprised me because I'm sure that those in the evangelical circles would be quick to brand this movie as being pagan in a very polytheistic cultic sense. I would be curious to hear more about the screenwriter's and producers intent they had for this movie.

It's hard to say how I have felt lately. Discouraged? Meaningless? Lacking confidence? These are all things that I struggle with daily, and so I cannot begin to express how encouraging it is to hear from you, my faithful readers, who have encouraged, no, implored me to get back out there and start writing again.

If it weren't for this sad, confused man, there is no telling where I might be. Hang in there Code Man! Keep singing!