Tuesday, December 30, 2003

Found news--its old but shows the need for selective breeding

Full Throttle for Catalina (July 1999)
Get this: it's a quiet day at sea on a ship some forty miles or so from shore. There's a sailor on deck minding his own business (you know ... watching the waves go by, that sort of thing.) When, suddenly, this petty officer hears a mysterious, disembodied, voice calling to him from far away.
"Whiiiiich waaaaay to Caaataaalinaaaaa?" cries the specter.
Startled, the sailor starts searching for the source of this eerie wail and, expecting to see a frustrated navigator, he looks around and spies instead, a jet-ski racing alongside the ship. On it sits a citizen, steering with his knees, with his hands cupped around his mouth, yelling up to the folks on the flight deck asking (I kid thee not) for directions to Catalina.
Well, someone as dumb as this is a real rarity and it just fascinates the sailor, who wants to share his humorous good fortune with all his pals. So he begins yelling at his buddies, calling them over to the deck edge and pointing at this weird guy who's out there alone, in the middle of the ocean, on a jet-ski.
All this time, of course, the guy on the water scooter is watching the sailor gesticulating wildly up there on the flight deck. Scooterman surmises that Sailorman has understood his request for a vector to Catalina and assumes he is answering the question by pointing in the direction he should steer. So he takes off, full throttle. Only problem is, that ain't where the Sailor was pointing. The sailor was pointing at the dummy on the jet-ski who, if he continued on his newly selected course, would be far more likely to make landfall in Pearl Harbor than he would in Avalon bay.
Didn't take long for word of these strange goings-on to filter up to the bridge and, as soon as he heard about it, the captain turned the ship around, gave chase, dropped the tail gate and this wayward adventurer putt-putted into the well deck. Once aboard, Scooterman tells his rescuers that he's not alone. He has a buddy out there somewhere who, last time he saw him, was DIW; bobbing on the ocean on a personal watercraft which, like his own, was fully equipped with a key slot and a gas gauge for navigation equipment.
Took them all night, but they finally found this guy's running mate right after sunrise. When asked how he was feeling, he's reported to have said, "I'm one happy dude." No, dude, you're one lucky puppy, that's what you are; and you and your pal are proof positive that somebody needs to drop a couple more chlorine tablets into the gene pool

posted by oldsalt @ 11:25 AM

Welcome to the wonderful world of garbage and other such nonsense as found on the world wide wait and other such nonsense. Please feel free to play in the wonderful world of 4tlft.

posted by oldsalt @ 11:05 AM