I can't afford to bank there.

There's a building at the shitpile-esque turnoff to Philadelphia's container port. This building, a hemidemisemi greek revival-looking structure, sticks out like a black man at a Merle Haggard concert. No graffiti, no piles of trash in the lot, and no spiderwebbed glass in the windowframes. It's pretty, in fact. An oasis of order, around which it looks like Detroit's city dump.

This is where truck drivers transit between I-95, the Aorta of the eastern United States, and Philadelphia's container terminal. Amidst the broken ruins of a couple of power plants, some train tracks long since gone to rust, and the odd run of broken asphalt sits this prosperous bank-looking place.

This is not a bank, however, but rather, an 'upscale' strip joint. A nudie bar. A nipple ranch. Or, as we local sailors like to call it, The First National Bank of Boobs. You see, I park my truck at a lay berth nearby. I always drive by this place IN DAYLIGHT. This part of Philadelphia at night isn't a place where I'll drive unarmed, sadly. Anyhow, in daylight yon nudie bar is closed, and since I've never driven out of the parking area at night, I've never seen the customers of the Boobie Bank and Trust, so I can't say for sure whether or not it's 'upscale.' I use the quotes because the sign for the place includes the word upscale specifically, and nudie bars aren't known for classiness in general, so I'm assuming that it means that they serve beer in bottles and at about 10 bucks a pop.

Now, back in my yoot, I enjoyed a night out in Houston or two while on shore leave, which included a stop at the ubiquitous nudie bar on the way home from a steakhouse. Yeah yeah, waste of money I know. Actually, it's such a waste of money that I don't patronize those places anymore, anyhow. Haven't been able to justify spending money on that sort of thing in a long, long time. So I'm not going to be turning into the parking lot of the not-a-bank anytime soon.

Of course, in theory, I could probably lose less money in a nudie bar than I would in my own bank, judging by my retirement portfolio's performance.

I may be on to something. By losing money at a reduced rate ($1 bill at a time), I might actually do better at riding out the current recession than I'm doing now.

Finally, this is some retirement planning I can get on board with.

fixed cargoes stack up

We've certainly seen a spike in activity this weekend! I've got back-to-back jobs running the next 4 days- guess the spate of rotten weather (and the threat of more to come mid-week!) is getting shipholders nervous about their fuel reserves.

As I write, we're alongside an absolutely beautiful orange juice tanker.

Yeah, that's how OJ is transported! Some is concentrated, and some 'fresh.' Either way, OJ is a nasty substance to transport. Biodegradable, yet incredibly caustic. The chief ingredient is, of course, ascorbic acid, and lord knows acids are fun to transport.

Anyhow, yeah, pretty tanker, and, of course, it's squeaky clean, which appeals to my sense of order.

I've also been offered an advance copy of Max Hardberger's latest book "Seized"

Capt. Hardberger is a modern adventurer- a ship's captain/admiralty lawyer/repo man. His books are excellent and document all kinds of insane and hazardous adventures between running a tramp freighter, buying and owning one, and boarding and sailing illegally seized ships out of hostile foreign ports. I'll let you know about Seized when I get a hold of my copy.

One of the largest surprises for me this weekend was in reconnecting with a former lady-friend via facebook. Like many of my friends from my days as a nascent biologist, she's a Ph.D now, of course. Without getting bogged down in details, it was nice to reminisce about our internship in the Marine Biological Laboratory down in Woods Hole, MA. Good times.

Just every now and again, I get a little annoyed with myself that I didn't see my way through to get a doctorate like so many classmates, but, if I had, I wouldn't be here, and here is pretty good.

leading from the peanut gallery

...and now this: France, among the most socialist nations on earth, whose battle flag of pure white is synonymous with the flag of surrender, and whose leftist 'progressive' policies have led the culture and safety of their nation to a bad, bad place, has fired the second non-pc protectionist shot heard round the world in recent months.

check it out:

...the socialist mayor of the northern city of Roubaix, who this month railed against his local Quick outlet over its Nov. 30 decision to remove bacon burgers from its menu and replace them with a version using halal beef and a slice of smoked turkey. "It's discrimination" against non-Muslim customers, Vandierendonck said. The mayor has filed charges with justice authorities against Quick for what he says is prejudicial religious catering. He has also lodged a complaint with France's main antidiscrimination authority on the matter. "Yes to diversity, no to exclusion..."

When France takes the lead in reigning in the spread of Islamism in the world, you know that we've fallen a long, long way.

Maybe it's time the EU invaded Jerusalem again, and keep the moors in check for a few more centuries.

Scenes from Carnival, 2010, Rio De Janeiro (semi NSFW)

gPhotos from various sources, via the mrs., friends, and the web..

Warning- some exposed boobage, so semi-nsfw. Apparently it was 106 degrees for much of the time! Now, I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood, and damn it, we never had a big party to celebrate the upcoming season of Lent. Rather, we talked about what it is we were giving up for Lent, then moved on... then again, although there are some very beautiful Irish girls out there, the numbers just aren't in our favor... I want to know what the hell's in the water down in Brazil, that like 90% of their women are lovely to see. Ah well.

Anyhow, here's this year's gatinhas lindas . Gostoso!

If this barge was sitting somewhere in Africa or in the Middle East, today would be a fine, fine day to practice the ancient art of Capebarre (sp?). With a partial load of now-homeless oil on board, there are plenty of places in the world where the crew would make some pocket money quietly selling off a portion of the cargo on a cash basis.
If you're the reading sort, I would absolutely recommend Max Hardberger's "Freighter Captain," which deals very honestly with the dirty and ugly side of shipping, including a scandalous account of the captain selling off bunker fuel to buy food for the crew and spares for the engine room after the owners failed to make

payroll or send stores.
Hard to believe that such things could be in the modern era, but I think back to my days with the Notorious B.O.B. and I'm dead certain that he did things like not pay bills to give me a paycheck in the summer doldrums when cash flow was nonexistent. Still, that's a far cry from having to defraud a shipowner because he is defrauding you. In the B.O.B's case, as the captain, and later as the vessel owner when I became captain, he was the one making the sacrifices. Capt. Hardberger's account was more dire, of course, though both his pragmatic reasoning (the crew needs to eat if they're to turn a profit for the owner, so that the owner can buy food for the crew) was rooted in the same altruism that the B.O.B. showed. As shipowner, though, Notorious B.O.B. set a higher bar morally.

crew change day...

Today is crew change day, but not for me. 2 weeks to go. One guy left, and another returned, and, like the bad smell in the fridge, I linger on for two more weeks.

Out of the mouths of babes...

So, whilst on the phone with Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife tonight, she asked me if I miss working on ships. "Yes," I said, "sometimes very much, but I miss you more." What slipped out then was piped directly from my subconscious, waaaaaay in the back of my mind, giving my amygdala, frontal lobe and prefrontal cortex the slip, and sneaking right past the filter that sits just between brain and jaw. "If I ever do go back, though, we're going to move to Brazil to live."

Where the hell did that come from? I've never really thought about it, but, yeah, I probably would want to move there if I went back to sailing away for months at a time. The fastest growing economy in our hemisphere, a fine exchange rate with the concurrent higher standard of living (for us)? Sure. Not to mention that I won't be living at the Ant Farm anymore, and that's a fine thing.