The ebb and flow of people weather chafes like a pair of shorts that creep up into the crack of your ass...

Hero to zero...and back again. So getting a puffed up ego over the one and hand-wringing over the other?

“0” current...a little wind, maybe but not bad. 2-3ft seas...and complaints roll in. Along with the compliments. Which to respond to...? Both? Neither? Will my ambiguous response to both elicit a complaint about my aloofness? All of the Above.

Some captains will entertain the notion that all people can be satisfied, all complaints settled. A complaint about ocean-things...trifling projections of personal issues onto the deep blue sea, where expectation meets nature unplugged.

Like a trickle of current...and 100ft of visibility. You move from Molasses (sublime, transcendent, clear water) over to French (this day 30ft vis, milder current) to quiet down the snivellers...now they’re complaining about other things over which I have no control whatsoever. My policy is strict...Never, ever choose a divesite for my own personal reasons. Choice is made by assessment of conditions, passenger qualifications, local knowledge. I would drive the boat to Mars for a good dive experience for my guests, and there are some divesites (Pickles Reef) I will not go to at all...so when I know that the complaint-of-the-moment isn’t really coming from a place that has anything at all to do with me...I move on. Running a dive boat based on the complaints of a complainer may seem like “customer service” to some...but I suggest it’s just a bit cowardly. The greater good to the greatest number and all...as opposed to trying to please unpleaseables.

My flaws are written in stone, my virtues in water...

Water magnifies, distorts, clarifies, runs everything...add light and marvelous things appear. Sometimes, people ask “why do you dive?”...and I think that question really digs to the heart of it. Water. Because the water is there, I dive. Once immersed, the answer seems so obvious...but fishing around for words to describe it falls short of expressive.

The properties of water are astonishing and decidedly anti-intuitive. Ice floats...have you ever pondered why that is? I mean, after all it’s water. Why would it float? And why do I give a shit? Well...if it didn’t float then the oceans would eventually just fill up with ice. The way the atoms lock into a grid reduces it’s volume ever so slightly and voila! It floats. How strange, I think...and the incompressiblity of it...amazing. No matter how much pressure you exert, same volume. Unlike air which can be forced into smaller volumes and higher density. So I’m a geek...h2o just seems very cool on a physics level.

The ancient ocean...filled with animals in relationships so complex people still know so little about...for example, what eats lionfish? How are their populations controlled in the Pacific? You realize...this is not known yet? 

Water...it isn’t the gear, the bling, the tshirts...I don’t seek validation or anything like that at all. It isn’t about flitting all over the globe seeking to be overwhelmed...for me it is about getting to know the place, seasonal changes, the same fish in the same places...the recovering coral, the dead and dying. I know Molasses reef very well, but in the handful of hours (nearly all of them in daylight) how much can I really grasp? So I don’t try too hard to be driven. Being here forces me into the moment, right now is all there is.

Back on land...my evil twin comes back as I transition into People Weather. They rush about, worrying about their groundpounder people things, as do I.

Yeah, it’s about the water itself.

The papers here are filled with letters to the editor about the high speed crash (see the post below) and tragic death of a police officer. People are not happy about this “investigation” and suspicion about responsibility being placed at the highest level of the Sheriffs Dept here in Monroe County is in the “ain’t gonna happen” file...but I’m not so sure. Seems the points I made here on Snappy Banter are being voiced everywhere. Except, of course, by the Sheriff himself. Time for a statement? After all...it is an elected position and all. And I (for one) have a very long memory. If only he would suggest a full investigation is ongoing and the officer in question placed on administrative leave pending outcome. But...<crickets-chirping>

Dr Laura yikes. What an EEEEEdiot. The Book Of Leviticus? HoleeSHIT! Another victory for the mainstream media for pushing this into prominence. She will soon be offered a job with FoxNews...you heard it here first!

“FUCK the doomed!” richard nixon

Guided dives...that sure sounds good to me. I used to think that diving should be ”do your own thing”...well. With guided tours, getting “lost”, running out-of-air, and that charming late to the boat thing is/are vastly diminished. The guy yesterday who came back to the boat complaining his rental reg stopped working rang that gong yet again...the reason his reg stopped working was because his tank didn’t have any air left in it. “That current was so bad, and when I tried to go underwater to swim back it stopped working”. Back aboard, he’s gasping and ashen colored...scared shitless. No current. “0” seas/wind...100ft vis.

Molasses reef was quite the scene...private boats everywhere...overloaded was the standard today...4-5 of them had 15-17 people. 24ft, 21’s the usual. Shrieking in Spanish the vast majority. One next to us threw a 3yr old into the blue ocean...no floatation, no warning...just picked up the baby and tossed him overboard. I was alarmed, on edge, pacing the boat trying to parse out one scream from another...and then mentally switching to the cold fact that drowning people never scream. Only the doomed do this, and I say :Fuck the Doomed.

8 people on an inflatable raft...8 adults! Now in Florida you have to have a life jacket for each passenger and in this case there were clearly “0”. They drive into the flotilla of private boats and shriekers, over the heads of divers and zoom toward a mooring ball that another dive boat had their bowline attached to...I’m watching in disbelief thinking they are going to run right over it and capsize...but they stop and try to hook up to it. I have never seen this before...the captain scurries forward and tells them “you can’t do that!” and swear-to-god, the dipshits start arguing with him...well, Lou kept his cool and never swayed from very polite. I got the whole episode on my iphone-vid and at poker night the crowd was beguiled by it...

One comment onboard; “if the FWC would ticket all these people out here, we could get rid of the sales tax”. INdeed...but they don’t.

And I’m not just whining here...anchors dropped on endangered species of coral, people fishing, lobstering, breaking every law and rule of boating, reef preservation, common sense...reckless endangerment of children, and the worst offense of all; playing horrible latino trash “music” at 110 decibels.

A woman, face down doing the “dead man float”, full scuba...bubbles finally blurp. She’s alive. But not moving at all...slowly she drifts from her (private) boat as her SO climbs aboard. She makes no effort whatsoever...literally DIW (dead in the water). 100ft back, she lifts her lame head out of the water and shrieks “PAPE! PAPE!!!!!!!!!!!!” (daddy in espanol). “I sure the fuck hope that’s his daughter” I mumble. BUT, it isn’t. He swims out to haul her lazy ridiculous fat ass back to the boat and she unleashes a flood of tears and profanity at him all the way back. Just hideous. THIS, kind readers, is where boners go to die. Daddy? Really? Am I so culturally intolerant? The combination of stupidities and unfathomable ickiness overwhelms one...

A quotidian day in paradise...

Something about this place seems to concentrate a certain demographic...female, 40-60, 100lbs, leathery sun baked skin and that distinctive walk...swaying and tilted, they might sidestep right into the traffic whizzing past the highway. Yeah, it’s that common.

Is there a Jimmy Buffett (maybe John Prine?) song for this? A couple times a year one of these vampirettes staggers into the path of a car and sadness ensues...we do seem to attract a lot of the same thing here. I know every town has it’s chronic drinkers, but here there is a clear division between the vampires and the straights. Between those who say and live “there is nothing to do here except drink” and those who listen to this bullshit politely silent...

A bar-world...nexus, ground zero...”the office”. Clueless tourists are lured into the Caribbean Club by a sign that proclaims “The Movie Key Largo Was Filmed Here”...The big Harleys are all clustered in front and entry is past the meth dealer-gauntlet...inside, a display so obvious I refer to it as “reason 12 why I don’t drink”. A couple a year cash the check by blundering drunkenly into traffic out front in this same spot...

The cop had turned his radio onto the wrong channel on purpose...while on duty he went to his gun store (he is the owner). His partner tried to call him and when he didn’t answer she hit the gas and was driving 106mph. One Hundred and Six. 1.7 miles per minute, 92.1 knots,155.5 ft per second A young man pulled onto the highway northbound, but who would expect such an onrush...? Note...there was no emergency other than the fake one created by one cop who was cheating the taxpayers and his partner who obliterated policy and panicked. The young man has been arrested and charged. I find this highly disturbing...highly. This is far from the first similar incident (I refuse to refer to it as an accident) where local cops were driving at over 100mph for nothing. No emergency. Not on call...in fact, they have been doing this on the way up the stretch now and then, off duty on the way home. The prosecution of this young man...while the cop who caused it still patrols our streets, still sells guns at his store, strikes me as very not good.

After complaints about this speeding business and aggressive driving by our cops shot up to “complaint-number-one” from the public, they did nothing. Now...they have a “policy”. Decades have passed as this problem grew and grew...but the cops going after this young man before the cop who caused it tells an interesting story counter to the “change in policy”...covering up why Kiffney was not doing cop work while on duty, why he never radioed his unavailability, why he switched frequencies, and why his partner acted so recklessly without authorization or emergency...I think the young man is also victim here and a lawsuit will surely follow. While my respect for law enforcement is solid, I find it highly distasteful that officers who disrespect the law are allowed to enforce it and subject others to the consequences. Arrest Kiffney. Charge him with contributing to this awful tragedy. And as an incentive to the police to do the right thing before this happens again...assign some blame to the officer who died in the crash. Instead of just referring to her as a “fallen hero”. A term better suited to those that died heroically while doing their duty to protect and serve the public. All due respect, of course.

Mugshots are posted on the police website within minutes of booking...charged but not convicted, I guess the message being broadcast here is “stay the fuck away from the po-lice!”. I can understand the convicted getting their face on there...but the presumption of innocence is an endangered concept in our police state-post 911 world. Note, kind readers, that seeing those charged and then acquitted is far, far, far more difficult and convoluted and the picture commemorating the arrest remains within the database..There is one face I see over and over...Key West the arrest site, drinking in public the charge. Once or twice a month he gets arrested...another guy I know has had police called on him 20-30 times in the last 6 years for domestic battery, intimidating behavior, drunk in public...a brute, convicted felon. But they don’t arrest him...so when this “citizen” gets all involved in support for the election of a local judge (Ptomey) I gravitate toward voting for the other guy (Demetrios). Something doesn’t feel quite right here...and this is far from the first time these individuals have spent the big money to support particular judges and sheriffs..

And a message to those running for office that the stain of unsavory patrons is transferrable.

The worst song ever recorded. The worst. Shared with the deaf we bring them into the “can’t get that stupid song out of my head” club

An Australian election and interesting similarities to our immigration problems and lying liars who lie.

So much for objective journalism...

Island life can be deceptive...the attraction becomes the problem itself. Very few can, in reality, live with “less”. True Freedom is having nothing left to lose, my friends. But this condition rarely registers as transcendent...like ego diminishment, in the poorly developed character...losing everything creates a feeling of failure in so, so many. Thus the common suggestion “all there is to do here is drink”. Here at the end of the road, the pathological drinkers who suffer the delusional latitudinal cure hit the dirt hard.. The craters are all around us...

