It's Just A Dream

Mortal Fool

Ascend, goddamn you!

Rise from fair Phoenix ashes, embalmed

To live and be lived, to be once again

Discard earthen rags; soiled, sloth-steamed scraps

Wash unclean thoughts and transgressions

Shed the self who sees no one else

Blink into being

Time cascades tributaries; each of us

To one day dry, evaporating into clouds as yet unclimbed

So ascend, mortal fool!

Before you like she is no more

A whispered vapour among outstretched hands

...and normally I'm such a fan of sleep. 

I dreamt about her a few times this week.
The computer is telling me that I spelled 'dreamt' incorrectly.
That's right, isn't it? Past tense?
We all dream in the past, so there's gotta be a word for it.
Anyway, when I dreamt about her while she was alive, and they were all silken scarves, that was fine.
Not so crazy about them now.
Now I have to wake up and remember that she's dead all over again.
There were a few episodes of that this week.
I suppose I have some subconcious things to tell her.
She doesn't say much in them...

Sarah used to describe her dreams to me all of the time - she loved yammering on about herself.
Dreams are as imaginative as any of us have an opportunity to get between YouTube playlists.
Dreams are us at our whackiest, and she was no different.
But even for dreams, I used to find hers far-fetched. 

The very first I had was long ago, a couple of days after it happened.
There was no giant stone or tomb, but it was sorta like a resurrection.
She lay curled in her mother's lap, in the Turpin porch, on the pew (maybe it's just a bench once it leaves a church).
Her Nana was there too, and they were quietly appreciating her.
It was just like a room with a newborn baby in it, y'know?
You walk in and things are very hushed in a positive way; a quiet, tired hush, but one full of potential.
People greet one another, but they just sorta make a little noise with their mouth because it's such a still kinda moment.
That's how the two women welcomed me as I came in.
The analogy makes sense. The baby room thing. Go to a maternity ward and stroll into a room with a just-squeezed baby in it and you'll understand what I'm getting at.
Anyway, she rolled a bit and looked up at me and said, "I'm done with you."
It was a joke. 

I always believe mine.
I'm one of these goons who could dream about being held at gunpoint by a former priest, and while the dream is going on, I am convinced that this is truly happening to me.
"Oh my Jesus, Reverand Letto's gonna kill me and steal my stuff."
This week marked the first time I ever saw through a dream of mine.
She and I were in a room and I remember little else, but I told her, "I'm dreaming this. This is a dream."
And she didn't disagree.

It Used To Be So Nice, It Used To Be So Good

ABBA is fuckin' awesome.
I'm not even sure why.
Mama Mia yer brains out!

Moving On

The final video was recorded unbeknownst to the videographer.
The payoff is at the end when Mom chases me down the street.
I have no idea why she did that, but I intend to tell people that it's because she's a huge SpongeBob fan.

...And Another Thing

Conducting ourselves based on what she 'would have wanted' is misguided.
You can't always get what you want, no matter what.
No one suddenly gets everything they want simply because they're dead.
Otherwise, no one would die in the first place.
Focusing solely on what she would have wanted is a misjudgement on the side of grief. We want her back so badly that we just want to please her.
Just doesn't work that way.
Sometimes we'll have to do what she would have hated (eat pickles). That's realistically 'moving on'.

Time helps because time forgets those who aren't a part of time any more.
Time numbs.
Time busies us into Christmas shopping and getting back to hating our fucking jobs, and the result is a distracted detachment.
That's not healing.
Of course, writing sad poetry and never getting another job isn't healing either.
Perhaps getting back to ourselves in spite of ourselves is the best option, but only given the circumstances.
In a make-believe society with no wars, where everyone lives in grass huts and eats fruit every morning, I believe they would find a better approach to mourning.
Ours is the consumerist's take on it.
Throw money at it, and if that doesn't work, just keep our heads down and act like this is what we wanted all along.
I'm playing ball only because I have to.
If and when I die, don't worry about what I wanted.
I've never known what's best for me anyway.
Instead, concern yourself with what I hated - what I rallied against, and then ask yourself why.
Ask yourself if I was right.
That's logical, isn't it?
"This is what he would have wanted, but was he wise to want that?"
Then you'll truly be contemplating me.
Sorry about that, by the way.
If I'm dead.
I swear, I don't mean to be. In all liklihood, it was an accident and we're looking at a closed casket affair.
Just as well. Everyone looks better alive.

In one of my ass-pocket-comedy-books I wrote:

IF I'M DEAD AND YOU'RE READING THIS, THEN WE BOTH HAVE THE WORST LUCK

I specifically wrote that as a joke for Turpin.
I always assumed I'd die first.
I guess that means the joke's on me.

What More Do You Want?

...and every silly song seems as though it has significance. 

All I want to do is sleep (and nap).
I'm not sure if this means I'm getting back to normal or not.
Getting back to normal is what we're supposed to be doing; getting our affairs in order (which is to say, back to extramarital sex).
I don't particularly want to, but then, I never wanted to do this while Sarah was alive either.

Being dead carries a lot of responsibility.
There's a lot of talk about what she would have wanted.
She wouldn't have wanted the kids eating this.
She would have wanted us to expand the porch or hang the Hallowe'en decorations in this window versus that window.
It seems important to honour the wishes of those we have lost, but being dead doesn't make you right all of the time.
She's even bossier from the grave than she was before (don't worry, she would have laughed at that). 
What she likely would have wanted is for the rest of those in her family to form a singing troupe and tour around Europe.
And I shall be their manager!

Sarah tried comedy approximately five times.
She was a natural, but then, I would say that.
I used to fantasize about us forming a comedy duo.
Not a couple of idiots sharing a guitar onstage, but just the two of us talking to one another, including the audience when we felt like it.
The dynamic really would have worked.
But we realized there would be a lot of unchaperoned nights in a single hotel room.
And that might have left a fly in the goblet, if you catch my drift. 
I go back onstage for the first time tonight. 
I intend to be bleak.
It's what she would have wanted. 

Oh, and by the way,  I sincerely wish someone had successfully shot what's-his-face Harper today. That would have legitimately, honestly improved my day considerably.

Swallow Your Pain

We all must go on, go on

Go on b'y! Go on go on

We all must go on, go on

For you won't live again

I do my best mourning in the evening. 

This is probably because it takes me several hours to actually wake up. 

I'm at the rummaging stage now, filtering through all of the junk I own for any scrap or morsel of her. 

I toss aside old ping pong paddles and Playstation consoles and hiss to myself, "This can't be it! Where's the rest of it?!"

Sort of like someone on the fiend for drugs, or someone who can't find their brilliant recipe for guacamole. 

All pieces of paper and scraps of our past that I come across I want to ingest. 

Like, I keep experiencing an urge to swallow this note or that card from her. 

I have to stop myself from doing it. 

I suppose I figure that if I swallow these figments, I can't ever possibly misplace them. 

She'd also probably get a kick out of it. 

"He's not going to try and swallow the whole picture frame, is he?" 

In Our Time Of Needles

I'm too tired right now. To write quippy things for you guys, I mean.
I'm not too tired to use the keyboard or anything. I'm here, after all. I'm present.
I was supposed to get my stupid mourning tattoo tomorrow (Turpin loved my stupid tattoos), but I can't because I have to give blood first.
For any would-be donors out there who are also in a motorcycle gang, you can't donate for a year after getting a tattoo. Or a piercing (through your penis head, or the bridge of your nose or wherever).
Some of Turpin's family are working on a blood donor initiative that I won't selfishly spill the beans on, but I should probably participate in that before getting her face tattooed to my inner thigh.

This experience has taught me that, like karaoke, I prefer to mourn alone.
The wake/funeral were very suffocating in that everywhere I turned there was someone.
This was our swim coach.
This was an old teacher.
Here's some dude that I don't know who is chewing a ham sandwich with his mouth open.
I often found myself extricating my person from the other persons.
I'm grieving alone still. These blog posts may seem like grieving, but really this is just me drawing attention to myself, just as I always have.
Like, I'm sort of hoping that Sarah's dying is just the angle that this blog needed.
I mean, I've got the writing chops. I've got the "voice" (whiny; off-key).
A gimmick is all that I've needed to shoot myself into super-stardom/marketability.
I'm not going to date 50 dudes and bang very few of them.
No one would want to read that.
But a friend's death and my consequential mental breakdown?
That's an untapped ploy.
Anyway, what I'm getting at is that I mourn alone, but I will share this thing with you because it's been very pervasive and weird.
I've had a song stuck in my head since she passed, and I don't know why.
It's "Crazy" by K-Ci & Jojo.
I'm not making this up.
At first, it was just stuck in my head the way songs are stuck in your head.
You're driving or golfing or tuning out your grandmother, and suddenly you realize that you've been humming the song and you weren't even aware of it.
Now, however, it's becoming more continuous.
It looped through my head all day today.
I'm beginning to believe that it has a subconcious significance that I may never figure out.
Like, we were listening to it while having some stupid conversation about dying.
Or we used to sing it to each other into our hairbrushes and pretend we were famous or...something.
I listen to it when I feel like crying.
Sometimes I feel like crying anyway, and I listen to it because it's sort of catchy.

