The past is presently unfolding

Alligator Alley is a stretch of I-75 that connects Miami/Ft Lauderdale to Florida’s west coast...a straight, flat strip of asphalt cutting through the Everglades as if God himself had created the most perfect speedtrap in the universe. The signs warn “No Gas Available”, which is only partly true. The Miccosukee tribe reservation has casinos and gas, but it takes awhile to get that far through the ocean of grass, the road fenced in to protect shiny cars from hitting 12ft gators...thousands of which lurk the contrived ditch/ponds along the road. Eagles, ospreys, herons...high above the telltale “V” of birds migrating from places far to the north to settle down in the warm Florida sun for a month or three.

It is the vastness of this pristine place that impresses me...the simple flatness, the wind gently hissing through the reeds swaying in air-driven waves that look like sienna colored water this day. The sky is angry in places in that “atmospheric” Florida thunderstorm way, the sky a coppery yellowy weird color I only see here and have never successfully photographed. I suppose painters have an advantage there. I am moving too fast, the car and the road blur my perception so I pull off into a “Rest Area; No Facilities” around 1/2hr before sunset...I can hear thunder in the distance, but the sun is blazing between the earth and the black cloud through the rain and the light is very “Florida Primeval”...

I pull out the camera and take a picture of a wonderful little wildflower as the foolish little men with guns stare...and I release all traces of intimidation, they fade into the background, as much a part of the place as any other thing...I wait until long after dark to leave this amazing place, as a full moon rises in the east...

I wonder how many times in my life I waited for calm moments to just set themselves up, about all the thousands of times I let something outside disturb the inside, and I drive through the silvery moonlight across the vast, unlighted wilderness toward Naples and then north...smiling gratefully.

“The rich get richer, and when they get poorer, well, they get bailed out” Forgiving student loans as part of a stimulus? Yes, please!

What the fuckism as reality? An interesting piece...

Five Dials...just wonderful.

Do you know a rightwingnut? Agitated, gratuitously political,.. amped up and there is much, much more in the atmosphere besides simple air. The fake conservative idiot is way more interesting than the real ones..”there is no such thing as an extreme conservative” says the foolish fat man, perhaps from the isolation of extremism it would seem so. Polarization, a career option, a modern plague. Making the big money from “hate”...

A Thousand Words

Amazon Womyn in the Carpathians...that is all

Desert plants such as cactus are examples of the most highly evolved plants in the world...

Feb 9, 1964...

Mission: a) to entertain b) provoke thought c) to bring down “the man”

I haven’t been diving as much as I would like...between training toward my tech certs and training with the Key Largo Fire Department Water Emergency Team, and the fucking windiest year ever...well. That damned wind just howls every time I get a shot at my favorite thing to do; flit around Molasses Reef taking pictures...so it’s not a reef picture. Send your complaint on a $20 bill and I’ll make sure it get’s to the right person..

I put up a “headline” every day I post, but I am not a thought-of-the-day type guy. People point out to me that sometimes the lines don’t seem connected to the body of the text. Well, thats because they’re NOT connected. Directly. Is there some rule about that? Like the rules about returning emails or answering phones? Well, I don’t follow those either.

Or punk-tuation rules. Some stinkin’ rules, I don’t need.

Valentines Day approaches and the anxiety builds...it ain’t that hard, guys. Shiny plant material, carbohydrates in a red foil box and a good fuck. VOILA!

There is no cry-cry in godaddy-godaddy! Jesus wouldn’t put up with this kind of boobishness, according to “the experts”.

#26 in the category “things about me you might like to know or not”; Jane Fonda is fucking hot Old chics are amazing.

Walk with me to some distant faraway hell...or right next door. It is a common “humorous” device, the prison-bitch. Funny? I don’t think so. So comfortable, complacent...perhaps you have never before considered what is happening here. It is called “cruel and unusual” punishment.

“Come kindly to terms with your asse, for it bears you” from John Muir’s classic VW repair manual...being able to deal with the mechanical things one needs every day is quickly becoming a lost art. Cars are increasingly computerized with modules that are not repairable...they are designed for replacement after specialized diagnosis, virtually impossible for your average old school “shade tree mechanic”...and even the word is fading, “mechanic”, one who diagnoses and repairs...giving way to “technician” who simply uses a diagnostic computer to tell him what to replace.

Transitional whale species...interesting article on a topic dearly beloved by “creationists” as fodder for their silliness.

Big snake...seriously. Big.

Potosi...el tio...the silver mountain that changed the world

I am so NOT good at this...waaaaay off on the women. Not good, so not.

How does one select a digital camera based on image quality?

A truth I knew about; women like the gay-male porn. Seriously. Now, they won’t cop to it any more than the average female will openly discuss having anything at all to do with/about porn of any kind, but we all hafta wonder sometimes “where’d she pick that lttle trick up?”...

10 years old...

Another 10 year old, for contrast

Awkward Moments

I knew this guy who had a pager (remember those?) back in the olden days...he was a bit of a tool, this one, and I would have him sitting on my couch while I sneaky-like dialed his pager entering the number “8675309”...I know, lord I KNOW...but he didn’t. Over a period spanning 10-12 years, I would do this sometimes at random...”I keep getting a page from this number for some reason” he said...”What number?” I asked him...”8675309” he said.

He never, even to this day, got it...at gatherings I would bring others into the little joke and page him...I only did it once in a while, a couple times a year, but it never got old watching him fuss over the “who is this person?”

The future of NetFlix as USPS shrinks...

What would 10 minutes with Nashville Pussy teach you?

Speaking of pathetic hypocrisy...no outcry from the dogma-police about what “every child deserves”? I guess they reserve that little piece of horseshit for Lesbian COUPLES who use ai to have children. Read the whole article, please. See it?

Myths about poverty and hunger persist in the age of bailouts for (face it, droogs) the uber-wealthy. The lagtime between losing the job and going for assistance is fogging the reality of where we are headed. There is a tendency to assign judgment onto the poor that I find in so many cases to be...unfortunate...it seems a sad illustration of who one is that they would express hostility or anger toward the poorest poor, as if “welfare” were a career choice like “Wall Street Thief” or something...

Facebook snarked

I got your pillows right here...or here...or godhelpme here

I can’t say I suffer from the tragedy of perfection...

Imagine a world where we are connected to the forces that be, to fate...by a wire. When we move toward the end...slack is withdrawn by the wire violently, and moving backward impossible against the inexorable force that pulls us forward...wire speed is not within our power to adjust, there is only one direction, and any time you give slack the wire takes it, now gone.

Others have different speeds...rarely does speed match for long and life in WireWorld is very much lived in the moment. Some go insane and rush toward the pull, and always...the wire takes the slack. Resistance only causes a painful pull, then dragging. Sometimes...we drop the water we carry to join wirespeed with someone else, sacrificing slack which the wire always takes. A true match in speed...is so very rare, more likely...a cruel twist of fate that draws you first together, then away at exquisitely slow speed. A cynical take on the meaningless of it all, or a pragmatic look at the way it is?

Ironically, in WireWorld as in ours, it is death itself that gives meaning to life. Not puppies or bunnies or happiness, which all wither and die as do all things. A natural part of life, ignored at great peril, focused on overmuch it shadows the true beauty of temporality...

The true beauty of the way it really is. Optimism is a natural handmaiden to acceptance.

Maritime history in Puget Sound, the Kalakala...a thing of beauty worthy of preservation.

The dude explains in a way that is simply fucking AMAzing. Seriously. Choose one, prove me wrong! Try this one for example

Womyn’s Land...

Not another article on the dismal science...!? A good read, nonetheless.

Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense...

This moment in history brought to you by: Publish or Perish

Opening up Greece to recreational scuba diving may be boosting tourism...but the downside is that the diving itself is on archeological sites. Who could have possibly imagined that looting would be a problem?

Finding treasure and looting history... History is crashing directly into treasure hunting yet again...an unflattering, unflinching appraisal of the new Discovery Channel TV show. “The results have to be shared and debated so that they can become part of the historical and archeological record. Otherwise the artifacts are just trinkets, conversation pieces, or decorative touches on the coffee tables of those who can afford them”

And on the subject of scuba related stupidity...”If you’re an idiot for pulling the trigger, then you have to stay with it”. Indeed. Or...when you find yourself deep in a hole, stop digging. I’m just sayin’....

I can hear the howling now about “endangered” status...the report seems defensive about the numbers, citing the ease with which this count was done...

Sunset...January 31, 2009

I’m sticking around as long as the “fun” outweighs the “unfun”

Some things are worth fighting for....some people will fight over every little thing. I struggle with my own versions of Pork Chop Hill...so easy to get sucked into conflict that is unwinnable, nothing but degree of loss, winning something you didn’t want or need in the first place..

Lionfish spreading into Atlantic waters is one of those battles that strikes a chord...what to do? One proposal I heard tossed out was to arm volunteer divers with pole spears and sending them out to the sanctuaries here in the keys...an idea that I hope dies out before implementation.

And the discussion about “invasive” species ratcheted up a few notches when the heretical question “who decides when distribution of species is “bad”?”

In regard to ecosystems in trouble, trouble being defined as whatever exists being in human-induced decline, the general thinking is to intervene to preserve some status quo...like “old growth” forest or coral reefs. As we distribute plants/animals of all kinds all over the world it is clear the cat is outta the bag.

healthcare options for low income or uninsured workers in the Keys

“The anti-hero is a hero in wolf’s clothing” alienation as muse...

The ape wears Versace

Seeing and Believing...the growing rifts between science and faith in the land of kum-bah-yah

Billy Powell...an obituary

A dystopian view or common sense? Or both?

The lords of karma shriek “res ipsa loquitur!”

“Paranoia is just another word for ignorance” hunter s thompson

There are days where so much happens within a short hour that I stand out on the bow looking seaward with every cell in my body fighting for transcendent release from physical bondage...I don’t sit out there very often, and when I do sit down on the bow I get the oddest feeling. I suppose being on the roof of a building you live in or work in might feel the same. A place where you can be invisible right there in plain sight. My feet dangling down, waves rolling in over my feet bringing out a memory of 45, 46, 47 years ago...I can see the reef below and the swarms of fish, sometimes an eagle ray. One time out at Molasses I was sitting in the warm sun out there on my “lanai” and a fucking manatee swam under my feet. 6 miles offshore...wow.

A shocking trend with museums...as the gov’t gives money to those who fail the free-market test.

Hef...icon of misogynistic assholistic magnificence! Behold the UberIdiot made good.

A study of sexuality reveals: women do not seem to be completely straightforward. I’m finding a consistent pattern...the data rolling down increasingly supportive of my own (admittedly) anecdotal experience. I worry a lot less about what the plurality wants and what the one before me wants. So far, ummm.

The Chagos islands...protection through isolation may not be good enough

Evolution and space exploration

YES! We will.

Dr Strangelove, revisited. How could such a thing possibly go horribly wrong?

The Bush Legacy...domestic spying. Maybe he was a nice guy, an aww-shucks good ol’ Texas boy...but he lorded over something deeply disturbing to my liberal concepts of privacy, an escalation of the Nixonian paranoid paradigm. It is time to push the UberCop mentality back away from the henhouse. I’m just sayin’.

Gouging out my minds eye...

I don’t get much walk in traffic here at Snappy Banter World Headquarters...I don’t have much room, so stuff I need or value is right out there. In the corner of the ceiling, a large and beautiful hand painted silk dragon kite...

The important things lying about, money, personal shit...clutter to an unfamiliar observer, but my visitor saw the tell tale signs...”You’re a fucking dragon, aren’t you?”

Busted...

The closures begin to ramp up...the transition from exploitation of the natural resources to preservation is going to be bumpy.

truth-o-meter...I will be watching this one closely. The St Petersburg Times...

A dick being a Dick and an asshole. Big Surprise.

The Flamingos...retro-licious...The Spotnicks!...The Spotnicks!...they’re Swedish!

You want to understand anti-nuke politics? Go ahead...understand what you will.

Sometimes...people just talk too FUCKING MUCH.

“3 Things I didn’t Know”...

zoom....

Life in the Florida Keys is all about the odd people...they choose to be here, and the reasons are always interesting. No shortage of quirky, highly educated weirdos...yet, what of the local newspapers? Have you ever seen such a homogonized asskissing bunch? Good lord.

Thank goodness there’s Snappy Banter from the Hall of Fire. My advertisers are, um, actually there aren’t any...quotes? Ummm, not many of those either...but finding me seems disproportionally easy...I am selling nothing, asking for nothing, reporting the underbelly of the dream of running away to a tropical island...life on a rock, serving tourists, relying on the random generosity of strangers and a diabolically convoluted exploitive scuba industry...

And let me tell you...it is exploitive. It is designed to play on dreamers, the marketing is filthy with it. Making it in this business requires no small degree of luck...hard work, dedication, low pay, high cost of living...shit, I wish I had a dime for every delusional northern burnout that came down here and got blown out within 6 months. There is one dive op here that hires people to fill positions and is run so insane-assclown-psycho that they know full well no one will stay so the ad just stays posted. Must give a real warm and fuzzy to those who sold it all, loaded up the dive gear, plopped in the Buffett CD and moved to Margaritaville to see that they are just another dumbass stuck in the revolving door.

Not a new story, by any means, and certainly not isolated to this place...same in Vegas, NYC, LA...dreamers gettin’ ate up and spat out.

Luck is made by force of will, sometimes. I call that “irony”.

The road from self loathing to acceptance passes through the town called “0”

Phony social identities have become pivotal to daily life. Substance gives way to metaphorical/literal tattoo’s that mark only the exterior...there is nothing to them, they are a fashion statement, a sign of one who complies without question with the appearance of nihilistic fury, without any passion or knowledge..

Lending real gravitas to the “The world will not end with a bang, but a whimper” adage.

Submitted for your perusal...watch it all the way through to the tattoo part.

Monkey Art...Pat Lynch, a nature illustrator and artist and all around interesting dude (PLUS a loyal SnappyBanterite) sends me this: “Seeing the thing on Arisman reminded me of the work of an old friend from my medical illustration days, Joel Ito, who spent years working at the Oregon Primate Research Center and did many very sensitive portraits of macaques and other primates (enclosed, one of Joel's works). Pat Lynch”

The effort required to be duplicitous...to lie successfully is massive. It’s called “commitment”...the ability to commit to bullshit but not to a person is called “sociopathic”...I’m just sayin’.

Mike Tyson at Sundance being interviewed...being interesting.

The middle one in the Subway commercial...completely hot. I am not the only one who thinks it.

If it wasn’t so consequential...it would be farcicial

She was laughing at some stupid shit I said...at me...”Well then. Was it a real clown or just some person dressed like a clown?” she said mockingly. Such a masterful cut that my admiration exceeded the hit.

The Inauguration Show...”the science is beyond dispute” Be inspired. Or not. Stetson Kennedy is toward the end.

They drove all the way down here to dive...and everyone else cancelled. 2 does not a trip make...but I decided to run with them anyway. Her parents were there to see them off, everyone smiling and happy. Not unusual de facto, but something was bumping it up slightly, and I put it down to individual variation.

She took her open water course here a few months back and I remember her well; terrified, seasick in flat calm conditions, had to come back down from Naples and redo everything. Which of course, she did. She tells me that it took her months to overcome her fears in the pool part of the course...months of coming to the dive shop every weekend to try again and again and again. I look at her with a growing respect...wow. People are so amazing.

He is listening to her and smiling...this is what they had worked so hard for...for a long time, and I feel the rightness of my decision to take them out post facto, and I run out to a couple of spots off the beaten path. They are just amazed at the beauty of it all in a gratitude-attitude that lasers out of them both. I ask them if they’re going to dive again and she says “no...we’re going to Key West today...my dad loves the Hard Rock, he’s been to 46 of them. He has early onset Alzheimers, and we are doing the things he loves to do with him while we still can”.

Not so many years ago, when people smacked their heads real hard, they didn’t survive it. ICU, Trauma One centers, life flight choppers, have revolutionized emergency medicine. TBI, Traumatic Brain Injury, is one shining example of the sublime and the terrible within our healthcare system.

Sublime...because they survive to walk out of the hospital. Terrible, because the person who walks is not the person they were...and the medical system is completely unable to cope with this long term care issue. Nor are families equipped. A soldier comes home, brain injured, personality altered, the devastating effects on the family create problems unimaginable...a friend of mine fell off a horse a few months ago and cracked her helmet in half. TBI. Life flighted, ICU’d, discharged, dumped. No short term memory, her marriage crumbled, alone, frightened...different than she was. My daughter, Hannah was struck by a car October 26, 2002. Sublime, terrible. Thousands and thousands and thousands just like us...dumped by a terribly flawed medical system that undeniably puts profit over long term care. Undeniably. Terrible, in ways I hope you never, ever see.

Wow. I am constantly fascinated with the death throes of the old myths...this is what it looks like when faith in god crumbles into angry/oppositional desperation. I find comfort and amusement in the idea that they are using the tools of science in acknowledgment of the flaws inherent in faith. They feel a need for validation? I imagine the mind of god being somewhat displeased by this obvious lack of trust.

Wendy does Japan!

The wetsuit pulled part way up around his knees, shorts, rubbing his belly, wandering around the boat looking confused...like he had wandered out of a nursing home. I don’t mean to be offensive or disrespectful...this is exactly what it looked like. Nothing about this one seemed to speak “scubadiver”...

The wetsuit thing was comical/tragic...wow. Staggering around the boat as we go down the canal with his knees hobbled, huge gut looking like he was pregnant, rubbing his hands over it in that “pregnant” way...right in front of the restaurants, Sharkeys, the other boats, the hotels.

I called him “silver alert”. His awareness of surroundings seemed...partial. Admittedly, I was irritated with him. But as the minutes rolled by, I became concerned...if he was someone I cared about, would I let him do what he is doing...alone? Something amiss, here. I step in...the dragon emerges. I watch his every move, silently...checking his gear (he failed to turn on his air), I whispered to the instructor onboard “watch him...help him out, OK? Just get him back to the ladder and I’ll take him from there” Late last night, I think to myself that diving isn’t really all that dangerous, but divers themselves are a serious hazard to themselves.

SNL...

OmG.that is all

I see a woman about 60 at the grocery store wearing an “Elvis” tshirt. The fat, drugged up, Vegas-y Elvis...I associate this image with all that I despise about Las Vegas, the phony, boozed up hooker rich zone...the weird RatPack bottom of the American sub-basement...what can you tell about a person by a tshirt?

Nothing. Everything.

Dear...MothER of GAWD....love the Jezebel

You want to make a statement to the Mormons? This sounds like wicked awesome fun...

The sum of all things worthy of regret; be warned

Japanese TV is amazing.

Museum Webzine

Part chaos, part country, part middle finger...

