Christmas Rant 2006

As usual, my Christmas Rant, the names may not mean anything, but the sentiment will...

Ahoy Shipmates!

Another twelve months of life have slipped through our fingers and, once again, it’s time for a quick review of some of the activities here. An unofficial grass roots flowdown of the office events with a bootleg cascade of all that’s bad about the world we inhabit here at the landing gear hub of the universe.

If you feel as though I’m having a go at someone in particular, well, you could be right on the money, your instincts as sharp as your pointy little head.

In the years gone by, I’ve avoided naming names in these rants, and that tradition will continue except for those that have left. However, most of you will know who I’m talking about here, some of you won’t, mainly because it’s you or your influence that I’m talking about and it can’t possibly be you in your insular world of denial and paranoia.

Who said that?

Shuddup!

We’ve seen our own little Napoleons here in the emporium, losing the support of their own military marshals, but not one of them have renounced their thrones. Well, maybe one or seven, seems like the tide was changing for a while, but I suspect that one set of coconuts has been replaced with another.

It would be nice (for the rest of us) for some to be exiled to a little Mediterranean Island, but it appears that the crazy captains of our enterprise are more likely to dash our boat onto the rocks instead of pulling up a deckchair on the beach.

The year has been full of grunts jumping over the side of the ship, which is similar to the events of last year, but more so. There’s been a tendency for the bigger deckhands to run for the plank, springing off into the air, smiling and wallowing in their new found freedom from the brig, sending messages in bottles to tell the rest of the crew that the sea is a better blue over there.

It could be argued that greed is behind the exodus from the ship, but lets face it, most of us are pirates, not pirate captains, and at heart we just want to be sailors, enjoying the company of hard drinking ruffians, plundering villages, murdering the women and raping all the men.

It’s a lifestyle choice.

I can recall that Panhuyzen was oiled and stripped to the waist, dressed in black velvet trousers, probably designed by a Frenchman, with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword, and the other waving a long silk scarf at his astonished Emperor, happy once again to be a pirate.

Then there was the Oberlander, a scurvy dog who had a long tradition of shooting his own shipmates, he spent the last three months walking around the deck with his cell phone glued to his ear, working out the wrinkles on the new, bigger world.

It always had to be bigger, smaller or cheaper in his world, an unfortunate side effect of those years where his mother dressed him as a servant girl and kept him in the kitchen cupboard with the Tupperware.

Kowalik, well, he was on last years list, so we can’t talk about him, well, we can as he is on the payola down there trying to be a rat catcher for $2500 a pop. He was voted most likely person to forward a CTS job offer in 2006 by the pirates guild.

Chuck or Charlie as he now likes to be known, is moving away from the shores of Ontario, there’s no doubt that the offer of more doubloons and a bigger hat has seduced the young helmsman into his second "permanent" leap in less than two years, off down south to live in the Oberlanders boathouse, sharing stories about their adventures and accumulated bounty while their associated partners watch Oprah and expand while eating too many bon-bons.

Ho Ho Ho Berlander!!

Jelena. Well, we all knew that she was only pretending to be a pirate. It’s obvious to the rest of the crew that dressing in women’s clothes and undergarments should only be partaken by those of us who can truly enjoy the experience.

And then there’s those faceless pirates that came and went, the salty dogs and the timewasters, the undead and the forlorn, may they haunt another ship and shuffle along.

They’re better off there.

This Christmas, we lose one of our favorites, a deckhand who tried to be an officer, but was constantly dreaming of his own fantasy island. It was often said that he put the Oh in Oberlander, but that wasn’t true as the big German only ever had one mast to slide his flag on.

I wish I could predict his future, but that’s not possible, after all, who can predict what a ronry, fifty year old, Vietnamese boy, who still lives with his mother and dresses in a white tuxedo will do next?

But, who can blame him for diving off?

The bureaucratic, French dominated, corporate ship we are morphing into is not helped in the least by the constant bombardment of new cryptic computer software and convoluted resource management tools that are finding their way into daily shipboard life. The officers involved in the creation of these afflictions hold themselves in very high regard and have detached themselves from everyday pirate life, their one goal is to strip the last vestiges of swashbuckling from the decks.

Add to that those leaders who don’t even seem to care about being shipshape any more, once again, it appears to come down to the hat, not the job.

In reality, my occasional references to Napoleon are an insult to that embattled and fearless leader, a man who is widely regarded as one of the greatest commanders ever to have lived, a man who could instill untold bravery in his loyal following, a visionary leader with historic significance.

And he wasn’t French.

The crewmates that remain enjoy their daily ration of rum and salt biscuits, thick skinned drunken sailors, singing our shanty songs in a detached fashion while we mop the decks with several officers following our every movement, kindly pointing out possible technique improvements and when we’ve missed a bit.

"Way, hay and up she rises.
Early in the Morninggggggg"

Merry Christmas Everybody.