Can't See The Memory For The Trees

Peter was telling us that it was time to gather close friends and family.
I went into the den of my father, thinking of my nights standing there, looking across the street during our conversations and escapades.
Why not look at one another while we spoke on the phone? We had the luxury.
I went to the window then, to look at where she once stood, and to seem dramatic.
But Dad's trees were 15 years older, and I couldn't see past them.
I realized then that there was no going back to that time.
We'd all been adults for too long.
I sank.
A minute or a day later, Peter called to tell me.


*Geoffrey Hartman, in his paper On Traumatic Knowledge and Literary Studies mentions two contradictory elements of trauma knowledge, and this post, when it was written, was an example of the first of those, I think. On the contradiction, Hartman mentions how traumatic knowledge of a horrible event is "registered rather than experienced. It seems to have bypassed perception and consciousness, and falls directly into the psyche."
The other form of trauma knowledge, according to Hartman, "is a kind of memory of the event, in the form of a perpetual troping of it by the bypassed or severley split psyche" (page 537).

*Peter was Sarah's husband. We met at the age of eight when he happened upon me rolling my red wagon along Finn Street, mere meters from the house she would come to live in.
They only got married cause they met, and they only met cause of me. And y'know, I never pointed that out nearly as often as I would have expected myself to.
Though I couldn't share the bond they'd eventually form (there wasn't enough room in the bed), they let me in on little big things, like telling me that Sarah was knocked up before anyone else. We were rolling in their Mazda 3 at the time; two surrogate parents telling their adoptive 29-year old that he was about to get a new brother or sister.
Did I mention there were kids?
Oh, there were kids alright.

Wakey Wakey, Legs So Shakey

It was a brief stop at the costume shop, and then I was off to the wake.
I chose Spongebob Squarepants because he's very popular these days.
Also, I recently watched a documentary about voice actors, and the Spongebob guy seemed really nice.

I saw a lot of folks at the wake. A lot of old friends.
A lot of girls I once wished I'd gotten handjobs from.
It was a good day.
The service will be over soon, and then the hunt for a new whacky friend begins.
A psychiatrist would likely say that I've been using humor to avoid my own crippling grief.
Granted, a psychiatrist might be right about that, but on the bright side it should make for some great blog posts.
Don't touch that dial!

Rise and Pine

Fuzzy today.
Sort of feel like I haven't slept enough, probably because I haven't slept enough.
Rowan came by to wake me up this morning.
"Wake up, Uncle Paul!" Her cute, stupid face a few inches from mine.
Then I yelled, "Get outta here, kid!"
Later in the day I poked her awake while she was napping.

Weren't You Just Here?

I feel like I'm in a small room with a single, unlocked door which leads to a party full of people that I don't want to talk to.

Hopefully I'll feel like something else soon.

...

My best friend died today.
...
Nothing funny about that.


* written approximately 2-4 hours after "the news."
Really, I have no idea what time it was that I learned the news. I just know I uploaded this post at 6:41, and I know that I napped before I wrote anything.
I remember coming downstairs, leaving solitude for the first time, to sit to my mother's dried, re-heated pork chop (they thought it better to eat without me).
Sarah couldn't eat by the end of it. In fact, she couldn't swallow water either.
An old-school vegetarian, she stopped ingesting flesh back before it was fashionable. She admitted that if she got out of there, she wanted to eat some meat (or at least chew and spit it). I promised I'd make her whatever she wanted.
This dialogue ran through my head (my first haunting!) as I thought to myself, "She couldn't eat any more. I shall never eat again! For her!"
Then I realized that was stupid and started cutting up the chop as I cried.

Coach's Corner

I have a 'dot com' of my own, and I'm sexually active. Things are falling into place.
Coming at you live from a bus somewhere.
Oh, I know that you probably figure the bus has gone the way of the horse-drawn, but when one can't afford a lease on the new Mazda 3, this is how man must traverse.
I sat in the back of the bus because I still want to be the cool kid, and on a coach line, no one can make me sit elsewhere.
Don't do that. Don't sit in the back.
I sat far too near a drunkard, who yelled a lot of profanity during our lunch stop because he didn't realize it was a lunch stop.
"How long do it take the driver to have his Jesus cigarette!? Let's fuckin' go!"
Later, he offered me straight vodka from a pineapple crush bottle.
He kept waking me up to shake hands with me, and he wasn't taking no for an answer.
"We're in this. You and me. We're fuckin' in it."
If he meant anything besides the bus, he was wrong.
We're not in it.
Another woman, who looks like she's kicking a drug, had been crying for the first half of the sojourn.
Now that we're into the second half, she's releasing absolutely ungodly farts back here.
It seems impolite to move now when I was willing to put up with buddy earlier.
He told me to charge his iPod because I "knew about that stuff," referring to me as a "pointdexter," which he pronounced incorrectly.
I think it's the glasses.
I'm heading to my homeland, and ultimately, the stage.
That crackly ol' mic. Can't get enough of it.
I've been watching some film about a preacher whose kid didn't die enough because they play bullshit movies during the bus trip.
I have a former blog post about being forced to watch a movie about a snowboarding chimpanzee through the same bus service, but I can't track it down right now. 
Anyway, there's not much of a point to this.
I'm just trying to get back into a daily blog routine, and some days aren't that interesting.
Primarily, I wanted to tell you about the drunk guy.

Don't Forget to Write

I tend to blame the outside world for my out-of-season hair and shabby clothes.
When I was a wee lad, shitty at basketball, I stumbled upon a word processor in Robert's house.
A word processor, for anyone born this side of Y2K, is (was) an electronic typewriter.
What a satisfying device!
Just like a regular typewriter, but it weighs twice as much and can't be used in a log cabin.
And it used to make that satisfying click-clackety noise as I typed along.
I used to write stories I called Murder, He Wrote.
Little stab stories about my buddies.
After the death scene, I'd pen, "That's the murder part..." 
Mostly, I just loved showing off my typing skills to my buddies, but they're not the only stories I've written for kicks.
I could be a gymnast, sure.
Or a teacher, I suppose. I'm actually qualified to do that.
However, I'd much rather be a writer.
Here are some of the perks to being a writer.
I know this is the 21st century, so I'll keep them nice and short, in bullet form.
Comin' at ya!

• Sleeping in is normal and, in some cases, encouraged
• Rampant alcoholism, though sad, is seen as okay by your friends and peers
• You're expected to wear large, comfy sweaters all day
• When people see you at your laptop in Starbucks and they think, "What a dick," you don't care because you're at work in a coffee shop, rather than being on a coffee break in a coffee shop
• Flexible hours, loose women
• Unkempt beards and hairstyles are fine
• People assume you're insightful, allowing you to talk over others at parties

The list goes on.
They say, "Everyone needs a writer."
I've found little proof of this.
Mostly because I never bother looking for work beyond the mailbox.
So today, I got on Twitter and hashy-hashy'd #bloggerswanted.
I'm a blogger. You want me?! Come n' find me!
Can't get paid that way, though.
So I went to them.
People just want bloggers for new fashion magazines that are never going to get off of the ground.
As it turns out.
None of them seem to be paying.
I can't live on sweaters missing a button, you dig?
I wrote a maid-of-honor speech for my former manager once, and I didn't know anyone who would be at the wedding besides her.
Everybody loved it.
In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David asks a doctor to look at a mole on his back.
The doctor is in a hurry and refuses.
Impatient, the doctor eventually asks Larry David what he does, and Larry says, "I'm a writer."
It just sounds so beautiful.
That's all I want to tell people. 
So, if you need something written, let me know.
I'd love to finally fulfill my destiny.
Until then, I'll keep polishing these gems for you fine tacticians.
Maybe the blog will catch on after I die.
#deceasedbloggerswanted

We'll Be Right Back

Is everyone sipping their tea? Good.
Everyone fantasizing about sleeping with a co-worker? Good.
We've got the right atmosphere going here at Tragic Hero, then.

Prostitution is totally legal in some places.
These are the places I would most like to visit.
I've often thought about picking up a Japanese prostitute - just Japanese.
And it's not even like I'm into the whole Asian scene.
I mean, I'm not not into it, but I'm sure that any of us could say that.
We've all been to the Chinese buffet.
We've all been to the intimate massage parlor.
This is not racist. Stop thinking that it is.
Anyway, for those of you who have been fans since the beginning, you'll know that the Asians tend to be into me.
Which is fine.
None of this has to do with the prostitution thing.
Perhaps it's the appeal of the love hotel that actually fuels this bizarre, unaffordable fantasy.
I don't want to contract a sexual disease in Tokyo, I just want to spend a night in a structure shaped like a rocket ship.
Again, most of us could say that.
I think I'm a little more romantic than usual today because I've been listening to The Cars.

I've listened to little else, though.
I used to pride myself on pretending that I knew a bit about music.
It's nice to be able to feel superior to others for no good reason.
I worked at that music store.
I was a part of the scene, even if it was the machine part of the scene.
The scene's machine.
I used to just sit and listen to music.
These days, I spend fifty percent of my music time listening to the same videos from my YouTube playlist over and over.
The other fifty percent is spent listening to YouTube's goddamn ads.

