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.