Disclaimer: Contains Salty Language, Bestial Sex, and Pyromania. Also, one name has been changed to give the culpable a chance to make amends.
Here’s a riddle for you: Besides existing in a marine environment, what do a Mexican, dancing, marine slug and our sailing trimaran, Triplefin, have in common? The photo above offers a clue. Think about it as you read this related story. Some definitions are in order before we tip-toe out on this slippery plank:
From the Oxford Dictionary:
pri·a·pism /ˈprīəˌpiz(ə)m/ noun
Medicine: persistent and painful erection of the penis unrelated to sexual activity (1)
And from the Urban Dictionary (2):
douche bag - 1. An object used for vaginal hygiene. 2. A person that is a total moron and doesn't think before he/she speaks or acts. 3. One with indescribable idiocy.
super douchebag - 1. Being such a douchebag that it makes being an asshole and motherfucker a compliment.
douche canoe -1. An individual who insists on causing the rest of the earth as much pain as possible. 2. A chap so arrogant and twattish that they have almost no choice but to fuck you over whenever possible. 3. The vessel used by said douchebag.
Priapism will rear its rocket-red, inconvenient head at the tail end of this story as will a high tech, marine slug. For now, I hope I didn’t offend you, but that dive into various forms of douchebaggery was just too fun to keep to myself. For years Paul and I have had an ongoing debate/argument over name calling. Essentially, I take issue with calling anyone, no matter how heinous their actions, a ________. Fill in the blank with your favorite put down. Many insults are, to me, needlessly offensive to women and clearly inaccurate; take for example: pussy. I’d like to see any swinging penis be as resilient as a vagina - especially one that’s squeezed out a baby’s head. But I don’t condone prick or dick either as their simply unhelpful, inverted sexism. Even unisex terms are problematic; take for instance asshole. Such anal shaming leads to socially-induced constipation and force-retained gas pains. So, what about douchebag then? It’s perfect in that a douche bag in and of itself, as an item used to cleanse a vagina, is at best useless and at most insulting and injurious since our girl gardens are self-balancing and regenerative, thank you, and require no douchebaggin’, man-made cleansers. However, I do strongly prefer douchebaggery over douchebag and here’s why. (Yes, I’ve given it some thought. What do you think I do while gazing at the stars on deck?) Calling someone a douchebag sounds, to my ears, like it’s a permanent aspect of who they are. A fixture of their personality. But one of my keystone beliefs is that Homo sapiens are capable of profound change. It’s part of what makes us so darn adaptable, right? Douchbaggery, on the other hand, is a way of acting that allows for both transience and wide-spread application. I mean, we’ve all done some regretful douchbagging, right? I know I have. (Oh, stay tuned.) (3) It is my belief that the douchebaggin’ human at the crux of this story, perhaps upon reading this himself, can also change. If he can laugh at this I think there’s a chance. And if only you laugh with me, well, we could all use some humor as we face this increasingly ludicrous world, huh?
On that note, for your reading levity, I’ll interject into this account of misdeeds some of our non-sequitur, “Boat Quotes of the Day” (BQotD) that we keep a log of on Triplefin’s fridge door along with cherished cards and photos. Although seemingly incongruous, they somehow convey the day-to-day reality of boat life. You may even recognize one as your own. Ready? Here’s the first one:
“One of these days, I swear, I’m gonna wash the blood off that ice cube tray.”
I’ve been sitting on this absurd chronicle of douchebaggery for an entire year because if I’d started typing it sooner I would have pounded the keys with a menopausal mermaid’s salty vengeance. For most of the last year I witnessed, helpless, as the love of my heart got sucked into a whirlpool of despair and chronic ill health while giving his all to make Triplefin into the sustainable work and home craft of our dreams. Every day I watched my hubby struggle to just get on his feet, put food I offered him in his mouth (often reminding him to chew), and manage just a couple hours of boat work in between fainting spells. After one dark day, when his lightheadedness resulted in him accidentally and embarrassingly crashing our mizzen mast off the boat and onto the work yard fence, I feared that Paul’s steady little pilot light of joy and mischief was becoming permanently extinguished.
“How fast were we going? Five shitknots!”
