Psychology 101: Vehicular Personification

Ok, we're in the midst of crappy winter weather, so I thought it would be good to write a cruise-related blog entry today.

I would like to announce my official opinion of the new Epic class of ship being introduced by Norwegian Cruise Lines:  It's hideously ugly, and I'm afraid of it.

We love to go on cruises, and we recently got together with some folks with whom we'll be cruising to Hawaii in a few months.  Some of us began chatting about this new ship, and some of the people were talking about how exciting they thought it was.  I had to offer counter-testimony, because this truly is the ugliest thing in the ocean, and I am including octopuses and squids in that assessment.

At first I couldn't quite put a finger on why I hate this ship's design so much, but I finally did a deep analysis, and I came to some really insightful conclusions.  If you happen to be a psychology major, please feel free to steal this idea for your thesis -- I promise you'll get an A.

Ok.  Here's the deal.  I believe that we have a natural tendency to personify our modes of transportation by giving human characteristics to various vehicles.  Think about the movie The Love Bug, for example.  Herbie is a cute, lovable VW Beetle.  His headlights are his eyes and his front bumper gives him a bit of a smirk.  Same sort of thing with the more recent movie Cars.

When we look at a car, we subconsciously think of it as having a human face, and we can either like it or dislike it for those features (are you psychology majors writing all this down?  Good).  My Prius, for example, has a bit of a round head, but has a sophisticated elegance about him.  He's witty, yet restrained in his personality.

Anyway, I strongly believe that the same thing goes for ships (and airplanes, too, for that matter).  When we look at a ship, we can sort of think of the bow as a giant nose, and the decks above it make the eyes, etc.  A quick glance will make you feel good about it, or it will perhaps scare the crap out of you by having a menacing appearance.

Well, that's where the problem lies with the Epic (pictured at the beginning of this entry).  When you view this ship from the front, it looks like the poor thing has some sort of severely malformed forehead.  It could be a tumor, or some sort of monsterism.  Whatever the case, it has this bulging forehead area that just looks disturbing.  I just know this ship has some sort of mental issues, and I would be afraid that it would start veering all over the place, possibly in search of smaller ships that it could eat.  I dunno.

Epic is scheduled to enter into service next June.  Don't say I didn't warn you.