Geraldo's Mustache of Truth

I keep seeing these ads on Facebook encouraging people to go on cruises. The ad has a clever tag that says, "Click if you like vacations!" Who doesn't like vacations? I like a lot of things so I am honest with Facebook about what I like. I went to click that I, indeed, like vacations when I noticed two very important things. 1) It was an ad for a cruise line.  2) A beloved family member had already clicked that they had liked vacations and thus, that they had liked the cruise line and may already be in danger of being sucked into going on a cruise where they may meet their demise and not have their death reported simply because CRUISE LINES DO NOT HAVE TO DO THAT! And they don't. Do you know why?  They don't want to be the cruise line that is equivalent of the Titanic. They want to be the HAPPY FUN TIME STUFF YOU WITH FOOD AND WHOA LOOK AT OUR CASINOS AND SWIMMING POOLS AND YEAH WE'RE GOING TO SENOR FROGS cruise line.

But I'm not buying it. Not for all the Bon Voyage streamers in the world.

Mind you, I would totes get in a cage and look at sharks, knowing full well I might lose a hand. However, there are people on that boat I feel safe with and that should I become a shark snack (I'm not really a dinner), they have to march back to their superiors and the police and file Shark Snack papers. Also, I'm pretty sure this would make the news and Jon Stewart would make a joke about my death on the Daily Show, which is pretty rad.

But I digress.

The Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports, "While crime is rare on cruise ships, justice for those victimized on the vacation voyages can be elusive due to overlapping investigative powers, difficulty obtaining evidence and witnesses, and a lack of sworn officers aboard ships." See! I may have first seen and gasped at this horror while on a late-night insomnia binge of news from Geraldo Riviera (Is that even his last name?) some years ago but I have since followed it up from "reliable" news sources. You know. Ones that don't crack open vaults of mobsters and get hit by chairs.

I have quietly bitten my nails as other loved ones have gone on cruises and, on the other end of the spectrum, chuckled to myself as despised co-workers announced a two-week cruise to ...I don't know...some Senor Frog destination.

The fact is I have also seen those movies where people have to turn into Indiana Jones in an instant when the ship starts to go down. Pianos are turning over, chandeliers are lighting on fire, people are traversing pipes and swinging on wires. The intense music alone makes me nuts! I'm a survivor in many ways, people, but if I was somehow drugged and woke up on a cruise ship with only the savory and delicious buffets to survive on, I know that if something happened I would not be the people crawling through vents and doing crazy acrobatic stunts to get out of a ship. In fact, I would be the one to go, "Ok well. I told you this would happen," and swallow a cyanide pill. The heroic people could use my dead body to slide to safety or to build a raft. I'm even okay if they use my stiff corpse to fight off villains. There are always villains. I would embroider permission on the front of all my clothing with a cute little boat next to the words so it would still be stylish.

I know many people in the entertainment industry find jobs on cruises.  I'm not trying to kill an economy here. In fact, at one point when I was still naive about cruise lines, I thought, "Hey, I could make a lot of cash working on a cruise ship and see the world!"  And then I saw the light that Geraldo's Mustache of Truth shined.  Cruise lines don't like you. They don't even have real "officers." I mean, I could be an officer.  I could get a jet boat and have a picnic and call it a cruise line.  The only difference is that I would have to report deaths because I wouldn't be able to get out into international waters.  Oh, and I'd be cheaper too.  It would still be a vacation, though. Which we all like.

My Mom Refuses to Read Anymore Today!

"I know I'm angry.  As my FBI Forensic Psychologist Husband put it last night while I was cooking dinner in our historic Cambridge home that was built by a well-known Transcendentalist, 'You're being tricked, Kay." -Patricia Cornwell from her book, "Red Mist" that my Mom is currently reading.  In fact, she came into the guest room in which I am currently lounging to specifically read this sentence.

Thank goodness she did this because I was struggling for a segue into what I wanted to write about: writing. Yes, writing!

I'm aware I haven't posted since May but thank goodness for you, I happened to listen to a podcast interview with my friend, Ben Loory  on Brad Listi's blog, "Other People." I then thought to myself, I should really start blogging again. I'll make a blog tomorrow. Apparently, I already have one I abandoned for several months so I'm letting it rise from the ashes of my memory like a feeble Phoenix.

This is an illustration of how my mind usually works, which is why my blogging tends to save us all a lot of hassle.

Now. You may be saying, "Wendy, why didn't you make easy to click links to all of these references?"  And I say to you, "I tried but it just made two whole blog posts that were linked to Ben's interview and Ben's new book marked BEN LOORY and that seemed a little creepy." Why, two? It's a mystery. So Google them until I figure it out.  I mean for you to use Google and not Bing because Bing sucks. But I digress.