No escaping them.
Ads.
Although I have no concrete notion of why, George Meyer is a hero of mine.
He once said that if he had a choice between ridding the world of nuclear war or advertising, he'd choose advertising.
Impassioned, I realized that I agreed with him as I read it.
Television commercials are one of those things that seem to affect me differently than everyone else.
Like, when I hear a television commercial I begin cursing immediately, and I try to find a way to stop it.
That's what I was getting at with ads on the Internet.
The Internet is slowly undoing TV (finally).
We have Netflix now. We have projectfreetv (not that I endorse it [obviously I endorse it, we all do]).
There are options that no longer involve a cable box.
You can still watch hillbillies shoot alligators with shotguns, and you don't have to DVR or schedule yourself around it.
And no ads!
Then they started adding ads.
Now there are just as many online as there are everywhere else.
I guess that's nothing new.
I mute commercials as soon as they come on.
All commercials, no matter what medium I'm watching them through.
It's one of those things that people find odd about me, while I find the opposite odd about everyone else.
My sister-in-law asks why I mute commercials and the only thing I can think to ask her is, "Why wouldn't I?"
Why wouldn't I?
What commercial am I going to hear that I need to hear?
I know the products.
KY Warming Sensation if I want to masturbate when the power goes out and there's no heat.
McDonald's if I want to fit in while feeling ashamed of myself.
Swiffer Dusters if I need to, inexplicably, clean the blades of my ceiling fan.
Who gives a shit? I don't need some voice actor from Toronto yelling at me about mutual funds while I'm eating a sandwich.
Do you?
And they're so goddamn loud.
The volume is jammed up four or five notches above whatever you considered a comfortable decibel to begin with.
Unnecessary loudness drives me crazy.
It's the reason I have a tough time in sports bars and grade seven classrooms.
Never mind the fact that they're everywhere.
Just think about how many commercials you have been fed so far in your life.
All adverts; not just TV. Print ads, radio ads. On-the-side-of-bus ads. All of them. 
How many hundreds of thousands? That's the number you're probably looking at.
Hundreds of thousands of yammerings about Pokemon and fuckin' Sears outlets.
Now, how many more will you see before you die?
Really think about it.
It starts to make sense when you really think about it.
It's something that I never asked for, and I don't want it. 
I might have to see them, but I'm not going listen to them too.
I'd love a job writing them, though.
Another thing I'd be good at if someone just gave me the chance.
Watch, I'll show you:

Ahem:
Hoping to lose your virginity on a date in Dad's van?
Tired of dirt not showing up on your car's paint job? 
Or maybe you just really hate your wife. 
Treat your car to smooth, refined Turtle Wax. 
Only idiots get their cars professionally detailed. 
Do it yourself with the shine that takes its time. 
Turtle Wax.

See? We've all seen so many commercials we can write them ourselves.

Pad Tired

One time I was in some place where they sell items.
Wherever.
Some trollop was there with her daughter, who was maybe five.
The kid was fucking around, being five, making noise, making demands.
The mother stooped low, and I overheard her hiss, "You're embarrassing me."
And I thought to myself, "No lady, you're actually embarrassing her."

What's more unbeatable than cancer?
The effort to beat cancer.
That's not supposed to be uplifting.

So roll out the carpet sample and bound up your feet, it's Turpin's birthday today.
She swallowed one of my gray hairs that fell off of my scalp once.
It was really gross.
Y'know, she used to have it going on, sure.
We all know that.
I mean, get her drunk on three coolers; sporting mens' glasses frames; setting up the tent by herself.
She was the full package.
But she's got these kids now.
She's also married to my best friend, but that's just a movie plot.
That ain't no thang.
But these kids, I'll tell ya.
They just, you can't get rid of them, can you?
A gaggle of children are sort of like an inapporpriate racial slur at a dinner party.
Once it's out on the table, there's no getting rid of it.
I love them.
The boys are always good for a laugh, and Rowan's old enough now that Peter can teach her to call me 'Uncle Fartface.'
It's perfect.
They all came on out to Pasadena ("Where?") for a visit, and that was good enough.
Sometimes the little ones get uppity, but you just have to give them one of those Heinz baby food things.
It's like a juice box, but it's a bag and it has peas in it.
All mashed up!
Water's great for kids. 
They're entertained by it, they can drink it (we were in a freshwater environment), and they can urinate right in there and no one needs to know about it.
We had a lovely day.
One of the little fellas wouldn't join us during snack time, but Andie managed to lure him up to us with cheezies.
They always want to eat. They're like the dog.

Yes, it was a helluva afternoon.
But then nightfall came.
Sorta.
It was gettin' on duckish.
That's dad's term for dusk.
Had to feed the babies. Had to feed everyone.
So, I was making pad thai in the kitchen because it's not just my sexual specialty.
The dish is perfectly suited for children. It can be family friendly if I'm not making it at the bordello.
It took me a while to prepare it, and the children seemed more fussy than usual.
By the time I had finished cooking, the children were all calamity.
They were just shrieking, oh how they were shrieking.
And I was thinking, "Let's jam some noodles and shrimp in these fuckers and smoke a joint."
This is the thought process of a bachelor. I'm unfit to babysit, everybody!
Nothin' doin'. They wouldn't eat anything.
They were screeching because they were hungry, reaching for food, but when I'd try to feed them...
Oh ho. What a loud, unsolvable pickle.
And I just remember thinking that I badly wanted to drown them.
To be fair, the pad thai was probably too spicy. 
Anyway, it got worse at bath time.
They couldn't have made more noise if you were skinning them.
Andie and I were outside of our home, and the catterwauls echoed in the evening sky, emitted from our bathroom.
It sounded like an asylum.
It makes no sense. When you have no children and you look at something like this, it makes no sense.
How does this become normal? How could you let this become your day?
Until you see pictures of them all camping.
Until you see them laugh and do all of the sweet bullshit that Anne Geddes loves to photograph.
Then it becomes a little clearer.
You see that they're all where they should be, and that feels right, so long as they're only visiting for a short time. 

Yes, the birthday girl has come a long way since our muted flirtations as twelve-year olds.
Sure, I have a thin mustache now and Sarah shaves her legs, but otherwise little has changed.

They call that a mom bathing suit.

I want to do a photoshoot with the boys in which we're all Greasers.
Sarah says I can give them cigarrettes, so long as I don't light them.
It's going to be great. 

Until Then

I once was a young lad, a-writing

Til I no longer found it exciting

Now I sit and I stare at my curl'd belly hair

And I muse on the matter of timing

I'll write something real tomorrow. 

Or perish!

Chasing My Trail

Gin is a spiritual drink for me because with Gin I throw up the least.
Of course, I drink Gin most frequently because of this, so I throw up the least most often.

I went mountain biking.
It wasn't erotic, obviously, but it was something that may have turned you on.
Myself, cascading over little paths with rocks on them.
Mud splashing everywhere.
Mountain biking I can do somewhat confidently because I haven't grievously injured myself on a bicycle yet.
Andie suggested that we take some path or another because she's into the concept of exploring.
And I say that's all fine and good and whatnot, but it's very difficult to explore while you're wearing your pajamas.
Unless you're exploring the jewelry section of Wal-Mart at 8pm, but that's another sort of thing.
I'm a bit of a homebody, granted.
I tend to not risk or...participate, but that's because I received so many participation ribbons while growing up.
So, according to the trophy case, which only contains participation ribbons, I have participated enough.
Not so for Andie, however.
She has this habit of pushing forwards at the precise time I want to go home.
Like, at Mad Rock the first time that we went there?
Mad Rock is the place in Bay Roberts that you never go to as a kid because it's way out in the east end, and paddling your bike beyond your piano teacher's house would be crazy.
Anyway, she wanted to get right on down there by the rocks.
The slippery ones, y'know what I mean?
Wherever the signs tell you not to go. That's where she's headed.
In Banff - this is unrelated - in Banff they had signs around the hotel because you weren't allowed to go into certain areas.
Wanna guess why?
Oh, come on. Guess. It's not like you're doing anything important at your job.
Unless you're the mayor.
Is this the mayor? Denny? I forget what he likes to be called.
He officiated a wedding I was at once.
Anyway, Denny, if you're reading this, you can get back to the slush funds or whatever.
The rest of you?
Anybody?
Snails.
They found special, endangered snails that you weren't allowed to trod on.
Then some idiot tourists wandered in there and got into trouble because tourists are idiots.
Ever been travelling elsewhere?
You were an idiot at the time.
Don't feel bad; my family owned a motorhome when I was a kid.
We were a tribe of idiots right up and down the eastern seaboard.
When you're on vacation - wait...I think I wrote about this before.
Try this post, I think. 
My theory is that when you're on vacation, since it costs so much money and since it is for such a brief, particular amount of time, people tend to lose sight of themselves while vacationing.
And, when you lose sight of yourself, you tend to forget about other people.
And, when you tend to not think of others, you tend to be an asshole.
Hence...
Banff was a real tourist town. I witnessed a lot of their habits, all of which were annoying.
"A postcard town" is the tab you want to hit for more Banff stories.
Most involve me not closing the deal with women and getting high a lot.
Anyway, Andie goes into dangerous places.
If you're on a hike with her, you're going to get your boots wet.
Inevitable.
So, on the bicycle I was sort of going for it, and she liked that.
And I liked that she liked that, and I liked going for it because I never go for it.
Like, when I was a kid, Dennis would always build ramps for our GTs (sleds, if you're from the mainland), and he'd immediately goad me to go first because he knew that I never would.
I always hesitate. I always avoid fractures.
With the missus, though, I go out of my comfort zone a little bit.
I second-guess less.
I still pay close attention to the signage though, as that's something she tends to miss, and we don't want to kill any snails that are in short supply.
I'll upload a photo of us on our little bike go-about.
We crossed a brook twice!
You'll see in the picture that, by Warford standards, I am smiling.
It's good to get out sometimes.