Kitty says “A fool in love is still a fool”

Galveston struggles after the big one hits...this one was zeroed in on Snappy Banter World Headquarters for several days. The Keys were evacuated, I bought a generator, we hunkered down, and it blew right by us.

Nice people...they smile, we talk, they’re from Europe. She blurps puke all over the fuel tanks. At the end of a long day I scrape it off and hose it...the irregularities and angles cause splash, and I rinse myself as well...nice people, they smile...they walk. All day, 4 dives...breakfast puke, lunch puke, ba-bye!

The mate passes out the rental gear, a huge pile of it. Huge. Winter is the time when people dive once a year and get their head handed to them. Wetsuits...dripping with urine. Oh you delicate readers going “euuuhhh!”...all you had to do was look at the simple words!

It is a beautiful day...warm, sunny...the bleating goat sounds of vomiting from other boats are piercing the air but not my consciousness this fine day.

A Euro wearing a $2 Tshirt that says “It’s Better In The Hawaii!”...wow. EuroTrashed syntax! He wore it all 4 days he dived here. During the debrief, I chimed in “there is a new law in Monroe county people...you have to leave with 3 more Tshirts than you arrived with...if you are from a EU nation, the number goes up to 4...they’re checking at the airport!” .

Los Bad Boys Del Valle! VATO! vaaaaTO!

Nature abhors a vacuum

Dwight Schrute, Salesman, Pennsylvania: The Meaning of Success
To me, success is simply the opposite of failure.

Look people in the eye. Unless they have enormous breasts.

Have you ever really kept your nose to the grindstone? The amount of blood that comes out is shocking.

I am loyal to a fault. But when the one I am loyal to starts suspecting me, I have no choice but to take him out. The secret mission is incredibly important.

The difference between sex and love can usually be complicated, but I think I've found a way to keep them straight in my head: You love your parents, but you sex your girlfriend. I have it written down in a couple of places.
 

A disproportionate ratio of addiction...much like pharmacists

“A lady gets a lot of things, she gets the 20 carat ring, she gets the alimony too, she gets to look good in the nude, but there’s one place where they’ve been whipped, between the nose and upper lip” “My Moustache” Sparks

Amy Sedaris...”vitamin P glow!”

Fans often speculate that I lie about my age...

“How many people have you guys rescued?”...the line from “The Guardian” I only remember the ones I didn’t” rings as a truth that hit me so hard I had to shut the DVD off and watch it later...yes, kind reader, I remember names, dates, faces, words as if they were right here right now. People who I couldn’t help.

Jan 13, 2007. The wind was blowing pretty hard...seas were up, but not at that “cancel” stage. A group from Ohio was aboard, and there was no way the group leader was going to consider today a “blowout”. One woman was terrified...just spitless scared. She was with an instructor, and my confidence was high that this would ensure safety for her...as I helped her to the exit, I leaned in close to her and said “Trust me...I won’t let anything bad happen to you. If you need me, I’m right here”

How wrong I was...and I have eaten those words every day. She wasn’t going to be allright, and something very bad did happen to her. She died. She drowned when she panicked underwater, and the best DM I have ever worked with brought her back to the boat...

So this time of year, when the wind howls from the east as it so often does...I feel it. God knows, I feel it in my bones. My vigilance is hyperextended, and I have to work real hard to move forward...I feel like I earned the right to be cranky and worried, even if the general diving public thinks my ocean-world is one big theme park...I owe it to her. Wife, mother, daughter, sister...I just do.

A guy I know gets all cranked about “cattle boats”. He only wants the 6-pack charter. I try to tell him a full boat is a full boat. I try to tell him a full small boat is way worse on rough seas. I try to tell him that a 6-pack boat has only the captain, no crew. I drive both...and lemme tellya, the difference is pretty much simple lower operating cost for the operator. Same dive sites, fer cryin out loud. The 6-pack ties up right next to the cattleboats! The advantages are part of an argument that is rooted in intransigent cranky diver arbitrary foolishness land. Fertile ground, indeed. This guy actually dislikes me because I drive a big boat. Or because I fucked his wife. One of those, I’m pretty sure.

meeeooowww! Passive aggressive Babs Walters and the queen Fool, Liz Hasselbeck! I’m with you, Babs.

The dude is blabbering at hyperspeed Spanish into a cellphone in the Publix...not that unusual. He gets in line behind me as I am being rungup, and he doesn’t use the bar thingie that tells the cashier where one transaction ends and another awaits...she is talking to the young lady doing the bagging and I am listening intently because I can’t understand a single word...literally...an ethnic blur of monotone. I see she is sticking cellphone boy’s shit on my tab, and I stop her...she tries to tell homeslice to use the divider, but he just stares at her and continues his conversation without any sign at all that he heard or understood any of it...so I said to her “doncha just wanna snatch that fuckin’ phone and toss it across the store?” and the two girls laugh loud and hard...I say “this dumbass has no idea, does he?” they continue laughing as I suggest they just get him to pay for MY shit...as he continues a loud Spanish conversation into his hand.

Weirdos getting weird stuff stuffed in weird places? Weird! 

Love stinks

There is no need for bullshit...none. That it exists is indisputable. What it means, I am far too disturbed to speculate upon

What would Odysseus do?

In tough times...what becomes of museums? Who owns this art, artifacts and such?

Joe, “the plumber” plugs his book..listen to the embedded media....And for added shits and grins

A brief history of Why Pot is Illegal...be sure to watch the youtube embedded vid...fascinating

All 17 full episodes of the original series, The Prisoner...

“and the years they just roll by, like a broken down dam” is filling the air on the boat..the sun is going down, the air is very warm. The passengers were all from far away cold places, and they were all just beginning their vacations, busy forgetting what day it is...we slice through the water at 22mph, the music providing a soundtrack that makes me wonder about the last time I actually posted something positive about what I do...and I feel a bit humbled by my pointing out the problem children and not the thousands of amazing people who come out on my little private Idaho...

Today, a young woman named Kathy from Ontario...she first came here years ago when I drove for another dive op. She was a brand new firebreathing instructor and was heading into the Caribbean to work...well, she went through all of the things you read here on SBFTHOF, and she decided that she loved diving too much to have it obliterated by the crushing public tourist juggernaut...she worked for several liveaboards, a thing I could never do. No offense, guys, but when my day is done, I’m fucking done. Hanging around and being OnSTage 24/7? JHC...I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t end well.

Like many Canadians, she has this speech pattern where the last word in a sentence her voice rises distinctly in pitch, as if she were singing a 2 note song. Odd, distracting...but on her, it fit. She is dancing to the music on the boat, having a grand old time...

My taste in music...is a bit eclectic. People often come up to me and tell me things like “wow...I haven’t heard that song in 30 years”, or they’ll ask me about it and I’ll get into a conversation...a chat that warms me, every time. The soundtrack of my life, in a way...and I think some folks pick up on that. Cool.

She lives her life like she knows what it feels like to have her back against the wall...when women stand in positions of authority, their sexuality gets into play real fast..”she’s a lesbian”, or “she really needs a stiff dick” type shit. People feel free to give advice to her in a way they would never do to a man her age...never. As she tells me about the latest shitfest...I am drawn toward the idea of confronting her attackers...which puts me into the same category, eh?

I reflect...when people say shit that isn’t true about you...when they make up stuff, call you a slut, or a dyke, or a drunk behind your back...well..

Critics who don’t address substance...they attack style. I was riding my bike down a street in Jacksonville Beach many years ago on a warm summer evening and I heard a woman’s raised voice angrily saying “It ain’t WHAT you said, asshole! It’s how you said it!”

WingNut Radio...fucking moron. Seriously...a FUCKING MORON. Too many smart people using birth control is tipping the evolutionary balance toward a new Manifest Destiny of the future; Stupidity

This looks staged...THIS, clearly not...but the point remains. Firing missiles into Southern Israel from Gaza neighborhoods is just not tolerable. Posting imagery of innocent young people being shot at...bombs falling, Israeli soldiers and all...wow. The antisemitic undertone of the Palestinian cause is an ugly, unacceptable position, in my humble opinion. Israel has a deep resonant heart-thrum to me, and there is only one path; peaceful coexistence. Quit Fucking with the Jews, assholes. What would happen if missiles were coming into the suburbs of San Diego from Mexico, I wonder?

Predictions of the demise of print newspapers are increasing. The New York Times?

Sit down! Shut up! I’ll tell you when you’re having fun...

This day, after the blitzkrieg of craziness that is the 2 week Most-Happiest-Time-Of-The-Year...no trip. So I decide to drop into the nether regions of my 20,000lb girlfriend and repair a sump pump beneath the head...and considering the handful of fuckheads that puked all over the wall...the woman who tried to stuff her damned tampon into the woefully overwhelmed toilet...the overflow of explosive-sea-sickness induced diarreah that had been rinsed down into the failed pump system, this wasn’t gonna be pretty. But dealing with this kind of a horrifying mess is something I have accepted as part of the job. So I fix it, and I go up into the office and what to my smelly and silent countenance appears???:

A Euro that is obsessed with not going to the same divesites...in the office he clutches the Scubadiving magazine opened to that blistering piece of shit article on the Florida Keys as he grills the young lady at the counter...the fluff piece that basically says everything is awesome, and that you MUST SEE the Jesus Statue (a horrible disappointing divesite). Now, one of the big problems for divers hunting for truth and beauty is the roaring cacophony of advertising-happy-love-joy bullshit...how do you find the best dive sites when everything is marketing bullshit?

Left to my own devices, I would go to Molasses reef every day...it is, hands down, some of the best diving I have ever done. Yesterday, sailfish were chasing bait right up to the boat and our Euro witnessed this rare and special event up close from under water...along with the 400lb grouper at Fire Coral Cave (ball 1 Molasses Reef)...no current, calm seas, beautiful day...back at the dock, he is flat-out grilling the mate to make sure we DON’T go back to the same places tomorrow...a demanding sort of guy. And of course...of COURSE, no tip. So I ask you, kind reader...would you respond to a petulant demand for repeated transcendent experience? What do you do, here? (“Grand Canyon? AGAIN?”)

Seeing as how this isn’t a reasonable position to take...seeing as how pleasing this guy is a crapshoot, and he doesn’t really understand that what he has seen today should be burned into his soul for the grand experience it was...and seeing as how I cannot put his happy smiley exuberant petulance into my bank and purchase luxury items like food and shelter...I think “not”. I will go, as I always do, to the best dive site on this given day, according to my experience as a captain and naturalist geek.

Under the waters of Lake Michigan, an under-reported archeological site...

I had a dream that I couldn’t sleep...rolling from one side to the other finding my comfort position over and over and over. I am not really sure if I slept or not.

Dreams have a meaning sometimes, but not always. I wonder...does dreaming of insomnia have some point?

I wasn’t aware of the time, or the passage of time...of sounds in the room. So I must have been asleep, but how weird I feel...as if I hadn’t slept at all.

I need to ________ or I will _________. I don’t really _________ because _________ say what ______...and I don’t even really know the question, anyway.

Realignment of metaphorical planets and moons and stars throwing allegorical piss all over a world ruled by a strange dream...

Perhaps it is the poison...the adrenaline breaking down and slowly cooking my brain in a toxic stress soup that disconnects from the event itself and asserts its own strange zeitgeist...a foggy, disembodied mood tied to spiritual unease and seeming far, far more important than rationality would dictate.

“This past couple of weeks has provided plenty of things to mull over” I tell myself...yesterday at Molasses Reef, a diver put a choke hold on my DM..not a simple grab, or arms around thing...but a classic choke hold. This crazed panicky (I want to call her “bitch” for emphasis, but she really wasn’t...she was a very nice person) eeeediot was drowning my friend right in front of me...I grabbed the boathook and was “thisclose” to whacking her right in the head and snatching her tank valve to get her away... The total breakdown happened so fast...shall I relate the events in lurid, judgemental detail? Or use profanity and snarky insults directed toward the continent of her origin...?

Nah...shift gears, I tell myself. quit investing time and energy into chaos

Writing has always come 2nd for me...I am an extemporaneous orator by nature. No planning or forethought, I run and gun on the fly, blurting it out. Writing has a more difficult and complicated challenge because of the gap between reader and artiste’...the words sit there to be parsed and meaning smashed or smooshed, misunderstanding, misinterpreted, dismissed. But I practice, every day, the disciplined exercise of turning thought/feeling/truth into the story I have inside me...and I am finding it increasingly difficult to tell it in first person. The pedantic tone, sarcasm, snark...o my!

Richard Dawkins is one of my heroes...the article will draw focus onto the “chimp” thing...but the point is important.

Irony in Mexico, a mystery, where did the anti-kidnap expert go?

The contemporary terror: kindness

“As your friend, I don’t want to influence you”...the greatest virtue they possess is that they leave you alone...the absence may be appreciated, but it doesn’t make them much of a friend...

Some of the most wonderful things about closeness is that influence...some combinations are enabling. People who need an ally to do bad stuff with so they both descend together. Others, inspire one another to move into a higher place.

Others just leave you hanging.

I am confused about the differences, having been on every side of all three. Raised as I was by wolves, the rules were simple...kindness was weakness, honesty led to violence, group association was for hunting/killing purposes only.

Being influenced by others, ordinary simple heroes...people who think for themselves, even in the face of terrible opposition, has been really important to me. I began socializing with humans with great difficulty, and stored a rolodex-index catalog of appropriate phrases and responses only slowly dropping my feral wolf conditioning that said “get them before they get you”

Fashion advice from America’s least favorite crackwhore...attacking Michelle Obama for what she wears? I love Ann Coulter, truly. There is no better advocate of reasoned liberalism than this silly anorexic twit.

Another Koresh...founded a town, claimed to be the messiah and that he would be resurrected. That the universe existed inside a hollow earth and all the planets and stars were in the center, with the moon being an illusion. The real hoot here is the number of people who actually bought into this. When Cyrus Teed finally died and didn’t come back from the dead, it all fell apart.

There are many traps within science and faith...rational thinking is full of twists and turns in a universe filled with wonderful things that may never be understood...make up some serious wacky nonsense, weigh the plausibility of it being empirically free of being disproved...convince yourself. Take your bullshit out to the street. VOILA!

What a deal!

Tom’s Hardware...for all your ubergeek needs

Sailor Jerry...

Reason #434 for Why I Don’t Drink; oh just watch it for crissake and figure it out for yourself

“Paranoia is just another word for ignorance”...motivational posters for the doomed”. Hunter...I miss you dude.

The sky...what could possibly be cooler?

I fucking LOVE to read rightwingnut bullshit...they twirled and spun and frothed at the mouth demonstrating their depraved and factually devoid opinions that were so full of holes that all credibility just leaked out...leaving naught but extremists to cheer them on. Actually, the election just past was far closer than it should have been all things considered. 

Nature...always bats last

O brave masochist, you who stoically staggers backward through the narcissitic twitness of my “self absorbed” rant-fest into Christmas Week past, be not surprised, my droog...the week be a bitch-on-wheels...I go to the gym, tired, my mind filled with the images of insane assclown foolishness that I deal with...I see a few crew from other boats (as usual)...we, the minority who choose to deal with stress and adrenaline not with rum, but more heavy lifting after a day of heavy lifting...and bra, lemme tell ya, these boys look every bit as tired as I surely must...we hardly even speak. “hey man” I say to Jason...”what’s up?” he replies...”wow” I say...”o yeah, I hear that” he says...and we move on.

We carry a set of scuba gear for “rescue”...and in my long career as captain, never, ever have I ever had to use it for that purpose. So far 100% of the rescues (numbering in the hundreds) have been at the surface..this day, an Israeli guy ditches his buddy on the Spiegel Grove on the second dive of the morning on this deep wreck...everyone else is back on board and I don’t see his bubbles anywhere...I do a quick calc, and I start thinking that 86fsw for 28 minutes...a 1 hr surface interval and now 36 minutes at a depth I suspect to be 100fsw or more is not adding up to a number I am comfortable with...I am afraid he has wandered into the wreck and run out of air...I wait a minute or two, gather data from the others...and assemble the rescue gear. This fucktard is in deco, no doubt...low on air...right before my DM splashes to search...he comes up on the other end of the wreck. We get him aboard...he blew to the surface without a safety stop, his computer was in violation, his tank drained...and then he fell asleep on the ride back in. I had the mate continue to monitor him, and I was tempted to pin a note on him saying “My name is _______ and I dove from the vessel <insert the name of the Love Boat> on the Spiegel Grove. If you find me crumpled in a heap take me to Mariners Hospital because I am bent”

She was taking the Discover Scuba course...a one day “intro” that sweeps one from a short classroom session to the pool and then into the deep blue sea all within a few hours. This young lady did just fine on a mildly bumpy day...the visibility was a bazillion feet, the sun was sunny, all the birdy’s in the trees and all...as some of the others were busy spewing lunch in alluvial fans across the hull she asked me “how often do people do that?”, referring to the puking...I said “every day...now how are YOU doing?...cause I bet 5 bucks you’d be one of ‘em” She laughed, and noticed the swarms of yellow-tail snapper scarfing up the barf...”what kind of fish are those?” I told her, and she says “EEEEUUUUHHHH!...I ate that for LUNCH!”

5 Bucks!!! SSSUUUweet!

The End of the World Cult

Nostalgic for a bright future?...was this our last “everything-is-normal” Christmas?

Class warfare is upon us...the adjustment/contraction will be televised.

So I’m watching (well actually, listening to) Maury Povich...a 15 year old and her mother are bowed up trailer-park-style about some sleazeball they claim is the babydaddy...eeeeyuh. Nobody is managing any dignity whatsoever. The paternity test? He isn’t the one...and little miss-hot-pants blubbers tearlessly, shrieking, running for exits...mom tells the girl “it’s allright honey! I thought he was the one too!”

“I got so excited my pants accidentally fell off...”

Topping the list? Who else...?

C.S.Lewis to J.R. Tolkein: “Not another fucking dwarf?!!!”

J.D. Salinger turns 90...”I’m known as a strange and aloof man” he said...as if there were something wrong with that?

Enjoying the random revenge that comes from outraging public decency...

It is winter...the air conditioner is on, flowers are blooming everywhere...here in the Keys, average daytime temps are in the low 80’s...this is the dry season, and trees typically drop leaves to conserve water. It almost never rains in winter, ever. Bright blue sky, dry air, breezy...

I walk through the dark streets of Key Largo, the parts that you don’t see from US1...a house with a huge LCD TV turned up loud out on the screen porch, nobody watching, NickAtNight and “Green Acres”...a house where cars pull up in front and someone jumps out, runs in and then out quickly, followed shortly by another and then another. Drug deals, methinks...I can hear fireworks going off, dogs are upset...people drinking, getting loud...cars being driven erratically...windows are open, muffled people sounds fill the warm fragrant air...New Years Eve, 2008. I walk alone, quietly, Jupiter and the moon so close together, the huge planet the brightest I have ever seen it, the moon in that sliver phase where you can see the whole disk faintly reflecting earthlight...orange jasmine flowers perfume the air, crickets, tokay gecko barking in the Gumbo Limbo tree...an angry voice shredding the still night air, indistinct but the meaning is clear, a woman yelling back, upset...I walk alone, pondering what the new year holds..

