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.

On Zombie Leavings: or, Life must be Tough for Brainy Women!

Shipmates,

Often times you have heard* the Dread Pirate Dewey remark upon the strange nature of the “human” cargo that haunts the corridors of the mighty Pequod. Yea, at times it seems that I must be safely ensconced in my fine linens and jaunty nightcap** soundly slumbering and trapped in a foul nightmare! The twisted freaks of humanity, whose souls have long since decayed from too much exposure to Fox “news,” stumble about in search of even the feeblest ray of light to help them “burn and rave at close of day!”***  

Anyhow, as you might imagine, and as, in fact, I have previously mentioned, these cantankerous zombies have reading habits that would turn the blood of any lover of les belle letters as cold as Goneril’s  love-less heart! So when I am not busy dolling out doses of daily Sudoku or signing out yet another thrilling Patterson novel, I find the time to peruse the “paperback exchange.” This, for the uninitiated,**** is a cupboard in which guests leave old paperbacks and pick out new ones in exchange. I have found some real gems in my day! I keep all the Westerns for my own reading pleasure, of course. With the romance novels that come my way, I put them in an envelope labeled “ESL Training Manual” and leave them in my Ukrainian friend’s mailbox. If I find hardcover books in good condition, I sometimes enter them into the library system, but some I keep for myself. My favourite find so far is a book titled Take the Young Stranger by the Hand: Same-Sex Relations and the YMCA, mostly because I love to imagine the smirk that must have graced the face of the person leaving such a book on such a ship as the Pequod.

That was my favourite find until today. Just now, shipmates, I happened upon a real find! It is titled  Nobody’s Baby but Mine, and it is, I assume, a “real page-turner!” I shall leave you now with the synopsis found on the back cover. Enjoy.

Nobody’s Baby but Mine

Genius physics professor Dr. Jane Darling desperately wants a baby. But finding a father won’t be easy. Jane’s super intelligence made her feel like a freak when she was growing up, and she’s determined to spare her own child that suffering. Which means she must find someone very special to father her child. Someone who’s more comfortable working his muscles than exercising his brain.

Cal Bonner, the Chicago Star’s legendary quarterback, seems like the perfect choice. But his champion good looks and down-home ways are deceiving. Dr. Jane is about to learn a little too late that this good ol’ boy is a lot smarter than he lets on—and he’s not about to be used and abandoned by a brainy, baby-mad schemer.

*Well, read.
**Otherwise naked ladies (and gay gentlemen (oh, and gay ladies probably do not care actually…))
***Well, either that or Sudoku.
****Or just plain stupid, god bless ‘em.

On Regaining Canadian Waters; or, Tales of a Haligonian Hooligan, Part 1.

Shipmates,

As any who truly know my wild marauder nature*, you will of course take it for granted that the Dread Pirate Dewey holds no faith in the flimsy illusion of nationhood! Yea, there is not a flag that flaps in the wind that would elicit the solemn tear of the true patriot; and The Dread Pirate Dewey would certainly never wait on bended knee while some royal tick grew fat and bloated feasting upon the unfairly levied taxes made possible merely because they are swathed in the purple robes of tradition!** 

All this you know to be true mates, and yet…and yet the Dread Pirate Dewey had more than the salty brine of the sea upon his manly cheek when first he regained Canadian waters! T’was a night like many others; The Dread Pirate and his sultry Piratess were enjoying some stale ship’s biscuits and grog*** aboard the mighty Pequod when the Dread Pirate felt his muscled heart give an extra squeeze! A joyous squeeze that echoed the first natal pump that heralded the Dread Pirate’s entrance into this mortal realm! The Dread Piratess, being but an ignorant American, felt nothing of this grand revelation; surely, her equally-mighty heart must have felt just a little more liberated being for once in the land of the truly free; the republican vein that marbles any cut of American beef must have shriveled just a little bit upon seeing the majesty of a humanely-organized society!

Regardless, for the Dread Pirate, it was a moment of celebration! Finally able to use money that makes sense—no more of this single colour nonsense! Give me colour-coded currency or give me death! And since we are praising colour, let us not forget that glorious “u” that colours our very Canadian language! Oh “u”! Oh lovely “u”! How you bring such a youthful glow to the dimpled cheeks of our words! Truly, no grunting, trailer park dwelling American sweating over a keyboard with a bag of salty snacks firmly fastened in porcine digits could compete with the honour afforded by the simple “u”!****    

