I can't believe that came from your mouth!
Pirates
DVD Pirates Wants Bitches Dead
Mar 22nd
Earlier this week I wrote about Lucky and Flo, two Black Labs who specialize in sniffing out pirated DVD’s. Well, it seems that the DVD Pirate ring has put a bounty on those doggies’ heads.
From Reuters here:
Malaysian movie pirates have put a bounty on the heads of two sniffer dogs who busted a fake DVD ring with a seizure of discs worth about $3 million (1.5 million pounds), media and officials said on Thursday.
“As a result of the extent of loss to the pirate syndicate, we have information from the domestic trade ministry that the Johor syndicate is intent on killing Lucky and Flo,” said Neil Gane, an official of the Motion Picture Association.“The Malaysian authorities are taking this threat seriously and the security around the dogs’ current location has been beefed up,” he told Reuters.
In Tuesday’s raid, the two dogs helped seize a cache of around a million pirated game and movie discs in the southern city of Johor Baru, neighbouring Singapore. At least six people were arrested.
How do you protect dogs? With other dogs? I wonder if Lucky and Flo will be fed wet dog food?
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Loading ...Smells Like Polycarbonate
Mar 20th
Two dogs, Lucky and Flo, employed by the Motion Pictures Association of America, the MPAA, are in Malaysia looking for pirated DVD’s. And they are meeting with some success. This is important because software and movie piracy is a security risk and a legal liability. And the worst offenders are typically far eastern countries.
From Reuters here:
A whiff of plastic led sniffer dogs in Malaysia to a cache of about one million pirated game and movie discs with a street value of roughly $3 million, film industry officials said on Tuesday.
The find was the first major success for Lucky and Flo, two female black Labradors deployed last week as part of Malaysia’s battle on illegal recordings of music and movies, said Neil Gane, an official of the Motion Picture Association.
The dogs are being given a month’s trial by Malaysian officials in a joint effort with the Motion Picture Association, which groups six major Hollywood film companies.
Fighting pirates in Malaysia is nothing new- in fact, its old hat for the United States. Even President Andrew Jackson dispatched pirate hunters to Kuala Batu in the early 1830′s to kill a bunch of pirates who were disrupting American trade there.
Old Hickory sent a warship, the Potomac, armed with forty 32-lb guns to destroy pirate forts. Marines serving on the Potomac went ashore and killed over 300 pirates.
And regardless what you think of the MPAA, entertainment is a commodity, and one which brings in billions in trade to the economy. It deserves protection from piracy just like our other goods. Now we use dogs before we start bombardment from offshore.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...It’s a Boy!
Jan 29th
We got back from the 20 week radiology appointment this afternoon after an extended ultrasound. The great news is that it’s a boy! According to the ultrasound, the fetus has all of its fingers and toes, and the heart looks normal and strong. Bone size and structure is good and everything looks healthy.
We have already ordered our furniture for the nursery, which is white painted wood crib and changing table with attached hutch. The crib is designed to grow with the child and can convert into a twin bed which should serve his needs into his teens.
This also means that we can now pick out our colors for the nursery. We want to paint a mural along the wall. I wanted pirates, and the Missus wanted faeries, so we decided on Peter Pan which will give us both pirates and Tinkerbell and her friends. We plan on coming up with a view of the ocean and a Pirate ship or three, along with a view of the Lost Boys’ hideout in Neverland.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Pirate Bay Wants to Buy Sealand
Jan 12th
Earlier this month, I noted that Sealand, the tiny rusting platform off the coast of the UK was up for sale. Well, there’s a buyer now, the software piracy site Pirate Bay. It turns out that I woefully underestimated my price for a steel platform that is rusting away. The current owner of Sealand has put a 2 Billion Dollar pricetag on the platform.
From the AFP here:
STOCKHOLM (AFP) – The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s most popular websites for the illegal downloading of films through filesharing, has said it wanted to buy its own island in a bid to avoid copyright laws.
