Displacement Ain’t Just a River in Egypt; or, What I Learned from Writing Recently.

Shipmates,

A short while ago, this embittered pirate wrote a rather bilious* missive for his adoring masses. It was, to an amazing extent, cathartic. It felt wonderful to publically profess my distrust, in general, for anyone who is “of a certain age”** and deep-seated distrust, specifically, for anyone who bothers me while I sit at my desk. But what, praytell, comes after catharsis? I was hoping for a euphoric state of transcendent happiness, and, yes, for a brief while I achieved just such a state, but it turns out that was the almond and coffee flavoured vodka I was guzzling whilst composing that first post.*** Sadly, the elated feeling of lightness left by my mental enema drained from me at roughly the same time that my alcohol-thinned blood regained its normal piratey robustness. All that remained was me and my problems. 

You see dearest readers, this pirate has decided to leave behind the cresting waves of the bounding main come January! I know some of you probably find such a proposition improbable, nay! impossible! But I assure you, my perhaps disillusioned friend, that I speak the truth. I have decided to trade in my eye patch and scimitar for the fragile ego and leather-patched corduroy jacket of an academic! Or at least the crushing debt and looming sense of having made TERRIBLE LIFE CHOICES of a graduate student. 

“Bravo!” you might be saying.**** Finally, this pirate has sown his wild sea oats and is ready to pursue an adult life in earnest! Well, my judgmental friend, please remember that such a choice comes with a burden! Like a pirate version of that old space rascal, Captain Kirk, I must enter the squared circle of life and do battle against my own self in the form of my faithful companion, Mr. Spock. Yea! I must take up the giant, double-bladed pole-axe of maturity and spill forever the copper-based blood of childish hopes, and, of course, score some green-fleshed babe along the way!*****

I think perhaps this last tortured metaphor illustrates much more than I had originally intended. You see, as Freud once said, “displacement ain’t just a river in Egypt toots.”****** Yea, I fear my ramped-up hatred for the Sphinx’s three-legged creatures is but a side effect of displaced anxiety: you see dear reader, while I have committed myself to a January start date, I don’t actually have a dissertation topic. I have some “ideas” about “stuff,” but since when does a university award PhDs based on such vagueness?*******

As well, while sailing the high seas has often times been transformed into an excruciatingly painful experience thanks to the rabid demands of the filthy passengers and my even filthier bosses, every day I get to spend time with that paragon of womanly, piratey virtue, the Dread Piratess Dewette! In the real world, our barks are moored thousands of knots from one another. And they shall remain so for the immediate future at least. We have arranged trips yes, but it still rips this old sea dog’s heart wide open to contemplate such a separation. 

So on with the bile and the booze! Here we are overnight in Tahiti! Let the 20$ beers flow! We’ll moan about the horrible beetle-like entities that, as I type these very words, sit playing rummikubs at one of the library tables instead of enjoying the delightfully seedy nightlife of Papeete! Arrgh! Ah! I feel better already.     

       

*Bile-icious even. Which reminds me of an old sea chantey!

Reader, can ye handle this?

Reader, can ye handle this?

Reader, can ye handle this?

I don’t think ye can handle this! Arrgh!

Another sea day, we’ll never arrive

Lookin’ morose, lookin’ sad

Most pissed-off pirate, pirate inside

Captain, port tonight?

Spotted me an ancient thang

There ye are, hobble baby

Don’t ye wanna walk unaided?

Can ye handle, handle gravity?

Ye gotta do much better if ye gone walk unaided

Ye gotta leave yer rascal if ye gone walk unaided

Read me lips carefully if that far ye can see

Move, groove, prove you can walk unaided

By the looks I got you shook up and about to pee

Hook up your diaper, it’s 7:30 and time for bed  

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this

Cause me blog too bile-icious for ye babe

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this

Cause me blog too bile-icious for ye babe

Reader, can ye handle this?

