You look at me. I'm normally about as white as they come, but today you notice something else. I seem a little ashen, even for me. Maybe actually a little greenish. "Yes, I am feeling a little unwell," I say, thinking how kind you are for asking.
I realize, though, that I am not alone. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It reminds me of the only time in my life I ever got seasick. It was right here in Alaska on a Kenai Fjords tour boat -- a big catamaran that holds a couple hundred glacier gawking, puffin lovin', whale watching tourists and the locals who love them. That fateful trip had high seas, and biiiig looooong rollers that were coming right in from the Gulf of Alaska. They were relentless, and three quarters of the passengers were not doing very well at all. The college kids working on the boat for the summer were passing out barf bags like after-dinner mints, and they had many takers. "Ha!" I thought to myself. I've never been seasick a day in my life, and I've spent a lot of time on boats. I feel bad for these poor saps, but it's not going to happen to me. Why I've seen seas twice this high. I've been stuck in these very conditions in this very place and never got sick.
15 minutes later, I was leaning over the side, chumming the creatures below with a big helping of recycled vegetable lasagna. That's how I feel now.
I get emails all the time that say "That Sarah Palin! She makes me sick! She makes me mad! I can't believe she did (fill in the blank)!!! How can you do it every day???" And I think to myself. "Yup. Seen it all before. Same old Sarah. I can take it. Nothing can faze me. She was my governor. Why, I've transcribed her speeches in their entirety and lived to tell the tale."
But today, I am hurling my metaphorical veggie lasagna over the rail and into cyberspace. The funny thing is, that there were three emails in my inbox, as I sat down to write this -- all from men I admire greatly, who pretty much have seen it all too. The subject lines?
1) Take me now, Lord....
2) Better get a barf bag
3) I think I'm going to puke
And that made me feel like I did that day on the Kenai Fjords tour boat. I may be engaging in undignified public regurgitation, but at least I'm not the only one. As I said, it's a good thing and a bad thing.
So get your candied Ginger, or your double strength Dramamine, or your shiatsu pressure point wrist bands or whatever you use. Because we're going on a cruise.
Sarah Palin's new book has a title, America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag, and a release date, Nov. 23, publisher HarperCollins announced Tuesday.
The Alaska ex-governor and former Republican vice presidential candidate, whose memoir Going Rogue has sold more than 2 million copies, has been working on a tribute to American values.
It will include "selections from classic and contemporary readings that have moved her," according to HarperCollins, along with "the nation's founding documents to great speeches, sermons, letters, literature and poetry, biography, and even some of her favorite songs and movies."
The book is inspired not only by her "strong belief in the importance of family, faith, and patriotism," but by some of the people she met last year while promoting Going Rogue. Palin skipped major cities such as Seattle and Los Angeles, traditional stops on most author tours, and instead focused on smaller communities more receptive to her conservative message.
"The book will also include portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her deep love of country, her strong rootedness in faith, and her profound love and appreciation of family," the statement from HarperCollins reads.
Yes, boys and girls, just in time for that money making holiday the liberals are trying to destroy, you too can buy a collection of stuff other people have written, with comments that Sarah Palin's 'collaborator' has written, that Sarah Palin herself read, probably, and approved. All for one green Andrew Jackson, give or take a Lincoln.
I can hardly wait to find out what her favorite songs and movies are. In our Dramamine induced haze, we start to hear a voice... soft at first, then increasing to a loud discordant screech:
"I just totally love Toby Keith, and anything by Big & Rich. And any song about red, white and blue stuff because they act color-wise as the symbolization of flagginess which wraps right around faithy family priorities that speak to ordinary real Americans that don't live near large bodies of water.
And my favorite movie is that one, you know, about the sports team that nobody thinks will win, with that guy with an injury that nobody thinks is any good, and someone dies, and then they pray and the team pulls together like the founding fathers and it's all miraculous going to show there that if you work really hard and if God opens a door you can just plow right through it and get a movie made about you."
Particularly noteworthy is the fact that she will use her experiences from the Going Rogue book tour as padding for America by Heart , thereby paving the way for the use of her experiences on the America by Heart tour to pad her next big project - Just for the Halibut: Sarah Palin Cooks Up Real Alaskan Food for Real Americans or wherever the Hell the Gravy Train stops next.
And maybe it's just because I'm wasted on my Ultimate Drowsiness Formula seasick meds, but hand on my heart, and the other clutching the rail, I promise that just like with Going Rogue, I will read and blog the book so you don't have to... I love you, Man.
OK, you better head off now. I'm thinking about what's in store and suddenly I don't feel so good.