And yet for all this joy, all this fulfillment of the Homeric conventions of the hero returning home, there is a touch of sadness to this tale. For all that the universe surely smiles upon all that is Canadian, the Dread Pirate must ponder in his manly soul, where for art thou Caribbean sun? Clear blue waters that once washed over Dread Pirate Dewey, whose body is now being licked by your salty tongue?***** Oh glorious and fast-setting Caribbean sun! Are you now the unloyal concubine of another’s eyes? Oh days of yore when time off the Pequod meant time on the white beaches of a tropical paradise!******

But mate, this is life. With the good, such as looking upon your child’s first smile, and the great, such as when the Lido actually has kidney beans available during the evening meal, comes the bad, the sure knowledge that your son or daughter will undoubtedly be a vast disappointment or the even more sure knowledge that tomorrow the Lido will fail to provide any healthy carbs instead serving bucets of butter-drenched over-cooked vegitables thus forcing you once again to choke down a plate full of none-too-fresh “salad!”.  Yea, as the preacher once said, “there truly is nothing new under the sun, just stale veggies poorly prepared.”

*I’m like the proverbial rolling stone that gathers no moss—except that I also pillage treasure-laden ships and coastal villages. Arrrg!

**Or maybe the Dread Pirate Dewey is just too lazy/irresponsible to file his taxes. Either way.   

***More likely it was the usual not-exactly-fresh veggies, not-quite-identifiable cut of meat, and water, but close enough. 

****There are, in fact, other reasons to love Canada, but this seems sufficient for now.

*****Get your mind out of the gutter!

******Either that or hunting for slow and expensive internet.

Let the Countdown Begin!

Shipmates, 

Well shiver me timbers! The Dread Pirate Dewey has less than one month of servitude left in his contract aboard the mighty Pequod! For about three and one-half months, your humble guide to all things both nautical and bibliographical has been slaving away over his keyboard for the elderly republicans who call the high seas their temporary homes! 

To be honest mates, I find it hard to believe that the waves of salty brine that have seeped into my very pores will soon recede leaving me just another landlubber!* Soon, I shall stand amongst you, shoulder-to-shoulder, jostling for a mere view of the ocean blue and its plentitude, and stymied by my poor soil-grubbing existence in the search for that ever-retreating horizon! 

On the other hook, I will no longer be required to jump to the demands the decrepit crustaceans that scuttle about the deck of the mighty Pequod! No longer shall ancient conservatives be able to foist their unholy will upon me!** I shall be free to skip and jump, to sleep in, to shrug off the cross of orange that is my perpetual burden! Free at last, oh lord, free at last!****

And yet, on the third hook, I have recently taken to my salty breast a fiery first mate, and our rovings are legend amongst those in tune with the way of the seas! I’ve come to depend on this young piratess—she combs my parrots, loads my muskets, makes sure that my eye patch is set at its proper rakish angle—in short, she has become an important part of this pirate’s life. But fear not oh over-romantic readers! A short week after my return to the dismal stretch of land I once called home, I shall once more board the mighty Pequod! This time as a “friend on board.” Basically, I live as a crew member aboard the ship with none of the actual responsibilities of my then-previous job—for free!

But on the final hook, these ruminations have opened the door to the larger issue haunting my mind as of late: what shall become of The Dread Pirate Dewey after the period of his indentured servitude to his cruel Seattleite overlords has ended? At the moment, I am pretty committed to one more contract sailing the Panama Canal aboard the mighty Pequod!***** But after that? Recently I have been leaning towards a triumphant return to the hallowed halls of academia; the literal cut and thrust of the Pirate’s life being no replacement for the more figurative variety offered by a career spend doing intellectual battle for the very souls of the young scholars! Then yesterday I had a rather illuminating exchange with a passenger. He was looking for info on some small town in the North West Territories, the home of an interesting artisan he had just met in port. As I was explaining that we probably didn’t have anything specific enough, he suddenly asked me where I went to school. I told him Bishop’s (yea!) amongst other schools and politely asked him where he had gone. He answered in rapid fire that he had received his BA, MA, and PhD from UCLA, that he was a retired professor of Native American studies, and had written 12 books. Ok, I said. After a fruitless search for the information he was looking for, I left him at the atlas, but not before he implied that Canadian universities offered little in the way of Native Studies. I explained that, actually, every university I had attended offered many courses on the field; I was simply uninterested in taking them. The exchange left a bad taste in my mouth. 

Are these the dry ashes of small-minded bitterness upon which I shall feast if I steer my bark down these academic waters? Should this lusty pirate abandon a course through the tumultuous seas of fragile egos in favour of another watery path? Or is “Mr. 12 Books” merely an example of the kind of jerk one must face in any line of work?   

*Like you, dearest reader.  

**Unless I need to borrow my parents’ van…***

***Just kidding! Love you moms and dad!

****Too far?

*****Well, not the same Pequod, but another incarnation thereof.