Pulling Back the Sheet

 

 

We have visited many countries, stayed over in many hotels and hostels and these days, in private rooms and homes to let, and yet somehow my wife has never seen a bedbug until now.

birds rest in thick reeds
a scream as heron visits
this migrant hotel

For Haibun Thinking

Whale Cruise

Jaded? Fancy a  unique cruise? How about following a pod of gray whales as they migrate 5,000 miles along the Pacific Coast shoreline, from wintering in their Baja breeding and calving grounds, to summer feeding in the Bering Sea between Alaska & Siberia?

My friend Enrico has attached a luxury travel pod (pod for a pod haha) to the back of a gray whale whilst it was passing San Francisco and the Farallons. This accommodation includes bed, bath, and kitchenette and will serve you well during your one-year round trip.

Per person: $20,000

Attractions include:

• Get to know the individual whales in the pod.
• Get to know their parasites. Gray whales are more heavily infested with a greater variety of parasites than any other cetacean, including lice, diatoms, lamprey, and barnacles.
• Get to know how in the ocean, it’s eat or be eaten.
• Tethered scuba gear provided, for those attacks of cabin fever.
• Attend the live birth of a whale calf. Earplugs provided, as the “whale song” caused by the mother’s delivery pain can get loud. This follows your presence at the calf’s conception (hold on to your hats; ride can get bumpy). Since gestation requires 13.5 months, a surcharge is added to your cruise cost for this feature.

Off Again

To Bura Turu. Thanks again, Danny, for minding the blog.

My favorite part of the island is now underwater.  😦

Everyone who can afford it has emigrated, many to Peurto Rico, where property prices are through the floor. Bargain hunters descend.

Only the poor remain on Bura. My special friend Gaugakao is gone, but I’ll catch him up in Paris.

The reefs are all bleached out. No fish. A Green group is experimenting with a new, resistant coral. A project for decades, if not centuries.

I’ll pick up all the remaining native art on the island. Exploitative, but money is money. The silver lining of disaster.

Laser scans uncover vast Mayan cities under Guatemalan jungles (AXIOS)

Airbnb, don’t bother going down. Our Airfnf subsidiary has locked up special agreements and arrangements with all the cities.

For the rest of you, come on down for the ultimate “Green” vacation.

Don’t speak Mayan? No worries. The folks in these cities speak a Mayan so old, the current Mayans in the area can’t understand them either.

Special considerations:

• Bring a machete
• Binge watch The Living Dead before coming
• Skip The Lost City of Z. They got it all wrong. Charlie, go back to Sons of Anarchy where you belong
• Wear a tinfoil hat to ward off the lasers from above
• Beds are made of solid stone, for your health
• Bring two machetes

No WiFi. Bring a satellite phone.

To use Uber, make the sign of the U. If the native turns his back, climb on.

To use Twitter, look for a native wearing a toucan headdress. Act out your message, with plenty of facial expressions and hand gestures. Point to the person to receive the message.

Please pay us in full before leaving home.

     (thank you)

Pilot’s crazy photos taken in an airplane cockpit (CNN)

It was meant to be “Crazy pilot’s photos taken in an airplane cockpit,” a CNN editor told me later, but someone flubbed the dub.

I’m the pilot’s wife. I found the photos but it was our maid who peddled them to CNN.

My man is a congenital selfie-taker. The whole stash of photos, snapped over a thirty-year career in the air, are selfies.

The largest cache deals with his fear of flying. He hated to fly. Spooked him. So many shots of him coming in for a landing at a major airport, shrieking in terror. (Photos with audio are what? Videos? I don’t own a phone). They soundproofed his cabin, that I know.

He was also a sexaholic. I forgave him of this. As a person who has only a vague idea about what “sex” is, I regard it as a sort of hobby for him. His collection of pictures of himself  “down there” while he was “behind the wheel” confirm my belief that sex is a strange and questionable way to spend your  time.

Bruce nevertheless was a fun-loving guy. He always flew with his pet snake Mert on the plane. He loved that reptile. So many hilarious pictures of Bruce grinning, cabin door open, passengers crying out over his shoulder in the shot (audio!) as they scattered down the aisle when Mert spread his cowl.

You can peruse the pics for yourself in The Herpetologist’s Monthly and the Self-Abuse Journal.

Plane turns round due to toilet issues despite 84 plumbers on board (Mirror)

It was a United Airlines flight.

15 of the plumbers were scabs, outnumbered by more than four to one. They kept their traps shut (no pun intended).

30 of the plumbers were undocumented. They wished to fly under the radar (no pun intended).

The 39 union, U.S. plumbers all had their wives with them, who said “I want to spend one day with you when you don’t stink.”

The 39 plumbers consulted with the airplane crew and offered estimates for their 39 different solutions plus individual bills for the consultations.

If a plumber comes to your house, he (I haven’t met a she plumber yet, tho I’m sure there are some) won’t use your facilities, even after he’s fixed them. In the current situation, the wives asked for a pass on that convention.

If you invite a plumber over for dinner, he will use the facilties but won’t fix them.

The airline held itself blameless, as the plumbing problem was initiated by the free snacks distributed for the flight, which were bacteria-ridden after being packaged by a fly-by-night (no pun intended) company in West N’aai’banistan.

There were 24 yoga instructors on board who helped passengers learn how to “hold it.” Some did.

There were 2 shrinks, to help with the shame.

Peacock Banned From Plane (MetroNews)

I was there. Flight 326 out of Florida. Jet Blue.

It wasn’t so bad. It won’t fit in a bird cage, they said. Put the bird in a damned kennel, I said. Or whatever you call those cages.

It doesn’t have to be walking around in the aisle, I said. It was worse than the drink cart. You couldn’t get to the bathroom. And speaking of bathrooms, it was worse than a Canadian Goose with the you-know-what.

Jet Blue didn’t ban the peahen. She was no problem. She got into somebody’s pretzels but that was all. A bit of a wallflower.

How different can bird sizes be, you ask. My budgie sat on my shoulder for most of the flight. That big galoot peacock would come alongside and the two of them would eye each other. Comical sight! The peahen pretended not to notice (my Mert is a girl).