Whipped Cream Difficulties

It was a busy weekend; by the time I found out about Scalia, I was out and around and unable to blog. Now it feels like we’ve reached Scalia saturation, and I’m not sure I have anything to say. Except: I would have liked to have met the man. Lawrence has some links up over at his site.

Something that mildly amused me, and that I also didn’t have a chance to blog over the weekend: remember the Royal Caribbean cruise ship, Anthem of the Seas? The one that sailed into a storm?

Well, it turns out there was a NYT reporter on board. Not that they were expecting a storm: the reporter was apparently on board to cover the first voyage of Royal Caribbean’s brand new super ship. Instead…

There were two things that happened during the storm that made me begin to believe that my life was in jeopardy.

Not exactly the kind of thing your company wants to read in the paper of record.

The second thing I began contemplating was composing farewell messages to the people I love, as well as apology notes to people I have let down. The ship’s vaunted Voom Wi-Fi was somehow holding steady during the storm, presenting the opportunity to send some emails or perhaps post a blanket statement to social media. I also contemplated writing a sweeping goodbye note on paper and sealing in the Ziploc bag I had packed my toothbrush and toothpaste in, hoping that it might float to the surface and be discovered by rescue crews.

2016, ladies and gentlemen. Speaking of 2016…

Like, who dies at sea anymore? This is 2016, after all, an era in which we build giant, floating sea fortresses and have apps on our phones that can predict when it’s going to rain down to the minute. This is not the 1700s.

“Who dies at sea anymore?” That was just stupid. Setting aside for the moment the immigrants who die at sea (while their deaths are tragic, and I don’t mean to diminish them, I’m sure the NYT author would argue that’s not the kind of “death at sea” he’s thinking about), ever hear of the Costa Concordia? Where are the paper’s editors?

One more thing that tickled my funny bone: a vaunted feature of the Anthem of the Seas is something called the “Bionic Bar”: “Attended by two robotic arms that mix cocktails amid an array of flashing lights and thumping techno music, patrons sit a few feet away from the bar and order from a menu of available drinks, many of them coming in bright neon colors that evoked thoughts of nuclear waste, on a tablet computer.”

How’s that working for them?

A friend I had made on the ship met me for drinks there one night after the storm and we sadly couldn’t bring ourselves to order more than one drink each, agreeing that the cocktails in our first round were, well, kind of terrible. Score one for human bartenders; your jobs are safe for now.