First Mate Starbucks would like to inform the record that he has received word of a recently-enacted ordinance banning totally the use of plastic straws, to be enforced throughout the entire whaling jurisdiction of Nantucket, Massachusetts, somehow and unhappily extending into the California waters upon which we now sail. These dire tidings have done nothing more than to exacerbate our captain’s present psychological troubles. How is he expected to be able to focus on his responsibilities, if he is not also able to draw quickly and uninhibitedly upon the most immediate source of caffeine to hand? And there is absolutely no room in this narrative for a tangential excursion into the theme of environmentalism. I will not stand for it, and I will not write about it. Our voyage is about whale hunting, pure and simple.
