Cruise Baby, Cruise!
I made a few transatlantic crossings the old-fashioned way. On ships with real decks from where one could lounge and study the ocean, the seagulls, the skies, savour the smell of salt and ozone, and where one ran into pretty girls and wise old men. It was the most wholesome, peaceful and at the same time stimulating experience of my early life. The decks made the oceanliner, stood out in your mind and the first place you’d run up to after breakfast or any other meal, until well into moonlight. And if your journey hit a rough weather spell, they’d be roped off but you could still sit somewhere and look at those very same decks getting sprayed with wild ocean water, till the scene cleared and your stomach settled again.
I now live near the ocean and frequently see those monstrous, deckless cruiseliners float bye, and think ‘what a waste!’. For someone discovered that decks are ‘lost’ space and can be filled in with more cabins, closing everything off, pumping in air-conditioning and ventilating the place to death, killing the seascape, those wonderful smells and sounds and sights. The hight of artificiality, nothing genuine, real, scintillating anymore. Plastic fun.
Floating suburbs, an apartment block with adjoining malls, full of stupid people getting drunk, who don’t remember much of Alexandria, Istanbul, much of anything, but man, did they have fun. Sea, what sea? We were on a cruise, fella, get with it, will yah! The only thing missing… a parking lot!
No wonder cruise ships are bacteria and fire traps these days, there’s no fresh water to even look at anymore, except for the Evian they plonk on your table three times a day. Because no lovely deck to make love on or barf your heart out, as the case may be but never at once…
The Daily Harpoon 
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