Of Captains Other than Me. (Part 1)

It occurs to me that my name (Captain Ook, if you haven't been paying attention) is very similar to some other notable Captains, mainly Captain Hook and Captain Cook

"Ook" has nothing to do with either of these people, and to alleviate any possible confusion here is the start of a comprehensive ranking of notable captains:

Captain Crunch.
This guy deserves no respect. He's maybe 4 feet tall, has a gut and no muscle tone whatsoever, and he's at least 70 years old. If he were ever any kind of real captain he would have been made Admiral a long time ago.

Also, his cereal has bad cases of the soggies and the Tastes-like-sawdusts.

Awesome Rating: Kelp, limp and uninteresting.

Captain Hook

This guy had everything going for him, sweet ship, a full non-mutinous crew, a huge hat, and a real sword. Yet he managed to blow it when when he was absolutely destroyed by a couple of kids with sticks and a six inch pixie.

How incompetent do you hafta be to let that happen? Also he was eaten by a crocodile. good captains don't get themselves killed. Though if I failed as miserably as ol' Hook I'd consider becoming croc food too.

Awesome Rating: Sea Slug; slimy and useless.

Captain Morgan

Holy crap! After raising himself to "fame and fortune by his valor" he was elected Admiral of Jamaica and used his fleet to take control of the Providence Island forts from the Spanish.

He managed to recruit over 500 of the best pirates in the Caribbean by dressing just like in that picture and strutting around being awesome in all the seediest places around.

He then managed to destroy a much larger Spanish fleet at Porto Bello, after which places like Panama decided to pay him not to kick their asses.

After capturing or destroying several more Spanish ships/forts, Morgan decided to attack Panama anyway. In a land battle he held his lines and flanked the Panama troops adding another victory notch to his belt.

Apparently taking Panama violated a peace treaty, so England arrested him. Morgan laughed at this and instead of going to jail he walked away knighted.

Also, " He was also one of the few pirates who were able to retire from his piracy, having had great success, and with little legal retribution."

Awesome Rating: Cowboy riding a Phoenix shooting lasers at a space dragons; mind-blowingly epic.

K, bedtime. I'll make this an ongoing series, cause there is a metric frack-ton of captains for me to belittle / drool over.

Goodnight Blogosphere.

The Why of The Blargg

Confession time: I'm not a blog virgin, I've had another blog.

Back when I was finishing up my first year of university I was struggling to find the motivation to study for finals and as a way of wasting time on the interwebs I started blogging.

Actually "blogging" probably isn't the best word. That first day I wrote about 8 single sentence posts about how I still hadn't got any studying done. I was essentially tweeting before the advent of Twitter. Too bad stating inane aspects of your life several times a day was as uninteresting then as it is now.

That old blog eventually morphed into a place of inside jokes between me and a few friends, before Facebook came along and everyone abandoned those old MSN Spaces.

Well some things never change. This blog was also born out of procrastination when posting here somehow seemed like a better idea than studying for my English final.

And as it turns out it was definitely a better idea.

My English final was from 9 till 12 this morning and despite only studying for 30 minutes last night, things went fine. I may have done slightly better with days of intense study, but not enough so to make the stress worth while.

So since I have a Physics final Monday I may as well try this blog-instead-of-study thing again.

So here's an explanation as to why The Blargg is called "The Blargg"

1. Its an onomatopoeia describing the noise my brain makes as it spews it's idea soup all over this web page.


2. "Blog" comes from the words "Web Log" But that's far too formal for your good Captain Ook, its like something a stuck up Commodore of the British navy would have. Pirate Captains would be far less formal, they wouldn't have "Web Logs" they would have "Web LARRRGGs"



3. A Blargg is an enemy from one of my favorite video games EVAR, Super Mario World. They are one of the 10 best creatures ever conceived, and they look like pure awesome.


4. ???

5. Profit.

Really I'm pretty sure I'd eventually regret whatever name I chose, and I was too lazy to come up with something clever. Also saying "BLARGG-BLOG" repeatedly makes me laugh.

HA!

Crap, I promised shorter posts didn't I.
I'll make an about me page or just post about myself a little later.

Stay Tuned.

Sober Second Thought / A Spidery Doom

*Note* The first part of this title refers to the role of the Senate in Canadian Parliament, I'm not suggesting I was drunk when I wrote that last post, 'cause I wasn't, even if it may have read like I was.

I'm a little worried my first post may have been a little lofty and ambitious. I doubt anyone reading this blog will ever feel like they've been transported to Narnia, or Never-Never Land, or Disney Land.

When I write I get into a grandiose mindset and I say things like "grandiose" and "Sober Second Thought". For the most part The Blargg will be little more than a place for my mind to spew forth it's chunky broth of cheesy ideas and undercooked mental imagery.

yummy.



Now having said that, this may well be the end of our adventures together 'cause I'm about to be destroyed by evil alien spider parasite(s).

It all started with an innocuous back scratch.

While scratching said back I felt beneath my fingers and odd squishy lump.

"A back zit?!?" I mused.

I've had plenty 'o face zits, the occasional neck zit, and very rarely a shoulder zit, but never a back zit.

Clearly this warranted further investigation.

Upon shirt lifting-mirror examination the aforementioned odd squishy lump was revealed to be "Definitely not a zit!"

The disturbing protrusion was found to be a nipple-sized bulbous red sac with a black eight-pronged figure radiating from its center. Keep in mind that my viewing angle was awkward at best, but I swear i saw it pulsating.

"What the hell!" I calmly stated, without the slightest hint of sheer terror in my voice.

