Apparently, I like wasting my time reading other people’s shit

Matthew over at Defective Yeti has started a meme which is supposed to say something about you by listing the most recent site you’ve visited for each letter of the alphabet. Follow the link below to read all the details or to make your own list. Mine’s below. Luckily Matthew only included letters, so it looks like I visit a lot less porn sites than I do. Otherwise, there'd be a lot of links to "18andready.com" or "99chicks1dick.com" or "85andstillready.com."

These are my URL ABCs:

• A is for asphaltroofing.org - Don't visit a lot of "A" sites. This one was for work, some time ago
• B is for boycottgillette.com/spychips.html - A funny little thing I saw the other day. Apparently, Gillette is spying on us
• C is for capitalone.com - These people are dumb enough to loan me money.
• D is for defectiveyeti.com - This is the guy that made blogging look easy and fun enough that I decided to try it. Blame him.
• E is for ebay.com - Wanna buy some used porn?
• F is for fishfucker.com - Funny shit....when he updates.
• G is for gmail.google.com - Still no mail. Nobody loves me.
• I is for izzlepfaff.com - Quite possibly the funniest guy on the net
• J is for jamesandthebluecat.blogspot.com - Haven't decided what I think about this....and yet I go back
• K is for kotwf.blogspot.com - IT'S ME! YAY! I WISH I'D FUCKING POST SOMETHING!
• L is for license.shorturl.com - Stupid stupid stupid email gag.
• M is for mapquest.com - Going to Atlanta in two weeks.
• N is for netflix.com - I'm working my way through the first season of Sopranos
• O is for ohiolottery.com - My coworkers and I actually didn't win millions of dollars.
• P is for porktornado.diaryland.com - Funny stuff.
• S is for somethingawful.com - There's something about ridiculously offensive stuff that just makes me giggle
• T is for thewvsr.com - How many "fucks" were in Deadwood last week?

What Are the Odds?

With the Papal Election commencing, and given the human condition/tendency toward sin, and given that everybody is always looking for a quick buck, does this surprise anybody?

If you've following the news at all, then the front runners shouldn't surprise you, but I think I will agree with The New York Times' Frank Delaney when placing my bets:

Still, were the lure of gambling to overpower the fear of God in me (and, God knows, it might), I'd have a crack at a few of the outsiders. For instance, at 25-1, Angelo Scola is an interesting bet; he's the patriarch of Venice, speaks several languages (including English) and is only 63 years old. And have a look at the Argentine, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, also showing strongly at 12-1. And though he is not even given odds (in Irish racing parlance, a "rank outsider"), Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia is a very effective Vatican operator and truly worth a piece of my money; after all, in 1977 Karol Wojtyla was such a long shot he had scarcely left the paddock before the others were round the first bend.

My money's on the bear....

Problems

Sorry I haven’t been posting that often. You see, I’m concerned because I think my wife might be dead.

The sex is the same, but the dishes are starting to pile up……

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Part 3

My father got so drunk the next night that he spent a couple hours talking to my brother and I about our inheritance. Whenever we would tell him that we understood and he didn’t need to worry about us, he would say that we needed to know this because he could die at any time. Hell, he said, he could get syphilis tonight.

A new couple arrived at the fishing camp that evening, and they joined us for dinner. Dad spent the entire dinner hour trying to get his pasta salad from his plate to his mouth. Unsuccessfully. Finally, my brother lured him to bed with a half bottle of One Barrel Rum and he passed out. Once an hour, we left the bar to check on him and make sure he was still breathing. He usually was.

The next day, we went north to Mexico (an hour boat ride) to a place where there are underwater caves just chock-full-o-fishes. We caught myriad Red Snapper, as well as a bunch of yellow snapper, black snapper, rock snapper, and something that the guide, Luis, kept calling a "hamburger." On the way back south, Luis said "By the way, if we are stopped by any rangers, do not mention the live-well in the boat. Where we just caught those fish is a nature reserve."

Great.

That night, while Luis was cleaning our poached fish, my brother was walking around in the water beside the dock, picking up conch, moving them, and putting them down again for no apparent reason. The guide said, "Hey Todd, you might not want to be in there. There are Moray Eels living under the dock."

"Right." Todd said. "You can’t scare me, Luis."

Just then, a pair of eels sped out from beneath the dock, between Todd’s legs, and attacked the fish entrails Luis had thrown into the water. Todd pulled a Savior moment as he ran across the surface of the water back to the dock. We watched in horrid fascination as the two lime-green leviathan rolled and riled and tore at the bits of snapper. Each was about 4 feet long, and as big around as a soda can. Their ugly, dragon faces masticated fiercely, sending crimson billows out through the water with each bite.