The contrast between the bellicose-man-world of professional boating, tourists on scuba vacation, and my private life as a dragon amidst orchids floats close and I think about life at 54...in some ways, an invisible man...I suppose that Snappy Banter gets the most attention when I relate stories of puke, nudity, and the randomosity of people told in snark style...but what is that, really, I think as I walk alone...what is this relaying of chaos and near death for the titillation of strangers, feeding my critics with an “unprofessional” reveal of daily life on a Keys dive boat? Why, I wonder, do I do this every day?

I know why...because I am in a place and time that I chose. I do not find myself here by accident, rather I planned, worked, sacrificed in ways that come rushing up and catch in my throat, and I whisper to no one “how could they possibly know?”

Those who know what is missing, are being driven slowly and quietly into the terminal craziness that comes with finally understanding that the one thing you want is not there.

People see what they want to see...and they disregard the rest (to paraphrase)...I got what I wanted, I have never been afraid to pay the price...but sometimes I feel the weight of something dark and heavy, surrounded by dispericitos just like me, people far away from who they were, what they once thought so important... I walk a mile, then another...to the dive shop where I unlock the gate and walk in the inky darkness out to the dock on the canal...I pull two chairs down by the waters edge, one for me the other for her...so far away, how could she know? But I can feel her right next to me in shadow form...the hotels on the canal are full, the bars are loud, people are walking, talking, laughing, sirens wailing on the highway...I reach over and put my hand where her arm would be and sit in the dark like the ghost I am this holiday evening...

I whisper again, to no one...”how could they possibly know?” I look up at the sky and see a dark, silent shadow that blocks out the stars as it moves overhead and I think “the dragon is on patrol”

Indeed, he is..one flying through the dark skies above, quietly watching all, the other below.

2008’s weirdest underwater stories

Forcing bulbs like hyacinth, narcissus, daffodils into bloom isn’t really all that tough...the reward is worth the effort

Take THAT wifi!

3 things I learned the hard way:

1) Nobody gives a flying fucking shit what I feel. All they care about is what I do.

2) Some situations can’t be resolved Gandhi-style. Better to wear pants.

3) There is a huge difference between being an asshole and being a dick. A dick can’t help himself. An asshole is totally in control.

Snappy Banter, now with 44% more evil and 76% more mirth!

She said “think hard about a concern or a question” and then turned the 1st card over and said “I see a man who sows strife for amusement...a shapeshifter, the borrowed robes of an imposter...an angry, deceitful threat”

The 2nd card...she says “another man with doubts, hardship...cold comfort, instability, overly protective of the wrong things, lost in the woods”

I am very quiet...absorbing whatever it all means...she turns the 3rd card and says “a cheerful person with a trusting heart, optimism, a romantic interest, imagination, playfulness, artistic abilities, an accommodating and well mannered soul”

Reflection is natural on this day, December 31...and I reflect vigorously, ask myself the big questions, seeking input from the ether...hints of truth, accidental, serendipitous, fate, random crap-shoot, who knows? My friend, the Algonquin, once said to me “if you think you know, you’re wrong. If you feel you know, you’re full of shit...when you know you know, go with it” I don’t know about how effective that is...but a man has to have a code to live by.

2009...predictions

Yuki-onna is gonna gitchu...

T-shirt philosophy:

Quit your job

Buy a ticket

Get a tan

Fall in love

Never go back

A very unflattering assessment of the Bush Presidency

Meet the antichrist

Fuck YOU, Penguin! thanks Pat

The Pope...I find this pretty funny all things considered. 

Tracy Morgan waxes eloquent on: the economy

Tossing around a few ideas in a tough economy...one I like is pet care for those who get “poofed!” when rapture falls...Jesus comes back, takes you with him...who will feed and care for your pets? The idea involves a monthly maintenance fee, a contract, an emerging business opportunity for the doomed...

Happy Childhood Breath Spray

Ellie Nesler...a folk-hero and her unmaking

What happened to the water on Venus?

Could this possibly be real?

The wind howls...on, about, over the limits of sane diving...down slightly, switching direction so that even if the velocity drops the effect takes days to subside.

I wonder sometimes what the criteria are for cancelling a trip due to conditions for some of my compadres as they slip down the canal on days when I have decided to stay at the dock...I watch as one goes by, a kid, mom, some older fat people...recreational divers on a day when an experienced advanced diver would just walk away...wow...?.

The ChristmasWeek divers are clogging the system in numbers that create a dilemma...cancel a trip when the numbers are in? In this economy?

Due to the seasonal trend that is “0” experience, the divers themselves don’t seem to flinch at all when warned of conditions...and I find this provides me a slew of images that do not serve my hopes to shed misanthropic notions, my metaphorical defenses...I think to myself how cows look all lined up for a fate they cannot imagine...as I scan the faces, as I warn people about 5ft seas....out at Molasses, several boats all full, all of them with rescue lines and DM’s in the water doing rescues.

As I am giving my briefing...a cluster of divers are whimpering and weeping right next to our boat distracting my increasingly nervous boatload...these people are in deep trouble in a way that I see every day...they’re scared, and I take them aboard. In a nutshell, they have no business whatsoever attempting anything physical like scuba...none whatsoever. They are in such poor condition, so bereft of any possibility of coping with surface conditions that I laugh out loud as I physically lift them aboard. Panicky, they totally fail to understand anything I am saying as they defy physics and attempt to climb aboard clutching taut lines connected to a 20,000lb boat pitching upward and slamming down...aaaaaaWHOOSH, hover, drop....bbbbaaaWHOOOOMP! as they slam into the ladder. They continue to pop up all around me, all over the reef...rescues on 1/2 the boats in progress. We splash our people as we tend to the others, and in a Chinese Fire Drill, ours begin popping up as I knew some would...

I listen as another boat calls in a report to their base...”Seas are 6ft,,, light current, vis 60...wind east 20-22mph” and the chipper reply “OK, then. Let us know when you’re coming in!” but the tone of the captain belies the chipper reply for it’s vacuity...he’s out on the Duane with a boatload of Griswolds just like the rest of us and the current has twisted them beam-to, 6 footers rolling them side to side in true “Vomit Comet” style...the bleating sound of puking resonates all around me, pukers blasting from the upper deck of the glassbottom boat as it slowly motors past some idiot fishing inside the sanctuary amidst the divers...the captain gets on the PA and says “Hey there, you are fishing in a sanctuary and the fine is $12,000.00!” and the guy ignores him, so he says “Allright then, are you just stupid?”

A beautiful day, perhaps a bit windy...the smell of vomit hangs like viscous fog, the slick must surely be visible from space...adrenaline replaces my blood supply and action is nonstop the entire afternoon, one freakout after another, pukers blurping all over the deck, all over themselves, the divers lining up on the taglines, my feet...I have it all over me and I abandon any hope of eating lunch...or peeing, as I stand witness to this vast herd of cats all around me freaking out, yelling, doing stupid casual diver horseshit that makes no sense at all, old people, children, women incapable of lifting even themselves up the ladder attempting to do so in full scuba, people laying in fully geared heaps on my deck, the deck over there, and there...and I yell over to the boat next to me as they do what we are doing and say “It’s the most happiest time of the year!”

Borderline conditions...and I see one of the multiple rescue boats heading back out as I come in...they’re doing a nite dive. In 6ft seas and current...and I wonder about the criteria that is driving THAT particular decision...

The mate asks me “why would they do a nite dive in this shit? I think silently...”because the captain has never seen dead people before...” Grim thinking amidst vacationing divers...

Shipbreakers

The Junky’s Christmas...part 1....and 2.

A protest movement grows in numbers in Iraq surrounding the thrown shoe dude...

A clever little bit of performance art...

What?....where?.......WHY!?

Today...I am _______ with ________ while ________ as you no doubt _________ without _______ of any kind. I’m just sayin.

We have a lot of regulars that go diving with us...a lot. I really like that...they become friends over time, and the vibe on the boat rolls along as a private tour. Here at the holiday, that just makes it all an amazing illustration of why I love my job...

These are times when being right...feels wrong

The dude is mad...”That’s the shortest surface interval I ever had!” He came up out of air after 20 minutes. I gave 67 minutes...in 30ft, the required surface interval is “0”. Counting the time it took to move the boat and do the 2nd briefing, he had been sitting there being charming and brilliantly pleasant and spitting on the deck for 55 minutes. He is mad! wah! And he keeps saying it, like I’m supposed to give him oven fresh muffins or some shit...I said to him “you are a very unpleasant person...you know that right?” and he laser-glares at me, so I reach into my bag and press a button on my Triumph the Insult Comic Dog keychain thingie and it says “You are such a good friend........FOR ME TO POOP ON!”

I am unfuckwithable.

Florida court ruling and children’s scuba programs have collided. PADI says “business as usual”. Brilliant!

Stylish..inspirational, and passive aggressive

Cosmo...ree-dick-you-liciousness “Your application to join Eharmony has been rejected. You failed question #14 “What do you like most in a woman” “My dick” was not an acceptable answer.”

“How can I stay sober and still have fun?”

The point remains as lost as ever...POOF! American car makers make cars and people buy them. Big fucking cars that suck gas...everyone wanted one, they are still everywhere. Now, everyone has an opinion about what is going on. Here is mine.

The burden of the auto makers isn’t about switching gears to fuel efficiency...it is the burden, kind reader, of “legacy costs”. The hundreds of thousands of retired workers drawing benefits from funds in a depressed market. How can they compete in the car business with this particular business cost added in? Is the “bailout” actually a de facto funding of this aspect? Yes, indeedy. Socialized medicine and retirement are the real issues and they are being soundly ignored. Detroit...is playing “bust the union”, people. Here it comes. You heard it here first.

Evelyn Glennie...wow.

The slave trade...the middle passage. History, the traces of where people came from, where they were taken, who they were...

Hurricane Katrina...the story keeps unfolding...

Caroline Kennedy .Palin...the very suggestion of a link is defacto evidence of head-in-the-ass wingnut ideology. The only link between these two is that they both have vaginas. Allegedly.

Very cool...

Don’t FUCK with the moNkEY

One Australian woman...in a Palestinian refugee camp teaching people how to use the web to tell their stories...amazing.

Polar amplification...a report that it has been verified

Certain myths persist...one, that dinosaurs and humans existed together (I will not address the stupidity of that)....another, that the moon landings were a hoax...(the stupidity of which I will address)

Torture Tactics..the article has the word “reasoning” in the title, I have dropped that little piece of irony,

Love is strange

Innocent until proven...hilarious. In the future, everyone will have been arrested. I find it absolutely amazing that here in Florida you can be arrested for resisting arrest as the only charge. Also, for “giving false information” to a LEO (law enforcement officer)...more often than not, these ridiculous charges are dropped when the accused hires a lawyer. Which makes the process ridiculous on a whole new level...police harassment is when they cuff you, book you, plop you in a cell, all the while knowing full well that they cannot hold you and that an attorney is gonna take at least $1500.

The shoe incident...a moment that will forever in my heart be the ultimate moment of transcendent justice, an act so amazingly appropriate in a room without any Secret Service...in Iraq. Another “intelligence” failure from the House of CLowns.

In the naked city, fun has a price...

Winter in the Keys...a pardox, conundrumatic, Eurolicious...turistas by the boucous-buttload, and as a rule they don’t tip. Winter is also “rescue” season...

The sound of an accent is almost invariably the sound of minimum wage...they tip so poorly or not at all that attitude toward them from restaurant/bar/service workers in all areas of tourism here in SoFl is a visible problem. I have no doubt that these visitors from abroad can feel the seething heat, no doubt. I am not one to suffer silently the vagaries of this fucked up economic system where price is posted but <wink!wink!> “service” is extra but no one discusses it out loud, it isn’t listed anywhere, and the rules are unclear...yesterday a guy from Denmark and he wore a ridiculous little speedo. Ridiculous.

My dockside banter as folks leave has become increasingly direct over time...”I hope y’all had a good time today, I know I did and that’s all that really matters...if you had fun, we want you to go home and tell all your friends and send ‘em down...if you didn’t have fun, tell all your enemies, send ‘em down and I’ll piss them off too...Don’t forget the #1 rule in scuba...NO SPEEDOS!”...I pause (2,3,4) “the #2 rule...NO SPEEDOS!” as I point directly right at our Euroweenie and all the women onboard laugh...”#3 rule TIP the crew!...we went through all your shit and didn’t find any cash, people!”

And the Euro’s scurry off the boat with full knowledge that they are scurrying, no plausible excuses...like fuckin’ RATS. As for the rest, my assertive banter produces the desired result....God Bless America! We love you folks, truly we do.

This is a tough room to play...I am heading out to the Spiegel Grove with a small group...winds have been SE for days, and today a bit more E. Good. The residual swell rolls in SE at about 3-4ft and we pound through it over the shoal at the edge of shallow-deep interface. Tied to a mooring line on the wreck, the boats point into the wind...unless there is current affecting them, and this day I see the lone diveboat on the Grove sitting in that classic wind from one direction current from the other position known as “beam-to”...I approach cautiously as I see the other boat’s crew is deploying a rescue line, the DM in the water 150-200ft downcurrent...I scan the water for some signs of current speed, and I assess it as “mild”...so I wonder wtf?

I look downcurrent and see a diver waving feebly, this wave being the 911 signal, and so I motor toward them...I get close, and I don’t like what I see. 200ft of line deployed, the DM struggling with a diver who is totally limp...I get an “OK” from the DM and begin radio com with the captain. They are so far from the boat in this choppy sea that in this mild current being pulled back in is gonna take a while, and lemme tellya bluntly; I don’t feel good about what I am seeing. The DM is clearly nervous about this whole thing, and the decision to accept my help comes quickly after he sees how limp and helpless this 60-something woman in his care is...so I toss them a ball and the simple act of crossing the 20ft gap seems strangely slow. The woman isn’t moving at all...she is a funny gray color, eyes closed, on her back, no sign of movement at all...the DM seems agitated. I tell the DM to push her toward me, and I grab the valve on her tank and with an adrenalized jerk I pull her completely out of the water and onto the deck. 

Up to that point...I couldn’t tell whether she was conscious or not, but she looked up at me as I set her down. Following a deep dive like this one, I am racing through the signs of decompression Illness, barotrauma, out-of-air rapid ascent, near-drowning...”talk to me” I tell her sharply...”what’s your name?” and she tells me...”what boat are you from?”I ask... and she turns and points...both pupils normal, her color is returning and she gets a bit more animated. The DM is climbing aboard, and he is less than ravelled...I am feeling the crisis passing away quickly as I motor over to drop them off at their boat. But the 200ft tagline is still out there, the wind, waves and current still at odds with each other in true washing-machine style...and I come in close, shut down the motor and splash them. Crisis averted. At least until I drift over the tagline...I grab the boathook and push down on the line to avoid fouling it on my propshaft, and the tension on the line is really high as it slides along my hull...the boat turns slightly, the line wraps the hook and shaWOOP! it is ripped out of my hands. “Damn. Shit. MotherFUCK!” I blurt reflexively...since I have to use this tool to lift the mooring lines, my day has just become much more complicated. The thing is supposed to float...but I can see it drop into the deep blue sea...ba-bye.

The line is still sliding...and then it snags as the baywatch buoy at it’s end wedges into the prop. “Fuck a fuckin’ ducky fuck!”

I drop the ladder, jump in...boat jumpin’ around, ladder slammin’...we’re stuck. I find a snap connector, pull real hard (adrenaline is amazing) and unclip it and we fall free...plus, I have the buoy in hand. I motor back over and we hand it off to the other boat...I maneuver over to a mooring ball, lean down close and pick up the line...without the hook, this isn’t easy...but there is no other way we’re gonna do this dive. Which gets done.

This entire story...100% of it was totally lost in the “you lost the boathook?! HA!” mockery.

Tough room to play, this. I’m just sayin’...

The adrenaline is soaking me...every bone in my body hurts. Back at the dock, I quietly set up for the afternoon trip as one at a time everyone flips shit at me for that boathook. Divers are gathering, and a couple who have been here all week come up to me with a bag...”This is for you” they tell me. They bought me a t-shirt, and I am overwhelmed at this small kindness from total strangers.

Late afternoon, back at the dock...we hear the call...a diver heading to the hospital after a Spiegel Grove dive from yet another (un-named) boat...jhc, I think to myself. What a weird, wonderful, maddening, sometimes sickening job this is.

I go home...sit down, take a deep breath. and wake up at 6:30am still fully dressed. Lock, load...go back to work...another day, another boatfull of happy tourists on vacation...

Tennessee is NUMBER ONE! YAY!

“more disoriented than a high school girl coming off a roofie in a barn on Route 12”

PotPsychology...serious advice, here. “How do I ask my ex to give my sex toys back?” I’ve wondered about this myself.

Wow. ummm. Young or old...there is no stopping it. Women behaving badly...having a vagina means never having to say you’re sorry?...

The combover.

Deep inside I know just what you’re after

Somewhere deep inside it got broken...the connection to Christmas past, the Norelco commercial, the Sears catalog, my SeattleSuburbanWhiteboy world just disappeared into a drawer that I sometimes open up...I might pick up these remnants and remember with feelings, if not specifics, a time when greed and covetous desire was tempered by the cynical Santa lie...that it was OK to be greedy if others perceived you as “good”, and “good” was defined in Sunday school.

Good times...and today, resonance on TV, a connection between getting gifts as children and getting an Acura. WhotheFUCK is buying cars as Christmas gifts? Stop doing that!

I get the random comments...”Obviously you hate christians, peopole <sic> who throw up, Europeans and all you want is money”

I think that people want to look dangerous, or mysterious, or they are making a statement like “This tattoo represents the inner me before I gained 130lbs”...or “This tattoo is my validation; Be enthralled!”...or “if you have sex with me I promise not to cry”

“Vote for me and all your wildest dreams will come true” pedro, “Napoleon Dynamite”

When people get scared, they sometimes increase verbiage...nervously talking non-stop. Usually this is accompanied by a total shutdown of listening. Natural enough, this, that it is a huge part of my every day, an endless roar of fear masquerading as “conversation”, and also natural enough when it happens every day it gets a bit old. Or insufferable. One of those, I’m pretty sure.

A sucktide of energy, a black hole from which no escape is possible...a pointless conversation. As if bazillions of years ago, far, far away a supermassive star explodes sending high energy massless particles flitting across the universe at the speed of light...these pieces of spacecrap are moving so fast that they just sluice through countless stars, unimpeded...until one smashes into a neuron inside the head of a diver standing next to me as I drive and they speak. Yeah, sometimes fear does strange shit to conversation.

