On my way back from lunch today, I was unfortunate enough to get stuck behind an elderly person that was going 20 mph in the LEFT lane, in a 45 mph zone and she was riding her brakes the entire time!! I was surprised there wasn’t smoke pouring out of each wheel from the brake heat. People were steering wildy to avoid becoming stuck behind her and trying to merge into the right hand lane of cars wizzing by at 50 mph! Needless to say I witnessed several near misses, if you are that much of a scaredy kat when driving YOU HAVE NO FUKKIN’ BUSINESS ON THE ROAD. PERIOD. There is no defense for that type of stupidity, and to top it off she was driving a brand new car!! This person is apparently optimistic about their future driving abilities and that scares the hell out of me.

Now, I think that many elderly people are good drivers, some of the best and safest actually, my very own grandmother is 92 yrs old and is a good driver, a bit overcautious perhaps but not stupid!!! The driving example I witnessed today was as though I were watching a drunk go down the road, seemingly just as dangerous, maybe even more so, and the passenger appeared oblivious to what was going down around them as well. Wouldn’t it fall upon the family to keep people like that from behind the wheel? Thoughts??

Once, when me and my 2nd wife were at one of her GF’s apartment for dinner, she grabbed my hand and we snuck to the bedroom for a few minutes for some quick fun, she pushed me back on the bed and unzipped me, and went to work with her mouth. A few minutes later her GF asks out loud where did we go! She stops at JUST the wrong moment to answer, a tiny *sizzle* is heard and there is suddenly a spot on the ceiling above my head.

We laughed hard for days and wondered if it was ever noticed, and occasionally I wonder if it’s still there…

wake up… Mr. Seven, it’s 4 AM, time for your blood sample.

I rouse slightly, vaguely aware that there is someone near me. I think I hear speech but it makes no sense. I can’t speak, my mind is so in a dense fog I can’t form the thoughts to translate into words. The large amounts of ammonia in my brain has shut down almost all my mental faculties. My failing liver is the cause, it’s not removing the ammonia like a normal one. High ammonia levels shut your thinking processes down and you can’t remember one fleeting thought from one moment to the next. You’re a zombie, comatose and dead to the world, nothing that happens matters, you only wish the thoughts and the sleep interuptions would cease so you can remain in peaceful bliss, sleeping, not knowing or unable to understand what has become of you.

Death beckons, it’s a longing to let go, to just allow the what seems inevitable to occur without fighting it would be welcome. You smell like death, everything around you smells like death, you feel like you’re already dead, why hang on? People are moving about you, adjusting things, touching you, moving you, sticking needle after needle in you, washing you, forcing you to eat, to drink, this is not welcome, to you it’s an intrusion into your blissful sleep, you just want them to go away so you can die in peace.

Why do they make me live? You’ve died twice before and they revived you each time, but it’s a vague memory and it passes as quickly as it came, why won’t these people just let me go? Dammit, just fucking let me die….

Hours later, they wake me again, Mr Seven, we need to weigh you… Again, I can’t speak, I’m more alive now but my throat is so dry that I can’t move my throat or tongue to form words, not even the simplest ones, the massive doses of diuretics have dried my withered body out so bad that speech is nearly impossible even if I can gather the thoughts needed to form the words.

Weighing means actually getting out of bed and standing. My body is so badly weakened from being bedridden, barely able to move for months, a near impossible task, the sheer thought of standing is a process that takes a couple of minutes for me to absorb, it feels like I’m planning a battle, as the body movements needed to stand are almost beyond my mental capacity. It takes a few minutes to plan every movement of every muscle, improvising as I go. Finally with lots of help I’m seated at the edge of the bed nearly ready to attempt to stand.

I’m freezing cold now, no matter what temperature it is in the room, i’m buried beneath piles of blankets in a futile attempt to stay warm, my body now shivering uncontrollably as I try to reach out for the handrail of the portable scale. I notice my hand shaking violently as though I was a drunk with severe delirium tremors, the handrail seems miles away. I lurch forward and with all my strength attempt to keep my legs under me. I waver and nearly fall but catch myself at the last moment, now breathing hard, my lungs working overtime in short breaths, forced nearly to collapse from the huge quantity of fluid that has built up in my chest.

My body is out of the special protein your liver produces to keep your veins, arteries and tissues somewhat water/fluid proof and they leak profusely, the fluid builds up in your chest cavity surrounding your lungs, forcing them to be constricted and inside your lungs at the same time making breathing a huge and difficult chore. The fluid is also building inside your abdomen, surrounding all your internal organs, making them float, awash in water, constricting your stomach and bowels making all normal bodily functions very difficult and time consuming. I step onto the scale, barely able to hangon for the 10 seconds needed to get a reading. I let go of the railing and fall backwards onto my bed, flopping over on my side, barely able to pull myself to the center and get my head on the pillow.