You may recall from my Relinquishment post that in July of 2023 our cantankerous, stinking, noisy, wildlife-disrupting, diesel-guzzling, unreliable engine on Triplefin died on us for the last time as we struggled to sail against the wind and waves all the way from the upper reaches of the Vermillion Sea back to our haul-out port of San Carlos, Sonora. Three sleepless, wave-tossed nights and a couple cracked ribs later we were ready to throw in the bilge sponge on the whole shebang of sailing-for-marine-conservation when a ninety-year-old benefactor, who’s hanging on to see us do some good work on his cherished sea before he dies, offered to cover half of the cost of a spanking new electric motor. So, we decided to scour the bottom of our safety net in savings for the other half (about $8,000 USD) plus another twenty grand for the additional solar panels, batteries, welded framework and such that the conversion to a fully solar powered, sailing trimaran with electric engine would take. Our November 2023, No Pants Ranch wedding guests helped us unpack the new engine once it finally arrived. And that’s when, like the Grinch stealing Christmas, the douche came a baggin’. As suggestively red capped Jacque Cousteau once said to some unsuspecting octopuses: “Beware Frenchmen bearing sacks.” (Yes, that became another BQotD.)
Let’s give our incognito, douchebaggin’ fella a dignified French identity for fun. Monsieur Jacques Meoff was our trusted, fellow cruising sailor from the US, the go-between consultant employed by the manufacturer to make sure we got the proper electric engine for our Triplefin and that it would be delivered and installed without hassle. Msr. Jacques Meoff assured us that customs (from Australia into Tucson) would cost 100 bucks and be hassle free. It turned out to cost seven times that and required our busy, ADHD groom-to-be several visits to the not-proximate airport. No apologies issued from Msr. Jacques Meoff. Well, we figured, at least we had the new engine in hand and all we had to do was haul it to Mexico and install it via crane where Triplefin awaited, up in the air on her modified, mobile home trailer. Conservatively, we set aside two full months for the transition, knowing that anything boaty that “should” take two weeks was best multiplied by months. We had conservation projects on hold for those months, so time was ticking. Surely, something factory new and professionally calculated to fit our boat’s specifications was sure to work, right? I mean, Msr. Jacques Meoff even personally inspected our boat, so how could it fail?
“You had me at goat tits.”
The first sign of douchebaggery came when Paul realized Msr. Jacques Meoff sold us crazily inappropriate batteries that, if employed, would have set our floating home and livelihood aflame like Poseidon lighting a cauli’-taco fart. When we informed our trusted consultant of this and calmly pointed out his mistake he charged us $480 for a “battery consultation”, which, after our objections, he reduced to $240. Remarkably, our consultant had no recommendations for suitable batteries that would arrive within the two months required. Msr. Jacques Meoff even gained from Paul’s personal research (in between Paul’s bouts of fainting and depression) what batteries we were choosing - presumably to help him make less explosively flammable recommendations to other clients. I hear you thinking, “Jo, why didn’t y’all just refuse to deal any longer with this incompetent and unapologetic guy?” When we contacted the company and asked for another representative, guess who replied? So, Msr. Jacques Meoff was the start-up company’s only representative, meaning we newlyweds had no choice if we were to have any hope of getting the particular, technical information we still needed for installation.
“I don’t remember when we married but I recall you had a chunk in your nose.”
As you can see from Paul's brief video, air-lifting out our old diesel engine (recently spray painted look-new-blue) and air-lifting in the new electric one was the easiest part of the process. Well, once we remembered to breathe.
The next step was installing the motor mounts that Msr. Jacques Meoff measured in person and assured us would fit perfectly. They did not. So into the industrial-city grit of Guaymas to have an old-school machinist make time and money consuming customizations. It was a back-and-forth-from-the-boat-to-the-shop iterative process that took weeks to get right. Once the new motor was mounted we then then had to get the mounts, that Msr. Jacques Meoff inspected in person and assured us would fit perfectly without any modifications, to fit on the stringers (beams that hold up the motor) of Triplefin. Did those fit as promised? No. So, into the bustling port city of Guaymas to have our brilliant machinist make time and money consuming customizations. It was another back-and-forth-from-the-boat-to-the-shop process that took weeks to get right.
