The Tangents of Carsenio St. Hubbins

One thing Carsenio St. Hubbins does extremely well is go off on tangents. It is how his brain operates, his speech is reflective of it and anyone who has been on a road trip with him knows the joy of finding points C, D, E, F and G well off the beaten path from the trip from point A to point B.

While his tangents can occur at anytime, they most often occur when he is making a point about one thing, says something profound and it is like a floodgate opens- tangents aplenty come flying out. For example, Carsenio was asked why he didn't submit any postings to this blog during the year of 2011. He began to explain his reasons when suddenly he felt compelled to share how he pioneered Gastrosynchronization- the training of one's bowels to go number two at the same time each day regardless of whether it is Daylight Savings or not (10:24am Mountain Time is his scheduled time). He then explained the intricacies with getting his bowels trained, challenges of keeping a clear schedule during that critical time, and related the painful failures and blowouts he experienced along the way.

As he was expounding on this tangent, he suddenly discoursed on the difficulty of finding a decent public restroom. He warned against restrooms at all J.C. Penney stores due to issues with the poorly constructed toilet paper they provide there. In his exact words, "it took me two times longer to clean up than it did for me to make the mess. These things should not be!" He then recounted various experiences had at public restrooms around this country, compared them with British "loos" and expressed satisfaction at trying a coin operated self cleaning restroom in the middle of a shopping center during his time in Wales. "It was magical," he said.

The above is just one example of his tangents. Interestingly, over ninety percent of the time, St. Hubbins does return to his original subject but it can be hours, days or even months before he does this. His mind is able to recall those deviations, who they occurred with and seek to bring everything full circle eventually. For example, St. Hubbins had gone on a camping trip with some friends and on the first day had mentioned the rock band Rush and how amazing they are. The conversation quickly veered off track and Carsenio was unable to speak his complete peace regarding the brilliance of Rush. For days they made fun of other bands, quoted favorite lines from movies, discoursed on the follies of American foreign policy since Woodrow Wilson's presidency, marveled at the beauties that surrounded them, and discussed the dangers of boy bands to the fragile fabric of society. One week later, when they were nearly home, Carsenio quickly said, "getting back to Rush, they are so amazingly brilliant it is sick!" To his friends, St. Hubbins came out of left field for that, but it was another coming full circle for St. Hubbins. He started the thought one week before and closed it when he felt moved upon to do so. Carsenio is a huge fan of the comedian Steven Wright who once said, "I wish the first word I ever said was the word 'quote' so right before I die I could say 'unquote.'" St. Hubbins is trying to close those circles no matter how long it takes.

Even as this post is being written, St. Hubbins wishes to mention how he came to calculate the percentage of his tangent closings. It was part of an article he started, entitled "Anthropological Studies I Performed On Myself." He will one day finish the work, but the tangents he created during that article must first be sealed in due time so this work can finally be completed. In an effort to bring one tangent from the article full circle, even though he is the only one who has seen the article/tangent, St. Hubbins wishes to inform everyone that wolves have made a huge comeback since they were introduced back into the Yellowstone ecosystem and he predicts that the time will come when their populations will spread into the mountains further away, perhaps to the very Wasatch Mountains St. Hubbins loves so much.

You may have seen tangents in the previous postings on this blog. Rest assured that in his own time and in his own way, Carsenio St. Hubbins will come back on topic eventually. He knows himself too well to doubt it. His memory is too keen and trivial to let such tangents continue into infinity. He will right the ship eventually. Speaking of ships, the captain of that Italian cruise liner shouldn't have righted his ship- he should have turned left ("lefting" his ship) and avoided colliding with the shallow reef that eventually cost the lives of many vacation goers. That of course, is another subject entirely...