The group said it would consider any territory in international waters to avoid copyright legislation.
“For Pirate Bay it would be awesome to have no copyright law. All countries today are based on the old economy and old ideas and we want to do something new,” he added.
On Friday the group established a website — www.buysealand.com — as a discussion forum and to raise funds to buy Sealand, a former British naval platform and self-proclaimed principality six miles (10 kilometres) off the eastern coast of Britain.
No country recognizes Sealand.
“We would love Sealand because its history is perfect for us as pirate radio used to be broadcast from there. If we don’t get enough money for Sealand we are going to try for a small island somewhere,” Peter said.
Pirate Bay was undeterred by Sealand’s two-billion-dollar price tag.
Never mind that Pirate Bay has not let anyone in on this “new economy” they are dreaming up. These idiots believe that “data wants to be free, man!” But they need to read their history and remember that Pirates get hanged.
DanBruno thinks that the MPAA will buy a jet with a few missiles and put their filesharing days in Davy Jones’ locker. My money is on the MPAA.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Bahamas Still Flogs Criminals
Oct 10th
There is one punishment that is still left over from the Pirate Days. A man that attempted to rape an elderly woman has been sentenced to years in prison plus lashes with a cat o’ nine tails.
From Reuters here:
Bahamas orders man lashed with cat-o’-nine-tails
NASSAU, Bahamas (Reuters) – A man convicted of trying to rape an 83-year-old woman was sentenced to eight lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails, a punishment used by the British Navy in the 18th century and reinstated in the Bahamas 15 years ago.
Altulus Newbold, 34, was sentenced on Friday to 16 years in prison after being found guilty of burglary, attempted rape and causing harm. Justice Jon Isaacs ordered that he receive four lashes of the whip at the start of his sentence and four upon his release, but suspended the punishment for three weeks pending a possible appeal.
The cat, a whip made of knotted cords, leaves flesh wounds and is used on the offender’s back by a prison guard. It was outlawed in the Bahamas many years ago, but reinstated in the former British colony in 1991 in the face of rising crime.
Newbold was accused of breaking into a woman’s home on Cat Island in July 2004 and trying to have sexual intercourse with her. The woman told the court that she grabbed Newbold’s genitals and “mashed” them. He bit her to make her let go and then fled the scene.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said the cat was last used in 2000 on a child rapist. That was the first time it had been used since 1994.
Arrgh! Sounds like a fit punishment for such a scurvy dog!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Well Behaved Women Rarely
Oct 5th
Make History.
Im still working on my great Pirate Book, Under the Blag Flag by David Cordingly, and I got to the part of the book about Pirate Wenches. I read another laugh out loud paragraph in the book when it refered to a famous prostitute in Port Royal in the 1670′s by the name of Mary Carleton. She was described by one man as “common as a barber’s chair. No sooner than one comes out, another goes in.”
It was such a gutteral, low thing to say about a whore, I barked a laugh at the cleverness of the comparison.
The story also mentioned that the woman was banished to Jamaica as punishment for theft and bigamy, and while she was in Port Royal she became the most famous of all Pirate Wenches, partly due to her fame back in England. The book mentioned that Mary had starred in a play written specifically for her. I did some research on Mary, and this is what I found.
Mary Carleton was not a nice woman, but she was apparently very attractive. She frequently claimed that she was a German Princess who was on the lam to escape an arranged marriage in order to meet and seduce men that were hoping to marry her for a fat dowery.
She made a career of conning old men out of money by using false identities and marrying them, waiting until she could access their money, and then making off with their fortunes.
Born as Mary Moders, she married a cobbler in Canterbury and gave birth to two children who died as infants. Unhappy at her husband’s inability to maintain her expensive tastes, and undoubtedly heartbroken over the loss of her babies, she left her husband and went to Dover in search of her fortune. It was there that she married a surgeon. When news of this new marriage surfaced, she was arrested and tried for bigamy, but she was acquitted.