Oh,this is just an aside, but check out this picture.

I already put this on my social media bullshit, but here it is again.
Foodland parking lot here in Pasadena.
That's the keys to the car, and the window is open.
I'm used to Newfoundlanders leaving things unlocked, but even this was a bit far for me.
That's a Mercedes SL, which means that, even by Mercedes standards, it's expensive.

Here & Vow

That's it.
I can't watch any more footage of people injuring themselves while trying to pour buckets of water on their head.
It would appear I don't have much going on, but there has to be something that would be a better use of my time.
Perhaps I'll wash the dog...
While I'm unkinking the hose, read the remainder of Colin's Marriage Chronicles, for those of you who still give a damn:

The wedding did, in fact, happen.
Nothing really went awry.
The babies made a lot of noise and fussed about and so on, but anyone who has been to a decent wedding or Christmas Eve church service has seen this before.
The maid of honor did forget Colin's ring, but that was glazed over with a lot of sitting around and murmured discussion.
After what seemed like a fair amount of time for the groomsmen to just be standing there, I managed to draw attention to myself, getting on the mic, saying:
"Umm, we just have a brief delay while the women find the rings. Remain patient, all of you will still have plenty of time to object."
I'm not sure all of mom's friends got it.
He did okay, the fussy codger.
Colin really dislikes public speaking (he also dislikes being mentioned in blogs), but he did pretty well.
No flubs along the way.
I know that I tend to not get nervous about this sort of thing.
And I know that I haven't been married.
But I've heard a lot of dudes say that their biggest fear is messing up the vows.
Even though you repeat after the priest, and he really breaks the sentences up quite a bit:
"I, Paul..." "I, Paul..." "Craig Warford..." "...Huh? Craig Warford..."
That sort of thing.
How badly can you fuck up the vows?
It's not like you're going to come out on the other side married to your mother.
"I knew this would happen! That's why I told you and Dad to sit in the back! Now I'm married to both of you and the whole day is ruined!"
Just take your time when you're doing your vows, kids. You'll be okay.
The photo shoot was tricky.
Oh, sure, the photographer and her assistant both had very charming bodies and asses and so on, and it'd be great to see the two of them enjoy a hottub together, but the day was too warm.
And Colin hates getting his picture taken (noticing a trend?).
By this time, I was very out of sorts because I hadn't slept the night prior (I love doing this for major family events), and I hadn't napped.
Also, acting as the MC, it was relatively unwise to drink, so I was getting pretty contrary.
Not as contrary as old wedding pants, though.
He really wanted to get out of the limo, send...Eddie? Was that the driver's name?
Anyway, send Eddie on his way, and get started on supper.
That's what Colin wanted.
We stopped at several locales, and the lack of communication between limoist and photographer was complicating things slightly.
Sending him out to stand on a cliff edge for half an hour likely didn't help Colin's mood.
And, Flynn, who is a wedding veteran, wasn't helping during the sojourns between shoots when he'd tell Charlotte, "You're never going to use these pictures. Do you think you're putting a photo of us all doing shots on your mantle? This is all a big waste of time."
We peed in a governement house and went to the reception.
We were half an hour late and everyone was waiting to eat.
Showtime!
I did great. I'm available for all of your weddings, should you need me.
No matter how many times you get married!
The speeches were whatever and the turkey was pretty good. They had a glaze on the carrots.
Then we danced and that's another couple who are now one another's emergency contact.
The tradition lives on.
Colin was smiling a lot. Everyone commented.
Despite himself, he was having a lovely time.
Andie and I represented the young, unattached heathens that everyone else longed to be once more.
Some were overheard to say that if we got married, they would attend the ceremony, whether they were invited or not.
I have only one thing to say to these crashers:
I hope you like skydiving.
Because if we do get married, the whole goddamn thing is going to be one skydive after another.
That's the theme.
Wedding shower (whatever the hell that is)? Skydive.
Bachelor/Bachelorette parties? Skydive.
We'll be throwing the cake and all of the gifts out of the plane on their own little parachutes.
At first, we considered scuba diving (as a play on "taking the plunge"), but you can't fit a tuxedo under the wet suit.
So, skydiving.
We hope you get the chance to...drop in!
You get that one?!
Anyway, it was a helluva wedding.
Too bad I'm out of unmarried brothers now. 

Bachelor Patio

The benefit of a french-immersion course, besides ensuring that your child will become a successful flight attendant, is that when they call for a cab in Montreal, one will actually collect them.
Not the case for this anglophone.

I'm ordering another tarantula today.
Don't tell my mom.
The west coast of Newfoundland has much larger spiders than the east coast.
I suppose they're necessary for ensnaring the massive, unyielding bird-moths that live here.
There are a bunch of them among the bedroom's ceiling corners as I type.
I insist upon keeping them there because I'm difficult to live with.
Anyway, wanna see?

It will look much like the one that this engaged person is sporting.
Andie agreed to the idea because she never thought I would actually get around to ordering one.
Since I'm so lazy and all.
However, she didn't anticipate how focused I am when it comes to spending money.
I 'feed' wild spiders all the time. I'll grab some stupid bug and throw it into a web. 
I'm on the side of the good guys.
Spiders will never give you an itchy bite on the webbing between your fingers, or on your genitals.

Speaking of an uncomfortable penis, paint-balling was on the docket for the bachelor party.
Any of my readers who are in the fan club and have the member's sew-on patch already know how I feel about paintball:
Strongly 'for'.
We trundled ourselves and our beer coolers into St. John's so as to bruise and intoxicate Colin.
We all stood about in Frontline's parking lot as we tried to pretend it wasn't 35 degrees outside.
Difficult for Newfoundlanders to do, as they tend to complain about warm weather more frequently than they even do about cold weather.
I shot two people in my first round.
Brian, however, also shot me in the head and on the hand - two places that are specifically known for being unpleasant.
I didn't really care, what with the adrenaline and all.
My body is so unfamiliar with it that even a thimble-full toughens me right up.
However, when the ball hit my head (forehead corner region) I heard a distinct ringing noise for half a second, which I wasn't crazy about.
I crawled through the thickets on my stomach and elbows and had a wonderful time.
Eventually, we pelted Colin with the remaining balls we had left.
He was permitted to defend himself, and he managed to shoot Ian right on the head of the penis!
Once he had finished doubling over, I believe that even Ian was a little tickled that it had happened. 

We ate barbecue at a nice woman's house and I mixed some incredibly shitty daquiris.
They always look so tasty in the movies, but I definitely took a wrong turn in the mixology somewhere.
For the safety of pedestrians, we took a cab downtown.
We went to Lottie's and I drank one White Russian before laying the other one aside.
Disembodied hands gave me these drinks, so far as I know.
I have no idea who bought them.
I learned, over breakfast the following morning, that we had gone to a second bar.
I couldn't remember this.
I did an Irish Car Bomb? Pardon me?
When did that happen?
Don't remember that. And I did pretty well at it?
That would be a first for drinking any beverage of any kind.
Well, that's fuzzy.
No, now that you mention it, I can't really remember how I got home or how I ended up in our hotel room.
Guess I took a cab. I'd hate to know how much I tipped that guy.
Luckily, I have no recollection of interacting with anyone after my half-hour conversation with some truck driver at the bar.
He, in fact, is about the only part of the evening that I do recall.
We talked about life on the road.
If I hadn't been so hammered, I'm sure I would have found it depressing.
Breakfast was dandy the following morning as everyone recounted their drink orders.
Some hard-on with a power drill kept interupting our brainwaves while doing some sort of renovation.
I was tempted to say to the waitress, "Can you please tell the man with the drill that he's negatively impacting your tip?" but I decided not to be catty.
Besides, I'd already confused the woman when she asked me how I liked my eggs and I told her that I didn't know.
All of Colin's old friends were there (the only kind he has these days).
It's a beautiful thing, really.
A collection of memories and laughs, all bundled into a group of men standing on a patio.
Bachelor parties are the echoes of childhood that men rarely get to hear once they become men.
The hair thins and the eyes wisen and the wives get in the way, but the personalities persist, unerred, once the boys get together. 