Reader, can ye handle this?

Reader, can ye handle this?

I don’t think ye can handle this! Arrgh!

I’m about to tell ye off

Old folks goin hard:

Replacement hips, wobbly thighs

Missing hair, watery eyes

Lookin’ lost, smellin’ weird

This morn’s breakfast in yer beard

Just like grandma ye give me a kiss

I can’t handle, handle this!

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this

Cause me blog too bile-icious for ye babe

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this

Cause me blog too bile-icious for ye babe

Move yer body up and down (arrgh!)

Make yer metal hip touch the ground (arrgh!)

I can’t help but wait in fright (arrgh!)

Yer body too fossilicious for gravity, babe

I write me blog at every chance

 While I type at me desk ye slip into a trance

I’m hoping someone can handle all the bitter text that I compose

I also hope you are not deceased merely at repose

Popah ye da hoo da arrgh!

Popah ye da hoo da arrgh!

Da hoo da arrgh! Hoo arrgh! Arrgh matey!

Arrgh Arrgh Arrgh!

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this

Cause me blog too bile-icious for ye babe

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this bile

I don’t think ye ready for this

Cause me blog too bile-icious for ye babe

**Old. 

***Probably easier to detect the wild state of drunkenness if you read the unredacted version with the 13 page rant about the “liberal media.”

****Especially if you are the type of pretentious nit who actually says bravo to people.

*****And not in the necrophilic sense either!

******Or was that Oscar Wilde? Or Winston Churchill? Oh wait, it was Mark Twain!

*******Well, I guess there’s always the U of T department of Comp Lit—zing! Take that Paula!

The Bitter Taste of a Pirate Gone Bad; or, Why I Have Not Been Writing Lately

Shipmates,

Ah…what can I say dear readers? I know I promised a veritable cornucopia of textual riches, a flowering of my writerly soul bared for all to see. I also know that I promised this once before after a similar failure to produce amusing copy in a timely fashion. The only thing that is more broken than my word is my very soul kind readers; the never-ending parade of human meanness and blubber that is the clientele of the ms Adventure* has ripped the still-beating heart from out my chest and left me a desiccated husk of a pirate!** 

You see, dear readers, we have just reached the half-way point of a 28-day cruise to Hawaii and the South Pacific. That means 28 days with the same whiny zombies—only they read and use my library twice as much as the regular whiny zombies I am used to do! And we have sea days. Endless, endless sea days. In fact, just for fun the other day, *** our wonderful captain cancelled a port—the sole port in a stretch of 5 days sailing from Hawaii to Bora Bora thus creating a five-day stretch of lovely days spent cooped up with 1200 of my closest friends. 

So here I am sitting at my desk looking at the notes from people requesting holds on certain books. With a collection of over 4000 books, someone who, after searching high and low for a book and telling me, “there’s not much I haven’t read here,” has asked me to hold the latest of Nickolas Spark’s saccharine works. I thought I had made my peace with the brainless reading habits of your average cruise ship patron, but right now, at the nadir of sea-faring career, the fact that someone just checked out Patterson’s foray into Harry Potteresque fantasy**** when a mere 10 inches to this apparently-literate patron’s left sat a wonderfully-haunting collection of short stories from Joyce Carol Oates. Similarly, I sometimes used to chuckle inwardly when a guest took such immense pride in his or her ability to read a book a day: yes, I would snigger; it must be hard to plow through all those Debbie Macomber tales so quickly! What a smart person you must be! And yes, dear reader, usually this taste of bitter sarcasm is just the nectar to sooth my poor, battered sense of personal integrity, but today? Today it was all I could do to keep from reaching for my scimitar and sending this tottering mass of stupidity to the briny depths of the boundless main!