What a cruel irony...so much beauty and space, sky, light, water in a limitless expanse...views of the water, blocked everywhere...except the bars and resorts. They come here, they think that is What It Is...but it isn’t. This is real life, just like anywhere else. People keep trying to get me to go out with them “partying” or whatever...they seem to think that since they are on vacation so are we all. All I really want to do is go home at the end of the day and see my girl’s beautiful smile, relax...shed the drama of the day just like anyone else. I am very selfish about this...and sometimes I suspect folks are a bit offended...groups come down and they want me to go to dinner or to a cookout...but the reality is they want Captain Bob to entertain them some more. At 5pm, I turn into “bob”.

I look at the weather radar and notice a counterclockwise trend in the thunderstorms...a banding that brings slow moving rainstorms over narrow areas in classic “freight train” tropicalality...seems a low pressure system is forming right over us here on the Rock of Love. No biggie for us...it’ll move on before it worsens, but the squally weather wreaks havoc with the turistas...my stoic grimness at the dock reflects what I have just seen out on the water. Predicted winds are under 10mph...reality is South 15-20mph. BANGO!

So all aboard! Certified in a quarry...never been in the ocean? Come on down, you’re the next contestant on “LiveAndLearn”...as always, our contestant will be paired with someone else who paid full price to be here. As always, our contestant will have refused to pay for the services of a guide. As always...our contestant will get the living shit scared out of them and then force their assigned buddy to miss 15-20 minutes of their dive dealing with their series of poor decisions. And best of all, a really nice person gets the shit kicked out of them, get’s feared-up and then seasick. Something I try so hard to avoid...so hard. But who listens to the voice of experience in this western-world-way of thinking? Ahhhh, you are correct grasshopper! No One.

The French family, same day...diving with a guide. But what ees theese? Ze bubble-watch-airs? OUI! Mal de mer??? OUI! Puking all over the ladders, the handles that we use to climb aboard, the lines we use to pull the ladders. Call me “negative”? I bet you don’t get other people’s puke all over you at work, do you?

The part of my job that produces the most resignation is that knowledge of What It Is...my empathy runs deep. I know that losing control of my body fluids in front of strangers in a place like vacation-land is pretty fucking low on my “bucket list”. The mortified, defeated, out of control and stuck for 4 hours thing...wowza. I really feel for them...I try to let them know at the dock, but holy SHIT! There is no stopping it most days. The beautiful clear water...the sky and all the wonderful shapes and colors in an endless variation of blue punctuated by the painful bleating goat-sound of vomiting...upwind, other boats and the unmistakable odor of puke. The challenge to spiritual awareness in times of need is to center oneself, remain grounded and grateful, to release one’s attachments to that which is not within control. And when you do this...for the sake of sanity (which is generally an important part of my job) I move to the the other end of the boat. And am frequently described as having a “lack of compassion”. I would suggest to those who would think I should rub the necks of the pukers and whisper words of comfort that Bad Planning on Your Part Does Not Necessitate an Emergency on Mine. Just go for distance...and don’t puke on the shit we all have to touch, please.

Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will

Shark Week is a rankler. It rattles my cage in the same way television of a popular nature almost always does...if you came here looking for a ranty negative on this....read on.

Evolution has so far produced but one mindless species that would indulge in “sport-killing” and it ain’t sharks, people. TV animal molesters are a plague...very PT Barnum and bite-the-head-off-a-chicken, I wish divers would be a bit more critical of the portrayal of any wildlife in the sea.I also would hope divers become a bit more inspired about this declining environmental issue and speak out...but, alas...

Out at the Elbow Reef Sanctuary Protection Area it is against the law to feed or harass the animals. Shark feeding has been outlawed in Florida in general because A) people are generally hysterical idiots represented by hysterical idiots in the legislature and B) it’s bad to feed wild animals. For the animal, that is.

But there it is...a local diveop has been doing this very thing for many years and when divers see this behavior they do it too. Grabbing eels, sharks...goading cuda’s, harassing puffers. And when they get bitten? Who attacked who? Have you been reading this page? Do you understand how foolish people can be?

It’s like a fire coral sting...you get one, you deserved it. It didn’t leap out of a cave and attack you, homes.

Another example is the gator baiting airboat ‘glades rides...several operators were fined heavily for feeding wild gators for entertainment/profit. Good! Teaching turistas that Florida is a theme park is not “educational” nor does it raise awareness and respect for the environment. Quite the opposite.

The real beauty of the sea happens when an animal comes into view all on it’s own and you get a chance to see something wonderful and rare...for so many divers, they don’t know when this happens because so few care enough to find out what constitutes an unusual sighting (like sharks)...they rarely even know the difference between marine animals and plants...it can be overwhelming to experience the diversity of species on a coral reef and making sense of it takes time and effort. .

The real predators...bullsharks, reefies, hammerheads, are generally very wary of divers as are nearly all fish. They flee nervously as well they should. The effort required to get them all crazy for the cameras is extreme, clearly. But I ask...how amazing is it to see these animals in their natural environment acting naturally curious? Pretty fucking amazing.

Fuck You, Discovery Channel...

Where to start, where to end...the stories pile up in an escalating clusterfuck of unnecessary risk that floods your humble narrators world with adrenaline.

I think to myself “it will never end”...it boils down to “who will the next fool be?” On a diveboat, things happen that push all genuine “fun” so far out of the realm of real for me and seem so obviously fucked up...one “thing” that glares is the childrens diving program that certifies 10 -11-12 year olds to dive with any certified adult over 18. Most often, this process brings parents and child(ren) into learning at the same time. So....what you have here, my friends, is one clueless nube leading clueless minor child nubes on a near death experience without the benefits of understanding how close they came to “dead”.

Yesterday...dad, 10yr old and his 11 yr old brother all three ran out of air. I don’t mean 200psi...I mean drop fucking dead empty. 0 psi.as they clamber aboard from a 60ftvis, 30ft deep, no current dive...they were panicky, and the kids gauges read zippo on air and I am cranked up on high. The mate leans over the dad and tells him “that’s just irresponsible. You need to watch this...don’t do it again!”

I tell him the same thing, as well as both of the boys...they seem to understand, but....but....they do it again on dive 2.

Ironically...I had been talking to someone about how the bubblewatchers get to watch things they never could have imagined. In this particular case the BW was mom and a 2 year old. Bizarre as it may seem...the gravity of this incident(s) never registered on any of them. They are here at Snappy Banter because? Intransigence...they are going to do this again, no doubt. So I come home...and the adrenaline seeps out slowly, the knowledge that something so wickedly unthinkable...an entire family wiped out by something so fucking stupid, a “recreational” activity so trivial and unimportant could end up so close to disaster...and you would think it would garner a bit of attention but it doesn’t. Because it is so unbelievably common.

WHO would get certified with their kids...WHO would be so scared shitless they couldn’t take care of themselves let alone 2 children looking to dad to protect, and his fear and inexperience looms in his face...but he doesn’t see it.

But we do. We see it...and one of my gut level truths is the stupidity of suggesting that the certification process for beginners equips a parent to take care of anyone else. They are not required to train for this. They get certified, they can take their kids diving. They are almost universally NOT qualified to manage divers, they can barely manage themselves...I have seen near death in children far too many times to count, kind readers. The major certification agencies and the instructors who sign off on these family groups? My position is obvious...This is getting worse and worse and worse...

French reef...as soon as we stop the motors divers start swimming back toward us...HEY WaIT! We haven’t even got anyone in the water yet!...they’re from another catamaran exactly like ours...one after another, they come. Low on air, struggling against, well, struggling against “0” current. The DM from the other boat is picking them up on a rescue line one after another...2 come up from a private boat and my DM is towing them back to their bigass fishing boat and she spots a couple of their group spearfishing...in a Marine Sanctuary! The boat has fishing poles dangling bait...she shouts at them “HEY! You can’t fish in here...and what the helll are you doing with that speargun?!?”...they shout back “IT’s LEGAL!”...she shouts back “NO IT ISN”T!!!”...I get on the phone with FWC and when the officer asks for a description of the boat I quickly snap a picture with my iphone...he says “that’ll do...I can see their FL numbers”...

All day long...one asshole after lobster, then another...dropping anchors onto the coral reef 5 ft from a mooring ball and snorkeling down 30 ft to take lobster from a “no-take” Nat’l Marine Sanctuary...dozens of people yelling at them, all over the radio...another one anchored in the coral near the lighthouse...in the channel near port as I come out and go on plane a boat IN the channel with a dive flag...I slow down to a stop and realize this is the same guy I yelled at yesterday for doing the same thing in the canal...he has divers in the water (10ft deep)...this is totally NOT legal, but far more than that it is INSANE. Look at all this boat traffic! Lobstering isn’t exactly a national security issue or some shit and I wonder what it is that drives this escalating stupidity over lobster...I yell over “Could you have possibly found a worse place to dive?”...he yells back “IT’S LEGAL!” (a non-responsive answer if ever there was one) And of course I yell back “NO IT ISN’T” and he flips me off...25 divers onboard all laugh at him...I warn the other boats in the area to watch for this assclown and call the FWC.

Fucking assholes doing fucked up asshole shit. Imagine that! I wonder...what kind of place is this? People come here with no regard whatsoever for the law or environment...they wreak havoc, so often in such a grand display of horrifying recklessness that as the sun slowly sets into the azure waters of the bay...I can not even speak...I turn on the TV and shit-the-bed-sweet-baby-jesus...SHARK WEEK! A non-stop sensational frenzy of mindless killing machines worthy of annihalation! FUCK you, Discovery Channel.

My attitude toward lobstering and fishing is shifting toward “shut it the fuck down”. Clearly...the reefs are being overwhelmed by destructive ignorance. It produces nothing and leads to a nowhere place NO ONE wants. But...there it is. We motor in past the jetty and watch a dozen people throwing sharpened hooks, 2-3 undersized snapper flopping on the rocks as the hooks are ripped out and they get tossed back to die slowly...a rotting nurse shark laying in the sun being poked by children squealing in fear and delight at the vanquished monster...good times. Teach your children well...

The Mountains of Madness...

Advances in solar

Don’t Look Back in Anger (30 second ad...wait it out)

Unfuckwithable...(words for things you didn’t know had names)

She wanted to be a singer...moved to LA. A few years later, Las Vegas. Read between the lines the dreaming and planning, the endless banality of high school Rogers and Hammerstein creating a localized star. The bravery of commitment is unbelievably strong in some. In others, recklessness is all they have. Every play a “hail Mary”. Put it all on one hand and bluff your way to wealth and fame. Or...doggedly pursue your goal.

Beautiful day, calm seas...ahhh, now the margin for fuggin-up seems to widen a bit. In high seas there is only a thin wafer in which to correct problems. But both are illusions. That margin never actually changes in size. Never. You think that such a wonderful gift of a day could never be marred by mayhem?

A group of snorkelers can alter that perception in a NY minute. Daily, we get snorkelers who despise water. They have never ever been on a boat (other than the one at Wally World with the singing dolls) never worn fins or a mask...and in the thousand-shades-of-blue Molasses Reef waters with 100ft of visibility they announce “I hate water”. The oddness of that never fades for me. Never. Yesterday it was the whole family. Somehow, the reality of what they had just paid $250 to do as a family dawned on them, alas too late. They were going on an actual boat onto an actual ocean. Sorry folks...

