Captain Obvious - Evil Master of the Self-Evidently Unequivocal?

NOTE: I'd just like to point out that this post is NOT about the Blue Line Comics character called "Captain Obvious," but about the idea of being an ass by calling someone "Captain Obvious," the conditions for doing so being listed below. End of commercial!

Have you ever stopped and tried to count how many times the infamous superhero known as Captain Obvious makes an appearance in your day-to-day life? If you know the nature of this beast, then skip the following paragraph.

For those still in the dark when it comes to this ubiquitous entity, allow me to shed some light on the whole thing: whenever someone says something that's so utterly obvious that it's slightly painful - yet says it as though they just had an epiphany to rival the one the people had at the sight of Jesus turning water to wine at that wedding - that's when you clear your throat, turn to face them with a genuine smile on your face and say, "Why, thank you, Captain Obvious." (I'm in Theology right now, if it wasn't obvious. And yes, I fully realize the irony of that statement. Anyway.)

Now that the recap is over, allow me to continue. Captain Obvious is a menace. Let's just get that out of the way. In any given day, between real-life and Internet conversations, the so-called "Captain" rears his ugly head numerous times. How many, exactly? Too many.

Why exactly is Captain Obvious such an evil force? Why do his nefarious actions directly counter his heroic title? Such astute questions, and the answers, in keeping with the irony inherent in this discussion, are quite . . . obvious.

As the notion of Captain Obvious spread - by word of mouth and through the almost viral mass-communcation abilities of any individual connected to the Internet - people began becoming more and more self-conscious of what they said and, perhaps more importantly, when and how they said it. How many times have you bit back saying something that you knew was important to the situation at hand - regardless of the situation itself - simply because you weren't sure if this important tidbit was already common knowledge amongst those involved? I know that that's happened to me more than once, and I'm not important - imagine if that were to happen to someone who was actually influential in the world? I mean, President Bush must have this happen on a daily basis, because I know he's a student of many of the ancient philosophers, so he's not a complete idiot, yet he sure seems to be about as sharp as a marble.

What I'm trying to say is, Captain Obvious might have had noble roots. Maybe some bored kid (who was somewhat of an asshole) had been having a bad day, and some well-to-do old guy on the street said to him something along the lines of, "wow, you look like you've been having a pretty bad day," to which he involuntarily replied, "thanks, Captain Obvious." The fact remains, however, that in his application, Captain Obvious has changed sides. Like an across-time-and-space version of the classic game of "telephone", what started out as a simple, innocent comment has morphed completely into an evil menace that strikes fear into the hearts of those unsure of the information possessed by their peers, lest Captain Obvious make an appearance at their next utterance.

Captain Obvious went from hero to villain. That's not supposed to happen. He shall be known from now until eternity's end as Evil Master of the Self-Evidently Unequivocal. And now that he has become a villain, I'm going to have to get Batman to kick his ass, because I don't trust Superman. In fact, after class I was thinking of going down to Walgreens and buying some Kryptonite, because for a mineral that only existed on a planet that, ironically, no longer exists, Superman's enemies sure seem to have no trouble procuring large amounts of it.

But that's another observation, that I'll maybe talk about next time, but in the meantime, I hope you think twice about invoking the name of the hero-formerly-known-as "Captain Obvious."

. . . because I have Batman on speed dial.

Stay classy.