As they edge toward the bow on a bumpy day, the seas thrust us upward and through a scuba mask it must look like a long drop...I tell them “put your toes right there on the edge”...”No...your REAL toes” as they back up...I’ll say “just imagine you’re weightless in the middle of the ocean surrounded by little seahorses” and they’ll shoot me this wtf? look...and sometimes they grab at me right “there” in panic and I’ll blurt “looks like my lucky fuckin’ day!”

Sure, they’re scared sometimes...and if this is gonna work out, I hafta find ways to defuse it...but that moment at the bow, the “you, your bullshit, the deep blue sea” time when you either suck it up and firewalk or siddown and puke your guts out for four solid hours really strips away all the idle chatter...

I have a finely honed ability to spot poseurs...the crew is amazed. I know it looks cynical, me all snarky and all...but there is a distinctive vibe from people, almost a smell...I just know they’re not gonna make it. Today...20mph ESE, 3-5ft seas building to 6ft...good diving, really shitty boating. My prediction of the puker count? Dead on. Yeah...I have my skills. And chics like guys with skills. Like nunchuk skills. Bowhunting skills. Computer hacking skills. Puker spotting skills.

Sure...I’m antisocial. I don’t like repeating myself, or stupid questions, or people with certification to dive acting like dependent children...I’m not your mommy, and I’m not gonna gratuitously kiss your ass..diving takes guts, sometimes...that I respect.

It’s 4am...December, 2008. I am watching this...then...this

You Kant always get what you want...but if you try sometimes, you get what you Nietzsche

Religion is a life style choice. Gay is not. Ban one. You choose.

The Deconstruction of the EPA

A walk down dorkstreet

Bettie Page...rip

My weaknesses are incredibly strong

Here in the hinterland of the soul, the deep interior places that don’t show to the outside world...the outskirts, across the tracks, in the valley where nobody goes lives a white tiger named “Mahatma”...an invisible loner hiding in plain sight. I only see him when he moves, and he is moving all the time...

Mahatma can smell your fear and he has great patience...tracking, waiting, lunging at you giving a final burst of knowing to his victim that yes, fear was real and paranoia the illusion. And suddenly, illumination and annihilation...

There is something in the air besides the atmosphere, kind reader...a vibe, and the tiger smells it. People are providing a target rich environment for Mahatma as the herd spooks...

My own complacency is deeply rooted in the ironic, because when you live life with the rythyms of sea and sky, change is all you really have. One day at a time is far more than bumper-sticker philosophy in the world I live in, it is truly the reduction of gratuitous complexity focused down into essential elementary applied action-plan...and I have grown accustomed to it. I forget, sometimes, the names of the days...what do they matter?

As I ponder the fearful weirdness growing all around...people are sweating a pure form of fear, can you smell it?

Scuba Picture of the Day

Where boners go to DIE....and another Paula Abdul WTF?

Che...the new film is loved in Cuba which means it is hated in Miami.

“We don’t do those goofy loans”

misandry... a very real and compelling flow of raw hate-lava that runs deep...sometimes erupting into the light of day, seldom discussed openly. I bet you didn’t even know there was a word for it, didja? Everybody knows “misogynist”...

She was a stripper at a Seattle club and the bouncer was a guy I have known since the 3rd grade. They would come over and hang out at my place sometimes bringing a few of the others who worked there...I was fascinated at the disconnect in the women’s minds about what they did and what men really were about...they were inside a situation where large groups of men were acting out in very specific ways and they all were quite frank about their disgust...in fact, the majority of them were actually angry gay women.

I formed my opinion about the titty-bar scene in this context. That men are easily manipulated by nudity and sexualized objectification of women, and that this transferred power of a sort. I also hold the view that the strip club scene is a gigantic fucking circle jerk. I’m just sayin’...

The other side of the world...

Repo Man..a sequel? fuckIN AWEsome..

Mental Illness in America’s Prisons...yeah. Who are we? What are we about? How...the fuck can this possibly be? One thing that stuck out to me as I watched this was the tone of sadness in the guards voices...

A bit of the old “I don’t think you can sing higher than her” for your, ummm, amusement

T-shirt designs

an 80’s Christmas TV...click the remote

Hedge fund managers to cancer patients; DIE motherfuckers!

Some people have called me a “sociopath”...but what do psychiatrists know?

I’m something of an “altered statesman”...getting Russian tourists to say “moose and squirrel”...prompting French people to give their opinions about America (first, they make the squinty face, then they search for the right words)..and announcing “every time a Canadian tips, an angel gets it’s wings!”...

As all social grace and niceties fall off me and creative, extemporaneous, passionate, aesthethtically advanced and socially aware profanity rolls off my tongue, I find I am not alone...my lovely companion took me to Thanksgiving dinner with her family...I was being very polite, and this discordant vibe must have been flagged... Her mom pulled me aside and said “lighten up...it’s fucking Thanksgiving!”

I get distracted...she was wearing a short skirt, seamed nylons...and black Converse hightops. Yowza.

I try to understand what it all means...and here it is so far; The stock market is a casino racket fueled by neo-con baby boomers fucking all of us.It has nothing at all to do with long-term “investment” and everything with gambling. It has become inherently unstable through contrived complexity and loopholes created to cheat the system and reward corporate failure by enriching inside traders. Buncha white people in front of computers producing NOTHING but chaos Those of you who bought houses you couldn’t afford that were priced at ridiculous levels? Fuck you too....Partying like it’s 1999.

View from my backyard:

Yacht Rock, BISH!...and it gets better.

I have watched with fascination...from hero to zero. There is nothing about this sad, awful man that inspires compassion in me...or a sense that it is over. It is just sad and awful, every step of the way.

Three things I learned the Hard Way:

1) Other people can actually hear me when I say smartass shit.

2) Farting in public and attempting to blame others can backfire in unexpected ways.

3) There is absolutely no way to use the word “cunt” in a socially acceptable context in spite of extensive attempts. Except for this one, right?

He was born on Dec 25th..and he changed the world.

In between “committed” and “nothing”...is “involved”

I went out on a date...she...is amazing. We went for a walk and sat by the water in the dark...I lean over to give her a kiss and for some reason I fart. Yeah, I know what the ladies like. She laughs...well then. 

The little guy wants a wii...mom asks ”Do you really think you’ve been good this year?...he replies “no...but SHE has” pointing at his sister. smooth one, dude...

People are just so...random. The sun is shining on a warm breezeless winter day. Here at the tip of the droopy phallic Florida Penn, winter days are our stock in trade. 80f, birds, flowers, palm trees all decked out in deck the halls glory. Water is 75f, vis 80ft...

He is in his fifties, and at this age some of us look it. He did. An aura of cranky old-man-tude like a Kirlian aura crackled around him. We buddied him with the German who has been here all week long (watching others tip every day)...Old guy doesn’t like the diving here. I don’t mean he had an uneventful dive on this wonderful pretty day...he openly expressed his dislike. I laughed at him. I find this discordant crankiness absolutely stark-contrastilicious, kind reader...

The demand for transcendent experience is self-limiting...because demanding it precludes getting it. DUH!

I watched in fascination as he and the German marched right past the tip jar...and I wonder what the Euro’s think when they see the tipping going on...? And a theme visited often enough here at SBFTHOF is the daily grind of working with a type “A” public that spits, pees in their clothing, demanding/petulant, negative HaterAde drinkers...

Sitting out on the dock watching the boats go by...channel markers clearly marking, ummm, channels. Huge fuckin’ boats ignoring the markers and cutting through at random and getting stuck on a grassy hump. Same spot, over and over and over...they rev up and try to bully their way off, churning up mud and threatened seagrasses sometimes taking an hour or more.

Endless entertainment...250k$ boats, expensive GPS navigation, and absolutely no sense at all.

One afternoon I was heading out for a nite-dive trip...approaching the jetty I could see I was clear and so out I went. Right behind me, the 100ft long 200ton Casino boat...as I motor out, a 26ft private boat is cutting the corner outside the channel (which means they can’t be seen) and collision seems inevitable...I hit the gas and move out of the strike zone and shout over to them “BIG BOAT COMIN’ OUT!!!” Now this shit happens all the time and I never, ever scream at strangers, even if they’re fucking up royally...I dodged it, but I totally realize that someone is gonna be in serious shit here in about 20 seconds. They think I am yelling at them, or maybe it’s just some kinda weird reaction to the near collision THEY caused, but they’re flipping me off and shrieking in Spanish, all looking at me enraged...and then the BIG boat hits the horn. BBBUUUUU_WAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

And since they were all focusing on me, and didn’t have their radio on and they didn’t understand fucking english (what the fuck?) they got surprised. The driver hit reverse...hard. He hit some rocks, hard. Thats gonna cost.

Queefing? Stinky semen, boob sweat. that is all.

Bettie Page is gravely ill...here is a 5:12 clip of her in 1950 doing some kinda dancing that makes no sense at all, much like her photo’s being spanked by weird angry Germanic looking old ladies. An interview..

BailOut? We don’t need no stinking bailOUT...

Oh fer crissake...legalize it! Tax it!

Everyone will finally be equal...aka; Welcome to the MoNKeY House...the quest for “equality” is absurd. The quest for “self-determination” and “individual rights” is, kind reader, quite not absurd.

Quick to fall into dumbass monstertruck thought patterns...

Prop8 the Musical. Jack Black as Jesus...and Leviticus gets thrown in for shits and grins!

Tina Fey...a late bloomer. Reason #1 why I will never be a celebrity; I could never jump around like that in front of a wind-machine. That, and the obvious other reasons.

The fucking system is broken. But as long as YOU have good insurance and are healthy, what do YOU care? YOU...just might be an asshole. The problem, asshole, is that administrative costs and rules having NOTHING to do with doctors and patients are sucking the life out of the system. The money WASTED would be more than enough to fix the problem. But fiddle away, insured one! Nothing bad will happen to you because you’re covered, right? JeezuzH! The systems of profit making corporations and institutions are burning down all around us as “trickle down” free market fetishists turn and demand “rescue”...you think the pharmaceutical/medical/insurance corporations are not part of this problem?

The Breakers Reef in Palm Beach has been scraped clean by a tug towing a barge that dragged a chain along the seafloor. The local dive community is incensed...the State of Florida has more important business and is dragging it’s feet...some pictures of the damage. (thanks for the links Chris) Why, you may ask, does this matter?

Well. If this kind of damage were to occur ANYWHERE on land, the offending commercial company responsible would be prosecuted and forced to pay for repair. If people drove by a park that had been ravaged in such a way, damage up in their face...sure, they’d be pissed. That endangered species were scraped off the reef in such a casual way...that ordinary commercial traffic is even allowed to use coral reef tracts as highways is disgusting. And since the real damage is “invisible” to the average person, and the only ones howling are scuba divers, it appears to the average person to be something less important than say, retail figures on Black Friday or Michelle Obama’s dress selection. I suggest this is a tiny piece of the damage that is done every day around the world.

“Like rolling one of my poops from the kitchen to the living room”...love the dog.

Normal person+anonymity+audience+total fuckwad...”The Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory” I have shunned the temptation to be anonymous, from the beginning. I find it hard to be a gentleman with some issues and much harder still with assmonkeys named “dolphinette64” or whatever. If you think for a moment, civility is generally enhanced by face to face...anonymity, distance from consequences, cowardly chickenshits...

Global Warming...let’s be careful here with the “conclusions”

I keep getting into arguments with wingnuts about “WMD’s” in Iraq...c’mon, guys. You’re just looking stupid with that crap. I realize that you’re not going to stop quoting in true parrot-style what you heard on the radio. One thing I’ve learned over time is that the hot chicks really love right wing anger rants.

Dating Tip #88:

1) Never stick anything into your body unless you know where it’s been.

2) “I don’t know what I want” means “I don’t want you”

“”The salient fact of an adolescent girl’s existence is her need for a secret emotional life—one that she slips into during her sulks and silences, during her endless hours alone in her room, or even just when she’s gazing out the classroom window while all of Modern European History, or the niceties of the passé composé, sluice past her. This means that she is a creature designed for reading in a way no boy or man, or even grown woman, could ever be so exactly designed, because she is a creature whose most elemental psychological needs—to be undisturbed while she works out the big questions of her life, to be hidden from view while still in plain sight, to enter profoundly into the emotional lives of others—are met precisely by the act of reading.””

Rip the band-aid off and END IT

Stare at the abyss...surrender to the void. Abrupt change is an opportunity, a release from bondage one didn’t even realize. It is absolutely amazing to me the number of people in long term relationships who make disparaging comments about their lives...they sit together not touching, body language transmitting discordance, both with “thousand yard stare”...muted sadness.

Amazing...years roll by and a battle rages on, and the worst thing that could possibly be...is change. 

Blurt, people. Blurt out the uncruel truths...move on.

The basis of my personal view on liberalism is deeply rooted...I grew up with the schism between racial integration and the snickering commentary from average white suburban racists...an uneasy transition, where I saw white people in Boston resist busing by attacking school buses filled with children. This had a far more effective role in my personal journey of political belief than MLK-Jr ever did. I learned that people were sometimes defined by that which they hated...

A little part of me dies every time a Starbucks opens...is there an Applebees in Yosemite yet? HOW do you escape homogonized AmeriCulture when on vacation...? Come here to Key Largo...

I was readin’ a thread about “dive boat music” on a scuba discussion board...big surprise, the opinions were flyin’ hard and fast...everybody was weighing in, and Buffet was a strong fave...some were saying they didn’t like music on boats, others were fetishistically connected to narrow tastes...and I laugh. HA! Fuckin’ divers have got a fuckin’ opinion about EVRYfuckin’ thing! Judging a dive op because of the music on the boat? HA!

And they post away...thousands of opinions, hundreds of websites, a tower of babel...yesterday out at Snapper Ledge, the wind died...water, slick, calm...the sun warmed the air to 80f. Baitfish were disturbing the surface waters in nervous schooling behavior and I saw why; dolphins were herding them. They followed the panicky ballyhoo along the ledge toward the boat and right past the bubbles of the divers and 10ft away from an 8yr old snorkeler...sunset is 5;32pm, it’s 5:15 as we head back in...I have a Bose system onboard, and the quality of the sound is way above average...I slide a disc into the player and turn it up. The Beatles..”Tomorrow Never Knows”...loud, abstract, seagull-ish sounds match the environment in a way I like...and this way, there is always at least one person who isn’t irritated. “you rogue, you!” she says...

Tomorrow Never Knows...the beatles

Turn off your mind, relax
and float down stream
It is not dying
It is not dying

Lay down all thought
Surrender to the void
It is shining
It is shining

That you may see
The meaning of within
It is being
It is being

That love is all
And love is everyone
It is knowing
It is knowing

That ignorance and hate
May mourn the dead
It is believing
It is believing

But listen to the
color of your dreams
It is not living
It is not living

Or play the game
existence to the end
Of the beginning

Martha Stewart...yabbadabbaDO.

A twin pronged assault of comedy and pain...

That’s why it’s called a “punchline” I suppose.

She said “I sell vacuums”...I was thinking it was time to show a brutal wall-of-voodoo defense, having been to the vacuum-sales rodeo before, so I said “I already have one and it works just fine”...

“Actually”, she quipped, “I am selling the idea of a vacuum”...well then. I ponder...clever one, this...she’s got a new angle. If anyone can sell the idea of “nothing” that will cause matter and substance to appear in a perfect void that sucks so much that it simply can’t not exist, then she is the one...

It’s like marketing appeals to the hot-button...people will buy anything if it’s thrown at them properly...I bet you could put lipstick on a pit-bull and pass it off as...but that’s already been tried and it almost worked.

I wonder...when astronauts are in training for spacewalks, is there a trainer in the wings screaming at them to “PUT YOUR HELMET BACK ON!!!”...as they drift toward the shuttle, do they fight some inner urge to doff the life support and hold their breath for 2-3 minutes? Scuba divers do this all the time, every day, every dive...I see them approach the boat carrying their mask in their hand, regulator dangling behind them, deep blue sea slapping them in the face as they gasp and sputter, struggling, spitting, acting for all the world as if this sysiphian task of coming back to the boat were like the last 1/4 mile of Mt Everest...

Then...there they are, at the ladder...throwing all the briefings out the window, no mask, no reg, clutching a ladder connected to a 20,000lb boat that is pitching and rolling in 4 ft seas...I recall Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics; a body in motion will tend to stay in motion until it crashes into the ladder

But I am not, kind reader, a screamer...I watch them <fascinated> do this because I know one thing about human behavior...to learn is to do. as they come up, I lean down close and say to them quietly “remember that stuff we told you about mask/regulator/don’t touch the ladder until you’re ready to climb?”...and they always look at me and nod “yes”...we train people to dive in the ocean, one dodged bullet at a time.

Dixie Longate...say it out loud

I’m just sayin’...talk real fast, giggle a lot, run sentences together that totally cutoff all hope of conversation? Then, whenever anyone else treis to talk, speed up and get louder? “Like a fuckin’ SQUATteam!” This would make an excellent primer for “don’t do this ladies”...How can I hear a word you’re saying if you won’t shut up? Whatssa matter BITCHES? You never seen puke before?

After the 30 years of warnings from Ralph Nader...the mindless elevation of greed as the American Way...the relentless, right wing efforts to convert “liberal” to a 4 letter word...and “free markets” as “perfect animals”...2008, a year like no other

“There is no settling down without settling for”...dan savage

Yesterday I ran a trip that just put me into humble mode...current and wind were messing me up and as I approached a mooring line it wrapped around the prop shaft. Shit. Stuck.

Now I suppose if you drive boats enough, this shit happens sometimes...but out on the edge, where winds and seas have bumped close to marginless error zone territory, I ponder my options. The stern is facing the wind and water is shooting vertically 5ft straight up through the dive platfom drenching me as I assess the situation...even when it is I who fucks up...I remain cool. Wet, from head to toe, but cool.

In I go...the boat lurching over my head as I ponder my options...fuckin’A, the line is knotted and throws me a curve I didn’t need. Somehow, I got it undone without getting brained and the dives proceeded...but life on the edge means every once in a while you slip over into the hole...panicky types need not apply.

A woman is taking Advanced Open Water training...nothing unusual about that. But she is unusual, kind reader, in the most interesting way. Her daughter died a year ago during her scuba training out west in California, so mom has picked up her demon and trounced the motherfucker.. Highly respectable. No attitude belies her mission, no yearning to talk about it...her instructor told me, and my affinity for what she was about was instantaneous...Earlier in the week, a father/daughter diving for a few days...“why I love my job”...as we approach the holiday season where those of us raised by wolves lament the inhumanity of apologizing to our families for things we can’t and won’t ever feel sorry for...when we are stuck in awkward social situations involving heavy drinking, simmering resentment, women with knives arguing over the minutiae of turkey basting...I feel simple gratitude for people who love each other acting it out in front of me.