A Ken And A Prayer

Here's the difference between my mother and I:
Mom prefers to plan each and every detail of an important event so that it will unfold smoothly.
While I, on the other hand, prefer to do everything differently than my mother.
Andie and I were six hours away from the wedding by car, twelve or fourteen hours by boat, and about 66 million years by pterodactyl.
How were we getting across, mom wanted to know.
Well, da b'ys were supposed to be dropping out for the weekend.
Boys' Weekend we had taken to calling it.
Doesn't take a genius; we'll hitch a ride back with da b'ys.
The days lined up near-perfectly.
Yet, Boys' Weekend bottomed out at the last minute and became Babies' Weekend instead.
Still fun, but fewer molested strippers.
Anyway, babies use baby seats and baby seats occupy regular seats, hence our ride was kaput.
Well, how would we get across the island?
Rent a car, whatever.
A rented car is a perfect excuse to show off new sunglasses anyway, so whatever.
Big deal. Rent a car.
Everyone leaves on Sunday. Bachelor party is a couple of days away, the wedding itself is in six.
Ring-a-ding, "Hello, car company? One car, please."
All cars across the entire island were rented because my life is a joke continuously being played on myself.
So, how were we going to get across the island?
Well, now I no longer knew, but Mom didn't need to know that (yet).
I called Colin and gave him an update on Sunday evening, and he pointed out that I had to make it because I was due to stand in the wedding.
Duh.
"He's also the MC!" Charlotte called from the background, which I had forgotten.
So, the lady perused Kijiji and found some fellow darting across.
New Subaru, so we couldn't take the dog and had to instead stick her in a kennel, which was too bad.
Yet, at this point, we had to focus on the big picture:
Getting to the bachelor party in time so that I wouldn't miss paintball.
Ken was a fellow from China with good English and a nice interior.
We got aboard, laid out our cribbage board, some books, magazines. This won't be so bad, right?
A town or two over, Ken picked up a young German couple who were traveling around.
They also have good English and nice posterior, but I know that Germans poo on each other in the bedroom, so I couldn't even look the lady German in the eye.
So, now we were a little crammed in.
Tough to play crib when you can't move your elbows from the sides of your body.
As we began to cruise, thus discomforted, Andie asked, "Oh, are you a Whitney Houston fan?"
"No," Ken explained, "This is Celine Dion. I got her CDs at some such place and so on..."
Three hours. Every Celine Dion hit that you'd forgotten about, plus some other tracks you never gave a shit about in the first place.
Anyway, when it was all said and done it wasn't so bad.
We ditched the Germans in Terra Nova, and then we were able to sprawl out enough for me to beat the missus in crib three or four times.
She's still learning the game, but she has to win stuff, y'know?
You know the sort? Typically they play sports and get way too into croquet at barbecues.
I've never cared about winning or losing at anything I've ever done at any time in my life.
I could play jacks with a five-year old girl fifty times in a row, losing each time, and not care whatsoever.
Who gives a shit? It's jacks.
Who gives a shit? It's crib. We're passing time, here.
She was a few points from winning, talking all sorts of shit and jabbing it in my face.
Suddenly, I bamboozle her with a 16-point hand and win the game.
Well, now what?
Heavy breathing. Like, she had to take huge, paper bag breaths so as to not freak out on me in the back of Ken's rig.
"Okay," deep breath, "That's okay. Let's put the crib board away." Deep breath.

We chit chatted and chicken salad sandwich'd our way through the ride and got to Roach's Line.
My brother Brian was there to collect us and he and Andie met for the first time and we gave Ken nods and thanks you's and best-of-luck's and parted ways as he continued on to St. John's and the rest of his life.
Got back to Mom's, unloaded the truck.
I hefted along with my bag and I looked ahead to Andie who was about to enter the house, and it dawned on me.
"Oh Jesus."
She was wheeling Ken's luggage across the driveway.

Tying the Knot

Like most sprawling voyages, this one begins with Ken.

It's a long story, but in June I bought a tiny book about knots for eight bucks in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia.
While I was on the ship I vowed that I would learn how to tie some cool knots from all of these clever sailors.
But you know me with vows...
I left the ship learning nothing (what a relief!) and I decided I'd try to uphold my empty promise to myself regardless.
Then, while having a two-day hour long conversation with an old buddy's dad, I found this wee book about knots.
Serendipitous as it was, I decided to get fleeced on the price and take it home with me.
I really will have to try and pack the story of the knot book into a seperate post because it really was quite retarded.
Anyway, yesterday I thought I'd cut off a length of rope, wrap each end in electrical tape, and get to work.
Here's what I picked up:
I have no spatial reasoning, no patience, and no new knowledge of knots.
I learned the half-hitch and thought that everything was going quite smoothly.
Half-hitch slipknot. Hey! I just pull this guy and it comes undone! Tying knots is a great bit of fun.
Figure eight stopper knot.
...
Half an hour later
Figure eight stopper knot.
The book, proving to be of less and less value with each passing day, shows the knots, but doesn't provide figures instructing you how to actually tie them.
And goddamn this knot.
Ten minutes later
I'm watching a YouTube video on how to tie a figure eight stopper knot, realizing that this is why people are reading less books.
The video didn't help either and by then I was too pissy to continue.
Anyway, feel free to try it yourself.
The book says it's a better stopper knot than the regular overhand we all use to tie everything.
If you're willing to trust the book, that is.

 

I'm warm and I'm probably sooky.
It's incredible how desperately a man may need a coffee shop.
I'm not one to write at home.
Perhaps I've always had problems with writing at home because I fish for excuses to not write anywhere.
Or, ultimately, maybe I just enjoy a three dollar oatcake from time to time.
No oatpucks to be had in this town, however.
Oh sure, I can buy cotton gloves and rat poison under one roof here in Pasadena ("Where? Where is he?"), but coffee shops are a tad rare.
There isn't even a Tim's, for crying out Horton's.
There is a Trudy's, however.
Picture a cafeteria in a trucker's driving school, then attach a walk-in beer fridge to it.
That's Trudy's.
It's my first day writing here in Trudy's, and I suppose, ideally, it won't be my last.
I mention all of this because there are two dudes wearing steel-toed boots sitting across from me, and I think they're finding my prescence strange and it's making them uncomfortable.
I hope this is true because they're definitely throwing me off of my game.
So, Colin got married.
This is my oldest brother for any newcomers.
Colin is a curmudgeonly, sour man.
He likes cats and those soft cheezies, and that's about it.  
No one who knows Colin personally would have expected him to agree to something so joyful as a wedding. 
Don't worry, he planned none of it.
As a consequence, it was a pretty good time.

Andie and I just returned home after an almost-week at Mom's, full of sweaty family members, screeching toddlers, homebrew and sex down at Mad Rock.
So, settle in with your mamosa - wait, let's find you a recipe for that.
Okay, so coochy in with your mamosa and your favourite lap dog, and let's see if I can relive the magic over a number of seperate, marketable posts.

Don't Cost A Thing

Written the yesterday before yesterday, Corner Brook Tim Horton's (da one by Dominion):

I'm writing this on a...I think it was an info tag for a life jacket.
Y'know the sort; they attach them to winter coats all the time.

DESIGNED WITH INLAID ZIPPERS AND GORETEX© SWEAT POCKET™ TECHNOLOGY

"That should impress the fellas. I'll take it!"
They always look at the price tag second.
"$280 goddamn dollars! That should impress the fellas. I'll take it!"
There are more life jackets in my day-to-day lately. Yet, I've been doing very little boating...
I'm in Corner Brook dropping dollars because the missus' birthday is fast approaching.
The circus tent is paid off (sold me quad), but I couldn't afford the 3D-printed balloon animal machine, and it looks as though the contortionist may not make it.
She says she has rickets, but I think she's found a better gig.
I find girlfriend birthday parties a little intimidating, to be honest.
Some women go in for the pearl necklace or spa facial (I chose sexual terms purposefully there. I don't know why), but my baby don't need the finery.
Lavish items don't really clang her bell.
Now, a lot of guys would say, "Awesome, bro! That's more money for brewskies!"
No guys I would associate with, mind you, but they're out there.
Fair, but my woman loves a nice outing. A good adventure. An event.
However, I've spent the last 5 years or so as a bit of a shut-in.
Consequently, my imagination gets a little gummy with a day out.
"Hmm...do people still roller skate? Not really?"
After which I just suggest a bunch of stuff that I want to do, and that's just it:
I spend too much time thinking of myself.
It's why this blog exists.
I run into trouble because I'm not valueing the things she loves; the things she will enjoy.
So, I will try my best to come up with a good day for Andie.
Each day she invigorates within me a slight desire to get out. To see something. To be myself among people, rather than being myself by myself.
It's the gift she gives me.
The least I can do is wake up first, make breakfast and greet the day with the fervor she does.

Lucky Duck

I don't know who I know in the places that I go. 

