Dear Paypal: eat a dick.

Well, after getting to be Pimp For A Day over the weekend, reality sets in with a vengeance.

      My wife's car has a warranty about to expire, so I turned the car in bright and early this morning. I fly out tomorrow, so it's not ideal timing-wise, but it has to be done.

 Yeah, it needs some work. The $2000 I spent on the extended warranty does not cover brakes, tires and a new catalytic converter, which will, in fact, run me about $2000.  So that really sucks.

 Minutes after that, I get an email from my bank that my account is overdrawn. It seems someone hacked into my paypal account, and no one picked up that I wouldn't request a whole shitpot of money be transferred, you know, about 10x more than I've ever asked, so suddenly my ass is broke.


 Oh, and Paypal's response: Yep, we had an intrusion. Change your password and call your bank to fix it.

So that's their idea of customer service, and thus, not only do I suggest they EAT A DICK sideways, I'd also like to award them extra for absolutely punting when it comes to not taking my fucking money.  So rather than tell them to just eat two dicks for a double delight, I'd like to award them this:

PAYPAL: Hawsepiper's summer 2015 recipient of the Golden Douchebag Award

    Now, having said that, I've requested Bank of America also eat a dick several times in the past, most notably when they stranded my wife and son in the mountains of a remote village in Brazil because they shut down her card for being in a remote village in Brazil after we told them she would be in a remote village in Brazil. So I got on the hook for 3 weeks of hotel bills and airfare to the tune of about $10,000 for that, but eventually they did actually credit some of that back to me.

 Well, today Bank of America did pretty damn well, after I called in a panic. Where in the past it took days for fraudulently taken money to get credited back in my account, they did it in a matter of an hour. So mad props to Bank of  America for doing what they should have been doing all along.

 Anyhow, my last day at home is NOT the tranquil day of eating well, packing, and spending time with my loved ones that I wanted, at least not so far, but it looks like it could have been worse.

 Still, hell of a vacation.

The Adventures of King Shit

If California is sometimes called 'the land of fruit and nuts' than south Florida is the land of fruits and nuts and bath salts.


    With my two weeks of freedom rapidly coming to an end, I checked off another American bucket list item for Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife. I brought her to a dive bar. Not just any dive bar, either, but a south Florida dive bar famed among dive bars. Harry's Banana Farm is billed as the area's best 'adult day care center,' and even the pretentious, self-important douchebag writer-wannabe's at Yelp recognize that the place pisses excellence. I went there with my friend V a few months ago. It's a biker bar disguised as a neighborhood bar, and at night some scary-ass people show up.

 
 Where my wife has the exotic Brazilian look- long black hair and dark eyes and dark skin, her friend is the polar opposite. Platinum blonde with blue eyes. Both have the same body type- think Sofia Vergara meets Dolly Parton, but iall done in zero gravity.

And so we go to this great bar and it's 3 double scotches to get started. after that, I order two Cape Codder's for the ladies (Vodka and cranberry juice) and more scotch for me,and that's the tone for the night.

 Well, there's a pool table. And it's me vs. the ladies, their two shots against my one each time, and we all three of us aren't good at pool, but there's lots of laughs and the ladies are bending over the table to make their shots, (both ladies were wearing white short shorts and low cut tops) and suddenly the entire place is very interested in our game.
    And this is where I get my "What the fuck" moment of clarity. I didn't bring the ladies to the good bar I know about. They brought me as chaperone to a dive bar they heard about. Because they need one.

      One by one, guys are finding a reason to suggest shots to me made or how to improve their game. Overall, fairly polite, but I'm having to cockblock here and there, by virtue of the ladies standing in my shadow when they're not playing. And they're hanging on to me. After a while it wasn't that much fun. What was cool was that there was not trouble. I used to bounce, and I can smell bar trouble like a fart in a car, and this wasn't it. But we were under a magnifying glass, and when our game was done, we relocated to the jukebox area where the girls hung out inboard of me at our table, like ducklings to their mama duck, and from this vantage point, once things opened up a bit, they could then venture out a little more and have fun once whe looky-loos settled back in.

