Danger!!! Unspeakable Horrors Await!! FREE PUPPIES AND CANDY INSIDE!!!

Alright, for those not savvy, I've spent the better part of a month in St. Kitts, a small island in the carribean. Yes, to be sure, there ARE white sand beaches and an overabundance of sunshine and its "rays". There are resorts and plenty of food and drink to be had. However, there is no basketball, a reality that has slowly eaten away at me ever since setting foot on this third world rock. To me, a few days without shooting baskets is like asking mortal men to stand in a room featuring a naked Marisa Miller and do nothing... for a year. Yeah, I like shooting baskets. A lot...

Around day 14 of my stay, I was busy caroming a baseball as hard as I could off the hotel wall, due in part to a wave of boredom, but also because most people have never seen baseball on this island, and I relish the chance to be a strange white man in a predominately black locale. Around thirty minutes into my expedition, I had decided that I was going to perfect a knuckleball. My overabundance of free time dictated that this would be an excellent time to learn a skill I might need one day, and I decided to learn a knuckle ball instead. They're fun. So, here I am trying all different sorts of grip configurations, when I finally land one. The movement on this ball is insane to the point where when it hit the wall, it went skittering off towards the pool area of the hotel. Giving chase, I nearly ran over some fat dutch lady whom I blame entirely for pretty much everything. Thats when I saw it. A basketball goal. Right in the goddamn hotel, tucked away in the tennis courts. Salvation.

Always being prepared (like how Jon Voigt brought freaking dynamite on the boat in Anaconda), I had packed a basketball in my luggage. As one of the few people that saw the potential usefulness of Spalding's now defunct "Infusion" line, I made sure that I would never travel without a readily inflatable ball again. In my mirth, I quickly shot back to my room and prepared myself for glorious basketball. I put on the sneakers, which I also packed (Nike Durants...) and applied a layer of sunscreen, because I shoot topless. The only thing left to do was inflate the ball.

Which didn't inflate. 

Due to some horrific malfunction with Spalding's now defunct "Infusion" model ball, I was unable to capture any air as it rushed into the empty ball. The pumping mechanism, as it turned out, had been damaged to enough of an extent that it would allow air in, but was unable to keep it there. I stood in my room, defeated and probably on the verge of tears, the defective ball resting slovenly on the bed next to me. The realization that the hotel probably had a ball shot to me, and the reassurances I gave myself drove me towards the front desk, where I was given precise coordinates as to where I might attain a ball. The Tennis Pro Shop.

As a small hut nestled alongside the outlying courts, the "Pro Shop" offered itself as a last bastion of hope that I might be able to get some roundball in a tropical locale. I approached the front desk and quickly laid eyes on an individual who seemed like he might be of assistance. After suffering through an incomprehensible bout of "Island Mon" talk (they all speak like drunken Jamaicans on this island, which I derisively call "Fake Jamaica") I learned what a small part of my more reasonable self had feared. There was no basketball.

Of course there was no goddamn basketball. In the past twenty minutes, I had seen my hopes at their most bored, then soar to an all time high, then be raped and torn asunder as my last options fell by the wayside. With all of the ultra dramatic fluctuations in the recent moments of my island excursion, why the hell WOULD there be? Sad, and completely dejected, I decided that I would roam the perimeter of the hotel. 

Now, for a small island, the Marriott hotel inhabiting it is ludicrously large. So large in fact, that I should probably clarify that I wasn't actually legally staying there. Anyhow, The size of the place is pretty shocking. I was able to see all kinds of things while on my walk of shame, including something I never thought I would ever see. That's right, a buffalo wing bone inside of a used condom.

Grossiosity aside, I feel like I must clarify that while the interior townships of the island might commonly feature such abominations, the pristine landscapes of the Marriott are a different story. After puzzling over the logistical queries this sight produced, I turned my attention to perhaps the more disturbing reality of the situation. The reality that perhaps if there were more basketball goals on the island, and thus better ways to kill time, that such forms of sexual cuisinart might not penetrate (pun) the sensitive resort at which I was illegally staying.

For those keeping score, you would know that this isn't my first foray onto this island. There is a veterinary school on the island, which my girlfriend attends. Before anyone jumps to conclusions and starts wondering about the educational merits of  a school on an island which features buffalo condom wings, you need to ask yourself this: "What are the educational merits of a school on an island which features buffalo condom wings, as well as two headed lizards?" Yeah, they have those here, too...

My first visit to the island was typical of any vacation to anywhere. I spent the first few days sort of awkwardly gawking like a bumpkin, and trying to feel my way around the local geography. While I spent the first few days accompanying my girlfriend everywhere she went, I noticed a peculiar phenomenon that seemed out of place outside of my extensive sci-fi and horror collection: There are two headed lizards here. And not just a few. You see them all over the place. As far as my scientific hypotheses are concerned, I can only say that I have developed none in lieu of saying: "Two headed F'ing lizards?! F- YEAH!"

St. Kitts is a weird place. Not only are there the aforementioned anomalies aboard this island, because I have seen things in the collective two months I have spent here. People play cricket here like hotcakes. I'm not talking like, civilized cricket either. I'm talking full fledged And-1 ghetto cricket, where people get taken out between the wickets or whatever they're called. Not only that, but people drive like absolute hell for leather maniacs on this island. All my years of playing Twisted Metal and driving through Houston are worth nothing, as the drivers here mimic nothing less than a cross between Deathproof and Rob Zombie Mario Kart on crystal meth. Couple that with the fact that the pedestrians here just don't give a fuck and will walk out into the street in the face of total vehicular obliteration, and you have quite a high stakes drive to the store. Awesome.

All said, St. Kitts isn't exactly what I'd call a real tourist destination as much as I'd say it's an island that has perhaps overly embraced it's own obscurity by willingly teetering on the line between Commonwealth (apparently that's some kind of non-American, potentially communist government...) and Tarantino/Rodriguez style sex and violence.... with no basketball...

side note: Billy Mays is on TV... that guy could sell dick to a nun...