We docked in Montreal, and I was determined to feel its energy.
You know how Montreal is.
Alive. Bohemian, kinda. Aware of itself and proud of itself.
It's a city with a pulse.
I'd been on the ship for a while, and I wanted some civilization.
Specifically, I wanted to gawk at women and eat steak.
St. Catherine's is the rue to flock to, non?
I decided to walk there because I'm a floundering idiot and I thought it wouldn't take long.
An hour and a half later on just...the shittiest pair of shoes that you could wear on your feet.
I bought them at a place that sells surf stuff, but no actual surf boards. You get me?
I required quick, cheap shoes because I was en route to a gig and I refuse to do comedy in boots, which I had accidentally worn.
So, I found these canvas sleeves that were adhered to a length of what must have been parchment paper. 
Purchased them from some guy who seemed as though he wanted his store to stay open just a week longer.
He was speaking to two sexy blondes.
One of them tried on a bikini during their visit and I wanted to watch her do this.
Can't do that, though. Unless you get a webcam set up in the ceiling.
Which is the reason you open a surf place without the surf boards.
Anyway, piece of shit shoes. Walking and walking and thinking, "Why am I not getting a cab? This is a real city. There are cabs."
None drove by because I was leaving the ship.
What's shitty about leaving ships is that once you disembark, you're in some industrial area that normal people never go to unless they're collecting a pickup truck's worth of crushed stone.
It's isolated.
Lots of transport trucks.
Not many party buses.
I eventually ended up near actual restaurants and stores.
Ultimately, I landed at a place that french people would call a 'bistro'.
I only stopped there because the awning had beouff in the title.
The food was fancier to look at than it was flavourful to eat, but that wasn't important.
Becauese the waitress was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
She must've been.
She was french and petite and she was bringing me food and - wait a second.
Was she really so beautiful, or did it seem that way because I'd been on a boat full of dudes for a week or two?
That's what it was.
This was just an everyday, run-of-the-mill hottie.
They're not that hard to find. Especially in Montreal.
And it donned on me:
If a woman has poor self-esteem or a goiter, she should just hang out down by the docks.
A month later, when I was ready to leave the ship for good, I'd learned that some women are already doing this.

I've been fantasizing about winning the lottery lately.
It's about as productive as anything else I've been doing.
I mostly blame Top Gear.
Have you watched it?
The entire population of India loves the programme.
Anyway, they review very lavish cars and make you want to own them.
Y'know the first thing I'd do if I won the lotttery?
Buy a suit.
I'd buy a suit that regular, hobo Paul would look at and say, "Even if I won the lottery, I wouldn't pay that much for a suit."
I'd immediately follow this by purchasing a $4,000 wristwatch.
I'd wear the suit out of the store, and I'd strut around town until I got mustard or whatever on it, and then I'd get out the pinking shears and turn the suit into rags to wipe down one of the several cars I would purchase if money wasn't an issue.
Money's always an issue, of course, and no one ever wins the lottery.
It's like a molecule getting picked to play shortstop. It never happens.
I don't know where that analogy came from.
When I was a kid I was jealous of Scrooge McDuck.
But it wasn't because of his vast fortune or his cool name.
It was because of his coin swimming pool that he had.
Remember that, people over twenty-six?
He'd go for a swim in his vault, and dive from his diving board into his pit of coins?
These days, Harper is doing the same thing with all of Canada's useless pennies. 

I thought this to be incredible when I was a kid.
I didn't envy the gold, or the vault, or the various fractures someone would get if they actually tried to dive into a pool of coins.
Being the youngest of three boys, I think I admired the privacy of it.
And the fact that his older duck brother didn't own it first.

I just want to take a brief moment to let everyone know that when I searched for that image, I typed 'Scrooge McDuck' into the subject line, and the first suggestion to come up was "Scrooge McDuck net worth."
Fictional cartoon ducks don't have net worths. Fictional cartoon ducks are worthless.
Just so we all know.

While waiting for my beautiful steak brought by the beautiful Montreal waitress, I saw someone practicing the tight rope.
She had a cable linked between two trees, a foot or so off the ground.
As I watched her, it all finally made sense.
"Of course! You start out at a low height!"

Steward's Log; May 16, 2014

By the grace of forces beyond my divination - be they God or merely the port authority - we struck land two days past. I awoke to see our vessel abreast the shore, one of Irving company's tentacle-like contraptions bloating our ship with oil or diesel or what have you. The day went by at an old hound's pace, yet I frequently found myself whistling as my work shift waddled on. The promise of land, of such simple comforts - commerce; soil; an evening stroll - heightened my spirits greatly. Upon my toil's conclusion I prepared to step the gangway and the expanse of St. John beyond. By coincidence, the aforementioned Russian fellow (of my log's previous entry) entreated he join me, so as to assuage the brunt of cab fare. Keen to accomplish this myself, I hastily agreed. Soon we were off.
Upon arrival at the city's known bazaar, I elected to part ways as I tend to enjoy solitude when entering a new or unfamiliar region. So isolated, I took my leave. All of the chincy shops seemed a little less gaudy as I passed one ostentatious awning after another. Few stores truly interested me, yet finding myself amidst this sudden surge of people was a thrill I would not have felt otherwise. Indeed, while dwelling on land, such a collection of wanton stragglers would likely upset my gullet, but now! A queer tranquility was to be found in the numbers. And women! Though I admit that I so heartily miss my lady true that it pains me at night, I believe that even she would understand my unbridled desire to be near strange women; to have them in plain sight. A man at sea is a man deprived, mark this! I would have no one tell me otherwise.
To the point, I found myself in a shop of unfamiliar name, in which stood an employee - a beautiful yellow-haired woman. As she assisted a pack of yabbering children with some footwear, I found myself positively entranced by her appearance, and transfixed by her tight-fitting attire. It took me a moment before realizing that I was staring at the poor girl, and what's more, I desired absolutely no merchandise in this tawdry shop. Further, their ambient music was truly abhorrent.

Steward's Log; May 12, 2014

Anchored still. It is beginning to seem as though our ship is in a purgatory of some kind from which we may only be released with the proper timing or proper bribe. Rumors suggest our non-operation is business-oriented in nature, though in truth I can scarcely feign to care as I have no head for figures or for beurocracy. I will simply dein to wait without worrying myself with the details.
Some European gentlemen comprise a percentage of our crew. One fellow is of Russian decent, while the other man's I have yet to determine, as we have had little acquaintance. He is possibly Bulgarian. The two have a lewd tendency to debate Western politics over supper, much to the bemusement of the ship's remaining staff. I say "lewd" not due to their topic of conversation, but rather the fervor by which they conduct it. Within minutes, voices are raised and breasts are beaten by seemingly nationalistic fists. These 'discussions' in time seem to verge on the countenance of 'argument', and their angered tones beget uncomfortable chuckles from the adjoining crew mates. When not engaged thus, however, the two seem as fine men. The Russian fellow in particular seems a chipper sort. He greets me at daybreak whilst arranging his morning tea, favoring a private tankard that he carries about at all times, claiming it has been thus employed for eleven years. Keeping such an item for even eleven months seems beyond me. His accent is thick and nearly archetypal in its sound, echoing the Russian-English accent as it seemingly should be heard, though I'm hardly an authority on such a matter. Regardless, this musical dialect carries with it a certain charm, so long as it is not shouting points regarding the Russian government's approach to property tax.

Things Kids Never Say

"When I grow up I want to work in pest control services. With Orkin, maybe."
"When I grow up I want to sell musical instruments for a while before opening a failed heavy equipment rental facility."
"When I grow up I want to work in landscaping."
"When I grow up I want to be an accountant's secretary."
"When I grow up I want to be a gynaecologist."
"When I grow up I want to sell carpet at an outlet store."
"When I grow up I want to be a sales rep. for a snowshoe manufacturer."
"When I grow up I want to be what grown ups do."
"When I grow up I want to be a grownup."

Steward's Log; May 11, 2014

On anchored chain we bob. For what has felt like a lazy fortnight, we have been moored from the coast of St. John in New Brunswick. Though our actual period of inoperation has spanned but four days, these have passed under trying circumstances, as the crew has access to no internet or social relief such as is afforded ashore. Each day presents a fresh delay, poorly communicated or otherwise unspecified whatsoever, a new promised time frame merely thrust upon us as we stew along the coast. I take no solace in the knowledge that several ships and fellow seamen share in our frustration. Each direction I face while anchored allows me to espy distant vessels, stoic and pristine along the horizon, not unlike a collection of burly gentlemen impatiently que'd for the one lavatory stall.

The encroaching land chides us from its near, though inaccessible, distance. Nightfall seems to share in this jest, as the city's twinkling lights whisper and tease us of entertainment and drink. These pleasures shall remain idle dwellings for the time being as we await our port to call.
While still burdened with slumber's tenacious shackles, I received a startling fright in the early day. As I began my morning duties, I exited the galley, passing my pantry's threshold, only to halt in unnecessary fright as I discovered that a small bird had invaded my work space. Of course, it posed no manner of threat to my person, and yet I found myself unsure of, or perhaps unwilling to proceed in its ejection from our wheelhouse. It is the nature of finding wildlife, however docile, within human confines that unsettles me. Such a creature surely does not belong, and my subconscious foolishly echoes this as though the very principle should prevent the chickadee's entry in the first place. My ever-vigilant co-man, the deafened Irving, shooed the poor jay, though it remained alight on our ship's deck for the day's remainder, and may very well be roosting with us presently. Some hawks were reported to have been on board (so to speak) as well, preying upon animals such as my hereto mentioned intruder. Deckhands anointed me with stories of ghastly discovery, as small birds' heads were appearing on deck, as the ravenous predators appear to not care for the skulls of their victims, as it were. I inwardly stifled a mild disappointment in not witnessing the larger specimens firsthand, as I find carnivorous birds to be most fascinating. Perhaps I will encounter one before my voyage concludes, though I admit that I would certainly not wish to see such a magnificent creature in my pantry.

Steward's Log; May ??, 2014

I really started to get exhausted after waking up at 6 am for so long. 