Once the mounts rested properly on the stringers it was time to install the coupler to connect the new engine to a gear reducer (a thingy to change the RPM to suit an electric motor) and another coupler to connect the gear reducer to the propeller shaft, all of which Msr. Jacques Meoff measured in person and assured us would fit perfectly. Guess what? Right-O. One of his couplers, we discovered, actually would have sent our propeller shooting backwards into our rudder. The other one, we realized, would have made a connection weaker than a bamboo kabob skewer employed to rotisserie roast an entire cow. So, back into the hustle of Guaymas to have our machinist, with the patience and fidelity of a snail, make time and money consuming customizations. It was a back-and-forth-from-the-boat-to-the-shop iterative process that took weeks to get not-ever-as-right-as the-right-parts-from-the-get-go would have been.
1-800-I-Have-No-Neck
You’d think by now an apology would have pressure-squeezed itself out of Msr. Jacques Meoff like a squeaky fart from a sitting Queen at a royal dinner party but instead we were met by heightened condescension and belligerence. He must’ve had some dawning self-awareness though because he actually tried to block our access to the Google document recording his erroneous responses! Now, get ready, because the most perilous and absurd results of the douchebaggery are yet to come. Just wait until we hit the water!
“Slugs are rapey.” (And that BQotD is also a reminder to think about the riddle as we go!)
Meanwhile, as Paul and our retirement savings were getting sucked down into a whirlpool of mysteriously ill health and grey despair what, you may be wondering, was happening with me and Gizmo, our aging, sailing hound, those two months that were turning into four? We rented our favorite, sweet little studio for the first month and even that had its absurdities. Take the night of our bedtime surprise. An exhausted Paul and I snuggled into bed early after tucking Gizmo in on the couch between our bed and the sliding glass doors, the only way in and out of the apartment. Suddenly we felt watched. Sure enough, there was Gizmo at the foot of our bed staring at us in that intense way that meant we needed to un-ass the bed and follow him. So, up I got and Giz led me to the corner by the couch where he pointed with his hound nose to the shadow where the unwatched TV and curtain meet. I had to crouch down before I spotted the unmistakable white stripes of Pepe le Pew himself! Never mind asking how in the hell a skunk snuck in without us noticing. The urgent question was how to get him out without having all our clothes, equipment, and a year’s worth of boat food stores get covered in chemical warfare?!?! Giz and I ran outside and some-holy-how, defying emotional gravity, Paul was up and patiently scooting all the furniture in the studio forward towards the open door, carefully corralling the skunk with only one escape route. It worked and Gizmo got heaps of praise because just imagine what we’d have woken to if our best friend hadn’t been so alert, calm and insistent!
Still. It seems like you would notice a treble hook in your nut cup.
Given all the extra boaty expenses, we couldn’t afford to extend our stay in the studio so we tried to live on the boat in the work yard since we were paying steeply to rent that space already. It wouldn’t have been so bad since we’re used to wearing respirators to protect ourselves from the toxic dust being sand blasted off neighboring boats but that year there happened to be an epic sewage leak from the holding ponds just uphill from the work yard.
We watched as just over the fence and directly upwind an odiferous cesspool of a wetland formed, attracting not only an abundance and grand variety of birds but also international, life-lister birders who got wind of the situation and decided to make it a destination for their annual Christmas Day bird count. There were even wild horses, coati, and once a large bobcat was seen crouched, ready to ambush unsuspecting foul water, water fowl.
“You can taste the feudalism in this beer.”
So, we had an entertaining view from elevated, high and dry Triplefin but the fecal fumes were just too much for me to take overnight and in the still and humid mornings. I decided I’d rather take my chances driving out into the desert outside of town to sleep in the back of our old beater truck, Clinger (another hackle raising story), with Gizmo. I reassured Paul that it had been years since the mass burial of bodies was discovered out there, and besides, they were presumably DOA. Each truck-camping morning I worked on shaping these coddiwompling tales into a hopefully publishable book (Thanks to your encouragement!) by resting my laptop on the tailgate while Giz’ thawed out in the winter sun. It was gorgeous out there between the orange and violet mountains and under the brilliant stars, but Gizmo and I paid for it by freezing our butts off each night. Our play-now-ask-questions-later pup turned thirteen and arthritis had crept into his joints. He was so sore and stiff he even gave up trying to hump his darling dog bed, the special cushion I made for his favorite, pre-bed pastime.