The kid is 8, and yesterday he brought me 2 gifts; one a sticker he had made of an stylized underwater scene, the other a pewter sea turtle...his parents are instructors who own a dive shop that brings large groups down...and he sits on the boat doing what 8 year old boys do, askin’ lots of questions. He wants to help, to be part of what we’re doing so I put him on the “bubblewatch”...now, for kids this age the “questions” can take on an irritating edge as they use the premise “quest for knowledge” to extend their attention getting strategy toward me...and I explain to him that we watch quietly, listening for the sounds of divers at the surface, and he settles down...helping with fins at the ladder, spotting people at the surface, whatever is happening on board he is involved...

Pot Psychology. that is all

Scandal...WMD’s? How have the politics of bullshit changed? Well...there weren’t any and instead of scandalous lies having a day in the light, the liars just subtly alter the dialogue and the argument remains. A fascinating glimpse into the enduring nature of neo-scandal and how journalists play it out...

Get FIT bitches!

I LOVE it when they quote “Leviticus”! The Old Testament can really come in handy when you need an angry God to do some personal smiting.

The worst day ever

What a depression might look like...

“blame it on the monkeys”

Requiem...a word I thought about and realized I had no grasp whatsoever on exactly what it meant, exactly. Basically rooted in “prayer (or mass) for the dead”. In music requiem would be any composition that sets to music sacred text appropriate for a funeral.

I asked her “What are you?...”a FUCKING 10!” she replied...

The scandalous rogue evolves into the solid man of letters...or gets burned in the fire of his own genius. A common story...something in the viscera makes words burst out, and putting the story inside onto a page takes discipline, focus, alcohol, All three are outside my grasp... Busting the line between rant and rave, reason and narcissistic puffery...writing for no one, everyone, putting a message in an electronic bottle and casting it upon the sea.

I repeat the words “let it go, let it go...” but only the ghost hears me. And that fucker never has anything constructive to say back.

A simple undermining from something only I can hear...so I take a string and a sock and make a ghost-puppet. I ponder it as I swing it tied to my finger and I think that symbolic expression has its uses...so I cut the string. baBYE!

Glittery light, whispering waves, a dome of blue with a cloud bordering the base 360 degrees like a planetarium...the fake sky and the real one metaphorically identical. People talking at me, I can’t hear a word they’re saying..I tell them that, so naturally, they repeat whatever they said in the same tone of voice completely inappropriate for the ambient noise level. The boat is moving into a 10mph wind at 22mph and the thrumming roar obliterates detail of the human voice, but that doesn’t stop them. I am at the helm...the center of attention in a way that takes mental effort. The guy behind me is getting lead weight out of the bin, and he keeps asking me “how much does this weigh? How about this? And this?”...over and over. I stop turning around to look thinking “does he see what I’m doing here?”...I wonder about how to adapt to having to be 100% focused on mother ocean and her obstacle course while listening to the randomly generated non-sequitar-theater...”Have you ever been to Lembah?”...”where can I go in Encino to get my poodle clipped?” or whatever... they want my attention, and it never, ever stops. I’m only human, and sometimes I must look like a real dick. “Let it go, let it go” I say to myself...you can’t please anyone. I mean “everyone”.

Imagine that...the center of attention. Day after day, year after year, the zen-monkey, so humble and confident and detached...”which way did you say that grouper was?” and I look at 12 million square miles of sea...I sigh and point straight down.

Talk radio is one of the phenoms of the right wingnuts...a glimpse inside the mechanics of NeoCon-Republicanism...the tactic of attacking the other side in the fear of losing an election resonates with me. The sum total argument against President elect Obama was “What if?”..and I gotta tell you, I find it amazing that so many people have fallen for this.

A cold front blew through yesterday, bringing in much cooler air at high speed from the north. 15-20-25 mph, low humidity, bright sunny sky.....

I tell everyone “it’s cold out there” and they laugh at me. 2 trips a day, every day..They say “72f isn’t cold. When I left <insert random place> it was <insert low temperature>! THIS isn’t cold”...well then. I guess you showed me.

Out of the protected harbor, the wind increases behind me...I match speeds as it follows, neatly neutralizing it. Local instructors are donning drysuits as the mockery rises in pitch. One guy has not wetsuit at all...he claims he is never cold. 2 women from Wilmington, NC relate their “this isn’t cold!” snark...I go quiet...I tried. We arrive at the divesite and I turn into the wind as we pick up the mooring line and like a wet kiss on a hot fist the wind suddenly slaps into them. Invariably, they seem more respectful of my advice at this point. The water temp is 76f, and the air mid 60’s...wind chill at 20mph? Intolerable.

Shivering...bone chilling, a lesson learned. Dives get cancelled down the road as core body temps drop. Humility is learned, not born.

After a solid day of being in dry, cold wind I get pretty well chilled...I come home and make my “hairdryer tent”, a blanket over my head, hairdryer between my feet blowing warm air as I watch the Jaguars lose (1-4 at home? pitiful) and President elect Obama vowing to stop torture and close down Gitmo.

My tent takes on metaphorical status as the liberal idea that America is above torture floats like a warm bubble in a cold world.

Darwinist Dating...a beautiful, brilliant piece of writing that hits nails directly.

After you read the above...this, a woman who forgets NOTHING. Can you imagine?

Queer Fear?

Vulture Culture...

Of all the people to piss off...Wanda Sykes.

How to Run a Con...the key is not to get the mark to trust the con-man, but to display the opposite

Touching millions who are touching themselves...

The wind was honkin’...SE. Sea were 4-5ft...and what do you think happened?

I gave the warning...and a few of them marched up into the office and fuck-me-naked-runnin’-down-the-street! They hired a guide!

The boat was full...they all listened to the briefings. They all had a blast...and most of them went back out that afternoon! Awesome...

She is a mix of tough water-girl and fragility...there is something about her deeper and darker that clashes with surface details.. But at 20 years old, who would expect anything more? She has just finished her third IDC (Instructor Development Course) in 4 weeks having just gained her PADI, NAUI and SSI Instructor cards....

She is a classic example of the notion that we in professional scuba are either running away from something...or toward it.

Canadian...never been to the US outside of her past 4 weeks here. She was a lifeguard, swimming instructor, a bit naieve perhaps, or not. She was taking some advanced diving/rescue instruction with her boyfriend a year ago...and tragically, horribly he had a heart attack under water while they were doing a drill and she was the one who had to deal with it. He didn’t make it.

Their plan was to become instructors and travel all over the world...now it’s just her. That is just an amazing story, I am thinking as she tells me this quietly, softly, and I feel her strength and drive even as I see how fragile she is. What a combination. She is, like so many of the women I work with, not average...

She asks me how I deal with the craziness of a life dodging bullets...of the daily parade of people with no business involving scuba here to scuba. As a man in his 60’s weighing over 300lbs struggles to sit down on a picnic table bench and fusses with his gear and lights up a cigarette...she was on the boat in the morning and noticed the “can you lift me?” women who couldn’t climb the ladder (4 of them today)...she hasn’t really seen the applied part of professional scuba up close.

I cannot help feeling a bit paternal toward her...but patronizing? Not in me. She’s a strong one...but I don’t think she really knows it yet.

I tell her that divers are largely baby-boomers...that one isn’t well served with wondering what if something bad will happen...but when. That only bad things happen fast, good things take time. Compartmentalizing, detached, vigilant, resolved...and calm action are all part of this job. You can never, ever show fear or act from that place in public. When the shit hits the fan, they’re all looking at you as the one to “do something”.

We stand there, looking down at the divers gathering for an afternoon of fun in the sun, and the demographic is a chilling reflection of what we are talking about, this pretty young blond woman and I. And the darkness lifts, we smile and march down to the boat...me holding the manifest launching into my role as captain and she as professional instructor...it’s SHOWTIME!...

He mails himself out of prison...did he insure himself and then collect?

ImJustSayin...really! I’m just sayin’...

Seattle, 1962...the GayWay...under construction

“Fortunately, the White House made a mistake”...no shit.

Schiff was right...A failure of leadership and personal responsibility....

Nebraska...what the FUCK?

Are you a risk junkie? Here ya go...

“If I could find emotion, to stimulate devotion...THEN you’d see!” jack white

The idea of scuba certification is sound. One must demonstrate a basic set of skills to a set of standards...pass knowledge tests. But there are flaws in the system, kind reader, because one can actually be certified to dive without actually diving in the ocean.

Sometimes I just want to rifle through peoples shit and get their C Card and cut it up in little pieces...they are terrified, and not in a way that bodes well for improvement, but fundamentally demonstrative of the fact that there is no fucking way in shape or form should they BE certified. I have had people admit that they never actually took off their mask underwater and replaced it successfully. I commonly see those whose mask comes off while giant striding panic...not just wiggy, but full blown life threatening panic. How did they get certified? If they were like this in scuba class...what the fuck are they doing out here, 6 miles offshore in 4ft seas?

I think there should be an “ocean-diver endorsement” in this process, where people who have only dived in springs or quarries are required to do their first ocean dives with a diving instructor or divemaster...

I have Quixote in my blood...tilting at windmills, railing against the machine...but the anger part is gone. No spiritual mission, this...rather I am poking at my targets through adherence to the point. Whatever it is. Ingenioso...farcicial, my quest to unseat the deeply rooted Nixonian ghosts of my past continues and evolves. I grew up with the images of people being beaten down on an ironically Black&White TV...civil rights seemed a no brainer to me. But there were hard core opponents to this, and to this day they are with us still. The battle changes fronts, sometimes if only symbolically between the radical right and the social progressives, and ebbs and flows with the vagaries of a distractable and petulant public opinion...what chance does a president have, I wonder? With howling medievalists swarming the entire world like locusts, gods own warriors on missions to return us all to the mythical time of brutal suppression of knowledge and freedom. For it truly is freedom they despise, isn’t it? The idea that freedom is in the process of liberating and releasing human potential that starkly contrasts with Koran/Bible rigidity...yeah...fighting against willful ignorance is indeed Quixotic..and like the classic Man of La Mancha, perhaps I too have lost my mind.

The solution to the language barrier in South Florida? Businesses like this one. Anya is doin’ a great job with this...in fact, she even prompts the Germans to tip.

I feel a little older today...Mitch Mitchell died in Portland, Oregon today....a skinny white guy that just amazed me with his ability to somehow, someway, amazingly hang on a par with Hendrix...I saw them play in Seattle a long, long time ago...

The rush to fill 24hr News slots makes for opportunities to launch hoaxes (or just bullshit) into the public that become very real. The clip of FoxNews where they drop words like “food riot” and “revolution” while sitting in a bar all calm as if they were discussing the relevance of womens shoes...and peppered in, snarky forecasts of Obama’s failures... When I first heard this whole “Africa” thing my alarm went off. I don’t think Palin is that stupid...seriously, I don’t. And it turns out that it was all a brilliant hoax

And this one...is the Governor of Florida Gay? You hafta wonder..a smear campaign?.you know...I think it is just that. Smear.

Regurgitating unconventional pieties, addendums to manliness

Snappy Banter from the Hall of Fire is celebrating 13 (my lucky number!) years of bringing you all things wicked and awesome...November1995-2008

I don’t get too upset anymore when people “don’t like me” and say stuff that is opinion or false. The truth? OuCh!.

I get judged a lot...good weather? All me. Bad weather...me. Water spraying up into your face? Bad driver! whatEVER. I read reviews of dive ops...dive shops, vacation destinations written and posted all over. If there is an incident of some kind in which someone dies or is injured, the nittering nabobs with their fakey little names and avatars start snarkin’ and speculating. Y’all certainly have your opinions...just head over to scubaboard or scubadiving...google “dive op reviews” for your destination and check it out. Dive mags are universally positive...they don’t do articles about stupidity or willful arrogance...nowhere else is the simple fact that the ocean is an environment so hostile that one breath of the atmosphere in the place will fucking kill you (thanks, Craig J) published in that blunt form. But here it is. Almost never does any one ever hear from professional dive boat captains, instructors, crews...speaking bluntly about what it is like to work in this business. Oh yes, kind reader, we talk allright...We are barraged by the focused perception and dreamy projections of the divers with whom we work...they think that since they are on vacation and relaxing, then so are we. Good. I hope that is exactly what you think. That means I am successfully making it look easy.

Repeating myself for the sake of clarity; at the bow of my boat, so many times a day I see the knees knocking, the fear as all the bullshit evaporates...the purity of true fear is amazing. it is brutally honest, guileless...some feel it but don’t know how to follow instinct, they have forgotten or never knew who they are, and they pick up diving like a 15 yr old goth adopts the uniform of rebellious misanthrope...they are poseurs. Diving is filthy with them. Geeks, dorks, wearing a costume they perceive as empowering...up until they stand there staring down at the deep blue sea...I watch this process with fascination, the transformation from bellicose puffery to silent perceptual narrowing... and back again. “0” experience with internet access and an angry disposition + a problem in the water=blame someone/anyone/ME.

Experience is a great teacher to the wise...and I have many hundreds, thousands of friends in the diving community. People who appreciate the respect and professional service they get from me and my crew...over 45,000 served and counting. I believe that my deep passion for diving, and divers as well, is obvious. My contempt for stupidity and arrogance, equally so. Deal with it. Or not.

Have you ever wanted to GPS track your vagina? Like “where did I put that thing...hmm, I know it’s around here somewhere”

Well meaning straights, listen up! Gay people are under full legislative attack from religious moralists and the highly funded Mormon Church...if you think that “gay” issues don’t affect you, you’re dead wrong. This nation is built on equality and inclusion for all. Parsing out the bizarre religious-based nonsense, ESPECIALLY Mormonism, and putting fundamentalist foolishness into our State Constitutions is just...fucking...stupid. Gay people are the sons, the daughters, mothers, fathers, tax payers, veterans, mormons all around us..let them quit living a lie.

Drunk of the Week

I voted for “slide your feet under bathroom stall doors in airports”

Sean Hannity gets mowed down...fabulous.listen to him blahblahblah, voice rising in pitch, defensive...

Aphasia is a condition affecting speech/language. The afflicted may be able to speak, but not write...or vice versa. It is one of the side effects possible with anti-depressant candies like Paxil...along with sexual dysfunction or suicidal thoughts. It seems everyone is on one of these...I know a woman who had a hysterectomy years ago and has been on HRT...they switched her meds and she hasn’t slept in months, got hot flashes and severe anxiety, so what do you think happened? PAXIL!

Just keep treating the symptoms and the kickbacks roll in Doc...doncha just wanna strangle these fuckers?

The Elliot Wave...is predicting a coming collapse. Stock index at 400?

He saw it coming...a dystopic view...telling the truth, Noam Chomsky

“I’m finding it harder to a gentleman every day” Jack White

Oh yeah. Here’s a little caffeine fueled piece I wrote and posted somewhere in the interwebs:

One very large point you missed, Larry. The "WMD" thing happened after the US had been in Iraq for a decade. Flyovers, daily back and forths...satellites, an American military presence. THEN...911, and the massive "intelligence" funding. Massive. Then, a massive intelligence FAILURE. Now, the US has been in Iraq for 16-17 years! I don't care who else got "fooled", Larry. I couldn't care less. The president was very, crystal clear. He said "WMD", over and over and over again. And we all got fooled, didn't we? We all were wrong.
What's done is done. Those who take on the responsibilities must accept the consequences. I suggest we allow the president to accept his responsibility as the Commander in Chief and leave with some dignity. And it appears that is what he is doing. The apologists/excusers...? ick.

I know how defensive supporters are. I can clearly see the linkage between "terrorism" and Iraq being made, in the exact same bumbling bullshit way as the "WMD". They lied, or they were totally incompetent. A trend that has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Is that a radical pov? Or mainstream? Who, I ask rhetorically, is the radical here?

Obama was elected because of what has happened the last 8 years. He didn't get where he is because he's black. It is because he did what needed to be done to get elected IN SPITE of his race. A great achievement that should garner respect. He has mine. And for the record, I do not see him as a savior or messiah. He has expressed his commitment to the core values of the Democratic party that I share. Dare I suggest more than a passing resemblance to RFK?
Reagan asked, and everyone thought him so brilliant: "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?"
I figured since I'm seeing so much Clintoniciousness being thrown out I'd slide a Reaganism down the lane.

Lets all agree on something: Bill Clinton is and was an asshole. He lied, he cheated, he helped turn the Democratic party into a sycophantic corporate weasel-fest. He was no liberal. He and his wife are panderers. No doubt. Thats why she lost. True liberals do not support Clinton(s) and I, for one, celebrate their final irrelevance.
The democrats have steered toward their FDR roots. And this will surely rile up the Reaganite trickle down fetishists.
President elect Obama's election represents a rebuke of wingnut involvement within the Republican party. The inevitable, agonizingly slow result of radicalism. I suggest that Republicans regroup and work to effectively counter some of the Democrat tendencies in the "lower taxes smaller government" area. That is a laudible and reasonable goal.
As opposed to the crap-ola "family values" agenda put forth by dudes who spend too much time in airport bathrooms.
GW has screwed the Republican pooch. Move on, people. Reasonable people disagree on many things...but on this? Cracker puleeze! 
Just sayin'.

Judy, Judy, Judy...

The Breeders...back in biz. Awesome.

“Judgemental blog posts about strangers”...Drink my kool-aid darlin’

Maya Hell

“Like Coke or Pepsi, with dicks in it” Mainstreamed, indeed. And this on Movieland

Dizzy and Louis...

Touching Strangers...very interesting photo-essay...and an interview with the artist

RIP Vandenburg...

Republican Senators kibosh Gulf of Mexico Sanctuary proposals.

Growing tired of that which is repeated too often

Bubblewatchers and snorkelers...! 3 footers rolling in from the east, a bad combo. One BW in the AM...a young woman, full makeup, street shoes, never been on a boat ever...<sigh>. I warn her. She goes anyway. We tie up, she begins vomiting. Miserable for 4 hours. PM...a Russian couple asking about conditions for bubblewatching...I look them right in the eyes and tell them about our happy tourist from the morning. And shit-the-bed...there they are on the fucking boat. She has never been on a boat, never used a mask or fins or snorkeled or worn a wetsuit, never. She is clueless. In the water she won’t put her face down, keeps her head fully out of the water meaning her snorkel is inserted into the sea and she is sucking saltwater...and she’s pissed at us. The mate is trying to help her but she is...um, (aww fuck it) she’s a bit of a bitch, so she is arguing with him. He is telling her what to do trying to help, she insists that she is doing it but guys...she ain’t doing it.In a sublime scene of perfectly contrived misunderstanding where she projects her discomfort, ignorance and that transcendent realization of what she is doing and how she got here onto we who are “causing” it, her “attitude” smahes headlong into your humble narrator...HA! She sits on the ladder and says “I am not happy”...boo-fukkin-HOO, missy! I have been a father for 27 years...I have 4 grandchildren. I have listened to whiny children for thousands of days, and I know the tone when I hear it and it rolls right off of my teflon self... So she sits down and decides to chat it up and wants to know where I got my hair highlighted (wtF?)...”In the sun” I tell her...she thinks I’m lying, and that makes her even angrier (?!). Strange one here, in her tiny bathing suit, seems she is used to getting what she wants through tit-display...she stands up, moves to the side of the boat and blurts out puke for 5 solid minutes...”can you help me?” she cries...”Yeah...go back there and shoot for distance” I say. That made a total of 8 solid hours on a beautiful day of young, clearly vain beautiful women literally weeping for pity after I had fully warned them. This shit just doesn’t get to me anymore....I am not your mommy, I am not going to feel emotionally attached to your stupid decisions...And yes, this falls solidly into the category of “STUPID”. A captain warns you not to go. You go because you WANNA. You blame me? DING! Who’s judging who, here?