Weariness grows upon me like ivy, its tendrils climbing my body's length so as to ensnare itself to my brain, constricting my thought's core. Each day's passing has begun to wear on my spirit and mind. Mine enthusiasm for stewarding is all but spent, and my greatest challenge to face each day is planting my feet upon the floor so as to rise from my inviting bunk. Fatigue proves my greatest adversary - one that seems to have mitigated my resolve and determined my weaknesses with a cunning eye. As a consequence, sleep provides little relief, no matter the amount of time I spend aslumber. Truly, sailing may be my folly.
However, perhaps my recourse is due in its own time, much as our ship is due for port. Perhaps if I can steel my jangled wits for some time more, I will arise from my own stupor; a phoenix illuminating its own ashes in triumph. I must remain stout in my vigil. I must prevail. Even now, so much of my fated journey is behind me, transpired in a manner befitting my character and station as a steward and as a galley hand. To shore I shall go a whole man; my head held aloft and my bosom inflated, to walk into my true love's embrace, and may the seas and jeering gulls be damned!
It is when a man's trials near an end that they begin to seem truly endless. This hallucination is itself a test and nothing more. My fatigue is but a moment's lag; my slackened wits, a figment. I am as strong a chap this day as I was on any other. I will commit my time and serve it shining. Then, with upheld palm I shall secure the weight of my earned doubloons and make for land, never to take her level keel for granted henceforth. 

Steward's Log; May 4, 2014

No form of transportation eludes me! In a Ford Windstar I make haste towards Newfoundland's Gander Airport. Due to particulars unforeseen and largely unexplained, I am to be transplanted to another vessel which currently rests in old Quebec City. I shall take to the skies in little more than an hour hence. As it stands, I am not to sojourn alone; my co-worker and cooking superior has been summoned as well, and we are to accompany one another en route. Irving, so he is called, is a curious fellow and quite deaf. Despite a pair of rather conspicuous listening devices, each affixed an ear, he seems unable to discern a single utterance of mine, necessitating my repetition of all things - despite my effort to speak at him with a volume well beyond my casual frequency. Regardless, the two of us get by, acting as a somewhat efficient 'team' in the galley. For my part, I accomplish this through patient repetition of all that I say, and I garnish my shoutings with pantomime wherever possible. By a stroke of coincidence we hail from the same hometown, though we have discovered no mutual acquaintances. He is getting on in age, and his memory seems to be at the vanguard of time's punishment. It is rumoured that his betrothed is quite ill, poor fellow. He continues to travail so as to afford the medications that provide her comfort. A noble cause, and it is perhaps because of this labour's love that he works with such vigor, as I myself have trouble keeping his pace, though I am nearly half his age. This fervor is matched in equal part by his dedication to tobacco cigarettes, of which he appears to be in infinite supply. He has informed me that in thirty years of seamanship, he has never found this supply depleted while on the water.
From Quebec we are to sail to an occasional port, slowly making our way back to Lewisporte once more. It pains me to write that among these destinations, Halifax is not listed. I hold out hope that we may frequent there, so as to see my lady love once more, if only for an evening. I miss her terribly and yearn for her touch.
Ah! The airport is before us. Now to unload my provisions, of which I packed too many.

Steward's Log; April 28, 2014

Surely madness is reeling thus. Having delivered our stores of crude to St. John's, we press towards Lewisporte, some 17 hours away. Upon overtaking the hugging, bosomed crags of St. John's secretive harbour, the vessel began to heave mightily, and in fact has scarcely ceased to do so since. Never before have I experienced such a thrashing, as my very notions of gravity and the physical world have been redefined this day upon the sea. My view out of the wheelhouse's main entryway was of blue sky followed sternly by the crashing waves, and to and fro again as the booming swells made a mockery of our massive, steel hull. Despite our rig's impressive size, it is at the mercy of the sea, as its now-empty bilges allow it to be careened lightly and effortlessly by the impending waves.
The crew has remained largely unfazed, and they laughingly warn of a sleepless night ahead for all hands - as though such a course is one to take joy in. This lolling is of second nature to them, seasoned privateers as they are. I, however, am showing my green colours in relation to my sailing experience, yet not in terms of my pallor or complexion! Fortunately, my meals as yet have remained within me, and seasickness has not affected its discomforts upon me. I must admit that I find myself both surprised and elated at this discovery, and I maintain hope that my fortitude in this matter will hold its stead. Although my physical limitations are comfortable enough, my mental stature was tried tenfold throughout the day, as this constant listing proved an extreme frustration to my stewarding duties. The rolling vessel transforms the simplest of tasks into harrowing feats, as standing braced becomes a chore, each step feels uphill, and the mere exercise of sitting in a chair may become a sudden danger.
Pots and pans clattered about and a boiler of rice very nearly fell to the galley deck. It was at this time that I suggested to the chief cook that we shut off the main fat fryers, as they suddenly seemed a tremendous hazard. A glass bowl upended itself and shattered in my pantry, and all manner of loose items had to be hurriedly secured and lashed by the crew. These complications seemed to recreate themselves at the roughest of patches, as fresh threats presented themselves. The crew assures me that should we enter ice, our voyage will become more tolerable as the hulking floes will disrupt, and therefore weaken, incoming swells. However, I see many pans of ice beyond my cabin window at this very moment, and yet I feel no merits of their supposed effectiveness. They are beautiful however, and truly serene in this desolate locale.
Despite a staggering number of curses uttered today on my behalf, I remain entranced by the sea, and respect more than ever both its unfettered tranquility and savage tumultuousness. Suffice it to say, I keenly await landfall on the morrow.

Steward's Log; April 18, 2014

I am born anew on this day as we have weighed anchor and I am now, in principle, a sailor. Even as I scribe this composition, our vessel splits the seas a-twain and steams steady onward, due for port in New Brunswick some three days' hence. With our journey begun, I already find myself mesmerized by the ship's movement and effects upon the water surrounding us. Several times I have had to remind myself that stock-still standing, my mouth partly agape at a porthole, will not present myself as a worthwhile labourer, and might even suggest to my crewmates that I am a potential dullard. Yet, it is truly a sight to behold, as the malleable water, mighty beyond compare in its seeming infinity, will patiently allow us to cut passage through it, with little more than a gentle bob of our ship.
Some shuddering vibration does occur as our bow meets and destroys any turgid ice blocking its path. This obstacle of nature provides little delay, however, as the spring season has no doubt withered away its otherwise stolid integrity.
The water itself folds around us, the outermost eddies of which resemble a gentle crease, not unlike one which may disturb an aging length of parchment. Closer to our hull the water gnashes about more coarsely, producing a foam as one might find upon a savage dog's muzzle.
The sea for its part remains blissfully, mercifully placid as we gain way. With great civility, I plead silent that the waters may remain this peaceful for I fear that heavier waves may weaken my susceptible gut, much like the cresting sun has hampered the rigid ice.

Steward's Log; April 15, 2014

Missing essentials dawn upon me each day anew as I while away in my desolate cabin. I use the term 'desolate' with a meagre affection, as it is now my one true sanctuary aboard this vessel. In truth, it is not without its merits. To wit, I have running water, a single stand-up shower capable of fitting three grown men simultaneously (upon renewed inspection, I might decrease this number to two). I have a lavatory and the chemical agents needed to maintain it. Further, I have a small, wall-mounted monitor (likely inoperational), a desk of ample width and height, a single cot (with reading lamp), a standing dresser, a fainting plank and a series of chested drawers. The walls, currently bare, resemble the inconsequential colouring of a kitchen's countertop, and my desire to mask this unwelcome decorum has far from lessened as the days pass.
On a related note, I have verified that I must adorn my hovel with a calendar. This I believe will benifit my surroundings two-fold: Primarily, it will allow me to mark off each day, likely in a traditional, large red 'X' fashion, thus advertising, if only for myself, my progression through this period and its foregone conclusion, at which time I will be reunited with my lady true, whom I miss dearly. Despite my sound devotion, I have settled upon the purchase of a nude, or "nudey" calendar, if such a thing may be procured from the town merchant. An item of this description will alleviate my Julianic need, while also acting as pornographic fodder, for which I am in short supply, as noted in a previous entry.
The crew continues to be outwardly wary of my newbord prescence on board, but some well-timed wit and lofty banter will hopefully correct this in time. While it is true that they and I seemingly have little to share by way of conversation topics (they speak, for example, at length regarding various all-terrain vehicles of which I have no knowledge nor interest) I remain vigilant in striking common chords among them all.
Perhaps they share my love for paintball...

Steward's Log; April 12, 2014

I have not brought sufficient pornography on board and this has grown rapidly apparent. I hear jocular discussions of shared external hard drives that are laden with smut, and though I believe these perversions might be shared should confidence among the crew be gained, I suspect that our tastes vastly differ.
I have deduced with equal quickness that I must populate my cabin with a plant, a fish, or both. Indeed, I would be happy to share my cabin with a cat, but it is my understanding that felines despise water. Perhaps I do as well. This, for the time being, remains undertermined as we remain moored here in the berg of Lewisporte, Newfoundland, Canada. As such, creature comforts are abound following a short walk to shore, and domestic plants may very well be available from a few named, local horticulturalists. The fish, I am told, may be less easily procured.
I am familiarizing myself with the crew, who seem a fine bunch. As of yet, none of them are aware of my lavish clothing, and I can only hope that I am not acutely dismissed as a 'fag' upon their revelation.
Alcohol is not allowed on board, yet it is readily available.
I peer out at the ice floes choking the harbour and to the expansive sea beyond, and I ponder when it is we shall meet.