And this, dear readers, is why I have not been writing as of late: every time I lift the pen to scribble some witticism to tantalize your mental taste buds, all that pours forth is the rankest bile. And who of you has the patience or desire to explore the dark reaches of this pirate’s soul? My only hope is that the upcoming string of port days will provide the respite from the churning torrent of willful ignorance that rages through these hallways like so many rascal driving ghouls!***** Is there, I ask, balm in Gilead?***** My very soul needs this succor, but I fear that all I shall find upon these sun-kissed shores are hordes of elderly French Polynesians clambering for crispy bacon, Sudoku,  and the latest mental pabulum to help them through the long cold days of their decline! Tomorrow we make land, and we shall see. We shall see.  

 

*The beautiful and elegant Adventure, according to our captain—more on him later. 

**Not literally. These people can barely lift their own body weight up from a chair.

***Although our captain is, objectively speaking, a sadist, he cancelled this port because the conditions would not allow us to ferry old people over to the atoll we were meant to visit. This was, however, not a huge loss: this atoll has 2000 inhabitants, no electricity, no running water, and a lagoon unsafe for swimming as they use it as a toilet. Yes, I missed seeing a shit lagoon.

****Seriously. It’s called Warlocks and Wizards or Witches and Wangs or whatever. 

*****My other hope is that the ships supply of Bombay Sapphire holds out…

******Gilead being Bora Bora in this case.

Of Emeralds and Alcohol; or, How the Dread Pirate Dewey knows that His Days at Sea are Drawing to a Close.

Shipmates,

Shiver me timbers! Your collective voices must be calling out as you read the anti-saline title of this posting; the Dread Pirate Dewey swearing off the ways of the bounding main? In favour of what pray tell you must be wondering? And what, I can hear you cry, will become of the salty flow of pure pirate juice that you call blood? Will it evaporate on land leaving you a desiccated husk of a manflower wilted before its time ready to be blown about upon the mere whisper of a fresh spring breeze?

Shipmates! Cease your incessant queries for but a minute!* Allow me to explain; lend me your ear** and listen to these reasons three that have recently decided the Dread Pirate’s mind! Reason the first: human feces. Today I found human feces on the carpet around the corner from my desk. No gentle reader, this Dread Pirate was not forced to sully his hands in the removal of said human feces; he had but to call housekeeping to arrange for a team to clean up the mess. But what a harrowing experience it was nonetheless! I can’t imagine that in the history of human endeavour and struggle that anybody had such a mind-bogglingly close encounter with human feces!***

Reason the second is my soaring bar bill. For those who remember the Dread Pirate Dewey in his why-yes-i-think-I-shall-have-a-giant-bag-of-Doritos-after-a-large-pizza-for-dinner days, you’ll remember he had a taste for the demon rum!**** However, after dropping over 100 pounds of excess pirate, even the thought of the calories in a single adult beverage give this pirate hives. On land a weekly stout amongst friends and fellow weekly trivia aficionados suffices. But on ship! Holy Moly! By the end of a long day spent shoveling platitudes, mindless literature, and Sudoku into the seemingly-bottomless gorges that we call guests this humble pirate needs about 6 or 7 double gin and sodas or his head will literally explode.***** This seems unhealthy. The no-pressure, take-it-easy world of academia seems the more sane solution.

And the third reason I can say with confidence that this pirate will shortly step away from the mast in favour of dry land is because of yellow emeralds. Sit down and hear this tale mates, for tis a nor’wester of a yarn! Aboard the mighty Adventure we have amongst our amoral crew a member of the Russian royal family fleeing the cruel hands of smelly, angry peasants.****** Her name is Katerina Karatova, and the other night she regaled us with tales of the shady practices of the Muscovite jewel merchants. It seems that these unscrupulous hawks have started marketing a gemstone they call a “yellow emerald.” This stone is so rare, they claim, that they and only they have it to sell! Of course, as one peasant asked, why, if the stone is so rare, are you selling it for less than a regular emerald? He was promptly boiled in oil. As Katerina Karatova noted, one can simply sell worthless beryl as a “gemstone” by simply trademarking a fancy-sounding name and gluing beryl onto some silver-plated nickel. Especially if one has either boiling oil or a captive market of semi-intelligent consumers.

