But taking cruises isn't for everyone, and it's fun to pretend for a moment that taking cruises isn't for me, even though I know it's close to an ideal vacation (insofar as they are relaxing, and include being taken care of by others, copious amounts of booze and nearby gambling, as well as the necessity to unplug from electronic devices). Really, I just like to be cynical, elitist, and snarky, so I figured I'd spend some time elaborating on the types of cruise ship passengers which really piss me off. Keep in mind when reading this that the ship we boarded sailed out of New York, so these thoughts are (in the words of J-Hova) really just what I was feeling at the time (in case you notice a regional bias, below).
1. Annoying New Yorkers. As a near-life-long resident of the Tri-State area, I feel people from New York* are held with an unfairly negative reputation with regard to their level of rudeness and awful behavior. A random, lost tourist in Manhattan is going to find someone willing to tell them where the Empire State Building is faster than the same tourist looking for major landmarks in most cities in the (Eastern) United States. It's not that all (or even most) native New Yorkers are rude, obnoxious, disgusting, and boorish. It's really just that the subset of New Yorkers who happen to be rude, obnoxious, disgusting, and boorish are WAY more rude, obnoxious, disgusting, and boorish than the subset of people from other parts of the country who are, similarly, rude, obnoxious, disgusting and boorish.Take, for example, Carnival passengers who are loud dudes from the parts of Brooklyn not populated by hipsters yet. Ask them where they're from, or hell, don't even ask them where they're from, and it immediately becomes REALLY fucking clear they are from Brooklyn. They'll scream about where they are from from the rooftops, and get into (fake, presumably, hopefully, my God) screaming matches with other fat dudes from the Bronx or Queens, just because they're from (I guess?) different parts of New York City. Like any of these places are really any different. They're all places that other people were fortunate enough to escape from already, because they're all fucking awful post-apocalyptic hellholes with no green grass. I don't mean to be mean, but it's just... stop being so loud.
(*NOTE: When I mention New Yorkers, I am of course only referring to those from the working-class outer boroughs of New York City. People from the suburbs or upstate New York might as well be from New Jersey, where I am happy to be from; there's no point in making fun of these people, as doing so would not be elitist or at all snobby.)
2. The chronically, yet perpetually underachieving drunk. It goes almost without saying that I am a fan of the sauce. You know, booze. Further, I'll freely admit I like to spend most of my free time aboard a cruise ship in some chemically altered state, ranging somewhere between buzzed, moderately plastered, and hungover. At this stage in my life, it's my idea of a good time. It's entirely subject to change in the future, but for now, I unapologetically endorse the idea of having a continuous sea bender.But I'm not really the problem here, I feel like, because I know when to say when for the most part, and even when I don't know when to say when, I'm not that obnoxious of a drunk. (I sit on the laps of two, maybe three women who aren't my wife, tops, and then I fall asleep. It's endearing, or so these women tell me.) But take, for example, the loudmouth whom I was fortunate enough to sit adjacent to while watching the Giants @ Cowboys game a couple of weeks back. Drunk off her ass, and apparently all-knowing about all matters football, her reaction to every play - plays which were both good and bad for the New York Giants - was a thunderously loud scream of, "FUCK YOU ELI!!!!"
Keep in mind this was a family-friendly event starting at 8:00 pm, on a ship where children were routinely up past midnight. Further, keep in mind this woman mentioned she was "an Eagles fan, but really I root for the NFC East," but in the real world, both the Giants and the Cowboys play in the NFC East. Thirdly, notice that this obnoxious drunk-tard decided to publicly vomit into a bucket of ice halfway through the second quarter of said football game. The problem here isn't getting drunk; the problem is not being good at being drunk. If you're going to play the game, you best know how to play.
3. The aggressively obese. It strikes me upon boarding a Carnival cruise that the people I associate with on a daily basis, in addition to being brilliant and generally awesome, are not really at risk for (or a current patient of) Type II diabetes. I get that obesity is a disease, and it's not really okay to make fun of fat people. So I'm not going to make fun of people who just happen to be larger than most, yet in doing so manage largely (get it?) to stay out of other people's way. I have no qualms with people who see me walking toward them down a narrow hall that can't fit three people across, people who are capable of the rudimentary mental calculus which goes something like "The person walking toward me is in far better shape than I, and frankly, I could use a quick breather, so I'm going to stop and let my non-lung-impaired compadre walk past." These people are not the focus of my rage - in fact, I respect the hell out of them.No, my problem is with the aggressively obese. By this, of course, I mean the people who think it's my problem for walking toward their gelatinous, sweaty, nearly spherical mass of adipose tissue, varicose veins, and fromunda cheese. I am not kidding when I say that there are cruise ship passengers who board these ships only to eat. I do not think they leave their buffet booths to shower, sleep, or shave; only to get up for another entire pizza. Thank God for normalized Chi-square distributions, because if it weren't for the aggressively obese having a normal starboard-to-port distribution of weight, my cruise ship would have turned into Costa Concordia, Part Deux. Take, for instance, the 750 pounds of couple who sidled up next to me during the mandatory muster drill. I wouldn't have minded them if they realized, hey, I'm really fat, and so's my significant other. Maybe we shouldn't sidle up within two inches of the normal-sized folks around us. Maybe they need a little more space, because I am large, in charge, and sweating straight-up Bearnaise sauce right now. But instead, no, they continued to stand there with their ham hocks around each other during the entire muster exercise. I can still smell their sweat.
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It strikes me that the above, seething diatribe is centered around a single type of person. Stupid, loud, lacking self-awareness, and probably lacking in success in life. But, as my Dad likes to say when mentioning how schlubby some plane passengers are "these days" (forgive my Dad, he's really just super-old), it's not like we're talking about taking the bus here. This is a mode of transportation which actually costs a serious amount of money. But it also reminds me how privileged I am to be constantly surrounded by the small percentage of people in the world who don't suck balls at life.
So before you post something on my Facebook about how retarded I am, and what a stupid decision it was to post this, and why I am going to hell for this, remember this one fact: this blog post is dedicated to you, my friends and those who've elected to read this much verbal diarrhea. I hope you enjoyed it. :-P
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