poopfish

On this Friday night my wife and I, for our recreation, watched “The Clash of the Titans.” We have wanted to watch it since it came out. Yes, I am talking about the most recent version that did not receive high scores from critics. Overall, I thought it was a decent movie and would not mind revisiting it.

However, the ratings for this movie or my feelings are not the subject of this post. The spotlight falls directly on the Ferryman. I am familiar with Greek mythology and the role of the Ferryman, acting as shepherd to the souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx to the world of dead. A coin is placed in the mouth of the dead or two coins upon the eyes for the Ferryman’s services.

Yes it all makes perfect sense. You pay to be transported just like taking a taxi after a long night of drinking. My point is we can infer what the person driving the cab spends his money on — food, shelter, bills, etcetera. The Ferryman on the other hand is another story. Let’s just say he takes a few hundred people a day across the river Styx. What does he do with all the money he amasses? It is definitely not on a new boat. Every movie that has featured the Ferryman shows him as a haggard old man with a long gnarled pole pushing a rotting wooden boat. Occasionally it has moss growing on it.

This guy from a business standpoint can’t lose. Even in a recession he wins. Not to be morbid, but if the stock market crashed it would be in his favor. Ok, that was going a little to far. Let’s get back to my original point. Where does all the money go? I don’t know.

What I would like to see is a movie where someone dies and they are being ferried across the river Styx and they say “Hey Ferryman are those new shoes?” He could say, “Why yes they are. They have a waterproof, breathable membrane to keep my feet dry and comfortable.” Now that would be something.

Personally, if I where to think hard enough I would say the Ferryman blows all his hard earned cash on his cookie jar collection. I am sorry I can’t reveal my sources. The Ferryman also pays good money to cover-up his fanaticism for cookie jars. Oops! Well now you know where some of the money goes.

Until next time, be sure to tip your Ferryman.

I thought I had a revelation about why people sag their pants when I saw a teenager crossing the street the other day. The teenager wore a huge puffy black jacket, making his head look quite small, and sagging pants that started just bellow the jacket.

Immediately, my mind jumped to an image of a gorilla walking upright. I mentally compared the gorilla to the teenager and his attire. The comparisons I noted where that they both have very short legs, both walk in a manner where they are too top heavy and have to sway from side to side, and lastly there upper body was much larger than their lower half. With these observations I formed a hypothesis that people sagging their pants, men in particular, were trying to look like large silver back gorillas.

With my hypothesis formed, I hopped on the web to find facts that would substantiate my claim. After browsing though hundreds of images I found a picture of a gorilla and of a person sagging and put them side-by-side for a direct visual comparison.

After looking at some more images I went hunting for some hard facts. I would have liked to say the facts I found were astounding and merited being published in a scientific journal, but they fell short of the mark. As it turns out, people sag as a fashion statement that is derived from the United States prison system. Apparently suicide is quite prevalent in prison and belts are commonly used to take ones life. Hence the prisoners have a hard time keeping their pants from falling down. So instead of emulating the strong and noble gorilla, people would rather be associated with inmates, prisoners, and hoodlums. Who knew?

Maybe it was the puffy black jacket that turned me on to gorillas. Or maybe it was the mist. At any rate I thought the gorilla hypothesis had some potential.