“Rule Five-A: If your wife leaves you for a millionaire motel-chain-owning douchebag fan of Team Whale, make sure you get your beloved mock-bioluminescent Team Krill eyestalks out of the trunk of her Civic before she takes off” (141)
In a first person narrative that focuses on the reader as opposed to the narrator, it can be difficult to convey any life of the narrator to the reader. Russell frames this story as a list of instructions, but instead of making it impersonal, and thus quite boring, she inserts life into it using narrative voice. The narrator reveals bits of his personal life via the instructions provided to the reader. However, the narrator is unreliable in his
description of what exactly occurs at the so-called tailgates. They are shown to the reader through the lens of someone who wholeheartedly believes that they are doing something normal. The descriptions of Team Whale seem as though they would be fairly typical of most whale watching ships, even ones that go so far south. The seeming disdain that Team Krill receives would also be typical for people who would uproot their entire life to go to Antarctica and watch krill. The story could be taking place in our world, where there is no sporting event surrounding the watching of whales eat krill, but just seen through the eyes of a person suffering from delusions who believes the recreational activity of whale watching is a league sport between whales and krill.