Full boat...and “the announcement” as we motor 5 miles offshore and approach the reef. “I can’t climb the ladder with my gear on”. Female. 50.

Sure, we’ll do it. But I always feel a bit like they are pushing it...really now, don’t you think this should have been ironed out when you sign up? The numbers of females over 40 with physical limitations make them a demographically unmistakable spike. The Way It Is.

And like a child on scuba, it changes everything. The presumption that grown-ups cover themselves is totally not the Way It Is...and when you combine neediness and a disregard for anyone else onboard? 65 minutes in the water, I gave. At 70 minutes, she is under the boat...I bang on the ladder, she ignores me. Her husband is back and he is scenting the air with attitude. “She’s right under the boat” he says, like that’s supposed to be something important. Well, Dick Tracy, I knew where she was. My concern was her lateness, the fact she was not physically capable of self rescue, AND the fact that she required special handling...the lateness pissed me off. I told him that since we needed to winch her aboard, she was late to the boat. This whole bullshit of lateness to a dive boat reeks of turista asshat.

Mom and daughter blunder into the office...they had contacted a snorkel boat for a trip and ended up here. The daughter was a fish...she motored around the reef like one of us. Mom was a bit more timid...she hung onto the mooring line the whole time. Onboard, she is concerned about where her kid is and I point to her and say “I’m watching out for her...don’t worry” and she seems reassured. She tells me her husband had been a lifeguard and he and their daughter had always been water-people...but all her words referred to him in the past tense and I don’t mean d-i-v-o-r-c-e...there was a sad-vibe here, a trace of the “love for someone no longer with us”, a lingering discomfort at doing fun water things without him.

So both of them hung around near me on the boat...an affinity that at first confused me a bit, but I put it together after a few mentions of him. I think they saw the dragon in me...the protector. As we motored back home, mom sat out on the bow in the sun...eyes closed, face up into the bright blue sky and her face told me a story in the most subtle way of tragic loss, sadness, grief, a love for someone cut short by life’s temporal arrangement with the corporeal

As she left the boat...she reached out and shook my hand giving me a squeeze that said “thank you” in physical code...she needed to be watched over, to have her daughter protected...if only for a moment or two...and being on the water this way, I unknowingly filled a role. How terribly sweet, I think to myself...I saw her for who she really was for a short time...and she saw me too.

The odor of mortality is hard to avoid...

Remember the NJ divers who entered the Speigel Grove on single tanks? The memories of that awful incident cannot fade...I say “canNOT” because the same driven, manic urge to push it to the edge comes here, every single day.

Imagine...these big wrecks up in Norfolk sitting at dock for years and years. No one was allowed to walk around these surplus ships or to wander the hallways and interior...why? Because it was too dangerous..But now, now they sit in the Florida Keys being dived by thousands..access is basically unrestricted and the danger has not been abated by immersion...

So there we were on the big wreck...3 divers from PA, adorned with their version of redundant air (literally air...a 40cf sling bottle with reg) one on a steel 120...the other 2 on AL 80’s. Nothing tech about them...nothing.

These 3 were...driven. They had dived the same wreck that morning...so, deep-deep-rush-rush-deep-deep. Turns out...the plan was to go to the engine room, same as the story referenced above...the story with the tragic ending.

I had no idea...the leader of the pack was very practiced in the art of deceit and lied from the very beginning...he said he had AOW students to get a discount on the boat, then showed up without students...he was there with his regular buddies. When he was told that his dive profiles this day needed to be conservative considering what he had done that morning he stated his intent to flit around the outside of the wreck. A flagrant lie as it turns out.

They penetrated into the engine room on BOTH dives, no doubt violating all recreational limits. I sought their plan...really tried hard. They blocked me, even when I queried their deco-intentions. I don’t have a problem with technical diving...but I demand a runtime and plan. For recreationals I give the usual admonitions against entering the wreck below the 86ft depth and they clearly heard and understood. Also clearly...they were not prepared for a deco-dive. They were going to rush in and rush out to beat the no-deco-limits.

Similarities abound...age, experience level, regional origins in the NE, lack of adequate gas...lack of appropriate deco gases...a hinky dangerous “plan”...and crafty deceit. Oh yeah...preening, pusillanimous arrogance.

Nothing new there...it is of great concern to me that people would use a commercial dive operator such as I as an ambulance in waiting. All around us this day are private boats in moderate current. One guy behind us sucks down a beer, dons his gear and down he goes onto the stern (140ft)...he comes up 5 minutes later and shouts over “HEY! What dive site is this?” I shout back “The Speigel! Helluva time to figure that out dude”

Meanwhile off the other private, 4 divers drifting off the wreck in deep trouble.

On my boat...1 diver returns on the octo of another...he is completely out of air and edging toward full blown panic. We get him aboard...the strangeness of this day blends into the strangeness of so many other days on the wrecks. People getting rescued, their lives being saved by the thinnest of margins...classic male character flaws play out in ways where the consequences are un-fucking-acceptable...I wonder all the time if they know this.

And I think, no. They don’t know really. And the tragedy in that is they will do it again and again. In this case...not on my boat. You get to fuck me and my crew over once. Bonus? Our “experienced” assclowns stiffed us. And guess which shop in Harleyville PA they were from?

This kind of worry isn’t what people think of when the visualize moving here and working a dive boat. The sleepless nights, the endless parade of fools with agendas...the strange obsession to dive these wrecks and nothing else, sneering at the reef dives as if they were childs play of no concern to the manfolk.

Wondering when, who...will fuck up spectacular-style and draw the inevitable inquiry into “why did you let them?”...police, USCG, lawsuit-happy relatives, the scubaboard hivemind naming names and speculating...all over a couple of dumbass dudes who died doing something dumbass. Nothing to do with me...I’m just the guy that cleans the mess.

Snappy Banter will never run out of material, kind readers.

Jane Austen’s “Fight Club”...

Too many prisons and too many prisoners.

An obituary writer muses on the deep blue sea...

“For Sale; Baby shoes, never worn” Ernest Hemingway

Brief, illustrative, thought provoking...a quick read. Hemingway wrote this on a bet. I hope he won.The shortest story ever.

The Capri pants...a EuroAffectation or another fashion trend of deep concern? I see these on clueless Euro’s as they blunder around the grocery store...so far I haven’t seen this hideous female-to-male-crossover on the locals. There is nothing “festive” about these pants. I speak for the general group here...it is a stupid look, guys. And ladies. Really stupid.

Something about this billionaire candidate isn’t quite right...he claims he isn’t taking money from special interests (like himself?)...I suggest he comprises the very definition of “heavily funded special interests”.

Oh yeah...they’ll read it and blow it off, bro-chachos! IN GENERAL, of course it is true. But that doesn’t mean she won’t bleed you out for saying it.

About 3...3.5 miles NE from the wreck of the Bibb (which is 1 mile from the Molasses Reef tower) is a long motherfucking way from your dive boat at the mooring on the Bibb’s stern. Ya think?...seas were building, 100degrees, 18-19-22knots...the wind kept clocking over to the SE ever so slightly and this boost from winds over deep water can create some huge and powerful seas. East, I can live with that. But over 100degrees, here in Key Largo, fuggedaboudit.

We were over at Molasses...seas were 3-6, and getting a bit meaner as the morning wore on...gusts were on the increase and some of the waves were breaking and I call in to put the afternoon dive trippers on notice of an impending cancellation...”maybe” I said...”we’ll see”...a lot can change in a few minutes...and sometimes the sea doesn’t do what is expected of her according to predictions...there is a great deal to be said for a lock-on-visually. Get a feel...see the sky, the debris drifting...current, if flowing into the wind will cause peaky, uber-nasty vertical seas, and the confused water isn’t good for diving. This is what was rapidly developing this morning.

I had the usual mix...and the diving was really good if a bit surgey, at least until the current kicked up. And then, the call for USCG assistance to locate a diver out on the Bibb...the Bibb sits in 135ft on it’s side; an advanced dive on the best of days. Covered in fishing line and the hull collapsing makes for a very high risk close encounter...but for haunted house effect, this wreck is tops. It and the nearby Duane were “Treasury Class” Cutters named for Secretary’s of the Treasury. The Duane is much more recreational diver friendly sitting upright allowing shallower access and comparatively less difficulty. I do not like taking recreationals out to the Bibb unless I have seen them dive (and sometimes THAT is why I won’t do it...) But this wasn’t my boat, they weren’t my divers...the USCG and the dive boat were busy on the radio and we all started scanning the choppy waves for any sign...nothing. After all our divers were back we joined the search with a couple other boats, but all of us had passengers and some of them were really seasick...and here we are tooling around theses big waves in some really sickening positions. I’m looking at signs of current telling me that IF this diver were adrift for this amount of time he/she wouldn’t be here. They’d be a few miles to the NE. Yup. That current was really honkin’ this fine fucked up Sunday morning.

Another dive boat down at French reef found him...they saw the safety sausage. ALWAYS carry one of these. Always, whenever you dive...

Crowded House...

Wachovia...follow the money and it leads to, ummm...pop-out factoid; 1/3 the GDP of Mexico?

WARNING: This page contains nuts

Beautiful and wild things can’t be held...taking, having destroys them. Like a frog in a jar with a rock, a stick, some dirt...or a butterfly on a pin dried and dead.

Or the sad, sorry plant in a pot in the wrong place dying slowly by degrees, day after day, month after month...just like a person loved for their feral independent spirit...attraction evolves into possession into stifle.

Like orchid cultivation or a reeftank, the beautiful free person requires patience and a thick skinned ego in those who would try to hold on...a loose grip, an open door, a cage with no bars, fly away if need be or stay...stay.

Say “hello”...wave “g’bye”.a conflict between “free will” and “security”.

This from the “things I have learned from growing orchids” file...

Being prone to wily exaggerations and relishing my reputation for never failing to embellish a story for every last drop of puke-a-liciousness I stray, at times from my mission...that being to release attachments to results, to write about things distinctly SoFlo from the perspective of a transplanted Suburbanite-Uptight-Seattleite-liberal-white guy. Of all the things I get critiqued on...the political part rises to number one status without a close second.

Hey...I’m a shitstarter. Can’t help it, it’s in my code.

The liberal agenda:

“The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by
monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights,
to new goals of human happiness and well-being.
For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.”
 

Asheville, NC...interesting place. This one is absolutely bookmark-worthy.

I’m like a superhero...without the powers OR the ambition

This group of snorkelers and divers from Missouri were from about 4yrs old up to 70...I cynically expected trouble. Hah! The whole group listened carefully to the briefing, asked the right questions, were amazed and inspired by what they saw. Imagine that... The little guy had a mask and snorkel on and after a short bit of coaxing slammed his face into the water in a way I’ve never seen before. Squealing “I SEE A CATFISH!” over and over...the other kids (none of whom had ever been in the ocean before) pored over the fish ID slates. Everyone was smiling and having fun...and I’m thinking that if other people wind up loving this place as much as I do, my work this day is done.

