IT’S MINUS FFFECKING FORTY-FFFECKING-SEVEN! The flashing sign outside the hotel says so and the carrion crow on the nearby lamppost squawks a dark reminder of fate, should your luck run out in this arctic wilderness. Two weeks I’ve been here waiting to get a job on the oilfield, and every day I’ve trudged to the office, freezing my pips off, and they tell me the same thing: “Come back tomorrow.” I mustn’t grumble, but it’s no wonder they nickname this place “the Zoo.” I’ve met some real animals so far, such as the cocaine-injecting ice truckers, the First Nations Elvis impersonators, and last but not least a bunch of landlocked pirates from Newfoundland. The Newfies, as they are fondly known, all talk like salty sea dogs and introduce themselves in medieval voices, saying, “I be Ron Flynn” and “I be from Newfoundland.” They all say “Arrr” a lot, drink a lot, and smoke a lot of weed. But they are a good craic and sound fellas, even the one with no teeth who wears his Wellingtons in the disco.
Apart from all that, being here is no joke, as most days I’ve been confined to my room. Hibernating like a grizzly bear and achieving a monumental thirty-two-hour snooze marathon, missing a whole day of my life. In my hours of infinite boredom I’ve been learning to play an antique harmonica, kindly given to me by a drunken Father Christmas impersonator in a biker bar. But after a week I’ve totally given up due to the mesmerizing effects of BC bud, British Columbia’s finest marijuana. . . . As I head down to the bar, the unmistakable green smog of BC comes from under every door in almost every room, with it the familiar clink of beer bottles, pirates’ laughter, and Beavis and Butt-Head on MTV. One of the drunken pirates walks out of his room wearing only women’s underwear and a trucker’s cap perched on top of his head.
He sees me and leaps back into the room, screaming like a girl, and pirate laughter echoes down the corridor.
“Haargh haargh haargh, me hearties.” They all laugh.
“She won’t want them for Christmas now, boy,” cackles Long John.
“Aaargh, Jim lad,” says Redbeard.
“They be soiled goods now,” laughs Blackbeard.
As I walk past their door, they all wail and shout at me to join them in their little world of pirate lunacy, but I make my excuses and hit the bar.
One hundred dollars left and I lose forty-five of it on the poker machine while praying for a gambling miracle to get me out of this arctic nightmare.
So homesick and depressed, I retire back to my dingy room with a big bag of BC and a crate of beer from the bar.
The Christmas television is a total joke. Bruce Springsteen got that right. “Fifty-seven channels and nothing on.” Nothing at all to give you the slightest inkling that it’s Christmas day on this frozen planet.
After a few puffs of the legendary BC, I’m welded to the mattress, unable to move anything except for my eyes and the remote control. I can’t believe American television is such fucking garbage. It’s no wonder some of them get so fat and fucked up and go around shooting each other. Maybe if they had better television they would stay indoors and behave. Who knows?
“Next on Discovery, Ancient Prophecies. A two-hour Apocalypse Christmas special with your host, David McCallum.”
“No fucking way!” I press the remote like a madman.
Anything remotely festive will do—a nice old movie perhaps, or Christmas Top of the Pops. Christmas carols, Santa, reindeer—anything! But after another fifty-seven flicks on the remote and eleven pulls on the joint, I’m back with McCallum, Nostradamus, and Old Mother Shipton.
“Jesus Christ! Doom, doom, fucking doom, for fuck’s sake.”
I chance yet another quick flick through fifty-seven channels of adverts and bullshit and back to where I started.
“Nice one. Apocalypse it is then.”
So I smoke my way to oblivion as the BC kicks in a gear and David takes us back through time, with his monotone haunting voice creating the perfect chilling atmosphere for total world destruction.
We begin in the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the apple and then move on to Noah’s Ark, the Great Flood, and how this could all happen again quite soon.
“Great!”
Next we travel to ancient Egypt for a lesson in pyramid alignment, then a short trip to ancient Israel to read the Dead Sea Scrolls as I smoke more and watch with fear and fascination. Then David reads passages from the book of Revelations, writing down the number of the beast, 666, on a blackboard in the studio, and as we come to the end of the show, he adds up all the dates and numbers and then multiplies them with some Egyptian hieroglyphics and calmly announces that the world’s gonna end on New Year’s Day 2002!
“Fan-fucking-tastic!” Apocalypse just around the corner and here I am in Grimshaw, Alberta, freezing me tits off.
I should be in Ibiza or somewhere, surrounded by scantily clad party girls instead of scantily clad pirates high on cocaine. . . . There’s a knock at the door. It’s Fat Luke, one of the young pirates.
“Did you know the world is going to end in 2002?” I ask him as he comes in and slumps down on the bed next to me, a little too close for comfort. He shrugs his opinion and flicks the remote to the music video channel. As Kiss take to the stage at Donington Rock Festival 1994, Luke starts talking about his girlfriend back in Newfoundland and the numerous unsavory and probably illegal sex acts he performs with her. I cringe in disgust as he laughs with a mouth like a burned-out fuse box, and I wonder how the fuck someone like him can possibly have a girlfriend. But then again I’ve seen a bearded abominable snowwoman on a bus in Winnipeg , so it’s quite possible. He then starts asking me about my own sexual history, so I quickly change the subject back to heavy metal and pass him the joint as he plays air guitar from the edge of my bed. He’s headbanging and frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, spewing question after question after question. Do I like Slayer, do I like Metallica, Anthrax, and AC/DC?
“Yes, yes, yes,” I keep saying.
Now Beavis and Butt-Head are on the screen and he’s doing really bad impressions of them while theatrically smoking my joint, then handing it back all bum sucked from his dribbling mouth!
Why me, Lord? I think to myself. Why me?
I wish he would fuck off and die or leave me alone at least, but it is Christmas after all, so maybe I should try to get into the spirit of things—goodwill to all men and all that bollocks!
“So who’s your favorite band than, Luke?” I smile, passing him a beer.
“Anything Satanic.” He grins, flicking his tongue between his fingers like Gene Simmons on the telly.
“OK then.”
We clink bottles and pull a Christmas cracker.
Luke gets the yellow paper hat, which he puts on his head, making him look even more foolish, and I get the plastic whistle and read out the crap Xmas joke.
So why are pirates called pirates?
Because they arrrrrrr!