"Those are the babies." Luis said, "The adults are over six feet long, and this big around." He held his hands together as if they were wrapped around a milk jug.

"Fuck" Todd and I said together.

The next day, we dressed back up in our suits and took the boat ride to San Pedro. We had about two hours to kill, so we wandered the town in search of souvenirs for our wives and a particular bar we had not had the chance to visit yet.

The bar was called "Hammock House." It was three stories high, on stilts. It was open air, overlooking the ferry I described earlier. Instead of chairs, there were hammocks and rope seats throughout the bar. You would get your cocktail and then go lie in a hammock while you drank. After a couple of "hangover helpers" I ordered a mango salsa lobster sandwich. Damn that was good.

The Hammock House has a calendar on the wall called "the golf cart drop." When I asked about it, I was informed that it was a betting pool. About once a month, a golf cart gets driven/knocked/dropped off of the ferry. For five bucks, you get to own a date on the calendar. If the golf cart goes in on your day, then you get the pot. I just love the fact that it happens often enough for there to be a betting pool.

We finally made it back to the airport, and who should be waiting to pilot the next flight to Belize City? Our Ass-Tastic Canadian Friend. She took one look at us, said "Gentlemen" and stormed out of the airport. Our flight was delayed a half hour while they tracked down a replacement pilot. Finally, we got on board, and again there was not enough room, so Todd sat in the copilot seat. At one point he convinced our pilot to fly straight into a storm cloud. The resulting pressure drop caused us to fall about 200 feet before the wings bit air again. Todd and the pilot laughed while every passenger buckled their seatbelts.

I found out that the airport in Belize City has a waving gallery for friends and family to come bid their loved ones adieu as they take off. Lord knows the people on the plane can’t see them and probably don’t care, as they’re busy going 300mph and taking off at the time, but it is a nice sentiment.

In my world, where people come and go every day, and where a plane ride is as common place as blondes in L.A., no one takes the time for a fond farewell. Gone are the crowds waving as the ocean-liners leave port. Gone are the beautiful women in polka dot dresses running down platforms beside trains. Gone is just a little bit of the romance, a little bit of the magic, and a little bit of the bravery that it takes to leave home behind.

They won’t remember my name, my face, or even my visit. They certainly don’t miss me now that I’m gone. But on that day, as I took to the skies, a small part of Belize waved goodbye and bent their thoughts toward my safe passage home.

Part 2

A van was waiting for us, so we climbed in with our luggage and asked that we please be taken to a liquor store. After spending forty Belize dollars (twenty US) we climbed back into the van carrying two bottles of rum and a bottle of vodka. The brief Island tour continued as we made our way to the dock where a boat was waiting.

San Pedro is a beautiful, touristy, third world town. There are three streets running through town, aptly named first, middle, and last. They are paved with sand. As far as I’m concerned, any place that is paved with sand is okay by me. There are any number of island shops selling trinkets, restaurants offering up fresh conch and lobster, and bars selling an endless supply of Belliken Beer and One Barrel Rum. We would learn more about San Pedro as the weekend wore on. Finally, the van pulled up by the beach, and we headed out to the waiting skiff. Our bags were loaded up, and we began our 20 minute boat ride to El Pescador, our fishing camp.

The boat ride was past the town, past myriad bars and resorts, and several miles up the island. We were inside the lagoon, and could see the waves breaking against the reef about a half mile away. Inside the reef, the water was calm, and the bottom teemed with exotic life eight feet below our hull. As we flew through the water, I soaked up the warm tropic sun and the light misting of saltwater from the occasional wave. I also opened up the bottle of one barrel and sampled some local culture.

Bob greeted us at the Dock of El Pescador and showed us to the bar, not our rooms. I liked this place already. It was a two story hotel, right on the beach, with an open air bar, a swimming pool, and hammocks strung up between palms. Eventually we found our rooms where we changed out of our suits and into something a bit more comfortable, then settled in to the laid back attitude of our surroundings. Our first night consisted of meeting some other guests, eating a delicious dinner, and falling asleep with the doors to our rooms open. We were miles from town in a tropic paradise, sleeping in clean pressed sheets with a cool breeze blowing in from the water and shaking the palms outside.

6:00am came and we ate Heuvos Rancheros for breakfast. This is fresh flour tortilla, spicy refried black beans, eggs over easy, cheese, and salsa all together on a plate. Hot damn was it good. Then our guide took us out onto the salt flats where we waded and fished for bone fish. We caught some bones, and we caught some barracuda. We also saw some neat bars we wanted to check out that night.

