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hello. hope you're having fun doing whatever it is that
you're doing (probably working). i am not working. i am
aboard the biggest cruise ship that has ever been built. it's
called the queen mary 2 and it thinks the titanic was a pussy
for losing to an iceberg. queen mary dominates icebergs
like a fat kid eating a waffle cone.
a few things about this column -
1. there will be no capital letters. i'm posting this column
from the television in my state room on the starboard side
of the 4th deck of the qm2. the television is receiving my
column via a keyboard that communicates using an
infrared light. unfornately the keyboard's up arrow is
where i'm used to finding the shift key so whenever i want
to make a capital letter, i end up wandering up a line or
two. this doesn't sound like a big deal but it is, so there will
be no capital letters in this blitz.
2. this column may be shorter or longer than usual.
normally when i write columns, i just keep rambling until i
hit the 1000 word mark. but this television/computer
doesn't have a word count tool so there's no telling how
much i've written. i've probably crapped out 400 words
already so we're almost halfway to the finishline.
3. there is no spell check on this thing. so there will be
plenty of typos. did you think i knew how to spell? you were
rong. i don't know how to spell. i wonder if even know how
to spell platypus correctly.
4. my cousin is taking nap on the bed next to the couch
on which i sit to write and he's snoring. this could be
distracting and the column could suffer. my cousin is only
17 but he produces deep manly snores. we're very proud
of him.
5. i am aware that there is a typo in #4 but i'm not
fixing it. it takes too long.
so now that we've got that business out of the way, let's talk
about this cruise. we are now somewhere in between new
york and london and i have heard the ship's band, Xtasea,
play YMCA approximately 471 times. they also know how
to play who let the dogs out, which is all the evidence i
need to confirm that they are really the baha men in hiding.
you would think that the passengers would get sick of the
baha men's version of ymca, but all the passengers are
between 80 and 90 years old so they can't remember
which songs they've already heard.
in many ways, the queen mary 2 ressembles a luxurious
floating florida retirement community. i'm here with my
family (there are 10 of us) because my grandfather is
turning 80 and he graciously invited us to help celebrate his
birthday with a crossing of the atlantic. i think thre are like
2500 passengers on board the ship. 2000 of them are
families celebrating a grandparent's 80th birthday. the
other 500 are the staff. they're mostly from romania, the
phillipnines, or russia. hey, guess what. i learned how to
say thank you in russian. it's sepusha or something. anatoli
the waiter taught me that.
the boat's senior citizens have a special ability to sleep
whenever they want, wherever they want. on our first day,
we had an emerency evacuation drill. i looked around the
room and about half the passengers were sleeping right
through it, using their lifejackets' orange head rests as
pillows.
i might be giving the wrong impression. being
aboard the qm2 is a blast. the days just aren't long enough
to do everything i want to do. (the days really are shorter
than normal. they're only 23 hours long. we lose an hour
each day because we'e heading east through one time zone
per day. it's actually a scam if you think about it. they say
you're paying for 6 days but really they're not full days.)
today i took a yoga class. i learned how to let my chest
shine through my shoulders to the ceiling. then i learned
how to relax and let my muscles melt off my bones. it's a
weird sport but i can see why people like it.
my cousin is still snoring. he has got to stop.
at night there's plenty to do as well. i can sing karaoke or
play blackjack. and if i feel like dncing, i can go to the night
club, g32. in fact, Xtasa is probably down there right now,
playing a stirring rendition of YMCA and hoping that
nobody recognizes them from the who let the dogs out
video.
i'm gonna go blow their cover.
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adam@theadamwhite.com |