I tell ya, you really start considering geology when you’re hiking a volcano and you’ve gotta go poop.
As our fourth month of douchebaggery turned into a fifth we finally had all the unexpected adjustments made and the new engine installed. Our launch was misleadingly uneventful, requiring simply the usual extra dock hands and the police blockading the road to allow for Triplefin’s girth. We got lucky with a no-wind morning and flat seas. We gleefully waved to Pedro, our Spanish teacher and rope-braiding wizard, as we passed his diesel fuel dock, knowing we wouldn’t be visiting him anymore for our $500 fill-ups, and cruised silently out into the bay to anchor for a few days to test all systems. Our electric passage was so stealthy I found the need to shoo away drifting pelicans who didn’t hear us approach!
The official pants of the crucifixion.
So, we were a few months behind schedule due to Msr. Jacques Meoff’s steadfast insistence that the motor he sold us was a proper fit for our sailboat, but, hey. We were on the water and, thanks to all the long-labored adjustments, all parts seemed to be working together well. The solar panels were harvesting sunlight, the controller was keeping it from surging, the converter was converting it into A/C power, the batteries were keeping cool and storing forty kilowatt hours of energy, and we two worn down sailors and Commodore Giz’ were ready for a sea trial outside of the bay! We were eager to celebrate our hard won sustainability with our dear friend, a marine biologist who works tirelessly to protect the area’s population of sea turtles, sea lions, sea birds, and any other wildlife that people bring in for rescue and rehab. It just happened that a bunch of his old high school friends were up from Mexico City to celebrate Semana Santa/Spring Break. We offered to treat them all to a little electric motor ride out into the big blue, beyond the bay, to fete our new engine. And that’s when the double-decker douche really smacked the sack!
Oh, just stick that cat in it and go to bed.
These were big-city people. When they climbed aboard our inflatable dingy at the little sand beach you will not believe what they were wearing. Shoes! Shoes with laces and buckles. And even - get this - socks! They had buttons down their clothes and dresses with fancy hose. Three awkward dingy trips later and there they were: a baker’s dozen of well dressed, civilized urbanites all spread out on Triplefin’s deck taking selfies and relaxing on the cushions. (Not Gizmo’s special one. I keep that baby stowed away so he doesn’t get jealous!) No problemo, mis amigos. I confidently raised the anchor and offered our guests tea and coffee as Paul slowly glided our silent and clean electric craft out of the narrow harbor entrance and straight into the gently rolling swells. But once past the point of the bay there were warning white caps and then their accompanying fifteen knot winds. Still no problemo but we’ve learned a thing or two over the years. As eager as we were to go out further to open the throttle and see how fast we could go with our new engine, we knew that a moderate breeze outside the bay meant that back inside that bay the wind was likely funneling through the mountains to reach its typical 20+ knots and quickly whipping up the bay like a last-minute meringue. Not anything we haven’t motored through a hundred times but this was our trial run with the new motor. So, apologizing to our guests, we turned a 180, and suggested they hold onto their Easter bonnets.
WWYFD? Curse my ankle and spread hate to my knee.
Sure enough, once around the corner, where we had to head straight into the wind to safely anchor in a distant sand patch, the wind was cranking 20 knots. Again, no problemo. Except there was, and it was a super douchebaggy one. Despite Msr. Jacques Meoff’s persistently cocksure certainty that the motor he sold us was proper for our specific boat, with the throttle all the way up we were barely creeping forward at a marine slug’s pace of .5 knots! (Note the decimal.) If it hadn’t been for the sudden gusts over 20 knots we might have made it to that sand patch, but with the punctuated equilibrium of those bursts we were instead getting pushed backwards quite assuredly towards the very rocky shore! We had to emergency-drop anchor right in the middle of the frenzied, commercial channel on the busiest holiday weekend of the season and we had to stay there until the winds died the next morning. But first, we had thirteen normal human beings to return safely to shore!
So . . . you’re saying my clitoris is like Elvis in Joan Rivers?