On the ride back in a guy sidles up next to me and asks me the question I now get several times a day...”Is the oil going to impact the keys?”...he says “we wanted to come down and see it all before, well you know, before it gets fucked up”

Life in the Florida Keys, a postcard snapshot, a vacation memory...object of boozy-slacker ballads, Hemingway, Hiaasen adnauseum, all part of the Chamber of Commerce marketing...but note this, my friends; people of means come here in winter and get the fuck out by May. Some parts of these rocks close down...summer in Florida is a kiss on the end of a hot fist, a corpuscular form of rain that floats with the gases not unlike invisible fog. A fog that is microwaved.

On its own, this might not be a problem: People ignorant of the facts could simply choose not to vote. But instead, it appears that misinformed people often have some of the strongest political opinions.

9 Billion...

And another close call with a common demographic.

“Forever” is a long time. And that is exactly what they claim is the length of time the 27,000 capped/plugged wells in the Gulf of Mexico will remain capped/plugged. Here at Snappy Banter World Headquarters, we duly note the emphatic confidence of the brilliant and talented marketing staff at companies like BP...but our prudent nature refrains from words like “forever” in terms of unacceptable risk.

Planet...SHMAnet, Janet!

Parental supervision...can you imagine. Go to a carnival...wanna ride the big-dog-must-be-this-tall rides? Leave your kids with the guy who runs the TiltOWhirl for a few hours while you and wifey enjoy date night? Bonus points if the kids don’t speaka-no-english. Now quit with the eyerolling-no-way-do-they-do-this...because that’s exactly what they do.

Ironically...and unbeknownst to the negligent “parents”...they have placed the kids with trustworthy people. But at first glance...how could they possibly know that? I wonder if they leave their kids with random hotel staff too...

Take your kids out on a DIVE BOAT? Leave them? Then the bonus...mommy and daddy were too cheap to hire a guide...they don’t understand the briefing, get lost...wig out a bit, get rescued. Now they’re puking. Scared kids...oh yeah. There’s a memory they’ll share a few years down the road with a shrink.

Good times...

A few of us decided to go see S&theC-2...as hecklers. brutal, profane...calling each others cellphones and such. We got throwed out. New plan for movie night...dress like Rocky Horror Picture Show characters and heckle Twilight like we walked into the wrong theater by mistake.

Everything is so, so real...but nothing is true

It seems so simple on paper...offer snorkeling to non divers, put them on the boat and a few will be inspired to take it to the next level; scuba. Surrounded by the screeching harshness of NY accents and petulant behavior, puking in a 1ft chop, complaining bitterly over the oceans’ “salty” composition...masks up on foreheads, incessant questions coming from the nervous place, not really wanting an answer...the degree of neediness can be astonishing, silencing...a snorkeler will bolt back to the boat and start the “HEY! HEY! I need some HELP here!” at the ladder demanding their mask be defogged...they hand it up. Not once. Not twice. Not...oh, you get it. They tighten the mask in the belief that it will keep the water out 100%...how do you explain EVERYTHING about swimming, fins, mask, snorkel, the place where you are?...that’s right, boopsie! You can’t. They aren’t listening, they don’t care, you are a theme park ride, bitch! Now entertain me!...

They are never coming back...the kids weren’t “snorkeling”...they were at a giant swimming pool. The adults were “suffering” through it...”Why can’t we go back now? I’m sick!” “Why can’t I throw up in the garbage? I don’t want to throw up in the ocean! That’s gross!” But vomiting into all of the mask rinse buckets? Nothing untoward about that...

A chinese firedrill of leap-scream-thrash-complain-whine at the ladder and climb aboard-puke-leap-scream....ad nauseum. Mind numbing, hard to describe, not likely this aspect of the job will be outlined or described in an article about the scuba biz. Such a huge number of trifling tourists...and when they get confronted with the decision to take a boat 6 miles offshore (not the one in their head) it seems an affront to all things holy and true. They don’t like the real ocean. Not at all. They don’t like boats either...but here they are taking 100% of every second, minute, hour after hour...energy vampires stuck on a 45’x 12’ platform with your humble narrator. Yesterday, the NY accent bypassed “charming” and went straight to “fingernails on a chalkboard”. The strange social world of crowded NJ/NYC urban life, the whole aggressive gimme culture of it marks them as a stereotype that fits.

The mate this day is well known for finding redeeming qualities in everyone...she never gives in to my “double eyeroll deep triple sigh” as soon as I heard this box of fucking cats blabbering loud, harsh, 8 different conversations and getting gear. She really tried to connect...but finally, when the crankiest one of all refused to get with the drill and tried to puke into the head (neatly closing it down and requiring the site be nuked from orbit with bleach), then went over to the ladder and puked all over the tagline, the ladder, the rails ensuring that NO ONE would be able to avoid smearing themselves...also having refused to go to the part of the boat rocking the very least and also where her mal de mer would have the least effect on others (“WELL then, can I puke ovah HE-AH?”) she turns her back on them and walks toward me silently, eyebrows raised in classic “what...the...FUCK?” arms outstretched palms facing up. Done.

A microcosmic glimpse into “Why are the oceans so fucked up? Doesn’t anyone care?”...a few do. More lend lip-service to it. The vast squirming mass of potential pukers who care not one little bit for anything but the superficial contrasts against the water-people...

In this case, this day (like so many others) means the instructors onboard and the crew. There’s your “water people” today. The rest act like they got in the wrong line at Disneyworld. The wrong line indeed.

Articles like this one play the Chamber of Commerce game...playing to “reason”. One thing for sure...when lobster mini season hits, people are gonna do what I just alluded to above. Words like “eco-friendly” and I laugh out loud. If only...if ONLY! How in the world do you reconcile the onslaught of thousands of poorly equipped single minded casuals in unseaworthy boats with “good ecology”? This is a crowd that will not only shun this article...they will not educate themselves in any way shape or form...they, like so many others for the past 500 years, come to the Keys to take something away. No contribution of merit. They buy gas, beer, cheezy lobster gear at K Mart...then they drive away.

It would be a beautiful reef if all those icky fish would move outta the way...

Amazing things become ordinary over time. The wildlife out on the barrier reefs is astonishing the first few time you see it. Barracuda thrive here and some of them crowd the 6’ range...big, toothy, menacing stare and the way they don’t flee or backdown. They just hang wherever they want and a lotta the time that place is right under the boat...so. There you are..do your dive, time to head back...get on the tagline and start removing your finswhatTHEFUCKINGHELLISTHAT!!!!!!!!!!! I hear sometimes through the mass of bubbles as they see the cuda we call “Psycho” 2ft away. They feel kinda vulnerable, obviously, but I have seen this same thing play out a a time or two...Ahhh, the game of it, to see it through the eyes of someone who has never seen such a thing and then get them in on the “joke” is always good sport...so, up the ladder comes a diver saying “there’s a HUGE BARRACUDA right under the boat!” like I’m supposed to jump in and subdue the toothsome mankiller before something untoward happens...well.

So I explain that we see this every day...cudas are not after people. They use the boat shadow to conceal themselves. Normal, everyday.And I tell them “every body who comes up that ladder is gonna say exactly the same thing, one at a time. Check it out”...and by god there it is. “Did you know there’s a HUGE BARRACUDA!!! RIghT UNDER the boat!!!!”

This overwhelming nature show is impossible to fathom at first. Truly amazing things happen here like sailfish on the reef (over and around the divers)...dolphins...mantas, hammerheads and once I saw a manatee out on the reef. Crazy. But if that ever happens in the early phases of your experience here it doesn’t register as special. Like once out on the Spiegel Grove I’m guiding a group and we’re at the 30ftmark ascending when a whale shark looms into view in the 40ft-ish vis. I’m beyond amazed...maybe 15-16ft long it wasn’t one the big boys, but still! So back on the boat I’m asking everyone “how cool was that whale shark?” they’re all...”yeah. I saw that. did you see the biG BARRACUDA right UNDER THE BOAT!!!!????”

Drowning isn’t like what you see on TV shows where people scream for help or thrash. No, not at all, and it can happen anytime people are in the water. Often times people slip into trouble within arms reach of others who are oblivious to what is happening. A fair number of these incidents occur right at the beginning of a dive and then a cluster at the end. Invariably it is on the bumpy side sea wise, maybe a current, a nube takes off the mask and spits out the reg...ears submerged (so they can’t hear) on their back kicking in a wobbly track ineffectively. They stop and get this “look” on their face and a slacky wavy arm thing easily mistaken for conscious willful behavior. And in a fair number of cases these near drownings occur within ten feet of the deck near the ladder or bowline. Talk about close contact rescue...once in a while right at the ladder (I’ve snatched a few with the boathook). No reg, no mask, a struggle and some stress and BANG...they go limp and dip beneath the surface without so much as a peep and with another diver so close their gear is banging together...almost never does anyone even notice what happened. The victim recovers quickly and is usually not put on o2 unless they have actually lost conciousness or it is demanded (Once the o2 kit gets placed on someone, it is time for an ambulance).

So...we yell at you a bit when you’re in the water without mask or reg in place...”PUT YOUR REG BACK IN YOUR MOUTH!!!” folks seem to be a bit offended sometimes There isn’t much time to recognize a problem when there are 30-40 people in the water around you, and rudeness is a byproduct of experience. Seriously, keep the reg and mask in place. That is prima facae evidence of control.

Cruising Mare Ingenii...

Some days on the deep wrecks...when we do the double dip...I am grateful just to get outta there with everyone at body temperature. Not that 2 dives to this depth are inherently dangerous or risky, really. But when incompetence reaches a certain threshold...risk is all there is...Managing one’s dives at this depth (70-90) should be pretty straightforward. But, kind readers, BUT; they are so, so not. To my co-workers and all who (in good faith) would offer “what the divers want” I suggest the “double deep” dive is fraught with near-misses and examples of the failures of training and common sense that are so common now that when the stories are told everyone just rolls their eyes as if you were complaining. Every dive out here...every time...computers screaming blue murder over missed deco, rapid ascents, missed safety stops, low/out of air. Daily. People on air jumping in and not even once glancing at their console to gauge depth...let alone time.

All the bragging and horseshit blabbered evaporates as “experienced” divers shit themselves with fear in mild current, flailing their arms in “swimming” style that shrieks out to the crew “I have no idea what I’m doing”...no “real” diver ever swims with hands and arms. We see this all the time with nubes, and in general try to train them out of it. And seeing it means one of 2 things; you ARE a nube (that can easily be fixed) or; you have no clue what you are doing and you are going to keep doing it.

This particular individual kept boasting...never ever displayed any humility whatsoever...”I know you guys think I don’t know what I’m doing but I do!”..and when she kept hitting the inflate button and tried to descend claimed “I’m not used to the buttons being reversed like this!!!”.a perfect example of the intransigent behavior we immortalize here at SBFTHOF. Laying down on the deck of a diveboat to get some sun, she blocks the exits...not only is she laying in diluted urine, snot and vomit (I exaggerate not one single bit), but a full on display of attention-getting bikinisita nonsense the sad bonus.

