Tag Archives: incompetent

a critical review of equatorial rhythms, “written” by rak, former coast guard seaman

Equatorial Rhythms, “typed” by RAK, is the pathetic, badly written “story” of a young coast guard seaman (who enlisted in the United States Coast Guard because he knew his lack of basic survival skills, and in fact, life skills in general, wouldn’t enable him to survive being drafted to Vietnam for even one full day, nay, not even one full hour during the Vietnam War), crossing the equator south for the first time.  This self-absorbed, narcissistic young man’s self-pitying past and dismal present intersect with the foreknowledge of his bleak, frightening, and boring future, which he will spend lying on his wife’s couch, letting her pay the bills for ten years, then suddenly dumping her after she survives devastating brain surgery, because suddenly she isn’t content to pay all the bills and be a quiet, crocheting robot anymore.  This dull, depressing “story” examines life aboard a coast guard ship, with all its gray-tinted, salty, and decaying “friendships,” petty complaints about stuff that should be barely worth mention by normal humans, the author’s unique, sadly unfunny, bathetic humor and what the narrator incorrectly terms “violence,” a couch-potato-wannabe life, clumsily contrasted with the power of the impossibly vast, eternally wild open sea:  a power and majesty the narrator will never, ever, ever understand, or even appreciate with the respect it, the open sea, is due.