Blistering barnacles!

Disclaimer: Go through the following topic only if you are totally jobless like me.

"Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles!"

A lot of people wonder about this phrase used by Captain Haddock in TinTin. For your welfare, I've tried to explain a part of the meaning of the phrase here in this post.

Why does Captain Haddock often use the phrase "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles"? What is the meaning that he is trying to convey to us? Is he trying to convey something to the world? Something about life and something about how we should live? Let's delve deeper and find out the possible meaning.

Now to truly understand Captain Haddock's phrase we need to look at it from backwards. Let's start from the last word - "barnacles". As you know, barnacles is a crustacean that attaches itself permanently to a variety of surfaces. Here the Captain could possibly refer to us, the mortal human beings, as barnacles and how we attach ourselves to various things of this world. People tend to attach themselves to things like money, power, beauty, etc., which in other words can be called as addiction. Captain here refers to human beings being addicted to worldly stuff.

The next word - "blistering" means something that is intense. The Captain is trying to say that we are intense about something. Now combining both the last words, you come to understand that blistering barnacles actually refers to human beings being intensely attached to worldly stuff. Stuff that is volatile. We are intensely attaching ourselves permanently to stuff that is impermanent.

Now the phrase slowly begins to make sense to you, doesn't it? Yes. Let's go further.

The next two words "bilious blue" refers to two different colors - one is the color of bile, which is green and the other one is obvious, blue. So what does bilious blue mean? It signifies the ever changing human nature. The Captain here tries to make us understand that humans are always changing according to the situations. Someone who is your friend today, might turn against you tomorrow. Someone who is lawless, rebellious, unruly and rude today might turn into someone calm, moderate, quiet and restrained. This is what the captain indicates through the words "bilious blue".

The last word from the back or the first word of the phrase -"billions" obviously refers to the number of human beings in this planet. The Captain just gives a rough value - billions of us.

When you put together all these meanings, the phrase "Billions of bilious blue blistering barnacles" actually means "billions of ever changing human beings attaching themselves permanently to things that are impermanent". Now you get it, don't you?

So this phrase is actually Captain Haddock's observation of human beings and their lives. If you think deeper about this phrase, you can actually derive a whole lot of meaning about life and how we should lead our lives. I will talk about that some other day as you must already be saturated now.

DrCygnus.

Picture Credits: The Internet