Fortunately our gleeful guests seemed unaware of the barely averted disaster as we bounced “on the hook”, in the waves. This mini-clip of Paul's will give you some idea of the party charters zooming all around us in the fiesta-boat superhighway:
I suppose by now Paul and I and Gizmo are used to dealing with such emergencies without evident panic and, in this case, rage, because the baker’s dozen got joyfully surf-dingied to shore and returned to their hotel with sopping socks, dripping coiffures, and appetites whetted from adventure. Once alone with wakes rocking us we faced the train-wreck-ugly fact that after all the time, money, and tedious work, the new engine of our dreams, nay nightmares, couldn’t even put out 920 RPM to the prop shaft. As the sun sank on everyone else’s holiday, our hearts sank over the reality that Msr. Jacques Meoff sold us a motor that was only able to utilize less than half of the confidently rated output of 22 kW. Any novice boat owner can tell ya that is as insufficient as farting at a tornado. If the wind had increased at all that Easter day, we and our unknowing passengers would have ended up on the rocks with our boat/home/office, all of our personal belongings, and sweet old Gizmo who hero-napped through it all.
You don’t have to be super imaginative to know that tomatoes exist.
Over the next, the fifth, month we had to manually lift the new engine out, dingy it to the marina, cart it to the truck, drive it back to the US, pack it up and get it in the hands of the tightly scheduled delivery person who kept getting lost, wait for a refund (that Msr. Jacques Meoff shorted us on), research, measure, calculate for and purchase a new, new electric motor (from Electric Yacht), wait weeks for it to be delivered, drive it back to Mexico and pay all the duty fees again, amass a half a dozen generous friends willing to risk their backs to help us haul it from the truck to the dingy, and lift it onto and properly into Triplefin who sat with Gizmo and a pensive me for two more weeks at anchor in that same wind-funnel of a bay without an engine to push us out of harm’s way should harm come a calling. Once it arrived we had to install it, test it, balance it, test it again, etc. until the very belated day came when we were feeling confident enough to finally, at long last, sail away from civilization on the first thing smokin’ which is a joke because an electric engine doesn’t smoke. We’d lost our entire work season but decided to use the remaining couple months to practice being electric and, hell, maybe even enjoy ourselves. Out we motored at sunrise on a super calm, no wind, appropriately April Fools’ Day and made it by sunset to a distant, remote, wild anchorage. We glided like a dream! Now the winter of our absurd discontent was over and it would be smooth, snail sailin’ from here on out, right?
Oh! It’s that hacksaw again.
We’d just settled into our cushions on the starlit bow with some margaritas to toast our hard-won motor success on our first night far far away from it all and ol’ Giz’ must’ve been feeling celebratory as well because he was humping his cherished cushion with such youthful abandon that he nearly thrust it overboard. That’s when something as inconvenient and stubbornly certain as douchebaggery reared its red capped head. Yep. Commodore Giz’ found himself with a crotch rocket ready for takeoff. I didn’t know that could even happen to a neutered and gone-grey hound. It seemed a bit humorous until he started whining in agony because the swollen member would not and could not go back inside its furry sleeve. The cushion abandoned, he laid down on deck and began to do what dogs do when in pain. He started licking it and licking it and licking it. We tried to stop him, knowing from experience that that was NOT going to help things settle down. At that point Paul and I realized that we might, after all we’d been through to finally get to that faraway bay, have to haul up anchor and employ those batteries to motor all night back to town in order to take our painfully priapistic dog to the vet.
I’m sure God was dead before the sweet potatoes
Now, you know how you have those moments as a couple where you look at each other in silent recognition of the fact that one of you needs to do something that before that moment was unthinkable? Well, we had one of those moments then because we were resolutely NOT going back to town. Which one of us then, we quietly debated with our eyes, should jack off the dog? Should gender play a role in the decision and if so, for what reasons? Maybe it’s best to not think and instead just rock-paper-scissors such a conundrum? (The arm/hand motion could be a good warm up if ya get my drift!) I was just about to give in (and Paul knew it - he just knew my animal compassion would trump my cultural taboos - he waited me out) when I decided to try a less invasive treatment first. I went to Giz’ and gently urged him to stop with his tongue and rest back into my arms. I spooned him while gently stroking him (his body, that is) and whispered gentle, calming, sweet-nothings about dolphins and slinkos (sea lions) next to his furry ear. After about forty five minutes he was dream-paddling with slinkos in his sleep, his missile was back in its furry silo, and Paul and I were sipping a second round of margaritas, con flippin’ fuerte.
Yeah, but hold onto your teeth.
