Weird, Creepy, True

Just watched some perfectly matched for me show called something like Weird Creepy and True. It was about swarms. Swarms of flies in Africa, swarms of crabs on Easter Island, swarms of locusts, swarms of box jellyfish, wasps, endless unexpected death around every single corner. Right up my alley.

Right now I am watching some show about a shark eating a woman, and her friend just keeps on filming it. Nice. Sounds like my old high school click.

I love to watch death and disaster. I feel it's good to be aware of every pitch life throws at me. I'm not sure it helps me stay alive and keep my loved ones alive, but it sure as hell makes me feel better to think about all the possibilities and think about how I would react.

I was on the Circle Line once for a Halloween Booze Cruise in NYC. Unlike a lot of people, I was only drinking and not doing drugs, I did have some brains, I guess. I saw a guy go overboard, from the top level of the ship, and walked over and asked the guys sitting there staring at nothing if a guy had just gone over. (My mother has trained me to distrust my "vivid" imagination over the years). They said yeah, he went over. So I ran, first thinking, where is the captain of the boat, then realizing that would do no good, and turned, heading straight for the DJ. He cut the music and announced Man Overboard, and all 500 people in full costume ran to the sides of the boat to look. I ran down the inner stairs, and two guys were standing at the bottom. One of them says, "Hey, this is the best time to hit the bar!" (he did not like lines, I am guessing) and the other guy rolled his eyes. AHA! I found intelligent life. I asked him where the life preservers were, and we tried to hunt one down. Alas, we found out after knocking a few ceiling squares down and opening a few benches, that all the life preservers had been removed because booze cruisers often ended up tossing all the preservers into the river.

So, the guy died. But I learned several very important lessons that night. One was, never hang from the railing by your feet on a booze cruise, no matter how fun you think it might be. Another is that I am capable of reacting well in a bad situation. Of course, it's not like the ship was sinking or anything, but trust me, I would have been on the lifeboat with that one intelligent guy before anyone else even knew the boat was sinking. But I did not act like a moron or flip out, I functioned well under stress. It proved to be my strong point in later years in my professional life.

And the final thing I learned was...it really is a good time to go to the bar if you want a drink right away. Really.