Rightly thinking that she needed to get out of town, she traveled to Cologne, Germany to live out her fantasy of being a German Princess. Having acquired a little pocket change from her former husband, she took an apartment in a “house of entertainment” near the Spa in Cologne, which was a prime spot to pick from wealthy would-be benefactors. It wasn’t long before she had several older men pursuing her and vowing their undying love for her. The biggest sucker of these men was a wealthy old nobleman with a large estate outside of Cologne.
Conspiring with her landlady who was also a grifter, the two of them managed to pass Mary off as a lady of refinement, eager to marry and love the old foolish doddard. He showered her with precious gems and jewelry and fine gold chains that had been awarded to him for services to the King of Sweden. Mary loved the jewelry and continued to lead the old man on. The nobleman made fabulous promises to her and pushed her for marriage. She agreed to marry him in three days on the condition that she make all of the arrangements. The nobleman was absolutely delighted and enraptured with the young seductress and gave her large sums of cash to put together a grand marriage ceremony.
Up until now, Mary had been splitting the wealth from the nobleman with her landlady as part of an arrangement for helping show Mary how to be a grifter. It was payment for the Con game. But Mary told the landlady that there was a larger fortune yet to come from marrying the old fool, but she needed the landlady’s help in the arrangements. Mary tricked the landlady into leaving the “house of entertainment” under the ruse of running a critical errand for her in order to pull off the next part of their caper together. As soon as the landlady was out of the house, Mary tore open the landlady’s secret chest where the landlady had been stashing her half of the con money, and she filled her bags with the loot that she had stolen from the old nobleman, and lots of other cash from other scams the landlady was running. Mary left town unnoticed.
She made it all the way back to London, arriving very early in the morning one day in late March, 1663. Her pockets full and her bags heavy, she tried to find somewhere to stay, but nothing was open except for the Exchange Tavern, located near the Exchange, where all of the money was traded and deals brokered. I guess it was much like a Renaissance Wall Street district. Tired and thirsty for gin, she went into the Tavern.
It was in this Tavern that she became to be known as the “German Princess.” When men that worked the Exchange inquired about her, she was able to conjure up fake tears. She would sniffle and she would cry that she didnt mean to burden anyone with her sad story. When the men insisted that she tell her tale, she told her fake story about how she was the daughter of a German Prince, a “Lord Henry van Wolway.” Her ficticious story told about how her wealthy family had abandoned her when she refused to marry the man her family had insisted upon.
Everyone in the Tavern started calling her the “German Princess” and Mary began to introduce herself as such as well, taking on the airs of a noblewoman. She had set herself up in another apartment and was living on the extravagancies of her loot from the nobleman she had fleeced in Cologne.
Mary liked the Exchange Tavern a lot. She hung out there all the time and was a local celebrity. The owner of the Tavern was a man by the name of Mr. King. He had a brother-in-law by the name of John Carleton, and John was smitten by the beauty and personality of the German Princess, and began to pursue her with the intent of marrying the young woman. She put up a resistance, even saying that she, as a person of noble blood, could never stoop so low as to marry a commoner! She finally relented, and John Carleton acted as if he was the luckiest man alive, having found the good graces of a Royal Princess, and he fawned over her for having accepted a lowly man as her husband.
It was not long before John Carleton even began acting as if he was of royal blood. After all, having married a Princess surely made him a Prince! Shortly thereafter, an anonymous letter arrived at the Exchange Tavern addressed to Mr. King. The letter detailed how Mary had been married several times before and only did so to defraud her husbands.
It said:
SIR, I am an entire stranger to your person, yet common justice and humanity oblige me to give you notice that the pretended princess, who has passed herself upon your brother, Mr John Carleton, is a cheat and an impostor. If I tell you, sir, that she has already married several men in our county of Kent, and afterwards made off with all the money she could get into her hands, I say no more than could be proved were she brought in the face of justice. That you may be certain I am not mistaken in the woman, please to observe that she has high breasts, a very graceful appearance, and speaks several languages fluently.