Once back on land for hurricane season Paul, who was feeling less stressed, depressed, tired and dizzy got himself a surprisingly clean bill of heart health from a cardiologist. On the drive home he said he must’ve been hoping someone could fix his broken heart. It’s now been a full year since the powerful flow of electric engine douchebaggery and our Electric Yacht motor has performed so well that Paul removed our small mizzen mast (slowly and on purpose this time!) and added even more solar panels. We haven’t used any fuel or plugged into any marinas for the whole year and now enjoy “solar sailing”, using the sun to get places when there’s no wind and the seas are blissfully flat. It’s hard to even believe that we used to rely on a rumbling, filthy, noisy, fossil-fuel guzzling, wildlife disrupting beast to help us move around on the planet’s liquid surface. We Homo sapiens were so darn confident that we’d created a problem-free miracle with our internal combustion engines that we didn’t stop to step back and consider what the long term effects might be. We humans are slow learners due, in part, to our priapistic thinking and our attachment to certainty due to the illusion of comfort it brings. Perhaps our species could learn a thing or two from one of the simpler lifeforms we’ve evolved alongside. A “lowly” marine slug that we tend to look down upon with douchebaggin’ conceit.
I think, therefore I am probably wrong.
Let me introduce you to Elysia diomedea, the Mexican Dancer. In Paul's video clip see if you can spy all eight of them clustered together on seaweed at night:
This thumb-sized, shallow-water, bottom feeding, lacy, sap-sucking, sea slug can also swim by undulating their frilly skirts as if doing the Flamenco.(4) This festive-looking marine slug is crazy common here in the waters of The Vermillion Sea. We just went for a snorkel yesterday and lost count of how many we saw gliding over the algae covered rocks. These slugs don’t just look pretty, they’re also highly intelligent and I don’t mean what we humans typically mean by that. They’re not solving equations and building rockets. No. They don’t need to bother with such foolery as they’ve beat us big brained apes by millions of years with their effortless ability to harness the energy of the sun. Yeah, they are an animal who, it seems, does photosynthesis! And they don’t need factory made solar panels and expensive lithium batteries like we do. So, how do they do it?
You ever notice how often I spit on your underwear?
Hold onto your own undies because this is just so freaking cool! They do it through kleptoplasty. Meaning they steal (klepto) cell parts (plasts). What exactly do they steal? Chloroplasts. Those tiny green organelles that plants carry in their cells to harness sunlight to make energy. Because of their thievery these slugs can go without eating for several months at a stretch. You can think of chloroplasts as microscopic solar panels. The plant then stores that potential energy in their cells just like we store it in batteries. How do the Mexican Dancers steal the chloroplasts from plants? By eating algae (a plant) as they cruise along over the rocks and sand. How do they store it? They incorporate it into their own tissues. Hence their green backs. Notice the green globs in our microscope video below? Those are the ingested and stored chloroplasts in the slug’s flesh!
Oh yeah, I forgot your interest in slug sex, you bestial freak! Did you spy some of them copulating in Paul's slug-porn video? Like all slugs our Dancers are hermaphroditic and simultaneously stab each other’s flesh with their dagger-like penises when humping. So, yeah, they do seem kind of rapey to me, but at least its equitable.
I’m NOT the devil inchoate and my shirt broke.
Are you feeling kind of inferior as a species now? And, not just due to the mutual hermaphroditism. Imagine what a more peaceful and healthy world it would be if human skin had photosynthetic capabilities. You could eat a kale salad and be set for a month! At least we’re now using our oversized brains to build clunky technology to attach to our rooftops and boat decks to do the job. Which circles us right back to Msr. Jacques Meoff and his priapistic certainty.
Couth is in the rear view mirror.
