Nightmare at Sea

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful tip. That started from this Florida port, aboard this luxury ship. The crew were mighty sailin' men, the captain sober and sure. Three thousand one hundred passengers set sail that day, for a three thousand-dollar tour, a three thousand-dollar tour…

With interests beginning to lag in the current Middle East bombings, this is what the media is left to work with. This is what constitutes as the new “developing crisis” for many of the bored news correspondents. It’s no bloodied townsfolk picking limbs out of a pile of rubble – but it’ll have to do.

The new Crown Princess luxury ocean liner built in 2006, and christened by one, Martha Stewart, last month in New York, rolled on it’s side 15 degrees during it’s fourth voyage of the season. That’s what you get when you let a convicted felon christen a luxury ocean liner.

I say they were fucked from the very beginning.

A supposed failure in the liner’s steering system caused the ship to lilt on its port side before righting itself again less than a minute later. Apparently, this caused almost unspeakable devastation for those onboard. Several of the upper decks were flooded and the elevators were inoperable. Gym equipment flipped over, TVs fell off their shelves and shattered glass was strewn across the deck.

This is a “near disaster”? Whoopee-fucking-shit! This is barely news worthy.

Vacationers complained that sliding plastic deck chairs had disturbed their sun tanning and that numerous shuffleboard games had been interrupted. One lady regaled the media with the horrific account of her margarita glass sliding across the table and smashing on the ground before she could finish.

“Oh, the horror….the horror...”

Tom Daus, 32, was sunbathing on the ship's upper deck when the ship began to list.

"It became very disastrous because … tables, glasses, lounge chairs went flying," he told The Associated Press in a cell phone interview. "I was just holding on for dear life onto the banister of the ship. As a result, I got more of a truckers tan on my one grasping arm instead of the all over tan I was going for."

"The water came gushing out of the pool like a mini-tsunami," he said. "It was really scary. People who were in the pool were shoved out."

Oh, for fuck sakes, get a grip dipshit! That’s not over-dramatizing things any is it? This guy has been watching one too many Anderson Cooper 360 updates.

Heaven’s forbid your snobby-assed cruise trip should ever be inconvenienced by a tragic twist of simple geometry. I know of about 125,000 people that are currently stranded along the Lebanese coast that would storm your luxury liner and throw your pontsy ass overboard into shark infested waters in a heartbeat given the opportunity. They’d make ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ look like a bunch of Mary Martin wannabe’s.

The real criticism comes from the Coast Guard who claims that the first warning to authorities that the Crown Princess cruise ship had tilted came not from the captain, but from a passenger on a cell phone. Well, maybe, that’s because the captain, the seasoned seaman he is, realized that a mere 15-fucking-degrees isn’t something to really get your panties in a twist over.

Instead, he participated in the onboard surfing contest with a dining room bus tray.

“I haven’t had this much fun since I used to ride that old washing machine down the hill in my backyard as a child”, the captain responded after he was contacted.

Princess Cruises, owners of the Crown Princess, says the captain, Andrew Proctor, was not on the bridge at the time the ship rolled slightly. The company says it doesn't know who called the Coast Guard first, but said its standard procedure is for the captain to contact authorities.

They did, however, mention that the caller sounded like a frightened little sissy girl who may, or may not have, wet themselves during the actual call.