This tale helped me think through a personal experience that I had the other day. I was grabbing a quick lunch and sat with a New Zealander crew member for convenience’s sake,******* and, naturally, we fell to talking. We moved to discussing the similarities between the USA-Canada relationship and the
Australia-New Zealand relationship. I noted that there are similarities in the relationship between native and non-native persons; that is, Canada and New Zealand are similar to each other and different from the US and Oz because in Canada/New Zealand there is a smaller non-native to native ratio and we perhaps live in closer contact. Now, I might have wrong in these opinions,******** and she might have made any number of salient points, but instead, she looked at me as if I had said something stupid and then told me that “in New Zealand we don’t have “natives.” We all have some Mauri heritage and are completely assimilated.” Oh. At first I was as much thrilled to hear that New Zealand had solved such a thorny problem as I was chagrined to realize that I had just made such a blundering faux pas. After a few minutes of awkward small talk however, I gave the conversation more thought and realized that, in truth, I was speaking with a moron, an optimistic moron perhaps, a moron with some semi-distant Mauri relation probably*********, but a moron nonetheless.

When I later heard Katerina Karatova’s tale, I realized that my annoying lunch companion was, not a moron exactly, but a yellow emerald: something of little value that can only exist aboard a ship. I also realized that we are all—all the pirates and feces-scrubbing crew aboard the mighty Adventure—yellow emeralds. Or, more accurately, we are all earth-buried material capable of emerging as diamonds through the process of applied pressures and time; contrariwise, we can end up as tacky beryl only appealing to the most taste-deficient marauding horde of consumers known to humanity. And thus, I must leave the high seas!**********










*Also the purple prose!
**Well, your eyes I suppose. And your imaginations!
***Well, the team of Indonesian housekeepers certainly got closer physically, but what of the emotional cost of that moment of “first contact?”
****And the demons vodka, gin, rye, wine, beer, cooking sherry, shoe polish, and Listerine.
*****Figuratively.
******And no she did not imagine that fleeing one such group would land square in the middle of another such horde. This is an example of irony.
*******I, like any truly civilized person, normally avoid all contact with New Zealanders.
********Although I am rarely wrong—as you well know dear reader!—I will grudgingly admit the possibility.
*********My great-grandmother was half-_________, so therefore I totally understand all the trials and tribulations of ______________ people!
**********After the Hawaii cruise that is; I’m not that crazy.

The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Old People; or, The Dread Pirate Dewey Returns to his Dread Ways!

Shipmates, 

       As you’ve probably deduced from the title of this missive, I, the Dread Pirate Dewey, have once more let loose the dogs of war to take arms against a sea of troubles!* And let me tell you my fine friends, the seas are aboil with trouble! Trouble with a capital T, or, to be more accurate, the capitals AARP!** During my time ashore, this old salty dog had begun to feel as though perhaps he’d been too hard on the aged patrons that plagued my nightmares. Perhaps the leering faces that continually haunted those moments of solitude snatched from a busy world were only hungry for love and not, in fact, the youthful sap that flows through my veins. Perhaps it was I, your humble narrator, who was too harsh—harsher even than the florescent lighting on the ship that turns even the spryest septuagenarian into a haggard octogenarian!  