Terrified...just scared to death. And talking...all the time. Any attempt to coach or help was met with a wall of words explaining in ridiculous and comically implausible detail the “why”...you know the type. 10 billion years ago a star exploded...high energy gamma particles are ejected outward moving at terrible speed...so fast they go right through countless solid objects across trackless trillions of miles...and they careen through Earth’s atmosphere and clang through her head knocking a neuron off it’s synapse and words tumble out of her mouth. Randomly.

“Don’t try to be clever, we’re all clever here – only try to be kind, a little kind.”Traditional anecdote, from the University of Oxford sent to me by my friend Pat

I do not struggle with being anosognosic...I accept it.

Not knowing what you don’t know and accepting that is not at all a form of willful ignorance...which is a state of mind when you think you have all the answers...knowing that unknowns swirl all about, things that cannot be nailed down are everywhere is the grand hobgoblin of “smart” people. Who, by definition are stupid...but not that stupid.

The wind picks up...15-20mph pushing seas up to the magical 5 footers that elicit all the charming justifications...”we go out in this all the time” from casual once a year divers...the ability to delude yourself may be a survival tool in one environment...but it is quite another in the big blue ocean. It is certainly interesting to watch in terms of couples dynamics when one is pressured to go out on the boat into a sure thing; projectile vomiting.

The ambitious plans folks make to dive AM-PM-Nite-whenever-the-boat-goes-out that just shreds all hope of a relaxing few days...ahhh, divers and their zen-ophobia!

It’s a weeding out process...some aren’t going to learn about “limitations” without testing the airbag...which of course is me. A rich metaphor that cuts both ways...

The way it all plays out, of course, is that on a boat of 15-20 people there will be 2 that have it all together...and they stay in the water until the last few seconds tick off..

All the boats in Key Largo are out...the reports from the boats run the gamut...some call in 2-4ft...one or two 3-5...as the mate this day takes video of a monster wave crashing along the inner line of mooring balls and these same captains getting tossed 6-8 feet up-down-sideways in a circle much like a tilt-o-whirl that has broken free of it’s anchor and is careening around on it’s own. One notorious narcissitic sociopath is sending a report to his shop (inquiring about suitability for snorkelers) consisting of “1-2ft chop, no current, 80ft vis...I don’t know what reef THEY’RE on (referring to me)...real report? 3-6ft, 30ft vis, moderate current.

never get out of the boat...

Carbon...the chemistry, the geology, the good, the bad, the bullshit...

“The last word” is highly over-rated

Diving is a “mission” oriented thing...you decide what it is you want to do and then you gear up (specifically) and do it. As opposed to one plan fits all dives. Dragging your camera AND your speargun along, for example, seems tentative and conflicted, like you aren’t really sure....

Missions...I started seeing a big uptick in tech divers looking for dive ops that would let them do their thing...deco, drifts, deep wrecks, trimix, rebreathers and the like. As they came...I realized I had better learn more about it.

Tech diving isn’t for everyone...the gear is heavy, and we all expect if you’re gonna drink the kool-aid, you carry your own shit. You really have to ask yourself how tightly wrapped you are. Recreational diving is limited in time and depth to allow the diver to safely ascend at any time...coming up no faster than 30fpm, of course, but you can bail at any time. Technical diving goes to depths and time that does not allow safe ascent to the surface without decompression stops. You might as well be 60 miles away from your boat..‘cause it’s gonna take that long before you’re there...BIG difference. 

Hence, for me, the why of it. Caves? Maybe...not overly fired up on this. Wrecks? Sure...real ones. Call me jaded...but artificial reefs are really just junk. They take pressure off the reefs and make marvelous training grounds for techies...but I am so much the nature geek. Evidence of past sea level changes are evident everywhere on the reefs, and down the dropoffs all along the keys the silty detritus that slowly flows down from the reef slopes gently toward the continental shelf. 94ft...a few hundred yards futher, 110...a mile 135...and here and there are outcroppings of reef at 160-300ft...fishermen know where they are, and my curiosity has got me going...big fish need little fish. Lots of them. What is going on down there that creates this amazing fishery? How come there aren’t any pictures? Tech diving these humps...sounds perfect.

I talked with a guy who almost got down to the hump (in Islamorada)...he dropped to about 260ft (yes, on air) and said it was crazy full of sharks. But at 260 ft on air? There are a lot of interesting dive people here...truly. Some of these cowboys did some really edgy stuff back in the day...but nobody I have talked to has ever heard of a dive on the hump...

Coordinates for Key Largo Hump and Islamorada

Over the counter status for birth control pills? Why not?

OK...this IS the worst.

Wallow in cuteness

Ride the tiger...not so hard really...it’s the getting off when you’ve had enough. That’s where the problem really begins. Neither one will quit trying to squeeze the other out of “the last word”. NewsFlash; “"truth is everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for." bob marley

Callin’ a spade a spade...

Something clever will soon appear here...

Like a human form of negatively charged storm, they came. To Snorkel the Statue. I would suggest (for the sake of kindness I restrain) that some large percentage of these folks were not “water people”.

So naturally, first they go by the Walgreens and pick up some cheesy snorkeling doodanglecrap like a lttle styro surfboard and some foam sticks (alas, no waterwings) and sign up for snorkeling on a, well, a dive boat. With divers. Also, a boat with divers that goes out on an actual ocean. OOPS! Who knew?

What an odd vibe that was...12-14 divers, really good ones with experience (and had been tipping like motherfuckers) onboard, and then. And then. The divers splash...and are gone. For an hour. What should have been a relatively calm period of scanning the water for divers and bitching about y’all,..ended so abruptly I laughed out loud. Puking (flat calm seas) complete with high drama shrieking, multi-generational familial dysfunctional cruelty, morbid obesity, recent heart surgery...a display of body fluids and passive-aggressive behavior that illustrated the wonderful depravity of mind-fuck games...a weekend for the triple eyeroll and double deep sigh.

The scubaboard Invade the Keys divers were here in town all weekend...experienced divers with specific agendas and very little wiggle room for your humble narrator...go here, go there in the most specific fashion. Along with a group of AOW students, a few DSD’s, a few JOW’s...requests for specific divesites that have very limited access and other boats with the same group all vying for a single mooring ball made pleasing everyone more of an exercise in “who am I going to piss off today?” Typical. Divers are very well known for not having a plan “B”...also, “experienced” divers also have a marked propensity to sneer at the wonderful shallower dives as if an hour or 2 on Molasses Reef were akin to waiting for a bus in the KMart parking lot or getting a root canal....

All the way...scubaboarders were awesome divers...low stress for the crew, these folks were here to dive. It was great having y’all here and meeting you personally...on a side note; some of your profile pictures are clearly from the 80’s...;-)

Lots of steel 130’s/100’s etc, specific and crankily demanded air/nitrox orders...the fill station people were elbows and assholes all weekend long (staying till 11pm) and still the demand was overwhelming...a blend of “difficult” with a few “misunderstandings” and add in a few type “A” zen-ophobes getting their panties in a wad...along with some marvelous and interesting people who totally had their shit together, some inside poop on a few of our more colorful and bizarre local dive shop owners (including Tony Hayward)...mirthful, mellifluous, bloviation be thy name!

Calm seas...great vis, blue sunny skies...wildlife turned up on “high beam”...a weekend made for relaxing, forgetting your cares, communing with mother ocean and reconnecting your very soul with something far more simple and important than petty obsessive-control of things outside your control...but alas. The moment of truth, when it is just you...your bullshit, and the deep blue sea...what do you do?

So..I say relax a bit...2-3 days of rushing around cramming in dive after dive just seems so...manic. Come on down here, stay a couple weeks at least. How about a scubaboard “hang out in the fuckin’ KEYS for a while” event next year?

Oil spill methane?

All we can do is watch and wait...

Poor impulse control and a dark sense of humor...

The world of an island can be incredibly small in the hot humid Floridian sWet Season. .

Any breeze from the water to the east drops temps in micro-climate ways...on the water a slight wind typically lowers temps about 4-6 f, and the difference between the reefs 6 miles out and the canals and people places-dead-air-heat is like a wet kiss on a hot fist.

The air...that comes across all that ocean is just about as clean as anyplace in the world. Sometimes, strangely, is the distinctive smell of flowers. Orange jasmine to be precise. With this wind direction and all...I wonder “Cuba?”...how cool is that?

Maybe I’ll bottle some of it and sell it. My big moment on HSN selling imported air

Meeow!

Fusion...interesting progress being made here

The worlds only sewage divers...Mexico City

Feeling trapped? Maybe you are...

Chuck Boux is a glass artist in St Petersburg, Florida. He does a lot of water-related pieces as well as having a distinctive 3-d process that especially shows in stuff like this Florida scene...

I’ve won regional awards for “most humble”

Hierophant, bus driver...a driver at the wheel leading horses to water...some drink, some don’t. If the coral reef is a temple and it’s play of water and light evokes a sense of reverence? My work...bears fruit. This is why I came here...this is what diving represents to me. Transcendent humility, the reduction of all that was so important...a glimpse of a world that was unfathomably complex hundreds of millions of years ago and today is only in the nascent stages of understanding by humans. So often...the expectations of divers is tied to their agenda...a spearfisher/lobster hunter who shot no fish says “that dive sucked”...a photog with a huge camera and double strobe diving in 100ft+ of visibility and a smoking current says “that was the worst dive ever”...the foolish type “a” thrashing and struggling moving quckly says “the reef is dead”...but it isn’t dead at all. You...your bullshit, and the deep blue sea. The trifling will pass...the sea remains as it has, unaffected by transient dabblers who fail to reduce their angst and drama and egotistical expectations...zen-ohobes.

A long time ago, Florida decided to go with tourism. Louisiana went for the oil rigs. Clearly a choice has been made at every turn to not drill offshore of the sunshine state. Now, that line is obliterated and the choices made by people over there, including some psychotic bullshit about dropping the moratorium BEFORE a finding of fact is weaseling it’s oily way through the public discourse...the decisions made by those in another state, hundreds of miles from Key Largo that jobs are more important over there than over here resonates rancorously, like pebbles in the hubcap of a flat tire.

Remove the tourists from Florida. There is your economic disaster...and that is exactly what has already begun. There is no oil here, but the effect of the oil spill itself is having a chilling downside spike on tourism and the numbers of butts in seats at an all time low. As we all await the next shoe to drop...as we all brace for hurricane season watching our expectations that things would “get better” economically, readjustments abound, plan “b” is considered grimly.

The oil still flows. BP still lies.

Locals are coming here from SoFl in general...every day I hear “I wanted to see it again before...you know, just before”

The Dry Tortugas...this was broadcast on PBS. Pre-oil spill data on fish populations. Note, kind readers, the hazy water. “Normally” the visibility on coral reefs is 50-100ft. This phytoplankton bloom is now common along the entire southern range of the barrier reef as the accumulated human shit and massive dumping of nutrient rich waste flows south, west. Add some oil and suddenly everybody acts like we’re about to lose something so important, just so, so important.

