Mr Scuba Stuff Guy, I'm talking to you. You with the dive flag wallet, the mighty fresh "divers do it deeper" license plate frame, the Shark-shaped Dive Flag bumper sticker and dive shirt collection featuring half nakked chicks that are way out of your league. If you need to immerse yourself in Scuba crap to convince the world you're a diver, you probably aren't. Listen Squid Cap, you're not fooling anybody - the reason you decorated your house with Wyland prints, drink coffee from the Aggressor mug, listen to Jack Johnson all day and wear a faded ScubaPro hat is not to convince the world you're a diver, its to convince yourself. Here's a shocker for you: you can't will yourself into a diver. You need to dive. Being certified doesn't make you a diver. Diving does. Put down the 6 different Scuba mags you get delivered, stop going to scuba club meetings, log off of the 12 dive sites you puruse every night, take off your DAN windbreaker and get out and dive. If you don't start diving and just try to continue to fake your way into the club, we're all gonna laugh at you and you'll look like a dork.
Hey you up there - DFA ("death from above") diver... you know who you are. You're the guy that insists on diving over me and not beside me. I look left and you're not there. I look right and you're not there. I look into the abyss and you're not there. I look up and there you are, like a Macy's Parade balloon in my blind spot... kinda wobbling along the dive, high above it all. When I ask, your well-rehearsed response of "I see more from up here" isn't ringing true, Dirigible. Its clear you simply don't practice. It don't make you bad people, just a DFA diver. Listen SR71, get a grip - if you can't stay outta the Ionosphere for 50 minutes and insist on flying high above it all, we're through - go find another DFA and you guys can duke it out until you're both on the surface wondering what the hell happened. If I need to clip you off like a lift bag to keep track of you, we're all gonna laugh at you and you'll look like a dork.
You there - Back Pack Hippie. Johnny 60's double hose vintage diver or Joe 70's ScubaPro giant chrome second stage dude. Yeah you, J-valve - with no body hair from diving a shiney 45 year old Fredricks of Hollywood looking latex suit all these years. Your pointed feet and bad toe nails jammed into those wacky Voit duck fins, and your dented grill smashed into that cracking black rubber round mask with steel frame clip are the dive version of a WD40 Pocket Protector. Listen wingless throwback - your gear is not cool. Its just old. I'm feeling you, Summer Of Love - I know you're into your '68 VW bus with the curtains, and your Joni Mitchell collection. Word up, Haight-Ashbury, that homemade rebreather you're working on in the lab you call a garage, the one with the counterlung that looks like a hot water bottle, that's not fresh either, Heathkit. Listen Lenny Bruce - if you're over 60 and you have a stringy gray pony tail with beads in it, or if you're over 50 and have a crystal around your neck, or if you're still diving a plastic backpack in 2007, you're not cool - you're a fossil. Show up in that rig you friggen Trog and we'll all laugh at you and you'll look like a dork.
Scuba dog owner - subjecting us to your weird "animals are people" personality disorder is just not cool. I know you put a dive flag coller on the mutt, gave him a name like Mares or KooStow or Doria, and you take him on every dive (and looks like everywhere else, as is evidenced by the ample pooch drool on the "passanger" side of your crusty dive rig) but hear me out: Keep Cujo away from me. When I come up from a dive, I don't need Bowser sticking his nose into my crotch when I'm taking off my gear. I prefer to not have my Wing and Mask covered with your fleabag's cast off fur, as he pants and sniffs through my stuff. I love dogs. Just not yours. Keep Benji at home in the yard, you loser. If you need a dog to pull chicks, you have no game. And if your dog is your best pal and comes everywhere with you, you need to shake yourself, Charlie Brown. If your dog, Phillipe, is in your car at the dive site waiting for you when you get out, we're all gonna laugh at you and you'll look like a dork.
More soon. Bob stole my Scuba Historian 70's Cert guy rant earlier.... dammitall. You know, the dude who still has a subscription to Popular Mechanics and when he got his cert there were no cards with 4 digit numbers, it took 12 weeks to get certified, his swim test was 2000 yards up hill in the snow. Both ways. Oh, and you could just walk in off Redondo and get five 12 pound lobster in 10 minutes...
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Ken