     Well shipmates, I was wrong. It turns out the hordes of porcine, grubbing animals that howled along the avenues of my darkest realms*** are, in fact, well, grubbing howling pig-like beasts. Now, my months of land-based reflection and personal growth have given me pause in these descriptions; I don’t want to imply that every person over the age of 60 is a shambling pile of poor taste and cellulite. No, the chattel that roam the hallowed halls of the Mighty Adventure**** are not your typical retiree. These bovine need holes have been fed a steady diet of unreasonable privilege, high-fat gruel, and Fox “News” for years by a secret organization of people who hate me! Or so I must assume. It is simply inconceivable that a group of some 1200 strangers could congregate and somehow all become so quickly skilled in the difficult art of annoying me!*****  

      This is why, dear friends, I have returned to these literary shores. I thought I was free from the shackles of the quill, but as I gaze about my library and watch the quietly shifting mountain seated by the window splay her wide digits across the screen of her expensive tablet whilst playing Bejeweled as part of the continual struggle to stave off boredom until the next feeding, I know that I need some form of mental retreat, some succor from the great unwashed masses that want nothing but my sanity!****** Thus, I have returned! I hope to write soon about my time ashore, about Mormon interlopers, and about sundry other pressing matters! 

 

*I’ve also begun mixing allusions! Fun and pretentious!

**Look it up.

***I mean my dreams pervert.

****My new home! Arrgh! The name is just as pretentious, trust me!

*****Actually, it’s not a difficult art. Probably not even, technically, an art at all. 

******Well that and 6 or 7 high-calorie meals a day.

On Eating Dodgy Cruise Ship Mussels; or, The Dread Pirate Dewey’s Missive from The Hole.

Shipmates,

Well now, even if you were you the most cliché-loving, James-Pattersonesque hack squeezing out a living by convincing the reading public that your putrid prose deserves to packaged and sold as anything but dollar-store kitty litter, I would credit you with the imagination to come up with a scenario more original and less tied to the cruel whims of ironic fate than that that has befallen the Dread Pirate Dewey!* After months of surviving the vagaries of institution cooking,** dodging the quavering, germ-incrusted paws of the filthy elderly scamps I serve so lovingly, and even braving almost an entire cruise under the fearful Code Red, I, the mighty main-conquering bandit of the vast oceanic depths, have been felled by a mere plate of mussels!  

You see shipmates, the other night I received an oh-so-interesting “electronic mail” whilst happily ignoring the roving bands of slobbering retirees. It seems, according to this missive, that delicious mussels were to be served that very evening in the Officer’s Bar! Now, those who know me well know that if there is anything the Dread Pirate Dewey can never refuse it’s four things: damsels in distress,*** a good WOD with my CF people, a ship and/or coastal village ready to taste the buccaneer’s blade, and, of course, free, or at least reasonably priced, mussels! Oh, those disgusting-looking bivalva mollusca! How you look so like alien beings come to this world to spread hope and forgiveness! And oh, how wonderful you taste once cooked in a nice red wine, marinara sauce, or, failing that, a creamy, white wine-based sauce!

But now, even though I still have a lot of respect and love for my slimy little sea buddies, I fear it will be many a week—nay month!—before one shall know the pleasure of entering my oral cavity!***** For you see shipmates, I have send to the hole for my sins! Any GI symptoms reported by crew or passengers aboard the mighty Pequod are dealt with by quarantining the patient, and, since I share chambers with a lovely long-haired vagrant,****** they sentenced me to 48 hours of solitary confinement in the infirmary. Although this sounds harsh, remember that this is the Dread Pirate Dewey in the stir! The man who once wrestled giant ice sharks in the arctic circle! The famed plank-walker known for his ability to hold his breath underwater for over a minute! The sea-bourn legend who once spent 37 years on a desert island drinking naught but his own urine! OK, perhaps that last claim is not the most glamorous, but dang it! If there is a mortal that can stand the terrible trial that is the hole, it is without doubt the Dread Pirate Dewey! 

Actually, this has been the first day off I have had in 4 months,******* and if it wasn’t for the...unpleasantness...this would be quite enjoyable. I watched Cronenberg’s Crash (way better than that other crappy Crash that won an Oscar) and Lars Von Tier’s Dogville (if the gangsters showed up today and offered me the Power would I have all the elderly swine destroyed? Hmmmm), amongst countless episodes of Cougartown.******** I have also played video games, written this blog entry, got my nails did, read a Western, slept, and basically laid in bed for hours. I feel like this is a good taste of what my first week post-Pequod will be like, and all I can say is, bring it!*********      

*No I wouldn’t.