After the fishing, we ate dinner, then convinced Antonio, the bartender at the hotel, to close early and go to town with us. We hailed a taxi by turning the light on at the end of the dock and waiting for a boat to stop, then headed towards the city.

Our initial visit to the city had been a little disorienting because of the errands that our van driver ran with us and our unscheduled liquor store stop. The entire town is actually only about a mile long, and three blocks wide. It is divided at one point by a man-made canal, which is crossed at one point only by a ferry, powered by a strong man and a rope. All day and night, a man pulls the ferry back and forth across the stream using his rope, and charges one dollar per person, or four dollars per golf cart for the privilege. The dock at which we met our boat originally is actually about twenty-five feet from the airport.

There are not enough people on the island to keep all the nightspots hopping all the time, so you end up with a sort of moveable feast. The entire town keeps to a schedule that makes each place completely packed and completely hopping for about two hours per night. We were at Fido’s from 10:00 to midnight, at Jaguars from midnight to 2:00 and Big Daddy’s from 2:00 to 4:00 when the town finally goes to sleep. Fido’s had a live band and a girl that insisted on stroking my leg until I said that I thought I saw my wife at the other end of the bar. Big Daddy’s had a couple of gargantuan zubba-dubbas that Antonio was infatuated with. But Jaguars was an interesting experience indeed.

Jaguars sits on middle street, in the busiest part of town. The entrance is a giant wildcat head with glowing red eyes and smoking nostrils. You walk in through the gaping mouth, and find yourself in a dance club with a jungle motif, drunk college students, and enough laser lights flashing randomly around the room to pose a serious risk to people’s eyesight. It was there, just after they finished playing the Grease Mega Mix (along with projected video) and had gone back to techno music, that we saw Lieutenant Lesbo and her non-pilot life partner. She approached us and said, "Gentlemen! I just want to thank you. I understand that after you got off my plane yesterday, you told everyone I was a lesbian."

Needless to say, this caught us as a bit of a shock. Who would we have told? Why would we have done so? Who was this bitch? "We didn’t say that" I responded in my best bewildered voice.

"Right. Whatever."

"We didn’t say that."

"Sure. I’m supposed to believe that?"

"Yes you are. We didn’t say it. We thought it, but we didn’t say."

That might have been one step too far. You should never insult the person that has power over whether or not you get off of an island in a third world country.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 3: Escape from Ambergris Caye (Abridged)

Part 1

We started drinking before we left the hotel. Nothing unusual there. It was after five….am.

There we were, three weary travelers, surrounded by blackness, making our way to the airport with our luggage over our shoulders and bottles of Black Seal Rum held tight within our grasp. We had a long day ahead of us, and we needed to be fortified against it. We each took another swig.

At the airport, we checked our bags all the way through to Belize City, and carried our meager supply of booze and books aboard. The waitress came over shortly after takeoff and asked what I wanted to drink. I suggested that I might like to have several bottles of gin, at which point she smiled her “I hope there’s an air-marshal on this flight” smile and backed away toward the gin storage place. I poured myself into Heinlein’s Expanded Universe and drank rum while I waited on my cocktails. After sometime between 2 minutes and an eternity later, my gin arrived, and I was able to overcome my fear of flying sober. Several cocktails, a complete and total failure to sleep on the plane, and a layover in Houston later, we landed in Belize city. When I stepped out of the plane wearing my winter clothing, into the tropic heat, two things happened. My clothes immediately absorbed all of the moisture in the air and began sticking to my body, and my story really began.

There she was. A vision in uniform. 6’2” of blonde-haired, blue-eyed Canadian. A hot little Tropic Air pilot all wrapped up in a big ball of butch. And boy did she hate us. Maybe it was our coarse humor. Maybe it was the way we each get more chicks than she does. Maybe it was our penises. But there was something about us that rubbed her the wrong way. And she had no problem making sure we knew that she was boss on the airplane, and we had to straighten up and fly right. Which we did not do.

Tropic Air flies little commuter flights all over Central America, servicing the ports of call that just don’t quite have room for 747s to land between croc’ infested swamps and poisonous snake infested jungles. They don’t really adhere to the FAA rules and regulations when it comes to, well, anything. Our particular plane was overbooked, so a girl had to sit on a guy’s lap, and seatbelts were not a requirement. The little plane began accelerating from a standstill, and took the final turn onto the runway at about 40 mph, on two wheels. A few hopping false-starts, and we were airborne, with Captain Bulldyke winging us toward the Island Paradise of Ambergris Caye. (Yes, I said Ambergris Key in an earlier update. I’m too fucking lazy to change it now, and I was drunk while I was there, so, fuck off. Besides, I’ve seen it spelled both ways, and so I am going to alternate my spelling as much as I fucking like. Fuck).

