Tales from the Steppes

2004-03-08

1:19 p.m.
Whale of doom

When we were in OC the first time, we were told the history of the community by an old guy everyone called "Captain" who was wearing a uniform. At first, we were sitting there wondering of what was he captain. He started his history with his version of the events of 1776, which was precisely the moment I decided not to take notes. As his talk progressed, it became clear that he was the retired Captain of the Beach Patrol, the OC equivalent of the lifeguards. Hrrm. Now that is a career.

For all of his rambling history, focussed on the Beach Patrol, of course, he did tell us the funniest thing I've heard in a while. Apparently a whale beached right by a pier in the late 1800's. The residents did not have a boat with which to tow the whale out to sea. So they left it where it was. Some resourceful children discovered that if they jumped off of the pier onto the dead whale, they could bounce around. This was big fun for some time until a child broke through the rotting whale's skin and got stuck up to their armpits. After pulling the child out, the residents noticed that, gosh, rotting whales smell really bad. So they decided to use dynamite to blow up the whale to get rid of it. Thus totally splattering the entire town with rancid whale meat and blubber. Honestly, I did not make that up. Freakin' geniuses. What did they think was going to happen? The law of conservation of mass was going to be broken and the whale would just diappear? Nearly made me snark my DDP when the Captain told the story. For some reason, he didn't think it was as funny as I did.

So I have to drive to OC again tomorrow. Yet another whole day blown on this project. As a measure of my annoyance with my classmates, I did not offer to take any of them with me. I did offer to collect data for them, but I will not sit for 6 hours in a small car with any of them.