Have you seen VIKINGS on the History Channel?
I know, they rebranded as just plain ol’ History
(and I just revealed that I entrust my historical education
to televised drama)
but Disney is all about the one-word titles these days:
Cars, Up, Frozen, Tangled, Brave.
Sometimes they themselves become incredibly brave
and they’ll put an article before or a suffix after:
the Incredibles, Monsters Inc.
No one in this world has ever lost money
by underestimating the intelligence of the [not so] great masses,
and so many young men get their blog ideas from Mencken.
I digress…
So, the Vikings.
Men from these and many other dare we say, cultures,
would for centuries get into a wooden boat
constructed from trees felled with axes they made,
and set sail not knowing where the wind might take them.
They didn’t have the frickin’ Weather Channel,
GPS navigation, Gore-Tex, Chex mix, or Sudoku.
They kissed their loved ones goodbye, quite possibly for the last time,
sailed and rowed across cold oceans, landed in strange hostile places,
met the local inhabitants, took all their stuff, and killed them.
The last part seems a little dickish,
but the rest of it really drives the point home:
we are complete softies.
Some of us barely even get off the couch.
We make some poor kid deliver hot prepared food
and we cue up Netflix with the remote.
The truly adventurous among us get into our heated car,
sit our fat lazy butts down on the heated seat,
grasp the heated steering wheel,
and listen to a computer-generated voice
that tells us exactly which paved bandit-free road to follow.
She doesn’t even yell at you when you make a wrong turn.
The voice should turn into Sam Kinison or Lewis Black:
“Oh my God, you flipping idiot, you missed the exit! Are you blind?!
There’s a HUGE green sign with white reflective letters!
Cheese and crackers!”
For the record,
my car has neither heated seats nor a heated steering wheel.
Life is rough.