Shipping News

How much can you fit in a 10-foot U-Haul?
2 lives and a medium-sized dog.

When I was first told I would be sailing on a ship and not a boat, I asked what all fledgling mariners ask:
"What's the difference?"
The difference, as it turns out, is that ships carry boats.
Tug boat. Cruise ship. See?
If you're in the company of sailors, call a ship a ship.
Unless you want some salty looks...

Okay, so.
This house in which I sit is 100 years' old.
It overlooks Deer Lake which, I have learned, is a lake, and not just some town with a hospital in it. 
Once, it was the town's post office and general store.
Right on the railway line, it was!
The train would stop, people would buy their newspapers and replacement iPod chargers, and then they would steam on.
In time, it became a place where you could rent paddle boards. Kyaks. Okay, how do you spell Kiyaks?
You see the word enough that you figure you know how to spell it.
Kayak. That's it.
Anyway, this place is still that place; you can still rent kayaks and paddle boards, but now we also live here.
My lady love and I have U-Hauled our way into this villa and are now nesting comfortably.
I am in the company of many, many bicycles.
I rode one yesterday in order to collect Mary Brown's.
I wore a light jacket while doing this even though it's June.
I am home.
Beer in gas stations!
The weather is nicer here, I think.
And the flora! The fauna!
We had a "june bug" fly into our bedroom area, and it was very frightening.
The creature looked and sounded like a moth covered in hard plastic.
Unsettling.
Andie stayed under the covers (which I heartily encouraged) while I nancied about and tried to make it leave.
It was immediately beside her on the pillow for a moment.
This is country livin'. Bumpkins deal with this sort of thing all the time.
Anyway, I can't wait until we hit July so that I won't have to see one of those fuckers for another year.

The ship, then.  
Well, to keep my mind limber and my arrogance inflated, I kept a sailing account of my voyage.
I'm going to post all of these entries more-or-less simultaneously, to make it seem like the blog has a bunch of new content. Which I suppose it does.
Will.

I have much confusion over my orientation.
Not my sexual orientation; I just don't know which way I'm facing right now.

Steward's Log; April 12, 2014

Okay, here's one.
I was off to a good start with these passages, but after a while I put more of my time into napping.


Today I saw a wolf, perished and frozen.
I have not brought enough pornography on board and this has grown rapidly apparent.
I hear jocular discussion of shared external harddrives that are laden with smut, and though I believe these perversions might be shared should confidence among the crew be gained, I suspect that our tastes may differ.
I have deduced with equal quickness that I must populate my room with a plant, a fish, or both. Indeed, I would be happy to share my cabin with a cat, but it is my understanding that they despise water. Perhaps I do as well. This, for the time being, stands undetermined, as we remain moored here in the berg of Lewisporte. As such, creature comforts are readily available following a short walk, and plants may very well be available from a few named, local horticulturalists. The fish, I am told, may be less easily procured.
I am familiarizing myself with the crew, who seem a fine bunch. As of yet, none of them are aware of my lavish clothing, and I can only hope that I am not readily dismissed as a 'fag' upon their revelation.
Alcohol is not allowed on board, yet is is readily available.
I peer out at the ice floes choking the harbour, and to the expansive sea beyond, and I ponder when it is we shall meet.
In closing, I remain enthusiastic and hope to maintain such spirits while this as-yet stationary journey unfolds.
I truly did see a wolf today.

Still Here, I Ashore You

Your e-mail's historic folders can be saddening at times, depending on who you are.
Like, for dudes who went to school with Scarlett Johansson and kept in contact during college, but who never 'made a move'.
"I could be high on the hog right now, making Colin Farrell jealous."
For those who have no friends and save their spam mail as though it's from actual people.
"Oh! The diamond miners wrote again! Gee, for guys who mine diamonds, they sure need a lot of my money."
And for those who are bad at keeping in touch. Like myself. I have so many replies that begin with, "Sorry I took so long getting back to you..."
Anyway, sorry for taking so long to get back to you.
I think I have eczema.
"Eczema? Gross!"
I spelled that correctly on the first attempt, without ever dating one pharmacist.
Pharmacists are sexy.
And I'm not just saying that because one of my cousins is a pharmacist.
I did a gig once with Brian Aylward and Bryant (pronounce the T) Thomson for graduating pharmacy students.
Beauties. Just out of this world.
That's because the lady pharmacists know both the skin creams that actually work, and those that just give you eczema.
Anyway, I'm on a boat.
Ship.
I have to remember to call it a ship.
If you're asking "What's the difference?" and to be fair, I suppose you should be, the difference as explained to me is that "Ships carry boats."
This one carries...three, I think.
It also has at least two cranes. Not that anyone will let me operate them.
Yes, I'm on a boat, and no matter how many times I say it (aloud, alone in my cabin), it doesn't put me on land.
To be fair, land is currently just a gangway away, but that land is Lewisporte.
No offense to the finite people of this town, but Canadian Tire is closed, and I'm not sure where else I'd go.
On Friday, however, I'll be going to The Pub (that's the name of the place. It's a flamenco studio [I'm kidding; it's a pub]).
Fridays are bumping at The Pub. I'll be going there with sailors. Real ones.
I suppose I'm a real one now, also.
I was on this thing while it was careening about forcefully enough to move all of the chairs to and fro in the crew's mess - while the crew were seated in them.
And I didn't vomit once! Ya hear that, world! Not one time!
Knock on bulkhead. I really don't want to vomit while I'm sober enough to enjoy it.
The short answer to "What are you doing on a boat? Ship?" is: maintaining sanity.
It pays well and it'll allow me to sit around during the summer and catch up with all of you fine ingrates.
At a real desk. The desk is already situated and it exists somewhere in the world right now.
But more on that later.
Sailors!
They're fascinating, kind of.
The whole process is fascinating.
In essence, I live and work with these people in a steel, three-storey apartment on the ocean, which is housed above several million liters of flammable liquid.
I'd type all of that out a second time, just for effect, but this is the 21st century, so I'll copy and paste it:
In essence, I live and work with these people in a steel, three-storey apartment on the ocean, which is housed above several million liters of flammable liquid.
It's great and terrible, as you can well imagine.
Drunken sailors being obnoxious and eventually ejected at a bar makes perfect sense to me now.
Made perfect sense within days of joining them.
I hope it happens to me, particularly in Montreal.  
Sailing on an oil tanker is sort of like being in a very small prison.
The only difference is that in prison you're able to play basketball sometimes.
We're all dudes. There are no women. We can't escape, and even if we could, there's nowhere to escape to. We all eat together. There's no alcohol allowed on board. No drugs. Either are searched for and confiiscated.
The similarities are there.
It's not so bad, though.
I have access to several pounds of baking soda, and I've never been able to say that before.
Let me tell you a bit about the boat.
Ship.
Umm...let's see.
It's 161 meters long, for any engineers who may be reading this.
It does usually have wi-fi, but it appears that, once you go far enough out to sea, even sattelites won't bother with you.
All of the doors are quite heavy, and I believe they're water-tight.
Despite its tremendous size, it does not just 'float on the water' like a 'cruise ship'.
And that's just the first of its many dissimilarities from cruise ships.
It has rolled back and forth so severely that I have feared for my safety.
Not for fear of it capsizing, mind you, but for fear that the small potted ivy I purchased to 'spruce the place up' might careen across my cabin and hit me in the head.
That chair thing I mentioned before?
That happened while we were all eating.
The chairs (and men) all slid one way, and then began to slide the other.
I panicked and hopped out of mine, only to have several heavy chairs come barreling towards me.
I had to do a little backup hop onto a table, the way referees scoot to avoid pucks sometimes.
Then the chairs stopped moving and I said, "Now what do we do?"
Everyone laughed.
The water that comes out of my tap is slightly yellowish, and I'm not sure if I'm supposed to brush my teeth with it, but I'm too embarrassed to ask.
We have traversed through melting ice floes.
Some of them had seals on them.
And we beat them with our clubs and we sang our jolly tunes.
That last part I made up.
There were seals, though.
The same boat (ship), while on an Arctic voyage, encountered a polar bear. The lads threw a rope overboard, and played tug-o-war with it.
That's true. I've seen footage of it.
Four men couldn't move the bear, by the way.
Everyone has hard-drives dedicated to porno, and most of them seem willing to share these.
We stay on Newfoundland time, despite the time zone.

I have a life vest and an immersion suit in my room. 

I miss sex.
These are some of the basic details of the boat (ship).
I've been keeping a log of my travels.
I'll start including those because the tone is really fun and it gives me a reason to continue writing them.
You give me a reason to continue.
I suppose I forget that sometimes.
...
I'll upload some pictures because I never do that.

Oh! One last thing, and I'm not saying this to be funny or whatever.
Whenever we pull out of a port, I get Barrett's Privateers stuck in my head for a solid hour or two.