March
2007
"Is the voyage worth making that does not enhance
awareness of our shared humanity?"
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Copyright © 2006
Masthead
Staff Biographies
"Giving well is the best revenge."
--Douglas Milburn.
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Tasteless
Jokes 110
The world has been too much with us. But our attention has turned once again to the collecting and polishing of truly off-color jokes.
On Disappearance
To disappear or not to disappear... That
is most definitely NOT the question, says Reppy Duart. What then is the question? Aye,
there's the rub.
Only the gentlest of perseverances
really furthers.
The Solution
Yes, we've done it. We have found the solution. To everything. Where? On the streets of
(you ready?) Bratislava. Don't believe us? Take a
look.
Odd, and possibly significant,
that the UFO reports contains many instances of indifference, some of curelty, but none of
generosity or compassion.
 Millennium
No. 3: Babies, Bathwaters, and Poets
Our culture-studies guy is back, making a list of important things missing so far in the
21st century. Nonsense, surely. What could we be lacking? Hint: he starts his list in the aisles of Toys R Us.
The Ages of Cowardice
Anna-Marie Quave lets fly with one
short paragraph that leaves few out of us six billion standing.
Maybe we're just planet parasites,
exhausting one, then moving on. Dead Mars a mute, possible reminder of a not-so-distant
dread past.
The Ossification
of Dominant Beliefs
 Pushing our
beleaguered publisher ever closer to the edge, Sylvia
Thodhiss burdens our pages with yet more p----y.
Each of the arts is a vast
wee, seductive tapestry from which few talented weavers, once entrapped, escape.
Wrong Thinking
and the Current American Mess
Doc Cuddy mulls over the turbulent American (and therefore, world) atmosphere and ponders
about what it all means for the last years of
the Bush-Cheney mis-administration.
Pianists, even really good ones,
don't play the piano all the time.
Permian Basin Blues
 Token Republican Ora Shay sounds off
somewhat regretfully about the latest shenanigans of
Midland's Favorite Son.
It's easy to stumble, wits
atwitter, into--and out of--other realms. Drugs are the fastest, most efficient, and
absolutely the least effective way. They'll put you somewhere good, bad, or mixed, and
then yank you back, leaving a flotsam of feelings and odd beliefs ranging from screaming
paranoia to self-fulfilling messianism. Much slower but equally misleading is to be
hell-bent on enlightment, either light or dark. Eventually you will get to a there, but
the there will be distressingly squishy and alamringly ambiguous (think of the child
witnessing sexual intercourse, or a beheading).
Publisher's Note: Against my
best money-making advice, staff members persist in occasional outbursts of what they refer
to as "p----y" (even they can't call it by name). I keep telling them: The
path to penury is paved with p----y. Do they listen? No. All I can do is alert
the unwary reader with the little death's head, which in this context means: Warning!
P----y Ahead!
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The author, in pursuit, 2004.
Out of The Writerly Closet
In which Douglas Milburn reveals all and winds up sounding like your local public
radio station at fund-raising time. Nothing is
what it seems, and
what nothing seems is false.
--Myra
Breckinridge.
110 issues. 4,700 pages. Enough, surely. Time to come out
of the writerly closet.
In 1999 when I started Magellan’s Log, I knew what I wanted to do:
create a cast of characters, each with a separate and clear personality, call
them my "staff", and unleash their varied opinions into the vasty Internet
unknown.
Of the resulting 4,700 pages only a handful (fewer than 20) are by anybody other than
myself. If you look at the masthead page, you think: Hmmm, a
big operation, a big writing, production, and advertising staff. In fact, I write
everything. I do all the graphics and music. I design and encode every page.
They’re a somewhat rowdy, diverse bunch, this
"staff" that exists only in my head. Ora
Shay, my "token Republican," doesn’t get along with any of the
other characters, ranging politically as they do from progressive to libertarian to
21st-century Marxist… and beyond. Chardo Blue Plains, my staff
"mystic," exists in a reality all his own but which he keeps trying to share. Pedkop
Bumbera is fixated on cars as
touchstones by which he thinks to understand, well, everything. Izora Firelands is
a kind of Bill McKibben with a heart, bless
her. Doc Cuddy, my "editor," is bright, uppity, and no doubt
every morning thinks 20 anti-authoritarian thoughts
before he’s even out of bed. As for Jerden Purmort, my "humor
editor," I sometimes despair, what with his avid interest in the most sophomoric
bathroom humor, but then he’ll come up with something
like this, and all is forgiven. And good ol’ Temple Duciel, he
of grandiose theological thoughts—well, his name says it all, doesn’t it. And
that’s just half a dozen of the cast.
Speaking of names: They come from a wide variety of sources.
When I travel, I have a section of my notebook devoted to interesting place names, street
names, store names. When it came time to baptize my staff, I went through the by-now
rather longish list, gleefully combining likely (and sometimes very unlikely) first names
and last names.
110 issues. From the very, very short (this one, based on a brief
Associated Press dispatch, took about ten minutes) to the very long (The Texas Tao took six months, the Iris Murdoch issue three months, Saltlick six weeks, the Montages de l’empire five weeks). But
most issues were done on a monthly basis.
To my pleasure and astonishment, Magellan’s Log, which I have come to
think of as a real-time, on-going performance piece, has found a large, loyal
readership of around 150,000 (that’s distinct hosts, not hits—the hits
run between 750,000 and 1,200,000) per month. Quite an unexpected and delightful result,
given the way the content ranges from silly
to sagely (some might say
"soporific").
Which means that, thanks to Google advertising the site just about breaks
even.
On a mission of gentle subversion, the idea was to come in under the cultural
radar, to plant not bombs but seeds. No self-immolation, no self-aggrandizement, no
self-enrichment. Just seeds.
Now comes the pitch, dear Reader. Just as in the South
Pacific once upon a time there was nothing like a dame, so too now in the wide new
universe of heaving, insubstantial pixels, there's still nothing like a book.
A few books exist of some of the best stuff. If you’ve enjoyed
and/or benefited from material in Magellan’s Log, please provide a bit of financial
feedback. You can order the books direct from the site (via
PayPal) here, or from Amazon. They’re a great gift to yourself and to
like-minded friends. Or even, if you’re of a gently malicious bent, to un-like-minded
acquaintances.
Giving well is the best revenge.
Douglas Milburn
February, 2007
Problems, Problems, Problems
 Humor editor Jerden Purmort has been out scouring the Internet once
again for photos to make you laugh (or cry). He's found 39.
Of the various bridges across
time, music is the most improbable and the most secure.
On Erring
Wherein we try to sort out this whole business of erring and forgiving in couple of sentences.
 What's
Going on Here?
Our wee contribution to the ever-popular on-going discussion of the question,
"Is it purpose that gives life
meaning?" (Thanks to Albrecht Altdorfer et al.)
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