I promptly concluded that a demonic arachnid had laid eggs in back which were now hatching and preparing to burst forth like the aliens in alien, but instead of being an adorable jello covered Muppet greeting me from my chest, It would be millions of alien spiders exploding out of my back like evil blood-soaked popcorn of doom.



Or maybe I have a tick?

I asked my brother to take a look but he wouldn't come within 10 feet of my after I uttered the word "tick".

I asked my mom, who promptly replied "THAT'S NOT A TICK, IT'S A SKIN CANCER!"

By this point my brother had done a Google image search for something like "eye raping skin horror" and came up with a vomit-inducing selection of terribleness.

Based on these images, we were able to conclude that I definitely have melanoma

or leprosy

or flesh eating disease

or evil alien parasites.

So now forgoing a fine dinner meal I find myself sitting at a walk-in clinic, awaiting a medical professional to stare wide-eyed at my back and say "OH my God Were all Gunna DIE!!!!!" or something along those lines.

I don't have Wi-Fi here so I'll just leave a bunch of ellipses here and then pick up with this post after the doc has seen me, if I'm still alive.


..................


K, Back at home base, still alive, for now.

Here's what you missed:

Receptionist-Nurse Lady escorted me to the littler waiting room and asked why I had come.

Fighting the urge to scream "Alien Spiders are living in my back!" I replied "Um, I've got something on my back... like a tick... or a malignant tumor."

She stared at me for a moment before saying "Lets hope for a tick..." I nodded.

Thousands of seconds later the doctor appeared, I showed him, and he said "It's not a tick."

He elaborated by saying that it is a "suspicious and aggravated mole"

What I heard was "The bulbous pulsating thing on your back suspects you mean it harm and is really really pissed!"



I fought the urge to shout "KILL IT WITH FIRE!" and instead just whimpered "uh-huh..."

He then told me he wasn't equipped to handle it tonight (Neither am I!) and I'd have to come back next week to get it excised and sent to a lab for testing.

For a minute my brain equated "excised" with "exercised" and I was expecting a priest to remove it by tossing on some holy water and yelling about the power of Christ, before trapping it, poking it with needles, and putting it in a wooden crate for storage beside the Ark of the Convent.

If you could see what's on my back you'd agree that this sequence of events is exactly the necessary course of action (though maybe with more cleansing fire needed).

The actual plan of freezing it, chopping it out, and shoving it in a test tube is clearly an under-reaction. They should at least have the army on standby.

Wow, this turned into a monster of a post. I'll make an effort to keep future posts shorter and less disgusting. I apologize to all my hypothetical readers out there.

This is Your Captain Speaking...

Welcome to The Blargg's inaugural message.

The Blargg is a place for me to share my inane ramblings, tales of tragic hilarity, and poorly drawn mspaint pictures. With a little luck it will be more than a just a way for me to appease my writing urges, The Blargg will be a way for me to invite others into my world.

You'll like it in my world, we have airships.



A couple years ago I took a course called "Philosophy of Mind" in which I managed to sleep through most of the classes. Nonetheless it involved some interesting stuff.
One of things we discussed is how our entire reality is filtered through our brains. For example, there is no such thing as colour. Our eyes react to certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation and sends a signal to our brains, which is interpreted to mean colour.
Since we only have access to our own minds, we can't know if other peoples brains are interpreting these signals the same way, so we can't presume to know what is going on in the head of anybody else.

Your best friend's perception of reality could be somewhat different from your own.
My world could be drastically different from yours.

I once ate a cheese-covered mealworm.

That wasn't relevant to anything, I just thought I'd toss it out there.

This next part is relevant, so try to stay with me.

One of my favorite video games EVAR is The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In it you spend alot of time sailing in a boat called The King of Red Lions. If you spot a flock of seagulls circling a spot on the open sea, and you sail to that spot, a giant octopus will emerge from the depths to battle you.

"So what?" you ask. Well flocks of seagulls exhibit this behaviour in the real world as well, yet when I saw this I nudged my friend and informed him. "There's a giant Octorok over there!"

The blank stare I was met with indicated to me that there may have been something wrong with my statement.

Upon walking past a construction site my first thought was "It would be way more efficient if those construction workers used robotic mech suits to snap girders into place like k'nex."

Yesterday a traffic light was about to change from "walk" to "flashing orange hand" and I was about half a block away. So I started to run. As I did this my backpack started to bounce on my ass. To rectify this situation I pulled forward on the straps. Obviously the next course of action was to lean way forward and make "PASHOOOOOO" noises as I jetpacked through the intersection.

Did I mention I'm not twelve?

I'm 24 and a half, and I have a degree in biology.

Anyway, my point was my world is awesome. It has giant sea creatures, and robot warriors, and killer bird monsters, and you should totally join me in exploring these strange lands.



It was on a whim that I decided upon the username "Captain Ook", but I think having somewhat of nautical theme is fitting. I'm pretty sure It was a desire to explore the unknown which lead me to study the sciences.

And I'm starting to think i was born a few centuries to late/soon. As it stands the earth has been entirely mapped, and our technology won't allow us to properly explore the rest of the universe.

My childhood dream of being an astronaut died when I realized it wasn't simply driving a cool spaceship through asteroids for a few minutes before landing and exploring cool alien worlds.

Anyway, I type like a war-amps champ arthritic squirrel so this post has taken forever to write.



To sum up, The Blargg may seem like a speck in the ocean of the blogosphere, but its magical and - not unlike a TARDIS - its much bigger on the inside than the outside.

Anchors away! BlarggBlog sails today!