My Hateful Vacation Diary, or Why I Will Never Go On a Cruise Again So Help Me God

Last week I went on a cruise I planned over a year ago. I hated the one I was on as a teen but that was a million years ago and besides, I wasn't with my BFF then. This would be a whole different experience, I thought.

Oh, how I thought wrong.

Some mildly horrifying cruise ship facts:

• It costs almost a billion dollars to build a modern cruise ship.
• The ship uses about a gallon a second of fuel. (Their calculations, not mine.)
• On board, there are (for a one-week journey): 1,500 gallons of ice cream; 55,000 lbs of fresh fruit; 49,000 lbs veggies; 18,000 lbs potatoes; and 70,000 bottles beer.
• It is possible to read a 300-page novel in one day (if you do nothing but read and eat)

Enter my cheerful trip diary:

Day 1:

Any self-consciousness I had about my body is COMPLETELY gone. Everyone on this cruise is fat as fuck. And I will be too in 7 days, seeing the delicious, never-ending buffet.

Day 2:

I hate everything. How did I not realize that a cruise is like a giant obnoxious steel jellyfish with 4,000 human tentacles insufferably stinging their way through the ocean? I'm never doing this again.

 Day 3:

I realize there are no noise ordinances in the middle of the sea, but MUST it be this loud? Seriously. Witness:


Obnoxious dance music is blaring from every deck. It is absolutely inescapable. Every hour, there's an announcement about bingo or the napkin-folding class. People do not know how to entertain themselves unless surrounded by a cacophony. Or fed bullshit manufactured recreation.

I read a 300 page novel in one day and it was the only reason I haven't jumped overboard yet.

I'm so fucking miserable.

Day 4: 

Lady in hall was queasy, I have a headache that won't go away and the people next door have been flushing their toilet notstop for the last hour. Norovirus? I'm doomed.

Day 5: 

Level of loathing has reached a new high. I've decided my main goal for this trip, in order to make the suffering worthwhile, is to save myself $7 on a bottle of self-tanning lotion so I won't have to wear pantyhose when I go back to work. So I have acquiesced to a deck chair.

However there is no place on this stupid ship where I can be alone. Hateful dance music is blaring from every crevice, causing a line of numbed and sweaty folk to sway dully and sip margaritas across the entire length of this 1,000 foot vessel. I have lost faith in humanity.

Day 6:

I'm ready to jump. Where are we? I don't give a shit what port this is, I'm not leaving the cabin. It's the only quiet place on the ship. The omniscient presence of people has reached absolutely unbearable levels.

I can't get a glass of water in the stupid cafeteria without someone pushing into me from behind. I can't walk to the elevator without oblivious forms darting into my path. No one is paying attention to anyone else because no one has had a deep thought for more than six days. The entire ship is bursting with hedonism. No one gives a shit about anyone but themselves.

The only people I want to be near (as long as I don't have to talk to them) are the recluses like me. At least the antisocial guy hulking over a book at the next table has a philosophical teeshirt.

Day 7:

Land! Thank GOD the ordeal is over. I need to spend a month on top of a mountain away from civilization. I hate everything and everybody. The only silver lining is that I can go back to work right away because I never got norovirus.

My idea of a good time now.

The Internet wormhole descending into truffle-making territory

I can't sleep. And somehow mild browsing has led to an Internet wormhole which devolved into learning how to replace the cream inside truffles, despite hating truffles, cream, cream substitutes and the idea of cooking homemade chocolates.

Twenty years ago I would have had no idea how to make these wretched sweets. Today, thanks to modern technology, I can absorb hated enterprises never leaving my pillow! Ain't the Internet grand.