     And that was the tone of the night. Much of the time, I was King Shit. My wife would occasionally lean over and perform a public display of affection, and her friend was hugging me all night, pretty much laying claim to being With me, capital W, and we had some fun with it. Along the way, we all met some nice folks, which, in my experience is common at a dive bar. A crazy cat lady was very adamant about selling my wife's friend an 8-ball of coke at rock bottom prices, and my wife at one point, absolutely shocked, handed me the smallest glassine envelope I've ever seen of something, a sample of whatever was being sold in the bathroom line. That was about the only time I got pissed that night. I found out who gave it to her, and when they were trying to order a drink at the bar I slapped my hand down on the bar, not hard, but enough to make a good slap sound, left the envelope and walked back to my table. And that was pretty much that, but my poor innocent wife was pretty shocked. Me, I was hired to bounce once, at a bat that was trying to drive the resident dealers out, and I know that if you are firm, polite and don't cost them money, you can often get them to work with you in not pulling shit where and when you don't want it. which is a nice alternative to the door or window game ("you walk out the door now, or fly out the window, your choice").

 At any rate it added some spice to the night. The girls ended up dancing to country and 80's rock music quite a bit, which attracted an attentive crowd. A few guys quietly asked what was up with my women and my "just needed to get them out of the house for air" was met with quiet approval. As happened when I went to that place the first time, I had a nice night, met some cool folks. And yeah, I looked like a redneck sugar daddy, but whatever, I'm not complaining.

 Oh, and my wife's friend drives a 2015 Camaro. So I quit drinking early on, and got to drive that bastard home because the girls got tanked up pretty good. I may have found my next car. Nice ride, the new Camaro's, responsive and good tracking, some decent zip, and very satisfying 0-100 on the on ramp, too. Been a while since I really floored a gas pedal.

Home!

71 Days, couple hundred million dollars worth of oil moved from A to B. I've got 2 weeks at home, and I'm just coming up for air a minute to ask you to hold on. BRB.

 Here, look at these nice Brazilian girls while I'm at home with Inappropriately hot foreign wife, who pointed out that the prettiest girls in Brazil have better things to do than pose for pictures.

last watch

Day 70: I'm on my last watch. When I hand off the watch, I'll be relieved, and a launch should be waiting for me. Time to go home.

   I don't know how many more double tours I have left in me.

on courage and politics

I don't often wade into politics here, but it's probably no surprise that like most non-union mariners (and, quietly, I expect, a majority of union mariners too, shhhhhh!) I'm conservative, and tend to vote Republican, despite the trope about the Democratic party being supporters of the working man. Which, in their defense, they absolutely used to be, way back when, but not now.



  Anyhow, this isn't about that.

 It's about an interesting supposition I've heard bandied about lately, about populist liberalism and moral and physical cowardice.

 It goes like this, and it may be utter bullshit, but does tickle my pickle in terms of sounding plausible.

          It seems like liberals, at least modern American ones, are big on capitulating to power, and choosing very carefully exactly who to submit to in terms of appeasement, and whom to protest.

 To wit- look at religion and religion.   There's no secret that radical(ish) elements of the muslim faiths are practicing slavery and genocide wholesale, while violently killing people of all other faiths, while destabilizing pretty much the entire world in the process.

 Protests: None.

Look at Christian bakers and judges, who get in the news and get death threats for not wanting to be included in supporting gay marriage.

 Protests: Pervasive and rabid.


 Funny thing about Christians- while making up a massive majority of the population of the West, (About 70% is a very conservative estimate), Christians will virtually always prosecute, incarcerate and sometimes even execute others of their faith for harming a non-Christian.

 Muslims? Well, not so much. But they might feel bad about it sometimes, if asked. Westernized muslims will not necessarily agree with this, as integration helps.

    But look at the constant capitulation by liberal-identifying subgroups, who have made Muslims a protected minority. There's a valid argument that this IS capitulation, that fear is the prime motivator. Why else would you capitulate to a group that hates you and is enslaving and actively attempting to do you harm? Why make those who practice evil a protected class?