“We are Canada’s Mexico”

I gotta laugh...a convicted felon can pass laws in the Senate, but two people who love each other can’t get married? Ahh, priorities!

Cool buildings...

50 things you might not know

My friend Simone sent me this: Hi Bob. I am writing an article on fear. Why do YOU think people that should be afriad or feel at leasy a tingle of fear-don't? For instance people that haven't been in scuba gear for years and decide to dive without a guide or refresher course? Is it stupidity? Genetic? Whadda ya think?
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

I think:
There are only 2 emotions. Love and fear. Everything else is a product of these 2 basics.
Jealousy, hate, rage, anger...empathy, pity, hope.
Stupid is something else entirely.
Divers are no different than the general public, Simone. Rush hour traffic, long lines, reality television watchers, racists, saints, pedophiles, sociopaths et al. They do stuff they don't think through for reasons they don't question. Sometimes, this ends poorly.
The fight or flee reflex that worked so well 20,000 years ago is something too many folks have allowed to become perverse.
They don't even know HOW to follow their instincts and are in fact suspicious of them. They medicate them away with alcohol and prozac to quiet the echoes of it.
How do you fight or flee in traffic, or work, or socially? Like any animal, when we deny our natural impulses we become self destructive and neurotic. Like monkeys in a cage too small.
Most people are open to approach when kindness and true helpfulness is extended. One can make mistakes while diving and learn from them, learn from others. For 10%, however, they learn nothing. Intransigent, anger based, arrogant...they will blunder through life and we will shake our heads in wide wonder.
And they dive. Diving provides the elements sought by many type A controllers. As you are no doubt aware, zen is not a common feature of the mind/life/spirit zeitgeist of our modern lives.
Put lead belts on angry middle age people, drop them in the deep blue sea, let their egos inflate a bit, and shit will sometimes hit the fan...
And there on the bow of the Cheeca View, it comes down to you...your bullshit...and the deep blue sea. For some, the bullshit washes off quickly. For our 10%, it is all they have. And they will die with it.
Sad, but true.
The choice to live as one who loves vs one who fears is behind everything we do, eh?

“Forced Entry”? Scotland! ACH!

The Mormon church has crossed the line. The State Supremes had already ruled...the backlash is huge...really. One Mormon weighs in with his opinion; “I don’t care”...and the response he gets clearly illustrates why I DO Care.

I hear the dark angel snickering...

They blame each other constantly...the game is on and the off switch is broken. This is the game, kind reader, that moves while they’re playing. In the water, they surface, and argue softly, sharply...“why did you come up?” “well, at least I didn’t rocket like you did...” “where’s the boat” “right behind you...open your eyes” and on and on and on...back onboard, they are pick-pick-picking at each other so much that I tell them to stop it. “Look, you two...if you don’t shut up with that bullshit I’ll put you off this boat!” and the rest of the divers out on the bow applaud.

A right wingnut Jesus guy tells me that liberals are intolerant to his viewpoints on social issues...he expresses that he feels “persecuted” for his views. How delightfully bizarre...a perfect example of the rotten part of modern Republicanism. The Intolerant as a “minority” with “rights”?

WWJD? Get his dad to do some smiting?

As the rage subsides post election and folks return to normal drunken ranting and domestic battery as means to express intolerant madness (or go to church to reinforce commitment to Armageddon Politics) I await the second wave, the one that smacks down the unwary apres tidal wave one. Face it...you don’t go from extreme rightwingnut to “loyal” opposition over night...or ever, for that matter. This isn’t a position conducive to compromise, is it? The other shoe is gonna drop, no doubt.

Angry old guy is mad...told that without an Advanced certification he will need to hire a guide for the Duane dive he says “CHA CHING! That’s what you people are about!”...and the office staff is attempting to placate by reciting policy...So he goes out on a shallow reef dive and doesn’t set up his gear properly and is wearing a thin nylon suit making him look a bit like a transgender CatWoman...MEEEEoooow!

And of course...he freezes his ass off, as I warned him he would. He gave me “the look” and I told him “don’t even start that ChaChing horseshit with ME young man!” AND...he bailed on the dive within 10 minutes: “My chest hurts!” Now from a 70 year old man, these are not the words you want to hear on a dive boat, ya know? He blames the straps on his rented BCD...Back the next day with a guide on the Duane, he bungies in his tank and then puts the regulator on backwards...DoubleDIng! And watching as he jerks forward repeatedly cursing our rack system is pretty fucking funny...at least he has a wetsuit today. “My chest hurts!” he says as he climbs the ladder...”he’s at 98f and breathing” I think to myself...a good day defined.

TWITTering! TwIT!

A clear surfboard...cool

The Natural History Museum...

STOP the remake! Seriously! “When you dressed up sharp and you felt alright”

The death of Superman... time machines, a father, a son, a mission...

What it all means? Since 1980 the vampires have been loosed on a sleeping public.

A plant geek...

It’S OFFicial! Ralph Nader is insane.

Obama Wins, Miami Loses...in SoFlo you get elected based on one issue alone; hate Castro. AND the homophobe amendment passes...DING

You shouldn’t let poets lie to you...

A young Italian couple...he speaks so little English that telling him little things, unimportant detail like “switch your tanks” between dives? Lost in Space...I try to tell them that it is windy and raining out on the reefs...as we stand at the dock, blocked winds create a warm sunny pocket of calm air and it is obvious that he is telling his female companion/bubblewatcher that it is calm and warm out there even as I try try try to tell her otherwise. “Fuck it” I say. No dealing with this horseshit...I saunter up to the office and grab a marker and change the “Bubblewatcher” price posted from “20$” to “2000$”...thats more like it.

He didn’t switch his tank, and on the 2nd dive he ran out after 20 minutes. Precipitating an incommunicado-licious moment or two of what-the-fuck-errificness. She was obviously miserable for 4 long dive boat hours...an unnatural pallor of green I know so well and was powerless to avert. My liberal tolerance policy is fading real fast...I hear the accented speech and I know the burn is coming...3 times the trouble, full rental gear, poor-to-none dive skills, inability to solve problems through reasonable communication, no tip at all. DING! A recipe born of desperate economic times.

Bad Haiku:

Unknown to but a few

my words hauntingly amaze

I should learn english

Will Rush Limbaugh mention it on his “show” today? (listen to the embedded video) He has tried to assert that Obama is not an American citizen by claiming that Obama’s recent trip to visit his grandmother was to settle business pertaining to this “concealment”...listen, kind reader, to this pompous ASSHOLE inflecting and emphasizing to make his ridiculous “point” that has already been debunked thoroughly. Maybe Obama was telling the truth? He wanted to see her before she died of cancer? I submit that Rush Limbaugh provides an excellent ”Get Out ANd VOTE!” message.

Looking for the film “Dr Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine”? Well, here ya go.

VOTE...then eat some fruit and touch yourself

On deeper dives, the prudent dive boat captain solves problems before they occur. A lesson I have learned the hardest possible way. The margin between extremes, the space separating body temp and ambient narrows down to a gap too close to see and it is unusual for all of those who sign on for these dives to actually be qualified to do them.

One young woman with an Advanced Open Water cert has been diving for several days...she opens her tank valve 1/4 turn, every time. At depth, the restriction of air through this unopened valve at 3 ATM (99ft) will be potentially lethal, kind reader. Boyles Law, which I point out is called a “LAW” of physics for a reason, dictates that as ambient pressure increases, the volume of air decreases and it’s density increases...the scuba regulator provides a higher volume of higher density gas at depth, and if the fuckin’ valve isn’t open all the way, it’s very much like turning a garden hose on partially. When you need the air in a hostile environment, you don’t have it. Now she does this every single time she dives on our boat...as she staggers toward an exit, I move to turn her valve on fully and she always, every time, snaps angrily “IT’S ALREADY ON!” as if this were an issue of a feminist nature and my behavior is somehow patronizing...<sigh>...I told her, over and over, and still she does it every time. Dodging bullets makes me tired, people.

She wants to know who her buddy will be, but she is travelling and diving with another pair already, and I ask her why she needs someone else this day...”I’m going deeper than they are” she says nonchalantly. “130ft!”...I must have gotten “the look” on my face. She’s never been deeper than 80ft, ever. Never been on the Speigel Grove, ever. Her plan? Well...the moth is planning to touch the flame, here. So to an “Advanced” diver, I am explaining “turn your air ON” and “your NDL at 130ft is 10 minutes...IF you have enough air...and you realize that at the bottom you’re looking at mud and a flat metal wall?” She has formulated a plan based on....um, nothing. She has no clue. And she’s pissy that I won’t set her up with another idiot that wants to do a stupid diver trick, thus creating potential disaster for 2. I calmly explain to her where she’s gone astray and how this is gonna play, and all is well. She views this as “customer is always right” and I view this as “I see dead people”...

The UnAmerican NewsNetwork...anger, 24hrs a day...an interesting take on where do we go from here?

“You’re a fucking asshole”...true, that.

Striving to dance un-selfconciously

“The current is terrible!!!” she shrieks at me...”No it isn’t” I yell back...”You realize you have to actually move your legs for the fins to work, right?” CLASSIC..no current at all. 0”, zip, nada. She is not in any kind of physical condition for what she’s doing, diving in the ocean, but here she is...and she’s pissed off. Not overweight at all, but her flesh wiggles around her frame in a way that says she has worked out...never. Just a sorry place to be, this self induced crippled state where mild physical demands cause massive whining and complaining, as if some failure on my part is resulting in this horrible torture...I have no idea what runs through the mind of such a person...and I breathe a huge sigh of relief when they are back aboard...”dodged another bullet” I think to myself.

As harsh as it sounds, my professional experience points toward an inescapable conclusion: the world is full of stupid people.

A guy in his 70’s bathed in “Brut”, the 60’s cologne...he can’t assemble his own gear and he declined the offer of a professional guide. He didn’t wanna pay. So he steals the service anyway from the crew, demanding that his gear be set up, broken down, reset...his buddy is 200lbs overweight, they get lost on the reef in 100ft visibility, “0” current, 1-2ft chop. The buddy learned a couple of valuable lessons, which removes her 100% from the category “stupid”...He, however, learned nothing. The conclusion is yours to draw.

2 rescues yesterday...one, a diver 40ft from the boat at the surface over her buddies...she waves and screams. We get her. The problem? “I only had 300psi and my buddies didn’t know where I was!” She climbs aboard hyperventilating as if she had just climbed from the wreckage of a plane crash unscathed, a hyperbolic attention grabbing scheme from the dark heart of feminine gender based vacuity...I sit her down and walk away ignoring her completely. Later, she says she wants to go on the night dive and I laugh at her...”NO!” I tell her. “If you need rescuing like that, you don’t get on MY boat for a night dive!”

Yeah, that’s the kind of dick I am, hon...

2nd rescue was a carbon copy of the first. Down to the smallest detail. Today is “damsel in distress day”, apparently...

Some learn, some don’t...the “don’ts” just keep to the script...and I assume they are like this as marital partners, bosses/employees, parents, drivers, contributors to intelligent political discussions, you know...general assholes makin’ the world the place it is.

Eddie reminds us of why we must remember the past and how it links to the present...

Canadians and their pranks!...here is a recording

Picking the low hanging fruit...

Here is an article of great importance and value about why McCain is the right man at such a wrong time...the current president, IMHO, is every bit as destructive to the positive elements of his party as the last democratic prez was, and it is high time for the GOP to purge itself.

Stichomancy...a form of divination using randomly selected passages from books for guidance and illumination.

Before the Space Needle, the Pike Place Mall...before the restoration of Pioneer Square there was Bobo (and later, Fifi)...I saw them many times at Woodland Park Zoo. There is a lot of moving emotional backstory very much a part of growing up in Seattle in the 1950’s/60’s...

790,000 years ago today...

Republicans...what are you gonna do? Crazy shit? Nah...nobody would ever....DOH!

This might sound crazy...but

Scuba Picture of the Day

Terrorist, commie, traitor...they’ve pretty much covered it all. WAIT! One more word they haven’t really used until...and she doesn’t skip a beat.

He’s livin’ the dream...careful whatcha wish for

Rush Limbaugh is a huge idiot. Millions of people listen to him and repeat what he says in argument. A+B, and all. Stupidity? Racism? What exactly is this horseshit? I believe it is safe to say that the extreme right has nothing of value to add to debate.

Unaired pilot for I Love Lucy (1951)

A brief digression...awesome!

You know who they are... the people who flip you off in traffic screaming profanity at you after they cut you off, their kids in the car with them...they’re the ones who talk on their cellphones in the grocery store blocking the aisles...when highway construction signs warn of a lane closure you move over early and they are the peckerheads that speed up in the closed lane to gain advantage and end up creating a clusterfuck...they pass you in a no passing zone, they charge ahead tailgating one car after another mindlessly, without roadrage, simply harassing their way through the day with ordinary evil...and they aren’t a tiny minority. The world is not a civil place, kind reader...it is full of people who throw cigarettes out the car window, cut in line, create an obnoxious atmosphere of negative energy. I estimate that more or less 10% of people fall into this category. They are my people...the meat and potatoes of Snappy Banter from the Hall of Fire. This weekend I had a pair that will neatly fit into “Hall of Fame” status.

Out there...Molasses Reef, possibly the most popular divesite in the world 2-3 footers, light current, 100ft of visibility. A beautiful day on the water. She can’t climb the ladder, can’t remove her fins, the mild current is kicking her, um, ass. The assistance required is beyond excessive. She totally knows this, but acts as if thats our job...to serve her and her self-imposed disabilities, her caloric intemperance has come to roost right here for us to cope with. I estimate her hips at 70-80 inches around. A big butt, indeed.

They exude an angry, irritated demeanor that serves to amplify my impressionof them as “unpleasant”...he boards after the dive and he sits, eyes closed tightly, semi snorting air through his nostrils...in and out, in and out, loudly, like a pre-pukerrific sign of seasickness and the mate asks him “are you feeling OK?”

“I’M FINE!” he snaps angrily, “I just wish I had taken my snorkel ‘cause this isn’t a dive site!”...I look at him sharply... He’s angry! The dive isn’t “deep” enough? The mate looks at me and sees it coming...but I don’t unload...I ask him politely ”Have you ever been here before? You realize, of course, we have 200 miles of 30ft dives? Thats what we’re famous for”...”OF COUSRE I’ve been here before” he snaps...and that is a lie, and I know it and he knows I know.. He is an unpleasant person, no doubt, and everything about him screams out “petulant dork”

Back at the dock, they waddle into the office and cancel their remaining dives...”We’re pacific people...this diving is horrible” they say. Joni tells me the wife had told her that the hubs was ex-Navy Seal and I laughed real loud and hard...guys, when you tell your adoring and delusional women this kind of “I’m a spy!” bullshit you gotta realize they are gonna repeat it...and that guy was no Seal, kind reader, ever. Ahh yes! The glorious randomosity machine of the general public has not only it’s special 10%, but every now and again pukes out that special one that stands out to a jaded warrior like me.

The Ting Tings...well then.

Bad Haiku:

Shopping shopping shopping

Boys boys boys

How’s college going?

Short Selling...’splained.

Life before death?

Dead before they die, millions of miserable, unhappy people without the courage to live...depressed, medicated, melancholics are everywhere, addicted to pain and suffering. They are scrimping and saving and worrying for and about a future that isn’t real and utterly destroying the right now that is very, very real.

Slave to a dream...of a day when all your cares and worries will be over, when money will no longer keep you doing things you hate, accumulating more shit you don’t need and can never hope to pay for. Slave to a lie.

I wonder how it all got so fucking crazy...how people submit to medication as a method of coping with bullshit...as opposed to dumping the bullshit?

You, your bullshit...and the deep blue sea.

And on that topic...bullshit, that is...politics just fires up the crazy in those inclined toward anger management failures...they’re out there listening to other crazy people saying crazy shit on the radio...getting all amped up and charming the living shit outta everybody at every opportunity. Todays Snappy Banter is dedicated to that noble and American calling...boobs. The nice ones, the bad ones, the ones plaguing us all with those awful emails that have all the visible “cc’s”. I think I’m gonna stick with eatin’ fruit and touchin’ myself for entertainment

Coming Soon: a way for you, the viewer, to add your brilliant comments to this humble contribution to the NSFW world!

She’s like, Smart...

Real AmeriKa! “Strangers are just friends you haven’t thrown up on yet...” Black militant with ties to terrorists?

Get away from me with that glue? I fucking love Seattle. Jumpier than a Catholic towel-boy in the Vatican sauna!

The Kennedy bunker in Palm Beach...an odd little roadside attraction, this. I’ve been to Peanut Island once or twice but didn’t know it was there.

I confess a visceral dislike for the President. And the VP. AND Karl Rove. The “ick” factor with these three natural born assholes is very high here at Snappy Banter World Headquarters...and for the record, I find the idea that the 2000 election was stolen more plausible with time. It is a most interesting fact that the higher the voter turnout, the worse it is for the GOP. They do not as a rule sponsor “Rock the Vote” type events...I have never seen a Republican based voter registration drive. Never. The Republicans, kind reader, simply cannot win elections without subterfuge and outright lying. The lower the turnout, the higher the chances of GOP victory. Interesting factoid, that.

The best political ads ever. By best, I mean of course, insane.

PBS Frontline...pesky facts. .

My view on the death penalty is deeply held. I am convinced beyond a shadow of doubt that where there are people there is deceit...that the state is so fraught with injustice and politics, the potential for huge mistakes is very real. Howl your stupid blood lust if you must...and save some for THIS asshole.

Pessimism, Doom, a new surge...SpeigelOnline has an interesting take.

A really common criticism of the literalists in the Christian churches is the multiplicity of bible versions that obviously contradict each other...1640, Puritans, Catholics, a new king...a world vastly removed from the origins, the stories, the traditions. An interpretation presumably free of interfaith input, nothing at all of the Jews so prominently part of this great human volume of myths..Adam and Eve 4004BC?