If I were on film this is when I’d look straight at the camera and speak directly to Msr. Jacques Meoff. But since we’re all toting some douchebaggin’ capabilities in our cells, let’s all pay attention to this: Dear Jaques, We don’t hate you. We don’t wish you unwell. We even still trust that your deepest intentions are to help more cruising sailors go easier on the planet by going solar electric. We admit to being taken aback when we contacted the overseas company you represented hoping to reclaim some of the many thousands of greenbacks that your douchebaggin’ certainty cost us and learned that you bought the company and moved it to the USA! But we sincerely hope that the electric engine startup does well for you and your clients. We ask you though, Jacques, please, as you go forward in your business, remember to take a step back and consider your own natural, human fallibility when a client presents you with a problem and/or complaint as we did. It’s our guess that your culture hammered into you, as it did so many of us - and especially penis-swinging, cis males - the unsustainable belief that you must be 100% right 100% of the time in order to be respected, accepted, and loved. But unquestioning certainty is the hallmark of douchebaggery. Intelligence should be measured, not by confidence, but by an individual’s and a species’ ability to recognize and learn from their past mistakes and, with wisdom, to try something different. It’s like you helping sailors switch from old, gas guzzling boats to photosynthesizing, electric ones!
Now, if you’ll pardon moi, si vous plait, it’s the middle of December and Paul and Giz and I are going out on deck to watch the Geminids’ meteor shower that falls, coincidentally, on my birthday. Should you, any of you and especially the as-of-yet-giving Jacques, like to make a charitable donation to help support our conservation projects, my writing, and Paul’s video and photo work aboard Triplefin just go to Triplefin Expeditions.org. As this challenging year slug-creeps into what will certainly be an absurd year for our country, we want to extend to you, and especially you, Jacques, a parting gift of forgiveness and levity. We’re able to do that again - to laugh. Thanks to the help and support of many friends old and new, Paul seems, as you’re about to witness below in regular speed and slo-mo, to have gotten his spark back. So, Jacque, and all of you fellow douchebaggin’ Homo sapiens out there, let’s remember the timeless lesson from the late and great Mojo Nixon(5): “Forget about the bomb and . . . light a fart”. (6)
1. As my first husband, a solar technician, once experienced firsthand after being emergency airlifted from a remote job site way the fuck out in the desert, priapism is also a symptom of a black widow bite. And let me tell ya, I can attest to how impossible it is to relieve because we tried just about everything! (Readership apologies to our son.)
2. Schrodinger’s douchebag - (This one from the Urban Dictionary is so clever and sci-nerdy I had to share it with you!) One who makes douchebag statements, particularly sexist, racist or otherwise bigoted ones, then decides whether they were “just joking” or dead serious based on whether other people in the group approve or not.
3. Here’s my confession of my own douchebaggery:
4. Research is being done now to understand the kleptoplastic ways of this Elysia genus of slug. One study indicated that they may actually incorporate some of the algae’s genes into their own (That’s horizontal gene transfer, y’all, as opposed to vertical which happens via sexual reproduction.) in order to make the proteins needed to keep alive the stolen chloroplasts. And, woo-hoo, it looks like some of these critters can even sever their own head from their parasite-riddled body and then regenerate a new, douchebag-free body! Wouldn’t it be great if we could do that with ourselves? Except for us maybe it’s the heads we should dispose of to replace with the clean slates.
5. Here’s the classic from way back in the cold war era whose applicability has circled back around like shoulder pads and acid washed jeans: Mojo Nixon’s Gonna Put My Face On A Nuclear Bomb. Fellow fans may have noticed Mojo was also referenced earlier in this tale!
6. Yes, fart lighting is absurd AND it actually eliminates methane emissions! It’s true. I swear. Paul just did the calculations. About 560,000 liters of methane is farted by people per day on Earth.
So if we lit all our human farts we’d decrease that amount of methane in the atmosphere. It’s a miniscule fraction compared to cows but it’s a start!
We of Triplefin do not recommend it but if you do decide to light a fart at home, kids, we have these safety tips for you:
1. Wear non-flammable, natural fiber pants like 100% wool leggings or 100% cotton jeans. The thinner the fabric the more impressive the flame but the greater the risk of hair singing, so maybe go with heavier jeans until you’re well practiced. A pre-shave may be advised for the extra furry among us.
2. Have someone who loves you standing by at your ass end with a pillow or such to smother any fires should things get out of hand.
3. Don’t be anal shameful. Lay down on your back, put your feet way over your head, spread your cheeks a bit, and really zero in on your bung hole (that’s a boaty term, btw). That’s where you want to hold the lighter.
4. Do it at night so it’s fairly dark but be stone cold sober, y’all. A healthy vegan diet provides the best fuel and is an additional boon for our fellow plant and animal life to whom we must certainly appear to be the most douchebaggy of species.
5. Send us the video to share the joy!
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