Also note the huge areas of dead coral. Huge. All up and down the reef the problems increase every year. And in marine environments it is water quality that reigns supreme. Death is downstream of large populations of humans. Clinging intransigently to 19th century technologies like internal combustion engines, ridiculous sewage/wastewater systems, hydrocarbon fertilizers from farms as far away as Fargo, ND all flowing into the sudden darling of focus, the Gulf of Mexico.

For so many people...saying “hello” to this world-treasure comes at the same time they are waving “goodbye”..

Arizona...the ground zero for some of the most bizarre wingnut foolishness EVER. The governor...a political ASShole of the highest order intransigently clinging to the extreme-right positions. And another example of how the mind of a wingnut does not change as facts emerge. They just shut tighter. It’s one thing to make a mistake...it’s another thing entirely to dig in deeper when the mistake is realized.

FBI releases it’s Ted Kennedy files...and reveals something in the American zeitgeist that is disturbing beyond the pale.

Sometimes...commentary is superfluous. Let the words hang in the air for all to ponder. Or not.

Option A: get drunk and cause a scene...Option B: review option A. Option C” willful avoidance

The whole thing reeks of desperation and hustle...

The Governor of Louisiana...talking so fast and so rehearsed “in charge” that he crosses the line. His resemblance to Sammy Davis Jr impresses me comically and I imagine him saying “this is just KOOKY, baby!”

Wavin’ his arms around and trying too hard to look “presidential”...kooky, indeed. “Be sure to focus those there cameras on me and not those dead birds...”

JHC...tell me he didn’t actually get elected? Next thing you know some uber-schmuck like Haley Barbour will get elected too....DOH!

The numbers of dive vacationers is so far down...nobody wants to book in advance and risk a holiday stuck in a hotel...no oil has come anywhere near the Florida Keys as of yet but the hysterical rumors come from without AND within...

And here’s another reason for those obsessed with media induced panic disorder...sharks. Malicious, remorseless killing machines waiting to bite your sorry white ass. From AOL “news”.

An interesting oil related piece in RS...

Verifiably both vile and disconnected from reality. So a “reality show” as “irony?”.

Dive company fined out the ass..."I've been in business 30 years," Secord said. "We have cleaned 190,000 boats, and we have not had one in-water accident."...I ask “define an “accident””...having scraped a hull or two, and noting the marina waters as, well, a heady soup-mix of decomposing human waste, rotting fish carcasses, heavy metals and toxic chemicals...perhaps the owners assertions don’t pass a simple sniff-test. The entire scuba business deliberately conceals risk and potential long term health issues for professional divers.

An old lady shopping at Publix...she is standing by herself and gets the 1000-yard stare, a squeak and a puff of baby-powder fog from the lower unit. Yowza.

She lost her I Phone...repeatedly calling the shop and getting increasingly accusatory, she tells the young lady running the desk “I don’t care if you took it...just give it back and there’ll be no questions”...this after she accused the boat crew.

Skillful command of vocabulary often gives the illusion of depth...

It was as if I had dropped from the sky without a past...people act shocked when they get a glimpse of “bob”...I was holding a friends 5 month old and making some tried and true attention getting noises and the baby was enthralled, laughing, smiling. Holding her brings me back to earth, and I am no stranger to children in my life. I hear my compadres talking about me, and her mom says “you are so sweet with her” and I say back “shhhh...don’t tell anyone!” .

 “White bitches love it when you buy them shit”

So what is the real truth in Arizona? Are banditos overunning the southern border? Compare your town with Tempe, Phoenix, Tucson...and prepare to be surprised. The crime rates in Arizona? Average to below. Somebody is lying, and I’m thinking it’s the white people to the right.

She’s 24...a tat on her back in Chinese. She announces in reply to the question “what does it mean?”....”PENIS!” she says a bit too loud and the males onboard start swirling around her like rutting bees. Guys...you can’t take em anywhere

Twitter is a bit like Haiku...140 characters limits those unfocused rants, like texting. Within that framework, some wonderful and funny shit comes down. It really is an art form in the right hands. But it also can be a bit of a trap where controversial comments can’t be fleshed out...but there they are forever etched in electronic stone.

Saturn’s amazing moon...Titan. Some very interesting data suggesting life...

I try to figure out what it is the righties are talking about...the grip on history seems loose and self serving. I can clearly see that in Glenn Beck’s world view, the “founding fathers” were demi-gods, and just like the protestant puritans and their static view of the heavily-altered-from-the-original text King James bible, there is no “interpreting” to be done with the constitution. It is a dead document, like latin, no longer to be adapted as a “living document”. “ Freedom” in 1776 did not include slaves, women, those who didn’t own property...or the people who lived here as native Americans. Clearly...CLEARLY, the constitution is properly interpreted as ”living”. This shark jump from “bible” to “constitution” is absurd.

Watching Real Housewives of New York will (or should) quell the notions about “If Women Ran The World” there would be no more war...christamighty. A re-titling of these epic displays of the worst behavior ever might be “Where Boners Go To Die”. There is an explosion of shows where the premise itself is narcissitic bitches acting very, very badly...huge fake boobs, repetitive bendover shots, clear alcoholic acting out, men as accessories looking patient and quiet. Art imitating life? Or just bullshit? Or...both?

In a direct relationship to the rising wave of thug culture and the glorification of gangsta as a lifestyle...the rise of cop-culture is sometimes drawing these same types who do the same things...legally. Adult hall-monitors?

Bad planning on your part doesn’t necessarily constitute an emergency on my part.

“Tell me some crazy tourist stories!” she demanded...she signed on as a snorkeler, and she quickly exhibited her shock at the reality that she had paid to go out on an actual ocean. 2 ft chop, 100ft of vis, and her terror morphed into mindless talk. I was her chosen source of distraction and amusement. Bad choice lady...a couple times a year I alter the chalkboard by the front desk where prices are posted for our services...$50 Snorkeling becomes $500...Bubblewatcher goes from $30 to $30,000,000.00 Cash Only (All passengers limited to a maximum 3 questions)

Sometimes...I resort to a policy of “comforting the doomed and dooming the comfortable”

Hey...wait a minute! If schools cut back to a 4 day week, and parents have to utilize daycare...where exactly is the “savings”? Plus...aren’t our priorities kinda being fucked up by wingnutism? Lower taxes...but higher payouts in the end? HEY! Hand me some cardboard and a sharpie...

“Speak when you are angry, and you will make the best speech you will ever regret” ambrose pierce

The world is changing...for the better. But the old way is not going out quietly...

Here at Snappy Banter World Headquarters, the staff all agrees that the “saving of souls” is not to be taken lightly. The standard of behavior amongst those who dictate what “god” wants from the walls and towers of institutional churches (free from taxation in the United States) has never been all that good.

The long sad history of religion is rife with leadership and behavior that is not all that far from symptoms of schizophrenia..hearing voices, seeing demons and such and then acting on this from “shunning” to burning at the stake and holding down scientific progress as a threat. Imagine that. The idea that truth threatens god. Or that being a pedophile rapist is just par for the course... But, no truth will ever be sufficient to overcome the intransigent and dogmatic simplicity of myth. Even the “truth” of the Catholic Church...or the utterly ridiculous Ted Haggard’s that infest this world. I wish there were a way to revoke the tax status of these fakers and liars. But, like the 2nd amendment allowing for idiots like Ted Nugent to have sex with their massive stockpiles of weapons, the Constitution is quite clear. 

The Life-Neurotic

Starring Bill Murray (bitter, cynical, doomed...but FUN LOVING!) as your humble narrator, and the director?...a cast of type ”a” zen-ophobes thrusting themselves onto a sun bleached rock amidst the merciless and fickle mother oceans’ azure illusion of safety and redemption...they came, fleeing unmanageable lives seeking the blessed comfort of geographical change, a comfort that rather than turning “cold” when reality set in, turned hotter and hardened into a black lump...a thin line between vaunted and vulgar..switching back and forth seamlessly...

Nothing in this world comes easy...no one, anywhere has a walk. Money doesn’t solve problems...(if it did, I think Courtney Love would have calmed down a bit.)

Life in a tourist driven resort town...in Florida. Life controlled by the strange petulance of strangers doing, ummm, strange things. Locals...getting fucked up in and then doin’ fucked up shit. Working with broken people running away from...or toward something on an island of misfit toys. Makes for interesting work dynamics. .

Also starring Ashton Kutcher (as 1st mate-dewd), Paris Hilton (highly qualified but disrespected), Robert Downey Jr (lothario instructor banging random tourists)...Rainn Wilson (gear repair and passive/aggressive mindfucker), Gary Busey (relief captain with certain issues), Tonya Harding (as the angry bartender with a PHD in French/German Literature and a crack problem)...

The redemptive power of water...terrestrial arrogance, ground pounder 2 dimensional mammal...adandon all you thought you knew about breathing, up & down, light, shadow, truth...leave your silly bullshit behind you and become a creature of 2 completely different worlds. Thats diving. It isn’t about what anybody else thinks or does or says...it is an experience like no other. No yapping or politics or traffic and responsibility, none of what was up there matters down here. It’s just you in an alien world where one breath of the ambient atmosphere will kill you...but that becomes an automatically dealt with reality that over time becomes less of a stress and more accepted as normal...I find it difficult and a bit uncomfortable to swim without fins now...not that I’m lazy and need the boost, but like a seal I can maneuver and turn in a way that is far more like ocean creatures and far, far less like somebody in a swimming pool.

Saltwater flows through my veins, and oceanfluid affects what I write, how I think, what I do for a living...everything.

GREAT idea...just fucking great

S-A-TUR-DAY! NIGHT!...the audience, fresh off the diveboat lookin’ for trouble. Oh yeah, and Ann Margaret.

So I subscribed to classmates.com regarding a HS reunion planned for 2007...bought a year and did the whole cancel thing. 3 years later, they hit me again with a charge. No way to contact from the webpage, of course...I despise this kind of “mistake”...ordinary thieving bastards. grr.

From the “Lighten up, Francis” files...

If I had a chance...this is what I’d say:

Catching more flies with honey than vinegar...what? Just use shit. Seems simple enough, right?

On the marine VHF...professional captains never lose their cool. Memorial Day Weekend, an example of “read between the lines”...”Securite Securitie, all vessels be advised of a woman with a cigarette and cocktail swimming in the channel between Holiday Isle (ground zero for drunken idiots) and the sand bar. Be advised she is attempting to catch a ride from passing boats” quote, unquote. Alcohol...is there anything that can’t be made more bizarre by this delightful liquid in large amounts?

Did you know that cops aren’t in drug consortiums and randomly tested? Or doctors. Or nurses. Or top level administrative officers in fire departments? I guess that would be considered “fair” or “logical” on some other planet. I’m not in favor of the testing, but I accept it as a condition of my choice of workplace. But when I poked around a bit...I realized there exists a real interesting failure to test the “most likely suspects” systemically, across the board.

