Fathoms, Cubits, Spans, and Firkins.

I'm afraid I've been thinking. A dangerous pastime, I know. I swore to myself I'd be married to Belle and right now I am forming a plan.

Nah, just kidding, I'm not getting married, and I don't know anyone named Belle. Unfortunately. She is by far the rocking-est Disney princess. Smart, sassy, attractive, decisive, as well-read as rural peasant France could get, and strong. I've read people saying that Merida was what parents were waiting for in terms of a strong female Disney princess, but I'm like, please, Belle has been around for decades. And if you try to respond that Belle needed the Beast, then I would respond that the Beast needed Belle. Both relied on each other and achieved even greater potential. So I don't care what dress Disney wants Merida to wear as a princess or what she looks like. I already have a female role-model Disney Princess.

But I digress. What I actually want to talk about is something near and dear to my heart. Let's call them unfathomables. That which unfathoms me. Or that I cannot fathom. And fathom is a fascinating word, so let's detour for a second.

Fathom. As a noun it is the inconsistent measurement of the span of your arms, from hand to hand, generally accepted as about 6 feet, though only actually 6 feet if you happen to be about 6 feet tall (This is my favorite old school measuring tool, followed closely by a Span and a Cubit). If you are 5'5" then your fathom is not 6 feet. It's a measurement used nautically to measure depth. If you ship sits 5 fathoms deep in the water, then the last thing you want to do is sail your ship into 4 fathoms deep water. So the verb form (to fathom) is the measuring of depth. And so, just a short hop, skip, and a jump from that definition we get the way it is used now (not a whole lot of large sailing ships with sounding lines anymore), penetrating or understanding the truth of a subject (well, object in the purely grammatical sense). Some things in life you can easily fathom ("Hey, Tim, you're desire to date that girl is totally fathomable. Especially when you take into account that you only want to date her because she is visually appealing. That's exactly one fathom"). Other things in life are unfathomable ("Sir, I've used all the rope we have but we still haven't hit the bottom. The depth here is 80+x fathoms, or in other words, unfathomable!").

So what do I find unfathomable? I've already said women a ton of times. One time I got close, but I ran out of rope at 120 fathoms (that's 720 feet for the conversionally challenged, which is more than a stadium). I don't really have much else to say where women are concerned. I find them fascinating, but I'm okay with standing behind the rope while other people golf. Besides, think of all the sand and water traps. Let's leave those to someone who knows how to navigate.

One thing I do not fathom is humans. They are unpredictable. You start looking at motivation, emotional states, personality, all sorts of stuff that muddies the waters. Mice are easy. If you give a mouse a cookie, then he'll ask for a glass of milk. And if you accede to his wishes the second time, then you enter into a circular trap, spiraling down into a world of taking care of a mouse until all the cookies are gone. Moose are similarly circular. If you give my dog Frodo a roll, he will want your roll, too.  Not so with humans. You give a human a cookie, and who knows where that will lead? If I feed a human a roll, chances are they'll wander off somewhere and make themselves a sandwich. But you can't know for certain. There are definitely certain patterns that one can count on, but people deviate so often from these patterns that it's not even really worth knowing the patterns in the first place.

Another thing that boggles my mind is cheese. It is essentially the product of mold, and yet it tastes super good, but when it gets moldy we can't eat it anymore. But man do Americans love their cheese. From the Jarlsberg, to the Gouda, to the Provolone and the Parmesan. Even Americans have their own cheese (Appropriately named American Cheese), but there is an argument to be made that it is not, in point of fact, cheese.

All right, fine, I relent. Girls. They're like humans squared in terms of unpredictability. You think you know what's what, but then the what you thought you knew turns out to not be the what's what, and what you are left with is a feeling of what and why and how. That's all I have to say about that. But boy do I love them.

Rubik's cubes. They are not fun. And yet, somehow, they are one of the most popular toys ever. But they're not a toy. They are a puzzle, and puzzles are not toys, they are pattern recognition educational tools disguised by colors. The moment someone puts a Rubik's Cube into your hand, you naturally feel compelled to solve it. But you can't without looking online. Unless you are Will Smith. But the thing that blows my mind about the Cube is that at the end of all the time you have sunk into it to solve it, what do you have? You don't have a picture of a sunset over the Thames. You don't have a 3D construction of the Eiffel Tower. You have a cube, with each side a different color. And then you scramble it up again to see if you can do it. There is no reward but personal satisfaction, and as far as I'm concerned, people doing pointless things for personal satisfaction alone gives yet another reason why humans are unfathomable.

There are a number of other things that I don't understand. Why don't Russians love donuts and bagels, and why is that word interchangeable over there? How can pudding be milk-based, but Snack-Packs thrive at room temperature? Why did Clive Staples Lewis go by Jack?

And finally, the last thing for today that I find unfathomable is Jell-O. It used to be alive, but now that's freaky so they play that part down in advertisements. Wait a second, I haven't seen a Jell-O advertisement in ages. Oh yeah, I live in Utah, no need to advertise here. And why? Because for some reason LDS culture thrives on a Jell-O based dessert diet. And due to the widespread consumption of Jell-O, people feel a need to take it's natural gelatinous deliciousness (well, that's arguable) and tamper with it to make something new and exciting. Carrots do not belong in Jell-O. Celery does not either. I can handle fruit bits because Jell-O is "fruit" flavored. But then you get into the awe-inspiring Jell-O masterpieces, like one woman I knew made a veritable tower of Jell-O with over a dozen layers. When you factor in that it had to be cooled layer by layer, you're looking at a more-than-one-day process to make a dessert that I frankly cannot enjoy as much as brownies (1-hour tops). I understand tradition. I understand that it is cheap and you can make a ton of it. I understand that blending it with ice-cream in a blender and then letting it set makes the most delicious Fred Short's' Day treat in the world (Mudgy-Scudgies, as invented by the one-and-only Andrew McCole). Really I just don't understand adding vegetables. Just stop it. Apparently people also like mixing alcohol with it. Stop corrupting the inexplicable childlike joy of eating Jell-O.

In closing, I find that the most unfathomable things (and people) tend to be the most interesting. LIke which is cooler, the ocean when we know the depth of it, or outer space where there are no limits that we have found. Or who is more interesting to converse with, someone that you can read like an open book, or that mysterious, gorgeous woman who waffles to and fro so often that you don't know if she's on the same page as you, or even in the same library. I'll let you decide, but the answer you should arrive at is the unfathomable one.

But what I do fathom is sloths.