(no subject)

Good morrow to ye & bore da. Wilt have Tea or Beer? As for myself, I prefer Tea; in Pembrokshire where I was Rear'd we acquired more taste for it. O yes, Cymru am byth, but I will take a Welsh ship as Easily as another. What country have Men at Sea?

As it be said that if thou must be Vengeful, let it be a swift and thorough Vengeance, if thou must take up with Outcasts, it were better to command than to be a Common Man & if thou will be a Common Man it were better to be an Outcast than serve "Honestly" shipboard.

So-called Honest Pay is low & the work is hard for the eventual saiety & pleasure of merchantmen, not those who labour. If a Man want pleasure & leisure for himself he needs must be a merchantman or a Pyrate & at least a Pyrate does not deny that their hands are dipp'd in the mud.

Not six weeks ere I was brought aboard the Royal James as Captive Navigator I was made Captain of the Royal Rover, our late Captain Davis being shot off the Isle of Princes (now called by some Principe). In accordance with solid Practice the Isle of Princes was plundered by my crew to Great Effect & I was acclaim'd "Proof from Bullets", Sailors being superstitious men.

This shewn to be my calling, I have set out to take a great number of Ships and done so with Goodwill towards my men & the Righteous Disdain for those captains which, calling themselves Honest, have been Cowards & Scoundrels &etc. when faced by honest Pyrates. I would rather lose to the Courageous than conquer the weak, but whence come such Men? Show me & there I will go.

I am John Roberts, call'd Bartholomew, & thou art aboard the Royal Fortune.

Tea? Da iawn! I like thee already.

What? It's talk like a pirate day. I picked Black Bart.

(no subject)

This article, with its mention of the Ghost Cat (actually a cougar "haunting" a Virginia town) reminded me of a book I loved when I was a kid, which I thought was called Ghost Cat but it turns out was called Time Cat. It was an awesome book, about a cat whose nine lives weren't sequential but were in fact different eras of history which he could visit. One life was in Egypt in 2700 BCE, one was in Italy in 1468, et cetera (young Da Vinci drawing pictures of his family in mid-sneeze is an image that has stuck with me for twenty years).

A little later, as a teen, I got hooked on Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat heroic-crime series. Recently I was telling someone -- possibly the cafe at large -- about them and decided that I wanted a copy of A Stainless Steel Rat is Born, not the first book in the series but the earliest chronologically. That showed up yesterday, and I dove in.

Between having flashbacks to Time Cat and reading Stainless Steel Rat, I'm pretty sure I now understand why I like Torchwood so much. :D

But in order for us to accomplish all this good for them we must operate outside their barriers and well outside of their rules. We must be as stealthy as rats in the wainscoting of their society. It was easier in the old days of course, and society had more rats when the rules were looser, just as old wooden buildings have more rats than concrete buildings. But there are rats in the buildings now as well. Now that society is all ferroconcrete and stainless steel there are fewer gaps between the joints. It takes a very smart rat indeed to find these openings. Only a stainless steel rat can be at home in this environment....it is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat!

(no subject)

THINGS I HAVE THIS MONTH THAT I DID NOT HAVE AT THIS TIME LAST MONTH:

1. An apartment of my own.
2. A bed I own. (pending delivery on Thursday)
3. A television I own.
3a. A hernia from carrying the television up three flights of stairs.
4. Shelving. SO MUCH SHELVING.
5. More knowledge than I ever wanted to have about various methods of killing cockroaches.

THINGS I HAVE THIS YEAR THAT I DID NOT HAVE AT THIS TIME LAST YEAR:

1. A job that pays a living wage.
2. Health insurance.
3. A scar from a broken wrist.
4. An ice-cream machine.
5. An estranged sibling.
6. A savings account.

Asi-asi; on the whole, not doing too badly, Sam my lad.

Tomorrow I get to set up the television. This could get interesting. When I asked my parents for a television for my birthday I was expecting a second-hand 19" TV or something, basically a thing I could plug my Wii into. Instead they went out and bought an $1100 television for themselves and sent me their old one, a flat-panel HDTV hybrid that doubles as a computer monitor. Into this I must somehow plug my DVD-recorder, Wii, and HDTV antenna.

Jesus, it sounds like I'm some kind of millionaire or something, but literally everything that plugs into the TV, plus the TV itself, was a gift from my parents. The only thing I'm actually buying is the LERBERG (I just like saying LERBERG) TV stand I'm ordering from Ikea, which costs $15. The whole setup is probably worth more than all the rest of my belongings put together.

If I can manage not to electrocute myself setting it up....