THE BIG SHIP SAIL$

(Is that an iceberg or are you just pleased to see me?)

Yesterday, on Entertainment Tonight, I watched the massive, top-heavy bulk of the Queen Mary II sail out of Southampton for Florida, with its on-board casino and planetarium, a full complement of passengers each paying up to $48 thousand a ticket. I couldn't somehow ignore a nagging feeling of unease. Wasn't this almost pornographic display of wealth, without even a single Irish immigrant in steerage, some weird affront to the gods of the sea? Maybe I've watched too many movies about the Titanic, and seen The Poseidon Adventure too many times, but I seem to recall that whenever a passenger ship was billed as the biggest and most luxurious of all time, it had a horrible habit of sinking in mid-ocean. Also, with the War on Terror still raging, isn't a monster liner like the Queen Mary II a impossibly tempting terrorist magnet?

(And the chains of the sea will have busted in the night/and be buried at the bottom of the ocean. – Bob Dylan)

(If I had a boat/I'd sail out on the ocean/And if I had a pony/I'd ride it on my boat. -- Lyle Lovett)