 Name one muslim society that is defending their religious minorities because it is the right thing to do, rather than politically helpful. Those days are passed, if they ever truly were.

       A protester who is going to make noise about a damn bakery shop's business practices isn't going to get beheaded for it.

A Christian hate group, like those dingleberries at the Westboro church, gives birth to multiple counter-protest groups who promptly drink their milkshake, even though the worst thing the Westboro assholes use as weapons are harsh words.

 Look at the outcry and internet heroism when a conservative actually HIT a liberal. With his hand! Which was Closed!

 Contrast with the furor when a muslim went on a mass killing spree in good old Blighty, using a machete because of badfeels.

 Yeah, bet you forgot about that one, huh?  Certainly didn't stay in the news long.

 But oh my fucking God, someone doesn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding! This is news! This is awful!

 You get the idea. There's a pretty good argument to be made that the Liberal set feel inclined to protest only when it's safe to do so. Get some blood on the streets, thought, and it's like Rudyard Kipling said:


Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
...

 For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"
But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot;



Also, don't give me shit for being well read. I work on a damn boat. There's fuck-all to do on my off watch.

misunderstood

I'm posting this because most of us need a little beaver at some point.

Day 4001

On day 4001, marking the day after a milestone, I got to bunker a cruise ship in Manhattan. Like most cruise ships, the engineering gang is all Russian, arrogant as hell, and also hates deodorant and the newfangled idea of the daily bath.


 Seriously, it's not fun to work when the bunker door of the ship is wafting out the smell of a double handful of warm bodies that smell like a burning dumpster full of diapers, onions and hair. You'd be surprised how far pockets of stank make it from the hatch, too. Well, you'd be surprised. I actually published the world's most boring scientific article on tracking smells in chaotic turbulent flow patterns... and obviously no one cares, but it WAS a $5 million dollar grant the Navy gave us to model this stuff for mine-sniffing robots. Shit you not. I did some dumb shit.  None of that was much comfort when the smell of ass and hot onions was all around me. Men smell that bad, you taste that shit in the air, and it ain't nice.

can't drink, need cake.

Today marks 4,000 Days At Sea since I was rated Able Seaman Unlimited in 2000. That's 10.9 years spent on the water as a merchant mariner in 15 1/2 years Holy shit, where does the time go?

 That time doesn't count the 1,080 days at sea that I had to accrue to get rated Able, either. This was, of course, back in the day, when there weren't classes you could take to be rated able, and you had to sit for a comprehensive exam, be rated lifeboatman, and then take a practical exam where a chief bosun's mate assigns you splices and knots to show mastery of marlinespike seamanship.



 In talking about this earlier, I was asked if I regret not going right into this career as a kid. The honest answer is 'a little.'  I LIKED being a marine biologist, and I flatter myself to think I had a certain talent for it in a journeyman fashion. But, for all the lustre that is long gone, this job suits me better, and me it.

Keywords

Can I just take a minute and tell you that I'd like to thank whoever found my blog using the search phrases "Brazilian silicone ass implants"  and "boat guy naked body painting." Whoever you are, thank you and please don't stalk me and make a wind chime out of my genitals. Thank you.

Maybe I should rethink that whole 'trigger warning' thing

Well, shit, I wrote a whole semi-funny/semi serious post about a certain ship I have to work with that, just in thinking about it, makes me go fucking nuts in a fit of rage. But then I realized that these folks are spending a million bucks or so on fuel every time they visit NY, which is often, and I probably shouldn't bad-mouth the folks who my employer relies on, not, at least, if I want to retire and have a Jaguar, instead of say, a bus pass.


 This self-censorship thing sucks. But my post was funny as hell. Guess you'll have to take my word on that.

Brazilian Humor

They're doing something right down south.

Rio beach days

Just in case you need to know what's fashionable these days on the beaches of Rio De Janeiro, I've got your back. Ol' Paul's a firm believer in keeping you up to date on important fashion trends in beachwear.