Okay, you can come back now.
HEY!
Damn... you can't read this now, you're in the other room making a drink. I'll wait.
Fine. I'll go on. I have photos to add to this soon. Many photos. Whilst I realized recently that most of my last few weeks have been what I'd call deadly dull and in a rut of throwing darts and drinking Jack and Coke in the wardroom until ridiculous hours of the morning watching the same people get the same drunk, there have been a few bright spots and amazingly immature evenings culled from the doldrums of pointless space-filling. I have had the good fortune to meet and work with some really great people here, two of them being our sound guy Steve Jones and our lighting guy Chad Singleton. Between the three of us, before Steve left last Saturday, we managed to pull fun from the jaws of shipbound boredom in some of the most ridiculous ways I've ever participated in. It began to get out of hand one night when there was a large group of us in the crew bar. I just wasn't "feeling it" and was about to leave, so Steve turns to me and says "If I go get my balloon rockets will you stay for a while longer?"
How can you say no to that? Steve had been given a number of small, random children's toys for Christmas. We fired off balloon rockets around the crew bar to the "delight" of many others, I'm sure. The next night... or some night soon thereafter... we were responsible for creating what I'm fairly certain is the first successful officer's wardroom human pyramid in history. That night also saw the invention of "Can You Catch Me," the game of seeing who is capable of remaining upright when another random person runs and attempts to leap into their arms. My alternate name for this game is "Who Wants To Be Medically Disembarked?"
Things began to get a little out of hand the night that Steve and I created "Booze Rocket," in which you take one of those kids' plastic water rocket toys - the kind you fill half with water and then pump up, launching probably thirty feet into the air - and instead filling it with beer. Turns out we learned a few important lessons:
1) Beer is carbonated and at least doubles the pressure inside the plastic rocket
2) Said higher pressure will cause said rocket to slam very loudly and very hard into whatever it is pointed at, perhaps even leaving a mark on things you didn't think it were possible to mark.
3) The beer will leave the rocket in a burst of spray you will not be prepared to deal with.
Booze Rocket should only be played outdoors, this is my feeling.
My personal favorite evening was the Indian Independence Day they held, which Chad and I were discussing early in the evening that night. We decided we should show our support by dressing as cowboys, which we did, later taking over half the dance floor with impromptu line-dancing to Bollywood hits. Many photos of this to come.
I would speak here of Penguin Night, and perhaps I will later, but Penguin Night is a dark and secret society held on nights before turnaround which is dedicated to... aha... you almost had me. More to come on that.
Last night I had another one of those surreal ship moments which later you put into context and realize exactly how strange this life is. Last night a former Beach Boy offered to teach me how to play guitar, practically insisting that he do so. Who am I to turn down that kind of offer?
Also last night, I managed to destroy the lyrics to a familiar and popular song I've known all my life in an actual performance, before an audience. Somehow, fewer people than should've actually noticed, because I just kept singing.... something.
In other news, a ship is still a really bad place to attempt to have any faith in human nature.
Anyway, long entry... to be edited later.
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