Mary was arrested again on bigamy, and it led to a trial that was sensational for its day. Mary fought it publically by distributing pamphlets written by her detailing that John had sought to marry her only because he thought he could get money from her. Somehow, she was acquitted of her crime. It is likely that her own sensational story had turned her into so much of a local celebrity that no jury would convict her.
Mary was still very fond of the local taverns, and she began to frequent one that was visited often by the players of the local theatre. The dramatists instantly knew that Mary would be a great draw to the local theatre. She was already a little famous and people who had read her pamphlets were eager to know more about her. So at the urging of her new friends in the theatre, she wrote her own life story and they turned it into a play with her as the star. At the end of her play, she gave the following epilogue:
“I’ve passed one trial, but it is my fear
I shall receive a rigid sentence here:
You think me a bold cheat, put case ’twere so,
Which of you are not? Now you’d swear I know.
But do not, lest that you deserve to be
Censur’d worse than you can censure me:,
The world’s a cheat, and we that move in it,
In our degrees, do exercise our wit;
And better ’tis to get a glorious name,
However got, than live by common fame.”
Mary parlayed her fame into fleecing her greatest admirers. Many theatre goers wanted to be near her and court her, and of course, she looked upon them as mere marks. She would play hard to get with some, and would entice others, depending on how much money they would spend on her. She even drained a small fortune from some of her best admirers and then cast them aside, publically declaring “How dare they think they could pretend love to a Princess?”
As her acting career began to wane, she accepted the advances of a wealthy old man, who, even after knowing the whole background story of Mary, doted after her and began to believe tales about how she never hurt anyone. She eventually married him, waited for him to get drunk, and rolled him, taking his keys to his treasure chests, his bank account access notes, and about 150 pounds worth of valuables. She fled and never saw him again.
For years to come she continued to fleece her victims with her guile, beauty, and the help of her accomplice, a young woman grifter cohort who posed as her maid. Together, they conned men out of thousands of pounds of money.
Mary was eventually caught stealing a silver tankard. She was sent to Newgate prison and ordered to be transported to a penal colony. In this case, Jamaica. It was in Jamaica that she became the West Indies’ most popular prostitute and Tavern Wench, utilizing her training as an actress, her long history of outlandish tales of plunder and beguilement, and her street smarts to become a very wealthy woman.
Violating the tenets of her banishment, Mary tried to make one more go of it in London. She returned only two years into her punishment and tried to pass herself off as a wealthy heiress. Using this guise, she pulled off a few more cons, robbing husbands and lovers of thousands of pounds.
By accident, she was recognized by the local police when they were looking for another thief. She was apprehended. On January 22nd, 1673, Mary was hanged. She was 38.
After researching Mary Carleton, I came to realize that this woman was not as “common as a barber chair.” Far from it. She was a vibrant, brilliant, beautiful woman who used her talents to plunder wealthy men. Her story should be told. Yet Hollywood insists on making Pirate movies about sea critters. **sigh**
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Read a Great Pirate Book
Sep 29th
Pirates didnt make victims walk the plank. They had a much darker and bloody fate in store for those that resisted their ship board raids. But pirates did keep lots of parrots, monkeys and other exotic pets.
David Cordingly’s book Under the Black Flag is a great read and full of all the real facts of life as a privateer or a pirate. It reads a little bit like a term paper, but there are some facts that make you laugh out loud. For instance, Captain Henry Morgan (you know, the guy they named the yummy rum after), who was the most successful pirate in history, had to abandon his plans to invade and sack Cartagena. You see, he was having a coucil of war on board his flagship. While all of the officers were plotting, the crewmen were doing what pirates do. Drinking rum, singing, getting into fistfights…. Well, someone touched off a powder keg in the hold of the ship and the ship exploded. Only Captain Henry Morgan somehow survived the blast.
One not so funny part is how some sick pirates used to torture their prey that refused to cooperate and disclose where the treasure was. They would slit the belly of a victim, pull out a length of intestine and then nail it to the mast. Then the pirate would take a flaming log and beat the victim in the ass, forcing the victim to dance around on deck, making his guts fall out.