People are freaking the fuck out...oil, hurricanes, the economy....it is slow down here and folks don’t seem to see a future they can put in the bank. Hell, there isn’t a damned thing in people world I ever could count on and as for the deep blue sea? I don’t trust that bitch either...you never know what she’s gonna do..

You can feel the bad vibe thrumming through everything...it’s making people mean. Cranked up, looking for the exits, cashing the checks...G.Gordon Liddy shillin’ gold to the suckers watching “Glenn Beck”...distopic politics of down. Yowza...

Fuckin’ news is nothing but “people weather” anyway...

This doesn’t seem so bad to me, really. That a suspect should actually invoke a right to silence out loud? So what?

“The Enemy In Your Pants”

Neutrinos have mass after all...”why is this important?” you might ask...well. Physics has so far been unable to figure out where 1/4 of the mass of the universe is...stars, planets, galaxies all combined simply don’t account for the observed phenomenon and expansion...previously, the old models had the neutrino as massless. Now, a new physics is emerging...expect the abstractions to crossover into applications someday soon.

HSt---

I stick my finger into the hole of knowledge and wiggle it around...picking out little boogers of wisdom I wipe all over the world’s couch

Anybody can be calm and centered with a few candles, some incense, quiet peaceful surroundings...the trick in life is to clear your head and find that calm spot in a shitstorm...to filter out distractions in a beehive world and focus on simple, true things.

Private boats everywhere...one coming through a series of bends in a channel slams into a marker and the 10 year old sitting on the bow (no lifejacket, legs dangling) was thrown into the water and his father ran over him. The kid is injured horribly... Repeat this formula...by hundreds. I saw dozens and dozens of overloaded boats, 24-28 footers with 15-16-17 people onboard. Law enforcement was all over it...but clearly overwhelmed by the numbers.

I got a boatload of snorkelers who had demanded the Jesus statue...well, of course they did. From 3 miles away I could see the clusterfuck...11 mooring balls, 41 boats. 200-300 people floating, drinking, screaming...several boats blasting sub-woofer enhanced music drowning any chance of hearing “HELP ME!”...jetskis like the smokers from Waterworld motoring in aggressively in clusters of 5-10...people standing on top of the coral, and the piercing shriek of terrified children freaking out as their inebriated parents throw them into the water...total chaos, a display of “this can’t possibly be good” that was astonishing...as I scan the crowd I see a vast majority of day trippers from Miami/Dade...what, I wonder, is the economic benefit? Just wondering...no hotel, no restaurant, no dive op benefit...no tshirt sales, just a swarm of trouble, looking for a day in the sun, the boats so grossly overloaded and poorly operated as to constitute defacto-high risk behavior. Add in the everpresent thumping howl of popular music in Spanish conflicting cacaphonously in the clear blue air and nerves rattle, chi gets stomped...adrenaline pumps.

A high level of alert for the professional captains. It isn’t good, in my opinion, to get all angry or snotty about the chaos...better to just suck it up and be polite, give up precious “right of way”, keep away from the horn, smile and wave...it will pass. 

Permanent expressions of youthful foolishness...my dad got a “drunk in Seoul” tat while in the Korean War, a stupid cheesy skunk on his arm that embarrassed him to the point of having it surgically removed, leaving a scar. He expressed to me how important it was to not mark yourself in this way, and the truth of that has stuck with me...I’m not anti-tat at all...I’m just anti dumbass.

Science vs Religion...an interesting glimpse into who believes what.

Portraits...

Shaky ground, morally and ethically is one thing. Unequivocal nastiness quite another. Exxon...America’s little monster.

Sailing the waters of oblivion...

You heard it here first. The drop in property value is/was inevitable. When the price of housing exceeds average income by such an alarming gap as it did and still does...a correction must occur. Same with almost any commodity. The laws of economics force painful adjustment onto hapless greed-monkeys. Raising wages clearly isn’t going to happen, so as house prices soared on the edge of the bubble we here at SBFTHOF watched with the uncomfortable smirky face.

Those who bought in before the vertical rise? Borrow on the fake equity...buy a boat, get some fake boobs, go on vacations...you know, Baby Boomer character flaw-type shit. Who would have thought that such unrestrained covetous greed would have consequences?

Nothing is more indicative of wingnut charm than defending BP. Seriously. The concept of “remove foot, close mouth”? A lonesome stranger...

FUCK BP...really now...it is a “free market”, right? Above are a few of the companies they own...

How the oil spill gets politicized drags out the party of no-ers from under the bridge to bite the ankles of people horrified at this awful mess. You don’t have to be a bedwetting liberal to see this stupidity as, well, stupid. What a crazy world...right, wrong all conditional on who you voted for.

TeaBonics...a new way of communicating stupidity and ignorance. For those of you who don’t see the 2 contradictory ideas on that sign...<sigh>

Hey...Wait a minute! I think these 2 ladies in the picture were on my boat! btw...They didn’t listen to the briefing.

Boy, I sure seem to piss off the righties! I get mail and comments that provide endless hours of mirth...keep it up folks...I know I will. These are my principles...if you don’t like them I have others. Pissing off righties is wickedawesome sport...

Top Ten New Species

A fascinating psycho-chic...

So easy to sit back and make caustic comments about Sex and the City 2...but I’m never going to watch this opus of really large Barbie dolls being manipulated by gay men because it falls somewhat outside my normal movie fare. Put a motorcycle gang dressed as scary clowns, maybe a few killer robots from the future and I’m in.

Referred for retraining

The buddy team is a great idea on paper...but in-water the usual drill is problematic.Separation, failure to recognize trouble/problems/emergencies, peer pressure...all can combine into a lethal force where the one closest to being able to help is the least likely to provide it.

Just a few quick anecdotes...a guy onboard sucking down a fruit drink and sitting in the sun while his wife pops up 50ft away screaming for help...we asked him “where’s your buddy?” and he said “right under the boat I think”. Or not.

Diving with the kid...and the 10 yr old is in silent panic, drifting away while mom waves frantically 60-70ft away drawing the dilemma of “who do we save first?” Certified together, 1st ocean dive. Refused the suggestion to hire a guide.

A mom (certified) and a 13 year old Discover Scuba...flat calm, no current. She flips the fuck out for some unknown reason never given and bolts toward the ladder while her son is climbing aboard and reaches up and tries to tear him off the ladder in her blind panic.

Experienced diver on vacation get’s paired up with the dumbass du jour...an AOW card and she can’t set her gear up properly. The experienced one is now dealing with a totally dependent buddy who (of course) had refused to pay for a guide...so she fucking STOLE one.

The wise diver still makes mistakes...from nube all the way to techie. Mistakes happen. Learning from them is critically important to becoming an advanced diver. But for so many in this Tshirt sport...learning from mistakes is option “B”...Plan ”A” being blame someone else. Learn nothing. Repeat.

How many are actually failed in scuba classes? Considering what I see every day, that number has to be incredibly low. Statistically damning.

Tired of the usual dystopia? Need a new scenario to chill you? All raged up on rightwingmilitaristic nationalism and apocalyptic Zionist passion? Welcome to Israel.

FUCK you, BP...when you violate federal law, regular people go to jail. When you’re a corporation, however, you just do what you want and let the case drag through court for 15 years and take your chances.

How cool is this?

Something new? A memoir by Mark Twain to be released...

Why don’t blind people skydive? Because it scares the shit outta the dog...

I don’t know when it started...I’ve never read about it anywhere. The blast of compressed air to dry the small “dust cap” on the first stage regulator is a practice that stands out as definitively diveresque...the move where the blast is directed into the orifice, a classic. On the former, note it is a “dust cap” not a “water seal”...and in a world of dry cloth, or even semi-dry and simple touch would be more than adequate to remove 2 drops of water. As opposed to leaning over and honking 120 decibels of compressed air (or better yet, doing it 3-4-5 times) in a crowded boat. On the latter...atomizing saltwater and blasting into your first stage is a tried and true method to corrode your life support gear asap. The air blasting is ridiculous, and when you do it you look foolish.

I’ll be driving the boat...everyone is happy and smiling and on the way home when a staccato burst at an explosive ear ringing 110db+ shatters the air...the offender has their back turned to the crowd and is completely unaware of the glares...yesterday a guy did this like 5-6 times, then moved over to his wife’s reg and started again...the mate jumped him and said “That’s ENOUGH!”...the guy was pissed. Imagine that. HE was piqued...what a world.

People can be interesting...they send in requests for divesites when they book and are told that their request will be written in but it is subject to change by the captain or sea conditions...most are cool with that, but there is that 10%...that pesky, irritating, type “a” controller thing among the diveinistas. So the requests are often for divesites that are OK on one day and terrible the next...and you gotta appreciate the non-tip crowd demanding specific locations and then complaining about them after you try to talk them down off the roof...One guy HAD to go to the Jesus Statue...a religious pilgrimage of some kind, and my suggestion he stop by KMart to commune with the cement Jesus they had in the garden section did not amuse him. I tried to tell him about poor vis...but belligerent is what I got...so off we went. Vis was 20ft...our presumably faithful christian swam around, surfacing repeatedly and demanding “WHERE IS IT?” and kind readers, I tried, god knows I tried, to get him to the spot...he surfaced again and erupted “GODDAMN! WHERE IS THE FUCKING STATUE???????!!!” Quote, unquote. Irony is a wonderful thing all too often lost on the doomed.

Yeah...she said it. She has no position. Face it. Nothin’ there. She has followers. But so did Jim Jones. And Charles Manson. And Lady GaGa.

Astronaut rescue training in Key Largo

You never get a second chance to make a really crappy first impression...

Ahh yes, but some try! A first impression in this “Tshirt” sport of scuba almost always swerves into impurity...something communicated that is false, untrue, a trifling attempt to sway through puffed up ego...so little zen in this manipulative world, so few gratitude moments...

Punctuated, thankfully, by those who make the world a better place through attitude...those who love this place, and in the time they have here immerse themselves in mother-ocean with obvious spiritual undertones...

Yesterday I was carrying tanks back to be filled...I rinse off the salt and as I pick them up I give the valve a quick twist to blow air out of the valve orifice. One doesn’t hiss at all; it’s empty. Sobering moment, here...this means someone among my all over 55yrs old tour this morning came pretty close to ambient temperature...I shake my head in wide wonder as I pick up another one and twist the valve; Silence. At this point...I shudder. Total empties on one trip to a shallow reef? 3...

Out on the Spiegel Grove..another boat hooks up and their divers hit the water like children (but none of them were under 45)...screaming, laughing...and 10 minutes later they ascend everywhere except the mooring line...they splashed, hauled ass until they ran out of air and then came up in a display of trifling ignorance that stands out as a new record. The most divers ever to get it wrong on a single dive. Actually shouting about how little air they had left. I have a group from Scuba Tiger in OP, FL...awesome group, tightly managed and guided...the contrast is amazing.

Ghastly...ghoulish images of oil spewing out of the hole punched into the seafloor punctuated by unusual silence in Snappy Banter World Headquarters new digs...so many of us are sitting here stunned. Silently shouting “we TOLD you so” in our minds the same way we kept quiet when the fucktards decided to start a war in Iraq.