I lay there, trying to go back to sleep, my mind wandering, dreading when they will return in a couple of hours to aggravate and interupt my blissful sleep again, I vaguely recall a revelation a few hours ago, something about wanting to die, now, what was that about… or maybe it was that if I died I would feel better, anything would feel better, even death. I glance up at the wall clock, it’s 6AM now, 2 hours passed between then and now, or was that 4 AM yesterday…

…day yet…. just a warm-up.

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For those that missed the prank, here’s an explanation… when people tried to view my blog earlier they got THIS instead of my usual header…

there’s nothin’ wrong with me!…. Play this while reading this post! Idea shamelessly ripped from THE LAST GIRL ON EARTH! (and she’s hot too!)

Often times working at sea could get just downright boring, so damn boring that you just hoped some horrific acident or the vessel sinking or someshit would happen just to break the monotony. After you’ve read every dime novel in the ships library, seen every single movie the company ships out with the weekly supplies and wanked off about a bazillion times undercover in your bunk at night to the outrageous quantities of XXX porn that gets passed around, theres just not much else to do, dammit. So, I took up pranks as a hobby, yes, I said pranks, and not just any pranks mind you, some were really quite bad and incredibly funny! One of my faves was short-sheeting bunks.

If you don’t know what that is, all you do is pull back the blanket and take the lower half of the sheet and pull it up to the pillow and remake the bunk/bed with the sheet folded back upon itself, when you try to get into the bed you find that there’s just no room!! To the unititiated this is a most unexpected thing and it’s hilarious watching some one try to get all the way in and yet it’s impossible. I did this one night to a buddies bunk and he was coming back from shore leave, BUT they asigned a visiting companies VIP to the bunk instead as there was no room in the VIP quarters. Here is this big fat old guy trying to get in the bunk and it’s pitch dark and we (4 in a room) can hear him gruntin’ like a bitch trying to get in the upper bunk. Then suddenly we hear a loud RIIIIIIPPP!!!! and the bastard stuck his feet right thru the sheet! He knew we had rigged the bunk cause we started like gigglin’ like little girls but the old fart didn’t say a word about it!

Tooth paste under the pillow trick, ok, this one is just a variation on the shave cream in the hand trick except the paste is under the pillow, who doesn’t stick their hands up under their pillow at night and then ends up smearing the goop all over their face?

The I glued your boots to the floor trick, ok, this one is just insane, I once got back at a guy that pulled the toothpaste gag on me by pouring an entire bottle of super glue on the bottom of his deck boots and put them back next to his bunk while he was asleep. The next morning he shows up on deckside in slippers with a boot in each hand and each one had a full size floor tile securely stuck to the bottom of each boot! It took him hours with a hacksaw to carefully cut all the floor tile off each one and damn he was pissed! But, he called a truce, he knew I had whipped his ass and he gave up.

Organized pranks, ok these were just plain rude, getting the diving crew together one time we had a cook onboard that just plain sucked ass, this guy was mean and honery, smoked while he was serving the chow and couldn’t cook his way out of a frikkin Home Ec class in jr. highschool. We agreed to ask this bastard for pancakes every morning when it was your turn to put in your breakfast order, he never cooked pancakes anyway but we all still asked just to get on his nerves. Then one day the sumbitch actually gives in and makes up a huge batch of pancakes we ALL say naaa, no thanks. This really pissed the sucker off and he whined about it for a week but he was a bit nicer afterwards, although the food still sucked ass.

My buddy Diver Dave (see post below and more on him here)once engaged in a prank war and I kicked his ass, too. One day he put a huge, live blue crab in my top desk drawer at my inshore office. He was across the shop and watched me open the drawer for a pen and I did a double-take because the damn crab moved and made me jump like a monkey! He laughed his ass off but he knew he was gonna get paybacks. Oh yeah, and it was gonna be juicy!!!

He tiptoed around the shop and offices all day, peeking around corners, opening every box and drawer with slow deliberation expecting some heinous prank of doom to befall him at any moment, but part of my return prank was to keep him in suspense as long as possible. He was getting really antsy by the end of the day and finally started begging me to just do it and get it over with but nope, I let him stew all day long. Finally at the end of the day it was time to go home and he started saying stuff like na-na I couldn’t do a good prank and other BS just to pick on me, but I just gave him my evil grin and let it go, and then, just as he thought he got away unscathed he grabbed his hardhat at the front of the shop to pass thru the construction yards to leave for home. He put the hat on and looked at me and said OH F*CK!!! you got me, you got me good you bastard that’s it, I’m done I can’t handle this anymore, TRUCE please!

I had put a huge gob nasty black axle grease inside his hat and smeared it all around the liner. Don’t mess with the dog!