As a boy, I thought Star Trek was real. And by that I mean the original series. Not “The Next Generation” with young Wesley Crusher, upon whom I had a crush. Crusher-crush. Nah, too easy!
Before you call me a dirty old man, or something worse, remember, when we first meet Wesley, in the pilot episode of the series reboot “Encounter at Farpoint” in 1987, Wil Wheaton, the actor who played Wesley, was 15, and I was only 21, just six years older. So its not like I was creepin’ on some teenager; I was barely no longer a teenager myself! Why is it okay for college guys to have posters of Farrah Fawcett in their dorm rooms, and I can’t have one of Wil Wheaton?
And in my defense, I also had a crush at that time on Dynasty’s Steven Carrington, played by Jack Coleman – a man eight years older than me. So on closer inspection, I think my selection of heartthrobs was pretty normal for a young gay guy my age.
But I digress.
When you think about it, watching Star Trek as a young boy in the 70s and believing the show to be the actual recounting of a mission that had returned from space is not really all that far-fetched when you consider that the moon landing of the Apollo 11 mission was broadcast live on television when I was 3 years old; Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were real, why not James T. Kirk and Spock? You’re not one of those nutjobs that believes the moon landing was filmed on a sound stage in Van Nuys? Or that Elvis is still alive and living in Seattle?
Now there was a great deal of difference between the quality of broadcast pictures from Apollo 11 and those coming from the starship Enterprise, but I was MGM – California’s public school program for “mentally gifted minors” – so I had that all figured out. It was in the early 70s that we Wilkinsons got our first color tv, and in my mind that was the fundamental reason for the difference between the two space missions – the advance of technology. When my mom got her first microwave oven, also around that time, it felt “Star Trek-like.” You mean I can boil a glass of water without flame or a heating element just by pushing a button, and when I take the glass of water out of the compartment it boiled in there’s no residual heat in there? That wasn’t science fiction – that was reality!
But the key for me was the captain’s “log.”
[insert scatological pun here]
You see, Apollo 11 was happening in real time; we were watching that mission unfold as it occurred. But the five year mission of the starship Enterprise? The clue was in the opening of every episode, which began with William Shatner as Captain Kirk doing a voiceover:
Captain’s Log, star date 1512.2. On our third day of star mapping, an unexplained cubical object blocked our vessel’s path. On the bridge, Mr. Spock immediately ordered general alert. My location: sick bay. Quarterly physical check.
“The Corbomite Maneuver,” Star Trek: The Original Series -Season 1, Episode 10
Clearly, Star Trek is not live. Duh! I’m not stupid. It’s a retelling of events that occurred in the past on their mission, and the captain, James Kirk, recorded those events in his log. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s ships always have a log.
Before radio or radar or satellites or sonar, or computers, a ship’s log was the way, the only way, to record what actually happened on a voyage. Logs provided a form of accountability to a ship’s owners or those bankrolling an expedition, as away from land there was usually no reliable corroboration of events apart from the crew’s own account. A log provided as accurate a record as could be produced in real time, and a way of “fact checking” a crew’s recollections, to tell a story – the story of the voyage, expedition, mission.
But why were they called “logs?”
Well, they began, literally, as logs. A small wooden board resembling – you guessed it – a log, often weighted with lead, was attached to a line and thrown over the stern. The weight of the leaden board would keep it in the same place in the water, sortof like an anchor, while the ship moved away from it. By measuring the length of line used up in a set period of time, sailors could calculate the speed of their journey (the rope itself was marked by equidistant “knots” for easy measurement, which is why we still clock a ship’s speed in knots today). As a ship’s journey progressed, the navigation came to be recorded in a book kept for just that purpose named after the wooden board, the thing that looked like a log.
Eventually, that book was simply referred to as “the log.” And over time, the captain recorded notable events alongside his navigational entries – bad weather, an attempted mutiny, whale sightings (for whaling ships), any interactions the crew might have had with native populations in distant lands/islands, and so on. Along with things like wind direction and speed, as determined by the number of knots, a logbook also helped the captain surmise where they were and how far they had traveled.
When I started blogging back in 2008, the word “blog” (which can be both a noun and a verb) was not as ubiquitous as it is today. Nor was it really clear what a blog was. As this form of writing evolved, blogs became rather specific, subject-wise. You might have one focused on politics, like Andrew Sullivan’s “Daily Dish,” or niche blogs like a lesbian from North Carolina, Pam Spaulding, who wrote about gay news (advances/setbacks in pursuing LGBTQ+ rights in the US) in “Pam’s House Blend,” an early inspiration and precursor of my own blog and blogging, along with Andy Towle’s “Towleroad.”
Blogs started popping up about everything – from cooking to travel. I didn’t want to be limited in what I could write about. I wanted the freedom to write about Barack Obama one day and the drag coefficient of tassels on flying carpets the next. The more clever of you, or at least more tuned-in to pop culture, will recognize the latter as something Sheldon said to Leonard on the hit television sitcom The Big Bang Theory.
But here’s the thing: I didn’t want to write a politics blog, or a science blog, or a gay rights blog, or a blog about dogs. I wanted to write about politics, science, gay rights, and dogs.
I remember discussing this with a friend at the time who told me, “sounds like you want yours to be kindof generic.” Which gave rise to the name of my first blog – genericsubject.com.
I have remained true to that original idea of having no set topic, and took heart, and validation of my motivation, from the 16th century collection of writings by Michel de Montaigne known as Essays. Montaigne invented the essay as a literary form, and despite suffering criticisms of self-indulgence by his contemporaries, famously declared: “I am myself the matter of my book.” Indeed, to read Montaigne is to meander through his recording of personal anecdotes and thoughts on any number of subjects, like friendship, education, virtue, the nature of knowledge, and the human condition. It’s a smorgasbord.
I call my blog a journal now for just that reason. I suppose I could just as easily call it an “essay” or collection of essays. To me, a blog is about a subject; it has a theme in mind. But a journal is more freeform; I write about whatever comes to mind, whatever interests me at the moment. Sometimes that is politics and current events, sometimes the post is about me, and sometimes it’s about how the ancient Greeks used to punish male adulterers by shoving a radish up their butts (no video available), or blowing up beached whales with dynamite in Oregon (video available).
But when all is said and done, blog is really nothing more than an Internet neologism, it is a portmanteau or word blending the sounds and combining the meanings of two other words, like how we get motel (from putting ‘motor’ and ‘hotel’ together) or brunch (from combining the words ‘breakfast’ and ‘lunch’).
Or blog, from ‘web’ and ‘log’ – hmmm, if that’s the case, maybe I should have called it WWW for World Wide Weighted-board.