Monday, June 7, 2010

FanTastic

If you’re anything like me, and I’m sure you are, you’re probably thinking, Holy Toledo, how did you ever manage to stumble upon the World’s Largest Fan? Am I right? Well, that’s exactly what I thought when I first saw it too. I was cruisin’ down by the shipyard, when my baby browns caught wind of that fan and right away, like you, I’m thinking, Holy Toledo, it’s the World’s Largest Fan!!!! And being the “fan” that I am of super-sized, and out of proportion things, I had no choice but to take a closer look. Right then and there, I turned my V12, turbo, fuel-injected, hybrid car around so fast I nearly ended up in yesterday.

So, then I started thinking, what if I were to stand in front of the fan and hit the ON switch? Would I end up in Kansas? Would it blow me into oblivion? Would it dry out my eye sockets so I could never blink again? Would it straighten my hair had I had curls? Would I even survive?

After musing on the endless possibilities of the uses of a fan of such gargantuan proportions, I finally read the accompanying plaque and that’s when disappointment hit me like a ton of lead. As it turns out, it’s not the World’s Largest Fan after all. What you see before your eyes turns out to be the mysterious 4-blade turbine-driven central propeller of the Titanic—a boat of some sort from the year 19-something or other. However, there is the question of whether this is really the central propeller or not, even though it was found lying next to the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean floor. And here’s why…

“Supposedly,” this “Titanic boat” had three propellers, all “supposedly” having 3 blades each. Yet, in an anonymously taken picture, from way back when, or perhaps earlier, it showed a man standing next to the central propeller, which had 4 blades. However, all documents “supposedly” show no evidence of there ever having a 4-blade propeller on the ship, boat, or whatever it is; hence, the aforementioned mystery. Hmph, some mystery.

Please keep in mind that when this picture was taken, I had accidentally, left my Krause debauching lens on my camera, causing a slight distortion in size. The propeller was in fact, actually much larger than it appears. Hard to tell, I know.

I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to find this junky, old, propeller from some old boat that probably no one has ever even heard of rather than finding a treasure like the World’s Largest Fan. It has caused me such grief, agony, and dismay that ultimately, required me to seek therapy. I know you know what I mean. I’m sure you were just as disappointed to find this out. It’s a terrible misfortune, I tell ya.