Thats just silly. I’m just sayin’...

From the mouths of babes...Young Gavin doesn’t live with political parents, it isn’t something he hears at home. At 7, he’s aware that something weird is going on in adultland...and the droning horseshit is as incomprehensible to him as to his dog, equally puzzled...his family takes him to a large Miami costume store for Halloween stuff and he wanders off as Gavin is wont to do...”where did he go?” mom asks...

They can hear the laughter...he is wearing a GW mask and walking around saying “I’M DUMMMMBBBB! I’M DUUMMMBBBB!” and people are with him on this one...

“FUCK you, Seattle! I’m moving to Portland!”

We sleep the slumber of ignorance in paradise...

There are places that have a certain feel, a vibe...maybe an old grove of trees, a clearing, an interesting rock formation, a breezy shaded view, places where you can feel the people who have been there for the same reason as you...but a long, long time ago. Not ghosts exactly, just the feeling of a people place. I look around me and ponder how life was 1000, 2000, 10,000 years ago on such a spot. I imagine someone far removed in time yet connected by this same thought.

There are signs of them everywhere if you look closely...mounds that don’t belong but have been there so long nobody notices that they are “unnatural”, where people long ago piled shells, freshwater lenses in the tropical hammocks, huge old mahogony trees. And in the Everglades these islands of high-dry land dotting the swampy river of grass that makes up a space so huge it is impossible to get your mind around. Walking through the small patch of old growth tropical woods in Everglades National Park, I can feel the presence of the “others”...visualize canoes gliding through the grass, feel the eyes of them from the dense woods. A mahogony tree, 15-20ft in diameter, it’s crown torn by countless maelstroms over 2 thousand years or more can talk if you can listen.

And in other places, feeling the people isn’t so simple or obvious...but there it is. Sea level changes in the past 12,000 years have flooded places that are the most ancient of all human settlements. Under hundreds of feet of seawater, over all those thousands of years, it is harder to connect people with place on that visceral level...so for a long time I didn’t understand why I felt it when diving sometimes. My thinking was “water always”...never been anything other than what I see...an ancient scene millions of years old and unchanged. A false premise, borne of ignorance tweaked by that certain feel, a vibe.

The reef here in Key Largo has a very subtle tilt toward deeper water...18-20ft on the shallow end down to 30-32ft where the main spurs end. A few big montastrea coral heads dot the outside edges, and if it’s true they grow outward about 1/2inch a year, they would seem to be about 10-12,000 years old. Past the main modern reef, there are lower profile spurs that drop at 60-70degrees to a soft muddy bottom that goes on and on beyond my ability to see its end...detritus that sloughs off the reef, dead stuff decomposed, coral slime, falling in slow motion down the big hill from the shallows and slowly covering up the ancient coral reef down there. The vertical wall itself has the same features as the more modern reef back behind, but I can see that sea level must have risen very fast and then stabilized where it is today. And I can feel that people presence even out here, now that I realize that truth...they were here, too.

There are places in the deeps where the ancient coral reef peeks through this “snow” of detritus...places divers have never been, blips on a depth finder, GPS waypoints held close by fishers who pull huge fish from these oddly fecund places in the middle of nowhere...big fish in a consistent spot in deep water, kind reader, speaks of many small fish as well, and I ponder what it is 250-300ft below that harbors such a profuse community, and what it looks like down there and what it would be like to go there and take photographs of this odd place where nobody ever goes.

Thats why I dive...my backyard has secrets untold, places that speak softly all around me. While I wasn’t born here, the place called me and I answered.

Thats why I harbor low levels of contempt for the focus on Buffett and Hemingway and Zane Grey...they explored nothing. All they did was take from the place. The value of their contributions are not the meat of historical richness, nor do they tell the real story...but the Florida Keys is stuck with them...boozy poseurs that they are, the myths that Florida’s history began with air conditioning and tarmac, orange groves and WallyWorld beguiles those who fly past sacred ancient places at 60mph seeking Margaritaville and a serious sunburn.

Amazing underwater pictures..

Monsters among us...delving into the past of Franco’s Spain isn’t gonna be pretty. That some tacit knowledge exists and secrecy persists troubles the rational mind. Hundreds of thousands of dead, unaccounted for, some of the brutal fascist motherfuckers live free and unprosecuted. Spain has a long, colorful relationship with genocidal sociopaths in high positions.

Colombia...the biblioburro man. Amazing...

1967...plagiarists? The Who...?

Lionfish...

A doubling of dolphin deaths in Florida?

AmazonCon...someone for everyone. For some, love is found by looking “up”.

Here’s the part you DIDN’T see...and maybe you did see this one

What happens on the Cheeca View.... gets posted on the internet...

He starts talkin’...and off the edge he goes. “I definitely know I saw a lot more than I remember” he says...about some club up in Miami where people pay to go in and fuck random strangers. Apparently, he did some drinkin’ which he nappily inserts as the justification for the memory lapse, a gap that his ambiguous phrasing reveals as less than forthcoming.

He knows me very well...the look on my face, my subtle drawing out of more info...and he says “hey, you’re not gonna post this are you?” and I reply “dude, you know that what happens on the Cheeca View...” he interrupts me with “stays on the Cheeca View!” I laugh...”That’s sweet that you think that...”

He just can’t help himself, this one...details he claimed “forgot” tumble out . Wow.

Then comes the coups de gras; “I told my girlfriend about it...we laughed.” he says about she-who-was-not-there in a disingenuous display of faux-disclosure...he only told her parts that displayed his “trustworthiness”...the fact that they don’t let males in unaccompanied notwithstanding. And, for the record, I am not a great believer in pure-friend relationships between men and women that would involve outings like this...don’t even tell me that shit. As he stands at the bow all geared up, he seems to realize his precarious position and not just literally...”this is a small world, so don’t post this, allrite?” as the mate pushes him forward suddenly and he face plants into the clear blue water at Molasses Reef. As he spits out seawater, I say “I am sooo gonna post that shit”...

A couple years ago...we were out at Molasses Reef late one Sunday afternoon, the last boat on the reef. A mile or so further out a dive boat on the Duane. We had a few French people who understood so little english they were functionally incommunicado...they were fucking up on every level there is, rinsing masks in the camera bucket (a faux pas of the highest order), spitting into the wind, hauling ass downcurrent until they ran out of air then surfacing like a bazillion feet away and screaming blue murder...Troy is swimming a ball and line out to them, and all 400ft gets used. They’re coming back when the radio crackles “Coast Guard Islamorada, Coast Guard Islamorada, <name of boat>”...out on the Duane, the current is far stiffer this day than here at Molasses. I can see the vessel hailing sitting against the wind as the current pushes them, and the wind has been building for the past hour...current pushing into wind forces the sea into a “peakiness” like merangue on a pie...vertical, sloppy, foamy whitecaps at 3,,,4, then 5ft. The radio call is for assistance...seems 3 of the divers are missing on this deep wreck, and my skin crawls. If they’re inside the Duane, we don’t have much time. I cut in on the radio and offer assistance...they are putting the DM inwater to search the wreck for bubbles, but my feeling is that they are drifting past me at this very moment in the stiff Gulf Stream current in rapidly fading daylight. The USCG is gauging the situation, and I hustle up the “rescue”...my patience with this boatload of Euroweenies is at an end, kind reader. When the shit hits the fan, non-english speaking tourists are a major fucking liability. Siddown, shuddup. Parlez VOUS, mutherfucker?

I hail the captain and tell him I will begin searching downcurrent...I gauge drift, distance, time, and the seas are so peaky now that we will have to practically run over them before we see them...but if they’re at the surface, I know we’ll find them soon. ZigZagging across the drift line as the sun sets I am a mile...a mile and a half, almost two when we see two divers at the surface. Where’s the third?...we blaze over to get them, drop the ladder and toss a ball. As we get them closer, I yell at them “Where’s the other guy?” They look at each other, and shit-the-bed-sweet-BABY-JESUS! They don’t understand a fucking word I’m saying...they’re FRENCH!.

My people person persona falls off like loose pajamas...”GET THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS ON THIS BOAT NOW!” and as they get aboard, I can see they are greatly relieved...oh yeah, I’ll just bet they are. I have kinda lost my patience here as they are totally unable to communicate anything at all about their buddy...zip. Zero. Nada. My disgust builds, but we have a situation to deal with. I let political science slide as we resume the search...it’s almost dark now, ironically we motor along the 130ft gradient at French Reef when Troy spots the third diver...as we are picking him out of the water, the USCG helo arrives...all three accounted for. This one is an American, and the look on his face was pure joy when he saw us dropping the crest next to him. It was getting dark, the wind was howlin’, he was out of air...he had been buddied up with these euros and it had bitten him on the ass, hard. “We were ascending on the line” he said “one of them let go and the other followed...and so I stuck with them cause I was worried about them”...and they totally abandoned him at the surface.

This is why I don’t like dealing with our foreign guests, kind reader. If they don’t understand the briefings...then when shit goes wrong, shit can really go wrong. We were in the right place at the right time...

Add to that...the accent invariably is the sound of minimum wage. And in case you were wondering...the French divers did not even thank us. No merci boucous to be had.

Today, a German guy who hasn’t been in the water since 2006...so he’s told he’ll need a guide as per policy. He’s pissed. His wife is holding an infant and she wants to ride along with the baby as “bubblewatcher”. I put the “KY-bawsh” on that one. They are all lookin’ at me like i’m some kinda dick...<sigh>...so be it. I’m a big fuckin’ DICK, then. What if non english speaking mommy gets seasick in the 3-4ft chop today? Do they realize this is a DIVE BOAT? We’re not theme park ride, people. Would you consider a place where people puke, drain urine on the deck, spit constantly, blow snot into their hands and fling it around a platform rocking up and down for a solid 4hr tour a suitable place to take an infant? No...Fucking...Way.

But they clearly feel otherwise...our diver sets up his gear...backwards. HAH! His irritation about being “ripped off” for the guide fee remains as the mate fixes his gear and gets his weights sorted out...our German is clueless about this assistance, without which he would have been up shit creek. As we pass the dock our fraulein looks like she and her little baby were denied entry to the “It’s A Small World” ride at Disney...and they will never know what they dodged...back in the Fatherland, they will no doubt tell a tale of being ripped off and jerked around in the USA...whatfuckingEVER. More work...more trouble...no gratitude, no learning and adapting. No tip. No shit.

Mac’s criticism of MS spending too much on advertising? Bullshit Theater?

Katy Perry jumps on a cake, for some reason. Then she falls down. A lot. But she kisses girls, so I guess that makes this not boring. Or not. Not that there’s anything wrong with jumping on a cake or anything. Are her 15 minutes over yet?

Japanese TV? check...A monkey?...oh yeah!...A Segway? that is all

Awesome! And again. AwesomER

Colin Powell drinks the KoolAid...rationality from a republican. There are many who have never voted for a Democrat, ever...crossing over because the Republican party has dropped too far into bad weirdness. McCain is a great guy...but something must be done to push the rightwingnut crowd back into the coffin and put a stake thru it’s heart.

My mano-fest destiny...

Redefining manhood on the fly extemporaneously, no net, no coach, no cheerleaders...it’s never been as simple as it always seemed but the myth persists. Mixed Message Theater...life in a world where no one gives a shit how you feel...they only care about what you do. Today would have been my dad’s 72’nd birthday, and I miss him as I walk in his shoes...

I get cranked sometimes...edging disaster can irritate. You see, I never, ever get expected to explain why everything went well, why everyone had so much fun and the boat ran flawlessly. But when something goes wrong, well, I am pretty much the one who has to ‘splain what happened. I have to allow my body fluids to be tested to prove, well, prove my purity for whatever THATS worth, the cops, the USCG...the wonderful scuba-web-world and the land of a billion speculations naming names.

All free to banter as they will...the focus is very narrow indeed. I write down my thoughts and experiences with the scuba-public, of madness and agenda, ignorance and stupidity...the heady mix of lead belts, heavy metal, people, and the deep blue sea...and near misses cluster around certain situations completely beyond my control that are part of the job itself. One, is the perception that I have some power to control who gets on the boat...I do not. If I could, there would be no one more than 100lbs overweight, or incapable of climbing the ladder...in fact, I’ve thought about a pre-boarding obstacle course where people have to lift 40lbs and climb a step-ladder, but I am not allowed...no, I have to run the test on the water, and the failure rate would amaze, kind reader. Both in terms of weight and fitness.

Another cluster of trouble is the non-english speakers...transactional english is NOT applicable to “extreme sports”...you know, the type of phrases like one uses at an airport or car rental...this isn’t “English”...the boat briefings are, indeed...and the specifics of the briefing are tailored to avoid the avoidable. So when our Euros come aboard, one can have no comfort in assuming anything at all, the shit will not only hit the fan, but it can fly from any direction, any time...Did they understand my briefing about the Speigel Grove? How to deal with the current? The ladders? The “don’t put paper in the head”? NEIN!

A few hours into this kinda weirdness...I look a bit tired. While most have enjoyed their day so far, a few have been playing “near death experience”...invariably, someone will suggest that my job is “so easy” and that I should “lighten up” or “SMILE!”...and of course, that too is part of my job...which I sometimes forget...

It’s that contrast...between adrenalized “what the FUCK?” and the banality of strangers grasping for conversation and the happy chatter of carefree tourists...at times, I have this weird smile frozen on my face...someone who didn’t listen/couldn’t understand and/or is a total dumbass grabs the ladder and struggles to remove their fins without a regulator in place or mask on and smacks once, twice, aww fuck...three, four times head first into the 20,000lb boat...and I look down and say out loud “oooh yeah...that’s gonna leave a mark”...Since their head is under water (hence my 100% amazement at the regulator not in place) they can’t hear me, and I long ago gave up trying to help the unhelpable...I can only deal with the consequences at this point. All efforts at prevention have failed. Naturally, I smile...

I have a group of University marine biology students here to collect algae. I take them out to White Bank, and brief them on the “no touch-a-de-coral”...and they hit the water and proceed to start ripping fucking soft corals, gorgonians, seafans, sponges...whatever the fuck they can grab right off the bottom! Holy shit! Game over...I call them back to the boat and move them several miles inshore and as far from the reef as I can get. What a world...when a college level biology student can’t tell the difference between a plant and an animal. Fucking dolts. They start whining about wanting to go back to the reef for some “fun” and I flatly refuse. “Y’all have done enough damage today...”

Warning! DO NOT STAND OR SIT

“Who put this dick on my back?”...hmm. I wonder...

WOOF! I poop on you!

The Smartest Guys in the Room...watch it.

A leftist agenda

Isn’t it pathetic...describing someone as “liberal” or “leftist” in conservative terms = unamerican...the connection is breaking down, thank god.

“The markets are nervous” the talking head/infobabe says...”Investors are showing confidence” the next day. As if the market were a psycho ex-girlfriend with stability issues. That will really inspire “confidence”...the economy as a manic-depressive.

A trip cooks up outta nowhere...the wind drops way below the prediction. An instructor and his 12 year old son from New Hampshire and a handful of others...the kid is just itchin’ for a wreck dive. Every day, one at a time people ask me “Where are we going?”...and I get irritated. Reflex, I suppose. How hard, I ask, is it to say what I intend? Well...I get the “I want to go to the Jesus statue”...followed by “I’m not going if you go to the Jesus statue” or “Can we go to the Benwood?” and “I don’t ever want to go to the Benwood again...”An exercise in “Who-DO-I-Piss-Off-Today?” PLUS...if I answer the question, more will follow and I will be carrying on pointless blabbering nonsense about someplace I may or may not be going...Listen, I’m not on a schedule. I don’t plan out in advance. I look at wind, tide, where people have already been, listen to radio chatter...and in the end, about 50% of the time, I change my mind en route anyway. So my irritation at the “Where are we going?” question elicits the “Out there” response. Another question I find insufferable is after a detailed briefing on the dive site some asks “which way should I go?”...I glare at them and say “Straight down”.

AnYhoo...we arrive at the Benwood...and the passengers light up. They all wanted to go here, but this morning I am playing to the kid...he is enthusiastic about diving in that smitten way that so many of us know so well...the kid is in. Deep. He is learning fast, carries and sets up his own gear, asks thoughtful questions and listens to my answers...

We are the only boat out here this morning...and everyone is amped. Back onboard a few minutes early and we head over to French...the vis is a dirty 30, and I blaze right through the mooring field assessing vis...now, kind reader, if you have ever been on my boat you know what I’m gonna do here. I am, after all, a fucking professional. So I power back up and head for Molasses. The vis up there? 100ft or more...reef sharks, eagle rays and divers come back aboard with comments like “that’s the best dive I’ve ever had!”...and I smile at them. I get it. I know why you came here.

Revenge porn...it’s just not worth it.

The Chicago Tribune has never endorsed a Democrat for the presidency, ever. Until now.

“The system is broken” This is what happens, people.

So simple...

Iggy Pop, Dinah Shore, 1977. Need I say more?

The sum total of all things “zero” for people with private parts...

 People are so complex, and I can be so harsh...but I don’t get to see your work with homeless kittens or the new vaccine you developed to cure the cold...I get to see you as a “tourist”. Sometimes no problem, other times, well, a problem.

Faking insincerity isn’t easy...to plausibly fly out the I couldn’t care less banter takes talent. Sometimes, people see right through me and call me out. I like that. Instant bonding. I notice that some people prefer the company of those who they have beguiled as opposed to those who truly know them. Not I...look behind the mask, do you turn away?

A close friend of mine has this thing where she tests you out with “truth bombs”...blunt, unequivocal, very brave...she throws out dynamite with a laser beam and you either run or not.

And since I have no time for trifling nonsense in my personal life...I am charmed and deeply impressed.

I told them that seas were “4ft+” as I saw them sign in...a dad with an 11yr old, and naturally I thought a parent would want to know something like that. He glares at me angrily with that macho-fueled tough guy shit I know so well and said nothing. He turned back and continued signing the releases without a word...the kid was scared shitless all afternoon. She puked her guts out and cried loudly but she couldn’t be moved from the bow, where the boat is lurching up and down at the maximum...I tried, god knows I tried, to herd her astern where the physics were more tolerable, but she wouldn’t budge. Macho-dad was useless...he was irritated with her. grr. Is this a form of child abuse, I wonder? It’s amazing what parents will do to their kids when diving is involved, just plain amazing.

Another, a guy who has just completed his IE, Key Largo’s newest instructor...”You guys better watch out!” he says to us at the dock...HA! 45 minutes later, he’s curled up in a fetal position on the bow “I don’t feel so good...” he says. Wheat from chaff, my young newbie dreamer...careful what you wish for.