My friend, BEN LOORY, speaks about his writing methods in the podcast.  Part of it is about being in the present and letting the story happen to the reader.  Too much background or any at all, really, according to Ben, is unnecessary and takes away from the experience of being immersed.  A little background about Ben and I: one time, a few years ago, I almost went to visit him but I became very sick and was unable to fly for two years. I also belonged to the bird club where he lives via the internets and tried to sell homemade post cards to benefit it and a man who lived in the park.  I failed but the point is I tried.

See what I did there? No? Okay.

I was pretty inspired by the interview with Ben. It helped me come to terms with the different ways that I write. I'm okay. Ben's okay. You're okay. Patricia Cornwell is not okay. As a writer. I'm sure she's a super nice person.  Yes, I am scared of Patricia Cornwell and her lack of staying in the present but more than that, I am terrified of not knowing what she was being tricked into because of all the damn background information about her fancy house and husband.

As Ben once said to me, "I always like to end on an up note," and I have taken that to heart.  Thus, I end  this blog post in the present.  Here we go.

My Mom just announced from the other room, "That's it. I refuse to read anymore today."
Thanks, Patricia!  Now I can get her to make more tiny cheesecakes.

What is Lube?

[Names changed because I like making up new names for people]

The other day I was rather tired and decided to go for a quick bike ride over to my friend [Otto]'s house. Normally, I don't drop in on people as I am not a fan of the drop-in but it seemed okay because [Otto] was making some baked beans and coming over in an hour anyway. Plus his phone sucks and if I called he wouldn't get the message until like a week later so it seemed useless to call. EXCEPTION TO THE RULE CARD PLAYED.

What you should know is that [Otto] was actually banned from my house for a small period of time.
When I first moved into my cool ass house, which I refuse to post photos of because you'll only want to come steal it in the middle of the night, [Otto] would drop in constantly and tell me it was going to burn down and myself and my cats were in severe danger. The reasons varied depending on what he saw and what day it was but essentially I was living in a death trap and if Bruce Willis didn't show up and explode out of the window in a mushroom cloud of fire at any moment, it was a miracle.
Some time passed and it was whispered to [Otto] by a family member that he may get chopped up and tossed into the compost pile if he didn't chill the fuck out because said house is just fine and makes me happy as a clam with glitter glued to its face. Things were okay for awhile as in it was okay that [Otto] was distracted by some skunks that lodged themselves under his bathroom for awhile and that became a large part of his life. They would have skunk parties under his bathroom and he couldn't sleep so he took to napping a lot during the day.

Fast forward to when I lurched to a stop on my Mom's bike the other day in [Otto's] driveway. I knocked on his door and could smell his baked beans cooking but [Otto] seemed confused as to why I was there. It was not particularly unusual, really. In fact he usually invites me in, tries to give me plant clippings and what not. That day, he wandered around his yard and was musing aloud randomly and then when I casually mentioned the bike I was riding was making a clicking sound he went into his MUST FIX MODE. I didn't really have time for him to do a full bike tune-up that was not necessary and was just stopping by to say "Hey hey" on my ride but I was forced off of the bike and stood there seething as he held up a can of Acme Bike Lube, proclaiming loudly as though I were a foreigner, "THIS IS BIKE LUBE."

It was at this point that I started wondering what would happen if I just strangled him with the bike chain. Could they trace it bike to this bike? No. No. It's my Mom's bike. Don't get her into that kind of trouble. She's a kind soul. What if I just cracked him on the head with...that shitty bike pump? It never works and it could be explained away as a drunken injury. Hmm.

It was announced after I wrested the bike away from him that he was going to take a nap. Mind you, he and his Magic Beans were supposed to be arriving in less than an hour and he just announced a snooze-fest. I was actually alternately okay with this and mildly pissed. I hate when people are not courteous so that was the main pisser there. Otherwise...WHAT. EVER.

But [Otto] did show up. Two hours late. As people were leaving. So of course we all sat down and ate a bunch of damn beans. Then a half hour later other said people, [Dude and Dude's Son], left and my Mom mentioned the beeping/F2 warning on her really expensive dishwasher. I'm sure you can envision what happened next. [Otto] decided to have a half hour look at it before my Mom herded him out to the yard where I am told he took charge of the fire pit and dug up some shit because our fire wasn't just fine the way it was. He also checked that she had turned the propane off on the BBQ as he was leaving because my Mom is a total firebug. It's well-known. There's photos of her at the propane places around the county.

At this point, I was just laying on my Mom's futon in some sort of cross-eyed fury where I was trying to figure out the cheapest locale for socks and oranges in bulk. In my head I was going to construct a Rube Goldberg-esque machine that constantly pummels [Otto] until he is broken of his habits to compulsively fix shit that isn't broken or if it is...no one asked him to take up our entire lives to inspect it and go off on tangents about how he's lived here for over ten years and ....zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Either this post will make you want to kill me (and I won't judge you for that) or you will completely understand. Maybe you even know [Otto] and you understand.