**Hint: the secret ingredient is probably not “love.”

***Or dude’s**** in distress; I’m actually a pretty nice guy.

****Is there a male form of damsel or is this another instance when the English tongue turns yet               another sensitive feminist soul into a Nascar-watching, “get-me-another-beer-hon” pleb? Curse you language!  

*****Get your mind out of the gutter! Is nothing sacred?

******Known as “Jazz Fingers” among land-based circles of solvent-huffing, underpass dwellers nation-wide.

*******Pathetic, right?  

********Thanks Kaitlyn! You are the best!

*********Except for the vomiting.

The Countdown Continues: Less Than 2 Weeks left!

Shipmates,

It is hard to believe, oh my faithful readers, but this salty dog has less than two weeks of servitude before the fetters are removed from his chiseled wrists! It seems but a matter of minutes ago that this young pirate boarded his first vessel unwise to the ways of the sea, untested on the battlefield, and still under the impression that with age comes wisdom! My how a thorough dousing in salty brine can shrivel even the supplest cut of tender beef! Where once hanged a fine, marbled side of manly meat dripping with the blood of its own innocence now dangles the tough, rawhidesque veteran of the salty main fit not for the gentle nibble of a buxom maiden but the vicious jaw of the mangiest cur!*

This leads me to wonder, what will a resumption of my life on land entail? Yes, I will have the luxury of joining my old friends for high tea, but can this compare with the riches the mighty Pequod routinely pillages from the ships we take? And certainly, it will be exciting to once more come together in a breathless encounter with my Crossfit peeps**, but what is this thrill next to that moment when I run my cutlass through a man’s still-beating heart as I swing from ship to ship? And my family, of course I miss my family; the winter nights as dearest mama would roast the chestnuts over the open hearth whilst dearest papa rocked in his chair, his eyes a-twinkle watching one of his grandsons cavorting upon the ancestral rugs***—how can I, a dread pirate, ever return to such scenes of familial bliss? Can the rum that now courses through my veins ever be naught but the fiery fuel that sends a drunken buccaneer screaming into battle? 

Or perhaps, so accustomed to the role of base servitude that my positions requires, once on land I will spend my days bowing meekly as I open doors for strangers in public places, mouthing a bland greeting for every new face that I pass with the fazed smile of an idiot man-child so favoured by the patrons of the mighty Pequod permanently plastered on my shell-shocked face! More likely, I will spend about a week in my underwear**** trolling about the Internet; the few times I venture out into the world at large I will snarl and snap at anyone over the age of 50 who dares to approach within 20 feet of me!*****  

And what of the Equally-Dread Piratess Dewette? Shall my savage heart, nearly-choked with black bile at the thought of the decrepit “readers” that once made bold enough to lay claim upon the time and mental resources of the Dread Pirate Dewey, be able to find the humanity to actually miss another? The answer is yes, of course, don’t be stupid, but I should also note that our separation will be but for a week! Yes dear readers, I am returning, after a brief week ashore, to the mighty Pequod as what we call****** a “friend on board!” Finally, Dewey shall taste the fruits of his labours, lap the milk of luxury*******, and be fed grapes from a smiling Filipina’s brown hand!********   

*Have I taken this metaphor far enough?

**Get your mind out of the gutter!

***From Ikea!

****Another treat for my hetero female and gay male readership! You’re welcome!

*****Except for you mom and dad! Love you guys!

******In the biz.

*******Like some kind of pirate kitty! Arrgh!

********Well, not actually fed in such a manner, but  I could go upstairs and get some grapes from the Lido buffet! Well, if we have any today...I’m also fairly sure none of my Filipina co-workers would hand feed me smilingly or not.