Dead man travelling

I had an interesting conversation this past weekend with my friend Dups . If you know Dups, then you know the word “interesting” can frequently also mean “insane,” “crazy,” “ridiculous,” and “beyond retarded.”

If you don’t know Dups, read on and learn.



Dups has gleefully announced his vacation plans for this summer. He has managed to con work into giving him two months off. During that period he’s going to fly to London, England. From there he’s going to travel to Shanghi, China via train. With stops in parts of western Europe, Russia, Siberia and Mongolia. He’s also planning on climbing Mt. Elbrus, the highest peak in Europe, along the way.

He’s inquired if anyone is interested in joining him. Considering many of his friends have, behind his back, called this “Dead Dups Tour – 2006”, there has been, oddly enough, no takers. We’ve been thinking about getting a website www.deaddups.com as a sort of clearing house of photos when Dups was still alive and to take odds of him surviving those two months.

Even Dups seems kind of blaise about his odds of survival, cheerfully recounting horror stories of visas, train tickets and getting permission to climb the mountain. “They won’t give me much information about it,” he relayed. “Apparently someone died trying to climb it in 2004 and they’ve been reluctant to give out information ever since because they’re afraid it’ll hurt tourism."

Which sounds like a perfectly Russian thing to do. And would cause most sane people pause for thought on the whole “climbing the mountain where they keep how many people die a secret” thing. Fortunately, “Dups” and “sane” are two words that rarely end up in the same sentence.

This past weekend I was told about how he had to get extra life insurance because his plan, should his corpse be dumped in the Siberian wastes after running afoul of the Russian mob, was that the money from the policy be used to fly all of his friends to St. John’s to watch his body be put in a dory off Logy Bay and then set on fire. Afterwards, everyone would go to the Duke and get drunk off whatever money is remaining.

I just hope they remove the liver before the bonfire. It should be studied thoroughly as a miracle of modern biology. Dups claims to have a Masters in History. He really has a Masters of Alcoholism.



Anyway, while chatting with me, he told me that he’s considering make me the sole beneficiary of one of the extra life insurance policies.

“What? Why me?” I inquired.

“It’s my last act of revenge,” he said. “You can only get the money after you finish completing my biography.” And then he cackled.

Guess who has the last laugh, my friend. Here’s the deal. If you die* and leave me enough money to take a year or two off work and be able to travel (I have to go and visit the people I need to interview), I will write your biography. A real, honest-to-goodness book. No problem. In fact, it will be my pleasure to do so.

Something for you to think on while you consider getting that extra insurance policy. Such as “why would I be so eager to do so?”

I can think of two reasons – the dead can’t edit. And I don’t believe in ghosts.

So Dups, show me the money….

*I don’t actually want him to die. He was best man at my wedding, so that means I do like him. Plus, it would make the wedding photos depressing to look at. "Oh him. That's Dups. He's dead now."

There I times when I say I do, but it’s generally a temporary infuriation thing, like when the idiot used to call me hammered at 3 a.m. He doesn’t do that anymore. Cathy had a “talk” with him. Oddly, I think that was about the time he started losing all that weight and gave up eating animals.

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