How to Simulate Shipboard Life
(a.k.a., Suggestions for the ex-sailor who misses the "good old days")

1.Sleep on the shelf in your closet.

2.Replace the closet door with a curtain.

3.Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife whip open the curtain,
shine a flashlight in your eyes, and mumble "Sorry, wrong rack."

4.Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your bathtub
and move the shower head down to chest level.

5.When you take showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping.

6.Every time there is a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly rocking chair and
rock as hard as you can until you're nauseous.

7.Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set it to "High."
(for that shipboard smell)

8.Don't watch TV except movies in the middle of the night. Have your family
vote on which movie to watch, then show a different one.

9.(Mandatory for ex-engineering types) Leave lawnmower running in your
living room 24 hours a day for proper noise level.

10.Have the paper boy give you a haircut.

11.Once a week blow compressed air up through your chimney making sure the
wind carries the soot across and on to your neighbor's house. Laugh at him
when he curses you.

12.Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store up garbage in
the other side of your bathtub.

13.Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich on stale bread, if anything. (Optional: Canned ravioli or cold
soup)

14.Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without looking in your
food cabinets or refrigerator.

15.Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. When it
goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as you can, then run out
into your yard and break out the garden hose.

16.Once a month take every major appliance completely apart and then put
them back together.

17.Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for 5 or 6 hours
before drinking (note: a Department of Defense, not Naval, specialty RM.)

18.Invite at least 85 people you don't really like to come and visit for a
couple of months.

19.Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and
lie under it to read books.

20.Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills on your front and back
doors to that you either trip of the threshold or hit your head on the sill
every time you pass though one of them.

21.Lockwire the lug nuts on your car.

22.When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it is baking. Then
spread icing really thick on one side to level off the top.

23.Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool, shout "Man
Overboard, ship recovery!" , run into the kitchen and sweep all the
pots/pans/dishes off the counter onto the floor, then yell at your wife for
not having the place "stowed for sea."

24.Put on the headphone from your stereo (don't plug them in). Go and stand
in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in particular) "Stove manned and
ready." Stand there for 3 or 4 hours. Say (once again to nobody in
particular) "Stove secured." Roll up the headphone cord and put them away.

Sailorisms!!!

Me and Willy were lollygagging by the scuttlebutt after being aloft to
boy-butter up the antennas and were just perched on a bollard eyeballing
a couple of bilge rats and flangeheads using crescent hammers to pack
monkey shit around a fitting on a handybilly.

All of a sudden the dicksmith started hard-assing one of the deck apes
for lifting his pogey bait. The pecker-checker was a sewer pipe sailor
and the deckape was a gator. Maybe being blackshoes on a bird farm
surrounded by a gaggle of cans didn't set right with either of those
gobs.

The deck ape ran through the nearest hatch and dogged it tight because
he knew the penis machinist was going to lay below, catch him between
decks and punch him in the snot locker. He'd probably wind up on the
binnacle list but Doc would find a way to gundeck the paper or give it
the deep six to keep himself above board.

We heard the skivvywaver announce over the bitch box that the
breadburners had creamed foreskins on toast and SOS ready on the mess
decks so we cut and run to avoid the clusterfuck when the twidgets and
cannon cockers knew chow was on.

We were balls to the wall for the barn and everyone was preparing to hit
the beach as soon as we doubled-up and threw the brow over. I had a
ditty bag full of fufu juice that I was gonna spread on thick for the
bar hogs with those sweet bosnias. Sure beats the hell out of brown
bagging. Might even hit the acey-duecy club and try to hook up with a
Westpac widow. They were always on the dance floor on amateur night.

If you understand this, you've been there.  ^_^  ^_^  ^_^