(no subject)

Come aboard, all of you, come aboard and take your rest.

What do you think of my coat? You might call it cheap, but it is very hardwearing. They make it from finest Southern cotton, and it's nothing flashy to catch the eye in battle, this plain calico. Not that it matters a whit anymore; they see me coming by the coat, and know who is boarding.

I know, you see, the value of things; once I was a quartermaster, and a very good one too, but that bastard Vane was mutinied on and me elected by accord to high piracy in his place. Thus you find me -- captain -- of the fine Curlew, much finer than the Kingston that was Vane's and then mine.

Oh, do call me Jack. Jack Rackham, at your service.

No, I would not bother Anne there, were I you; she hardly needs my protection and, if you should try, you will find her a fierce fighter. I brought her aboard over protest of a worthless husband, and it has been her thought to plunder Jamaica in this the year of our lord seventeen hundred and twenty, once this damnable hot weather is done and autumn has fallen. Though I do not like this Read fellow she is so fond of; he hangs about her too much.

Well, and perhaps we will all be hanged in the end. What of it? There have been greater pirates before me and will be after me, I am sure. But I will leave my mark, listen you -- and for more than Anne Bonny, who will leave her own. With her on my decks and the one true Jolly Roger, my Jolly Roger, flown over the sail, all of these waters will tremble.

Pirates, my guests, are terrible things. We steal, and we kill, and there may be a romance about us but someday there will not be so much. So while we may, while I may, I wear the calico and fly the colours, and perhaps they will tell stories about me when I am gone.

I am Calico Jack Rackham, and you will know me by my flag.



What? They said talk like a pirate day, not talk like every pirate day. I picked Jack Rackham this year.

Incidentally, Jack Rackham's flag is the one flown by Barbossa in the Pirates films. So he did live on after all, as did his legendary female crewmates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. He's quite the storyteller's pirate, is old Jack.

(no subject)

I have updated The Valet Of Anize!

I decided, for my own sanity and as it seemed to be the more popular choice, to continue adding parts to the chapter to which they belong rather than making new posts. I'm going to try to make sure they're sizeable chunks if not whole chapters. Sorry guys, it's just the best way to go for now, I think.

You can find the new update here; that link should take you to the new cut text, but if not, the new stuff is marked with a full horizontal rule so it's easier to find. I have chapter six underway, too, so that's good; I may be able to rip through it, now that I know firmly where it's headed.

I won't lie that I had some issues to work with in this chapter, not literary so much as social, and having a lot to do with clothing and how clothing is gendered in a society with more gender equality than ours. There's still one more scene to go in which I'm going to have to either address or deliberately ignore the issue, so I'll talk more about it then, once it's written.

(no subject)

This is going to be one of those chatty days.

First: writerinadrawer is down to four writers, so you should go read and vote!

It's come down to caladria, copperbadge, cruentum, and kalichan. Clearly the Hard C and K contingent fight dirty. :D

Second: LAST NIGHT I PICKLED EVERYTHING.

Okay, not everything. But a lot of things! I had a PeaPod delivery, with many supplies, so I put half of my Ew Gross Pickles in a jar with the brine, to see if age improves them, and the other half into a double-strength Kool-Aid mixture. I also made two jars of pickled eggs in malt vinegar, one to put in the fridge and one to put in "a cool, dark place" to see which works better.

And I made two jars of salted lemons, again one for the fridge and one for just an ordinary shelf. You roll the lemon wedges in salt and pack them into a jar; one jar will get lemon juice in four days, as per one recipe, while the other one got lemon juice immediately, as per another.

Between the lemons, salt, and vinegar, I am possibly the most disinfected person on the planet right now. It's a miracle there's any skin left on my hands at all. And my cutting board is super-clean!

Third: I have roomba'd the kitchen and cleaned the living room. HOORAY.

(no subject)

I am roomba'ing my floors today, and I kind of have to do one room at a time because if I try to do the whole flat the poor Roomba runs out of battery juice.

So it had finished with the living room and BEEP BEEPed at me to tell me so, and I picked it up and went to the kitchen to empty the dust-catcher portion into a bag next to the robot trash can, since the trash is full. And as I was doing so it went BEEP BEEP again, sulking that I hadn't turned it off or something.

As it was BEEP BEEPing, I accidentally set off the automatic motion-detecting lid-lift function on my robot trash can, and the led went WHOOM and WHACK right into the roomba and the roomba fell very, very silent.

On the one hand I think, you know, LOL THE TRASH SHOWED YOU WHO WAS IN CHARGE ROOMBA, but on the other it does give one the sense that one's life is not entirely under one's own control.

Also, jonaht let me know that the 26th is Free Museum Day, where you can get into all kinds of museums for free. You can find the details and passes and stuff here.

ALSO ALSO, FREE MUSIC. I made a CD for my parents of the Prairie Home Companion show we went to and quite loved some of the songs, so I thought I'd share a few. The first is funny, the second is kind of country-ish but very sweet, the third is a gospel spiritual a capella:

Garrison Keillor and Andra Suchy - Unchained Mellow Cheese

Andra Suchy - Little Heart

Quicksilver - All Right