Jezebel: “So-called normal people can go wild-eyed and start spouting shit off the likes of which one would think would be confined to Arkham or parody, while others will holler things like "Kill him!" at political rallies because they feel like they're safe to do so. And, if the behavior of John McCain and Sarah Palin (along with the mainstream media) this week is any indication, they are pretty safe from repercussion. And that's fucking scary.”

“Show me on the doll where you pulled that ad out!”

The Bolsheviks are coming! From Herbert Hoover to Lenin in 3 easy steps...

The Dog Bucket List....

Easy credit, sleepy regulation...market fundamentalism? wow. An amazing interview.

Sometimes...you just have to bust out and bring reality to the table

The dude is sweaty and red-faced...on the stairmaster machine. Friday night at Froggys is a slow time,so the circuit has “0” traffic jams, the no-necks are no-necking elsewhere, no beautiful people to be found...a handful of the usuals. But sweaty-guy I don’t recognize...and one by one people start their cardio workout and he engages them with baiting yap about politics. Now, kind reader, I don’t go to the gym to socialize...I go as an effort to remove accumulated adrenaline. Some consider going to workout after captaining a diveboat, lifting all those tanks...a very, very physically demanding job...well, excessive. Perhaps... Mental health (for me, at least) demands exercise beyond and removed from work, kind reader...

I move around the free weight area, the machines, watching as one by one folks are trapped into this political crap-talk...and DING!!!!: He’s a wingnut. Imagine that. So my turn comes...I get right next to him and my MP3 player is blasting “Fire Frei” by Ramstein (a song about little puppies and flowers)...I see him talking to me, and I slip the earphones down but they are still audible “BANG! BANG! FIRE FREI!” seeps out in gutteral satan-fueled German...”That Obama is a real idiot” he says to me...I smile at him and reply “ I’m an idiot too” and I put my earphones back on and look straight ahead....BANG! BANG!

The house is For Sale...the 26ft 3-outboard boat For Sale....the dual axle pickup truck For Sale...a McCain/Palin America First sign in the yard...the irony is amazing...I swear to god, these fuckers really would vote Republican even if Nixon’s stinking corpse were on the ticket.

Yesterday...a guy who had both his knees replaced 4-5 months ago is on the boat. He’s 80 today. Happy birthday, I think to myself, but why here? A dive boat...going out on mother<fucker> Ocean? Does he have a guide? Hell no. Can he kick fins? HELL no. So naturally, he puts on fins...a scuba tank he cannot carry, and requires all kinds of special help and attention...and guess what? The trickle of current “sweeps” him away and he needs rescue. Nice guy...but jeezuzH...this job is so weird sometimes...people are just so erratic.

And “it” happened again...dude drank too much the night before and gets seasick. With explosive diarrhea...clogs the head, splatters all over the small space, says NOTHING...it oozes out of his wetsuit. He squishes his way off the boat and into the office and the bathroom, leaving (I shit you not) a trail and a puddle. And the chatter about him? He’s a Euro. He didn’t tip. He’s back tomorrow.

In the afternoon, a bubblewatcher who wants to lay in the sun...I try to stop her, but alas...if people only knew. People are spitting, blowing snot, draining urine out of their wesuits...that “joke” “there are two types of divers, the ones who piss their wetsuit and the ones who lie” always gets a chuckle from the others and a glare from me. I guess it’s all true enough...but flush your fucking wetsuit before you come aboard, cretins. Add to this diver-body fluid soup our pooper...and I ask you, would YOU lay down on this deck? Go for it Bucko!

Can I get a “EEEEEUUhhhhwwww! That’s gross!”??? Twins? Am I the only one repulsed by the concept of being in the presence of incest? With a fucking 200 year old weirdo? Oh fer crissake, tell me I’m not the only one that thinks this?

For good service...tip Now

I’ll tell you where I stand on this...Leave people the fuck alone. That is my position on Gay Marriage, Abortion, Marijuana, and the End of Life. “Don’t believe in physician-assisted suicide? Then don’t have one.” Seriously....Leave People The FUCK Alone, “smaller government” assholes...

You fell asleep watching a DVD?

 The choice is as easy as shootin’ cats offa gran’ma’s couch...

Republicans are sounding real nervous...Garrison Keillor “The republicans have decided to run against themselves”...true, that.

Fall is one the things that notherners really don’t get about Florida. They are conditioned seasonally, a disturbing reminder of where they are, and where they are not. No leaves turning, here, no flaming panoply of vivid colors, frost on the pumpkin...no, it is the end of the most brutal time of year, summer. For “true” Floridians, fall is a celebration akin to the northern spring. It is hot here morning, noon, night all summer long...day temps are in the 90’s, night mid eighties...every day. Being outside takes fortitude, and if the wet heat doesn’t get you the mosquitos surely will. So fall is a welcome thing as the first cold front manages to push it’s way south...here in the Keys, this generally doesn’t happen until November...the fronts tend to stall as they hit the warm tropical ocean air and slide back north slowly as warm fronts. But a drop in temps below 90 is welcome...

The bullshit people carry around with them...the idea that they can move to where they vacation and be on vacation all the time is blunt force spiritual trauma to the very soul of illusion. These hapless people end up hating it here...on the rock, there is precious little to do for those used to getting whatever their whim whims whenever they whim it...tires? You need some tires? 3 days. 1 hour glasses? You’ve-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me...

Unless...your idea of paradise is being drunk and laying in the sun everyday...not that that particular activity hasn’t bitten the ass off a few wide eyed dreamers with really, really bad taste in music...just sayin’.

Sarah Vowell on the Daily Show...

Is Pornography Adultery? “Correlation isn’t necessarily causation”...an interesting article worth reading all the way through. Perhaps it is more the hiding and lying that makes the problem? Be what you are in the light of day with everyone informed so they can make choices? Live without shame? What a concept...

Simple minds...what sort of comment could I make here? Here is a link to blogger interrupted.

Nail Your Wife...go ahead, watch it.

Navy sonar use versus environmental protection hits the Supremes,

4.8 miles down...amazing video of fish at great depth

From above...photographs that are amazing

Google is 10 years old...and they are offering a timemachine of sorts, a database search for 2001; I googled “Sarah Palin”. ummm, her “experience” is limited rather severely, methinks, hence she might consider never even uttering the word lest she look like a fool. What? DOH!

___________________ like you give a damn.

Whatever you do...

Yesterday I sent out an email and I misspelled “I”...no shit. Awesome.

Rachel Ray...that is all

One of the things about my job that I love...is the moments when people are stripped of all pretense, all posing is muted...the dive related puffery dissipates like the fume’ it really is in the light tropical breeze. Where else do you see such a profound transformation? That moment when it’s just you, your bullshit, and the deep blue sea. There is no hiding real fear, nowhere you can stuff it and power your way through...

The grand irony of it all is that they pay cash-money for it. The Big Plan is to fly down, rent a car...Buffetesque your parrothead way down the 18 mile stretch and chill out in the islands. So far so good I suppose. But let me tell ya, that whole thing just drops away as the ocean slops around 3-4ft up, down...the 15knot wind hums at 60hz drowning out all other sounds and the parrothead mind narrows, second after second...and they realize that they are standing at the edge of a perceived cliff.

I love this...the purity of it strikes me as a breath of fresh air, honest, reduced...there are only two emotions; Love and Fear. Thats it. Everything human fits into one of those two, everything. So much of what we do is convoluted into complex fakery posing fearful blabbering as an unconvincing vehicle...I feel the falseness, I can smell it. Detecting it amidst the barrage of rapid fire verbal diversionary flak is easy in this context...call me cynical if you must.

You...your bullshit, the deep blue sea...

Yes indeed, the epiphany of that reduced knowledge is a common part of everyday... divers who come without experience gained on the sea...my favorites are the ones who have an “Advanced” certification from a fuckin’ quarry or spring...there they are 30 seconds away from a smokin’ current in 130 ft out on the Speigel Grove 6 miles from shore looking very much like small children in grownup suits.

It’s a study in purity...and courage of the most ordinary kind. They do it, right through the fear...down they go. Their metaphorical bullshit washed away as they descend...most of the time. For a small number, the fear is too great and they hit the water and freak the fuck out...their bullshit, kind reader, is all they have...in all the visualizing and dreaming, they must not have thought about this 90 seconds.

Outta the blue...no trip is booked, but 4 brits come in at the last minute. Never been to the USA...I size them up, and knowing that 15knots ESE means 3-5ft seas, I know this isn’t gonna be pretty. Out on the reef, it is exactly that...the boys with their techie gear and huge wings look a bit silly with single tanks, and they really want to do the deepdeeptechdeeptech stuff...as they surface hundreds of feet from the boat impotently kicking in “0” current with the worst of the worst fins ever made, “Force”, and of course proceed to complain “This current is wicked, mate!” and I roll my eyes. There isn’t any current at all...when you roll over on your back with a fully inflated 60lb lift wing, you’re pretty much flat fucked swim-wise. One of several classic mistakes...clutching the ladder, backplates rolling around, the double bladder wings seem, well, like overkill. I get the impression that these boys didn’t do a lot of research about how we do it here, and I find their plan to dive morning, noon, nite a bit implausibly ambitious...I can easily imagine how badly these boys would get their asses kicked in doubles as I watch it unfold...they take forever to set up as they stare blankly looking a bit like “Pinky”...they are silent on the ride back in, the smell of continental breakfast vomit backwashing over the stern...they leave their gear onboard promising to be back for the PM trip, and they slither back 30 minutes late...and cancel. SURPRISE! Add that mirthful and usual bonus to any trip involving Euros, triple workloads and unpaid overtime; $0 tip.

Confused about the “financial crisis”?...and This American Life: another frightening show about the economy

Happy endings...the clothes that got me laid...

The Piano went on tour...and magical thinking made it important, somehow. It isn’t rational, but it’s real if you think it’s real. Or not.

That stupid horseshit “debate” about choice and experimentation, and the idea that people are recruited to change their sexual selves is so bogus and pathetic that I cannot imagine a serious person suggesting it aloud. But alas, they do kind reader, they do.

And if you line up all the issues side by side...how important is it to you that someone believes something really, really stupid and they say it out loud in front of millions of people? At what point do they get disqualified?

The greatest threat to coral reefs? Money.

FAQ you...

Automated phone systems...getting directed to a website to fix connectivity issues, FAQ that are drafted and posted by asshats that never even thought for a single minute about what actually constitutes “FAQ”...major corporations with “Customer Service Representitives” who are all over the globe and speak english poorly and are paid, no doubt, the same. Service...a modern oxymoron. Just sayin’...

How terribly frustrating...I search for specific things, sometimes, and the difficulties of online shopping are just laughable.

Websites designed by people who never ask the fundamental question “what do we want the viewer to do?” or “what is it we are trying to say?”...form over function is a fucking plague, the easy refuge of one who hasn’t got a clue...a disconnect that screams “opportunity!”, indeed.

Confirmed: She is BatSHit Insane....

Elmo is gonna FUCK YOU UP, bish!

The bailout...darkly

Colbert...seems distracted in that special way we all know and love...

“On a first date...you should ALWAYS have a getaway car” Sometimes you have bullets that must be bitten. Here’s the deal...

I order shit online...living in this small town island place, and all, the K-Mart doesn’t cut it sometimes. I found a terabyte external HD for a good price, and order it “2nd day”...I get all the confirmations, and then I discover the “signature only” thing...DHL won’t leave the fucking thing unless “somebody” signs for it. What? So...if I’m like say, AT WORK, the requirement for ANYone to sign is a “requirement”...I can’t call them with the order number, tracking number, all the data of the order itself and get them to leave it at my door, but if they have some unknown person who will sign for it? THAT’s cool, but leaving it there? Not.

Facts? We don’ need no stinkING FACTS...

This is just too easy...

“Bitches get things done...that’s why those Catholic schools use nuns and not priests”

There is no diver more dorked than a middle aged male dude with a “Divemaster” card...he’s got a “Divemaster” slapstrap, a line reel on shallow reef dives, a “spare air”, dive related tats AND bling and he sneers at “shallow”...he wants nothing to do with it, and returns to the boat sneering derisively about his “boring” dive on Snapper Ledge. He bitches about his buddy, who was overwhelmed by all the fish on this site and paid little attention to him...”Geritol-man kept swimming away from me!” he said, then switches to...”How bad were the hurricanes?” he asks...I look at him, hard. and reply “What hurricanes? We haven’t had a hurricane come any closer than 300 miles in 3 years...” Where does this crap come from? I gotta wonder...do people just randomly generate inane chatter? Sometimes, my gratuitous conversation ability is “0”...the mate sees me hitting that wall, and he knows what’s coming next so he takes over...<whew!>

The old guy is convinced as only the deeply religious can be...”God wil not let Obama be elected” he says. No doubt in his mind as he predicts the outcome of the coming election...DING! The clear belltone of truth, there, a tone of icy brilliance that cuts through rhetoric, complex blabbering...and exposes right-wing-fundamentalism’s cold hard core. The medievalists...are truly a force to be reckoned with.

The cost of doing nothing is unacceptable. A rise in sea level isn’t some fantasy scenario invented by Democrats...it is a natural fact of historical record. The oceans ebb and flow is clearly evident in the rocks all over our rock, the reefs, the geology of the State of Florida...the issues of private property, real estate values, insurance...all of it is beginning an interesting bounce....here in the Keys, I watch as all that high priced real estate right on the water starts looking less like a long term investment and more like an “oh shit...you mean Gore was fucking right?”

Cold cases, grim surprises in SoFlo canals...

Dr Ellen Prager...of the Aquarius Undersea Research Program...culled from the “Women of Substance” file.

Counting on the erratic generosity of the public...

I’m a zen-cowboy...betcha WERE ready for that...I was 17 and on the road, literally at street level 36 years and 3 months ago. Out on 101 on the Pacific Coast Highway, my life as a child had ended pretty abruptly. My dad had pretty much run out of coping tools, and since he had joined the Navy in his own youth, he had decided that my future would be in military service. At 17, I knew almost nothing about some things in the adult world, but one thing I knew without a shred of doubt was that I would rather live on the street than face certain failure of this kind. Bear with me...I will spare you the tragicomic aspects of how I got to this place, this position...suffice it to say, I was 17 and on a hot Los Angeles afternoon in July, 1972, I took my life and destiny into my own hands without any idea or plan, no clue at all...just a surge of knowing what was and was not to be was mine to choose.

I was being punished...for something unjust that I still feel after all this time. I went to my room and threw a few pieces of clothing into a scruffy knapsack thing and walked out of the house and down the long road to I-10...and began thumbing my way the fuck outta there. My first ride...<sigh>...was a guy who grabbed my crotch after he had exited in the foothills of N La...he had a gun under his seat, and he pulled it out to show his intent to do what he wanted. He was talking to me in weird excited breathlessness, and this asshat wasn’t interested in my best interests. Why I’m not dead...is a mystery sometimes.

He stopped at a stop sign...and I bolted. There was a car right behind him, so I guess he saw his opportunity vanish and HE bolted too...but I was afraid he was going to hunt me down, so I headed back toward the I-5 and hid by an overpass for hours...it got dark. No food, no money, but the number of stars was just amazing...and to this day, the sound of big trucks in the distance on dark quiet nights reminds me vividly of those hours.

Around 1 or 2, I guess ‘cause I had no watch, I was thumbing out on the freeway itself, which was illegal...being 17, I was afraid of the cops but there was no sleeping for me that night...and a car pulls over. 2 guys not much older than me listening to Led Zep...off we go. They’re headed to Santa Barbara, the coast and I relax a bit...they start conversing and soon the subject veers to “Jesus”...and I fake my way through. They will leave me be I figure if they think I’m one of them, but they are not strident, really...just very calm...I lie to them about who I am, where I’m from, where I’m going...and they look at each other and smile. They stop to get something to eat, and I tell them I’m not hungry...another lie. I haven’t got a dime.

They come back out and off we go again...time comes for them to make a turn off 101 and they drop me off...I stroll along awhile, and decide to try to get some sleep in a grove of trees. I reach into my pack for a sweatshirt...and out falls $5. I think that is one of the kindest things I have ever had happen to me, truly.

Lookin’ over my shoulder for the bad rapist dude...the cops, my dad...and none of them were actually there. A few weeks later in Newport, Oregon on the road, with strangers driving me through time, space, the glorious coastline sweeping past...I bedded down in some dunes by the Pacific Ocean, alone under a fiery, blazing sky-cake serving as the candles on my 18th birthday.

Drifting with the faithless tide into the heart of human darkness...notes on tropical depression

He asks me “How many?”...I hold up 7 fingers and he asks “7???”...I reply “7 total pukers, 2 will cry” He notes the fact I have never before ventured a prediction of this type, calling for “criers”. But I have a feeling on this rainy day as I scan the faces at the dock.

And in an amazing series, 1,2,3,4,5....6 & 7 begin loud weeping, and I mean loud. Like somebody just shot their dog, or some shit. Laying across the deck, blocking people, gear all over looks like a fuckin’ dive shop exploded. Chaos...loud, goat-like barking over the sides in a graphic drama...I guess it’s important to remember empathy...but I no longer teach scuba actively. I couldn’t take the crushing relentless cluelessness of it all, the trifling weenies that comprise the majority of those that take the course, get their ass kicked, and never come back...Scuba is something you wouldn’t wanna dabble with. It requires a desire that some do not muster. They are quickly weeded out. And in the truest sense, All Great Adventures Begin and End With Heavy Lifting. Kind reader, you ought to hear it...the whining “this is sooo heavy!” like I’m a prison guard torturing them...meanwhile, a ten year old girl weighing maybe 85lbs soaking wet clambers up the other ladder with a huge grin on her face...

He is amazed...”how in the world do you do that?...how could you possibly know what they’re gonna do?”

I’m just lucky!

I swear to god...listening to people ranting about politics is just getting insufferable...I bet some of these wingnut types would vote Republican even if Nixon’s fucking corpse were running...

Bark like a dog...yowza.

The Debate...um. The Saturday Night Live writers are ready to kill themselves, no doubt. My favorite part was when they both claimed they “saw it coming” re; the economy.

LOVE the smart girls...

Amazing pictures of a diver and a right whale

Sid Haig...as Seymour Smiles in “Little Big Top”

“Just another saint, floating on the water”

A few years back there was a lot of talk about how housing prices would never go down...”couldn’t happen” they all said. Well. It would appear that some people make huge money from financial failure. Unbelievable? UnAmerican? Nah...perfectly legal. Perfectly, sublimely...American to the core.

“Deflation”: 1) The supply of money goes down...2) The supply of goods goes up...3) The demand for money goes up...4) The demand for goods goes down

Sarah Silverman...The Great Schlep

McCain believes Iraq is “winnable”...he also thought VietNam was “winnable”...is there a connection in his mind? Look at your children and you decide whether this kind of thinking constitutes strategy...or that it’s time for him to retire with dignity intact

I love weird bookstores...

Don’t fuck with THIS duck