It is more important than ever to vote and get involved...are you listening to Rand Paul? I mean really paying attention? You have to know he has no real game when he blames the reflected outrage on “the media”...Rachel Maddow asked him a fucking question and after he blurts out what he really thinks he blames her. Like Palin getting asked “what do you read?” and then exploding at her own reflected stupidity...note: arguing constitutional law or history with the righties is akin to arguing evolution. It just makes you look stupid for arguing the obvious truth. Next up? Another industry producing unacceptable waste that cannot be contained; Nuclear. In a world of really bad ideas, possibly the worst way ever to boil water.

I sit out on the reef and watch the Gulfstream current wash past slowly flowing toward the NE and I ponder what is coming. A hemispheric pollution event...predicted, discussed, dismissed like anti-war dissent. Fat, old, stupid white people suddenly caring about made up hinky “politics” because they don’t like that little “brown socialist from Africa”...outrage among smart people has to be translated into votes, my friends.

Oil...is dead. It creates and enables a host of problems unsolvable...Nuclear is madness, and surely as the sun rises a major disaster lies in the foreseeable future. Our sad clutching to 19th century solutions (such as sewer/storm runoff) and Jacksonian horseshit “manifest destiny” delusions focuses us on the politics of down.

A metaphorical hurricane spinning to the northwest, gathering strength and size unchecked by the puny efforts to plug a hole on the bottom of the ocean...people lying, arguing, blaming, politicizing...cancelling dive trips...all just beaten down by the futility of such an overwhelming disaster looming...we wait. There is nothing else to do. One question; Why is BP still in charge?

She weighed a lot. Big. She had bypass surgery less than a month ago...she went diving and ended up unconcious after a seizure. Too large to be brought aboard the diveboat, she had to be transported to shore on another boat nearby. Life-flighted/ICU for days, not expected to live, but she did...and of course she began searching for another diveboat that would take her out the day after she was discharged... Female...late 40’s. Scubaboard yakker. Snappy Banter SUPERstar!

I have a perfect record of having never left anyone at sea... accidentally.

Triflers...I detest them. Truly. Having seen dead people as I have and all. When divers are late back to the boat there are a lot of reasons they give, and the vast majority of them are contrite and strive to correct the error...but I get pretty nervous at that -5 minutes mark. I assume that they are low on air, lost, and if I can’t see any bubbles or people at the surface I scroll through the negative possibilities on this fine, calm sunny day in front of all these laughing, smiling people...who I also assume have not figured that this day would include mayhem. Yesterday...2 20 something girl/women were 25 minutes late. They laughed it off...I swallowed my adrenaline enhanced irritation and spoke assertively to them both...they apologized. And then these 2 did it again. I am quite sure they do this everywhere they go...and I see this on occasion. One other notorious violater has a dive blog, owns a dive shop, is a fucking course director...and he is late to the boats, late to the airports, late every time. It is all over his blog, this late everywhere thing, and snarky criticism about anyone who doesn’t “get him”... He writes of a diveboat lifting the ladders thinking everyone was aboard as if the boat had done something horrible. Well, they did...we always count heads, verify, then take roll call. But this assclown is so nototiously late for everything and so NE Americano stupid about it, every diveop in the keys knows about his bullshit. Dave, I hope you’re reading this. Because none of us have ever left anyone out on the reef...by accident. Divers, if you’re so worried about being “lost at sea”...then minimize your chances by not being a dumbass. And teaching other divers in training to disrespect the crew is pure Snappy Banter Gold. As is fucking with the people you rely on to watch your back...and then mocking them on your blog.

Hey y’all...you love your mother, right? Then how about we eliminate pay discrimination against women? On that note...you want to deal with illegal immigration? Put the assholes that profit from the cheap labor into a fucking jail cell along with the other thieves. Problem solved. As opposed to ranting and raving about some of the poorest people on the planet.

Love Betty...

Drilling for oil blog. Who thinks BP is going to pay? That’s really sweet you think that. We wanted the oil...well, we’re all going to pay. Will the Republicans back off the chanting horseshit “Drill baby drill”? Silence is NOT acceptable. Those who cringed from the start need to make their voice heard. “Environmentalist” is NOT a 4-letter word, and defining the movement through the mouths of ignorant haters is a concept we here at Snappy Banter World Headquarters have grown weary with...

Dolphins...are actually not spiritual beings from outer space. They don’t communicate telepathically. They don’t jump for joy at the idea of hanging around with people. They are animals. PEOPLE are the one’s from outer space, apparently.

A pirate without a ship is just a creative homeless person...

The fascination with violent historical figures and vampires and such just pushes my “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me” button. Pirates...? Really? Can you imagine the terror of being thousands of miles from home, sailing across the ocean in some piece of shit galleon...scurvy, bad food, people dying over things as unfathomable to the modern mind as toothache? Then...attacked by a band of rapist/thieves? How delightfully romantic.

Kinda like the ultimate commitment porn of the vampire cult...holy shit. So bizarre...just so messed up, the metaphorical issues just oooze “ick!”.

“Fat finger trade”? I say; BULLshit. Since when do you type numbers in by spelling them out? The explanations put forth are so stupid that my cynical nature swerves toward “thieving bastards” thinking. To suggest such a “theory” one presumes a suspect exists...but alas, they are just making shit up. The stockmarket has become volatile in a direct cause and effect relationship to deregulation. When valuable stocks drop like this it triggers automatic sell orders...which means that automatic buy orders pick them up. Cheap. That’s called a “bear attack”. There aren’t any grownups watching out...the SEC was nowhere. Film at 11...

The phone calls are coming in...”how is the oil spill affecting you?” from folks nervous that their dive vacations in the Keys are threatened. Some blame the media for inciting hysteria...well, how charming. Blame the media for people who can’t read a fucking map. Another example of how facts get published and people get it wrong and then blame the messenger and act out on their ignorance. And then blame someone else (the media). The maps are right there to see...but anyone who has ever tried to drive while a map-challenged passenger is queried as to “where are we now?” will attest to the venomous and volatile attachment to ignorance gets a prominent place in the “Intransigent Behavior Hall of Fame”...

The Keys are (so far) an oil free zone...emergency officials are mobilizing and planning, but so far the threat remains about 800 miles away. Wind patterns this time of year can shift a bit, but are increasingly stable from the east/southeast...a good thing for the worlds 3rd largest barrier reef.

Dinosaurs in the Deep...there are some really interesting stories about fossil collectors/paleontologists. Much like orchid collectors they went to extraordinary and devious lengths to get the object of their obsession.

“Do you know how hard it is to find a Republican that isn’t a dittohead?” Chris Matthews complimenting George Pataki (fmr Gov of NY) on his distancing himself from Limbaugh on MSNBC Hardball...so, so true.

The way ordinary things are traced historically is really interesting. The lives of regular people, the ascent of music performance venues, and an illegal commodity...

Steph...one of SBFTHOF’s “Women we love”...

I’m sorry for farting upwind from you. Was that wrong?

The fishing industry is not totally down with the diving...mooring balls placed by the Feds are designated for multi-use, and in my experience the fishers are a usually civil if not supportive group. I’ve had them give up a ball when they see me arrive with divers, and they don’t have to do that. I’ve had them scream obscenities...as well as a few times they got on the VHF and made asses of themselves in front of everyone. On the radio, I am all business. No chit chat, just communicate and be done. Since everyone can hear everything you say and I am on the radio every day, I am tightly controlled...so when some asshat fisherman starts cussing and threatening me, I just turn down the volume and smile and wave. The other day...a fishing charter was on a mooring ball at Crocker Reef along with a dive boat. That a professional fishing charter had to use a mooring ball is because they have, as a group, pretty much screwed the pooch over the years. Increasingly, I see them right on the National Marine Sanctuary borders. And I find it the mark of a “phone it in” captain to do this. It’s a big ocean, people. You don’t have to hook up to popular divesites. But...it’s legal, and we all try to stay out of each others way. Well...the captains try. Two divers got away from the boat and surfaced behind the fishing boat requiring the daily drama of a pickup. See it coming yet?

The divers were paying customers related only in this way to the dive boat...but the fisher got on the radio and let loose a vulgar and profanity laced dressdown of the dive boat captain rivalling the worst I have ever heard...the divecap apologized for his intrusion. This enraged the fishercap...he escalated his anger. The divecap said again “look...I’m very sorry. We have to work together here”...well. That got a response so vile and nasty you wouldn’t believe it. “I’M SICK OF THIS FUCKING WORK_TOGETHER BULLSHIT MOTHERFUCKER!!! YOU DON’T LIKE IT THEN MEET ME AT MY DOCK MOTHERFUCKER!!!!!

The divecap paused...then said “Like I said before, I apologize... xxxxxxx back on 16” and off the air. Not one swear word, no loss of cool, no response to the awful threat display. Very professional, Dean. He took responsibility for 2 total strangers who made an ordinary daily mistake...and I hope my loyal readers will click the link to this “professional” hot head dumbass and never, ever book his boat.

Just my way of “meeting you at the dock” you charming marketing genius you...and I appreciate the material you provided for Snappy Banter.

Since I’m never going to win a Pulitzer or be asked to write an article for any respectable mainstream dive mag...I appreciate some of the kudos I get. I also consider a measure of success is who you manage to piss off and why. I just ask myself...What Would Tyler Durden Do?

There you go...blow up (with a fucking robot drone) an average of 32% civilians and you’ll win some hearts and minds. “Why do they hate us? Is it because we’re awesome?” No, flag waver. It’s because you fucking blew up their mother. By accident. Every day for years and years.

Exactly what are we doing here? Explain to me again how this is NOT like VietNam? Cause it looks a lot like WE are the ones with the terrorist training program.

When I think about all the people out there that want to kill me, I”m just glad as hell I’m here with my friends. You are my friends, right?

What a dumbass...my goal in life is to follow this dipshit into a Men’s room and kick him in the ass while he’s pissing. Hard.

The oil spill...so many opinions. I have mine...as I drive divers who flew here in jets, rented cars...out to the reef (which they demand be pristine) in a boat, where fuel consumption isn’t gauged “miles per gallon” but rather “gallons per mile”. So in the interest of burning off the outer shell arguments and dispersing the red herring let us take a look at the core issue; we’re all a bunch of hypocritical whiners. Especially we who dive.

Conservation used to seem like such a great idea. Then, along came the Reagan-era, a golden age of neocon bullshit that made Americans feel real good about greed and overconsumption. Those pesky lefties and their un Amurrican ideas about saving whales and hugging trees and wanting water you can drink right out of a tap. Yeah. The oil spill is all of our fault, people. If we quit escalating demand through the crazy and insane socialist concept of “conservation” then we can do something rational. But that would be crazy. Crazy..

The relationship between despicable hypocrites and Republican AntiGay Crusaders has a long and very rainbow-colored history. You’re out NOW, motherfucker.

40 years ago...

Cthulu..is NOT cute

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