Corporeal Punishment

I know I've left you stranded before, left you wallowing in deep swampy pools of the dimmest water without a wooden plank to helplessly grasp. or even half of a bright orange life-vest. I was off gallivanting with prostitutes and steamy wads of cash ejected from offshore slot machines on open-water steamboats, I apologize. I do indeed enjoy writing for you my crew, or maybe this is just writing for me.

Some days when I wake up to consume my black morning sludgewater I think of you and I think of me and I think of the sea-green waters that have yet to be traversed by us and I get excited at the prospect. Other days I wake up with crustacean eyes and a barnacled demeanor, I stare up at the timber ceiling in my room. Suddenly I bust in to my own cabin with a group of sweaty, grimacing, tattooed strongarms clutching thick coils of thick rope with their sweaty, meaty paws. I've come to keelhaul myself.

I can't tell you how difficult it is to play the role of punisher and punished simultaneously, to be the one standing shipside of the plank with a scimitar:

"Ye broke the cardinal rule of music blogging: not hosting yer own MP3's. Whats worse, ye been using Badongo, putfile and (Spits on the deck) RAPIDSHARE?" and then quickly jump to the oceanside of the plank to play the tattered me in tattered sackcloth, hands tied with shaggy, cutting searope:

"No no... I swear! I'm getting to it... I'll start hosting as soon as I can, I swear"

I jump back boatside and eye myself squinteyed for a second, my posse of gnarled sailors behind me, reething their muscles and waiting for me to try and escape so they can exact their flogs against my sallow back.

"so ye been sayin' for a fornight now and I haven't seen anything. And ye been slackin on the posting m'boy, you know what that calls fer!"

"I know I know, please, please don't do this! not again!"

I readjust my captain's tricorner, sheath my curved blade, saunter out to the end of the plank next to bearded me and stare darkly into my eyes and then pinch my cheeks and say:

"too late ye scurvy dog, say 'ello to Davy Jones!"

))kick((

Under the boat it's quite peaceful. Everytime I plunge, Buddy Holly plays for some inexplicable reason.

Buddy Holly - True Love Ways

The ropes cut deep into my hands as the bottomside of the boat, splintered and be-barnacled, rasps along my face and stomach and legs drawing blood that in turn draws the sharp toothed harps and pianos. These sea creatures live for chum like me, they pluck along behind me and lick their lips. They are slow moving creatures though, often being drawn astray by schools of violins, bottom feeders, following boats for scraps of resin: dropped overboard. The strings converge and scatter as I skitter along the sharp base of the boat.

I ignore these hyenas, mere scavengers, it is the blood-thirsty saxophone I worry about. Traveling alone, these creatures can swim faster than seven deckhands can pull, and typically, I'm pulling myself alone so any sign of the sax could be certain death. I've heard stories of keelhauling ropes suddenly going slack and waters turning chunky and crimson. Everyone present at those fishy feasts said they heard the faint glimmerings of Paul Desmond, of Take Five. I shudder to think even now of the jaw gnashing fates of those men and women.

So far I've come up on the other side, blue cheeked, lacerated and bloody, coughing up saltwater, but I've survived. I welcome myself back to the boat, slap myself (painfully) on the back and hand myself a hot cup of joe.

"ye lived through it again meboy, now hurry up and get that MP3 hosting"

__________________________

Check out my new roomie's blog: Battle of The Midwestern Housewives

Check out Sufjan doing a performance at BAM about the BQE. Apparently he will be playing old stuff and new stuff. I'd like to see it considering the live version of Majesty Snowbird is one of my new favorite musics. Are you going?