April 1998
Hi Sue,
Just another note from your bottom dwelling brother.

Last week I had a bad day at the office.

Before I can
tell you what happened to me, I first must bore you
with a few technicalities of my job.

As you know my
office lies at the bottom of the sea.

I wear a suit to
the office.

It's a wetsuit.

This time of year the
water is quite cool.

So what we do to keep warm is
this:

We have a diesel powered industrial water heater.

This
$20,000 piece of shit sucks the water out of the sea.

It heats it to a delightful temp.

It then pumps it
down to the diver through a garden hose which is taped
to the air hose.

Now this sounds like a damn good plan,
and I've used it several times with no complaints.

What
I do, when I get to the bottom and start working, is I
take the hose and stuff it down the back of my neck.

This floods my whole suit with warm water.

It's like
working in a Jacuzzi.

Everything was going well until all of a sudden, my ass
started to itch.

So, of course, I scratched it.

This
only made things worse.

Within a few seconds my ass
started to burn.

I pulled the hose out from my back,
but the damage was done.

In agony I realized what had
happened.

The hot water machine had sucked up a
jellyfish and pumped it into my suit.

This is even
worse than the poison ivy you once had under a cast.

Now I had that hose down my back.

I don't have any hair
on my back, so the jellyfish couldn't get stuck to my
back.

My ass crack was not as fortunate.

When I
scratched what I thought was an itch, I was actually
grinding the jellyfish into my ass.

I informed the dive supervisor of my dilemma over the
communicator.

His instructions were unclear due to the
fact that he along with 5 other divers were laughing
hysterically.

Needless to say I aborted the dive.

I
was instructed to make 3 agonizing in-water
decompression stops totaling 35 minutes before I could
come to the surface for my chamber dry decompression.

I
got to the surface wearing nothing but my brass helmet.

My suit and gear were tied to the bell.

When I got on
board the medic, with tears of laughter running down
his face, handed me a tube of cream and told me to
shove it "up my ass" when I get in the chamber.

The
cream put the fire out, but I couldn't shit for two
days because my asshole was swollen shut.

I later found
out that this could easily have been prevented if the
suction hose was placed on the leeward side of the
ship.

Anyway, the next time you have a bad day at the office,
think of me.

Think about how much worse your day would
be if you were to shove a jellyfish up your ass.

I hope
you have no bad days at the office.

But if you do, I
hope this will make more tolerable.

Take care, and I
hope to hear from you soon.

Love, Brian