Aye, the wind was blowing coldly and cruelly from the north at what I guessed to be around 50 knots. And as I stood on the rig floor, I could hear the steel in the derrick groaning as the wind screamed through the trusses, plucking the turns of wirerope as if they were strings on a zither. The roughnecks were slinging the monstrous iron tongs about as if they were little plastic prizes from a box of cracker jacks. And the snow poured in over the tops of the steel panels that shielded us from the wind. And I stuck my head out of the side door next to the vee-door and screamed down through the churning snow, hoping that my voice would penetrate the roiling sheet. Somewhere in the distance I heard Dennis shouting back at me and I took it to mean that he had heard my request, whereupon I ducked back into the relative warmth of the rig floor enclosure, back into the haze of diesel exhaust fumes. I fixed the latch on the steel door and turned to see the tongs attack the drill pipe. The squealing of the cathead was a haunting noise and the rig floor shook as the chains went taught on the tongs. The thunder of the generators and mud pumps rattled my teeth in their sockets. The rig floor is an exhaustive collection of exotic ways to die and the passing of time is measured in near misses and close calls. Hence the bristling hair and tickling sensation in the back of my neck and the tightness in my throat.

The two dozen or so stands of drillpipe that towered in the derrick looked like bundles of giant black whiskers as they writhed in the wind. And I shuttered. These stands were of heavy weight drill pipe and to stand beneath them as they bent and gyrated in the fingerboard was as frightening as being exposed to the indiscriminate malevolence of a tornado or a surging tidal wave. To see such massive iron objects bend like boiled pasta was highly unnerving. You could not but anticipate the violent consequences of even a single break, a thousand pound javelin plunging through your body like a lawndart through a ziplock bag of tomato soup. The roughnecks, as a matter of course, were oblivious to such remote hazards and they looked like fleas as they worked amidst the weaving iron shafts.

The drawworks roared back to life and began winching the wirerope into its ravenous belly. The travelling block, a colossal pulley the size of a small car, rose ominously into the night, vanishing into the blinding glare of halogen lights shining through blowing snow. Again the rig floor shook as the tongs wrenched the joint loose. In went the slips and the kelly whined as it spun up.

The Bulgarian Ass-Inhabiting Hermit Crab

Ok. I've decided to continue blogging. But I'm going to start over. As you may have noticed, all previous posts have been removed. Family and friends were deeply disturbed by the content. Thus I am attempting to write a tamer blog. No more profanity. No more stories about family and friends. Henceforth, my writings will be a departure from the narrative style that marked my previous work. I will focus an a more impersonal journalistic style. To family and friends I say: I'm very disappointed in you. What you saw here was a part of the real me. You disapproved (and I don't blame you for that because its your prerogative). But know this, I will never stop writing as myself. However, I will not share those writings with you and they will be published either under an assumed name or posthumously. Consider yourselves deprived of ever really knowing the true me.

As for my devoted readers, send me your email addresses and I will be sure to supply you with the "good stuff."

What follows is a brief description of a terrible creature that came to be late one evening when my bother and I were delirious with sleep deprivation. We laughed and cried until the sun came up the following morning. In fact, we still laugh about it.

The Bulgarian ass-inhabiting hermit crab (also known as the Fijian Nard Wrangler) is a particularly pugnacious species of hermit crab that inhabits a chain of islands near Fiji in the South Pacific. It was (accidentally) discovered by a Bulgarian naturalist late in the nineteenth century. These hermit crabs are unique in that they do not have shells. Instead, they creep up on the native male population as they slumber on the beaches under the stars after a wild night of fire dancing ( or other seemingly pointless native activities ). These crabs get a running start and weasel their way past the natives' loin-cloths and lodge themselves in the victims' bums. These bum-dwelling crustaceans are notorious for their surly dispositions, their marked propensity for violence, and their abhorrence of things that jiggle. When provoked (which is most of the time) the bum-inhabiting Bulgarian hermit crab will burst forth from the poor fellow's rectum and viciously attack his scrotum. When the disgruntled crab is sufficiently exhausted it retreats back into the cozy confines of its bum-home. Eventually, the skin on the hosts scrotum becomes thick and leathery and the man and his crab become surprisingly fond of one another. Thus an unlikely symbiotic bond develops. The crab continues to use the host's scrotum as a punching bag and by-and-by becomes outrageously powerful and even begins to exhibit territorial behavior. In one incident that was reported last year to a local UN relief office, a local islander was courting a young lady in a nearby village. One evening, as he trotted through the jungle; en route to a tete-a-tete with his beloved, he was accosted by the young lady's father and six nefarious brothers. All had large machetes and were only seconds away from hacking the poor chap to bits when out burst his viciously territorial bum-dwelling comrade. The crab went to work on those surly mofos and when it was done, the bodies of the assailants were un-identifiable. The young man was later quoted as saying: "These crabs are totally auspicious. I don't know but sometimes I believe this in my heart."