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.