Road Remedies

ILLUSION, COMA, PIMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE
MS NORDNORGE, Norway: Erm, I signed up for the coastal mail boat. What rugged implications: we'd charge up the jagged coastline, right across the very Arctic Circle, delivering homework and love letters. Neither snow, nor sleet, nor dark of night would detain this noble mission.

Yet the MS Nordnorge appears to be a cruise ship, though a petite one. The sort that closes its gym-cubicle for a solid 12 hours of cleaning. And then disrupts clients, docking at 2am and craning off containers.

I'll be honest: the purser won't permit me to upload files. And I'm pissed.

The satellite Internet system, please understand, is secure. No exceptions can be made. So sorry, this is Norway. Everything is orderly here, except you, the journalist squalling about a $1k loss of work.

I wail, I gnash my teeth and, in best Italian-American fashion, I begflatterflirtconnivebully.

Unstoppable force meets immovable object: Scandinavian calm.

The resulting black hole, should – as I somewhat sketchily understand physics – collapse the universe. Instead it corrugates only my brain and bank account.

"Work through the annoyance," a friend once advised. "You can only control your reaction. Work, work! It's productive, if nothing else."

As I write, edit, instruct into the void, I play Prince: Musicology and the track that follows: Illusion, Coma, Pimp and Circumstance:

Money might talk, but what does it say?
You better get busy if you wanna get paid.

As if...