Fifteen minutes later, we began our descent towards the Island. Ambergris Caye is an Island formed from coral. The sand is very coarse and sharp, there is nowhere on the island higher than about 15 feet above sea level, and it is completely surrounded by the second largest barrier reef in the world and a 10 foot deep lagoon filled with sharks, barracuda, rays, tarpon, permit, bonefish, and moray eels. More on this later. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and produces nothing of use. Oscar Wilde would have loved it for it’s pure aestheticism, not marred in the least with purpose. It’s only export is tourism, and it somehow imports enough rum to keep me in my cups, and enough gorgeous examples of T&A to make your eyes continually do that “AWOOOOGA” cartoon thing. The fishing is divine, the scenery is beautiful, and the company I was keeping knew how to get in trouble.

We stepped out of the airport (read: Big field with a chain link fence around it) and into part 2 of the story.

Trouble in Paradise

Blondage and I (oh yeah, during the hiatus she went through a rainbow of different colors, and ended up dipping her hair in the pot of gold at the end) have been trying to figure out where to go on vacation. One of the requirements of marrying me is that I have to show her the world. So far, I’ve shown her Lubeck.

Not a good start.

So we have decided that we should go somewhere in May/June for a few days. Originally, I wanted to take her to Paris, but the whole "buying a house" thing really fucks with your finances.

Instead, we are looking at domestic travel. She loves the beach, whereas I loath sand, saltwater, and sun. Really, the only good thing about the beach is sitting one of those tiki huts, drinking boat drinks, watching bikinis bounce in the surf.

She prefers a vacation where you get some much needed R&R, and are refreshed when you get back home. I prefer to not risk missing anything, and get up earlier and go to bed later when I’m on vacation. There’s a whole world full of bikinis bouncing in the surf, and I don’t want to miss one of them. Also, there’s art, culture, history, and more gin and scotch than I could ever hope to drink. I can’t afford to miss a second. Hell, I don’t think you need a hotel when on vacation, just grab a nap in the cab between stops.

She prefers four stars. And room service.

Anyway, we’re trying to find a nice compromise between a hot-sandy-salty hell and curling up under a set of stairs at the dodgy end of Fifth Avenue. Blondage was looking into Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, but I’m thinking that maybe Paris would be cheaper and easier to get to. So now we’re talking about driving to Niagara.
I think that sounds nice:

Romance. Awesome scenery. Canadians. Everything a boy could want.

What’s the Plural of Hiatus?

Hiatuses? Hiati? Hyatts?

Whatever.

That’s where I’ve been. On Hiatians. I’ve been doing a lot of soul searching over the last five months, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t have one.

More details will come along later, but for those of you still reading (crickets chirp here…..) I’ll give you the cliff’s notes of the KOTWF’s dealings, in random chronological order:

October: Get married. Spend 7 days cruising through the Caribbean, stopping at such places as Jamaica and Cozymel. Run up a $1,500.00 bar tab on the boat, and sunburn the shit out of myself. Recuperate by spending 3 days and 3 thousand dollars in New Orleans, land of oysters, crawfish, gin-and-tonics, and strip clubs. Ingest far too many of each (except the strip clubs. I didn’t ingest anything in the strip clubs that didn’t come with a lid).

December: Christmas. Spend time with family. Drink lots of champagne. Take Red out for her birthday on New Year’s Eve. Have an all around ducky time.

February: Valentine’s day. Drink several forty dollar bottles of champagne. Get whisky-dick. Ruin marriage. On a lighter note, have former landlord threaten with lawsuit for numerous reasons. My lawyer has asked me to not use the phrase "dickhead" here.

January: Take brief fishing trip with Father and Brother to Ambergris Key in Belize. Actually run entire island out of rum. Also buy a house. I finally have something worth putting a lien on!

November: Thanksgiving. Eat turkey with in-laws. Start strict midwinter weight gain regiment. Celebrate one-month wedding anniversary. Don’t have to remember another anniversary until next year on October, ummmm, shit.

March: Present day. Wonder "where has the time gone." Blow dust off of blog and write this post.

Update: Write this post twice because fucking blogger lost it the first time I tried to publish. Man! I’m jumping back into this blogging thing with both feet, ain’t I?