Arr! Its Friday and I need a Pusser’s Painkiller.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Killer Bee Mead
Sep 23rd
Im going back to the Maryland Renfest again tomorrow. Its pirate weekend, and I have a pirate costume that I mashed together from various sources, so it should be lots of fun. I think the best thing about the Renfest is the feasting. Im looking forward to the pickles that are the size of your fist and the bags of beef jerkey. And of course, the turkey leg is a must-get every time you go.
One of the best surprises about the Renfest is the store that sells specialized honey. There are about two dozen different types of honey, ranging from clover to Tupelo honey to blueberry flower honey. You can actually do a honey tasting at this store to find out what honey you like the best. Most people like honey with biscuits or other baked goods. I like it for mead.
I got four pounds of honey last time I was there to make my mead with. One type is honey made from Africanized Bees in Brazil. Out of all the honeys I tasted, the Africanized Honey seemed to be the thickest with the most sugar. So I mixed that into a batch of mead tonight, along with a spiced tea containing cinnamon, nutmeg, juniper berries, rosemary and fennel seeds. For the fruit flavor, I chose a rich blackberry preserves to steep into a deep purple tea that I mixed with the honey water.
It should be ready next Sunday. If you want my complete recipe for one gallon of easy mead, check here.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...New Animatronics at Disney’s Pirates
Sep 18th
Just got back from Disney World. The best time of year to go is late September when all of the kids go back to school, because the parks were nearly empty. I didnt have to fast pass anything except for Epcot’s Soarin.
The last time I went, the Pirates ride was getting a face lift. I was a little worried that the introduction of so much Jack Sparrow stuff into the ride would spoil it, but I was only slightly right.
You see, the original ride was based mostly on historical accounts of the plundering, looting and sacking of some Carribbean cities, which culminated in the burning of a town, likely based on the real burning of Panama City by Captain Henry Morgan in 1671.
But now the story seems to be a hide and seek game with Jack Sparrow from the Disney Movies. Its not an improvement in the historical accuracy, but then again, the ride was mostly just a showcase for Disney’s animatronics. And it is the animatronics that have now taken a huge leap forward.
The new animatronics that power the Capt. Jack Sparrow character provide more lifelike movement and mannerisms than previous animatronic characters. It would be really nice if Disney could go ahead and phase the older versions out and replace all of the characters with the newer more lifelike characters.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Had to Have the Mermaid
Sep 15th
My wife and I went to the Renfair again last weekend. I got the rest of the gear to complete my costume- a burgundy top to go with my green pants and pirate boots- and I actually was able to blend in with the rest of the renfair crowd.
But while doing some shopping, my wife stumbled upon a painting that we just had to get. Its a mermaid who rescued a drowning sailor and brought him back to her lair. Its by a local artist, and it was so cool we just had to get it.
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(1 votes, average: 6.00 out of 6) Loading ...Help Me Bob! I’m Bully in the Alley!
Sep 11th
One of the best songs on the Rogue’s Gallery CD is called “Bully in the Alley.” Its a sea chantey, but I wasn’t too sure what it was about. It features what sounds like a drunken sailor singing poorly about some dirty whore named Sally.
Some research finds that being “Bully in the Alley” was sailor slang for being so drunk that your friends had to ditch you somewhere safe while they went out for more drinks. The place to be ditched was usually in an alley somewhere. So you become incapacitated or “bully.” Your sailor friends were supposed to come back on the way to the ship and drag your sorry butt with them.
One of the most famous streets or alleys was Shinbone Alley in Bermuda. There was a Groggery on that street where many a sailor had to crawl back to the ship on their hands and knees because they got so wasted there, giving it the name of “Shinbone Alley.”
So the lyrics to the song are supposed to be:
Help me, Bob, I’m bully in the alley,
Way, hey, bully in the alley!
Help me, Bob, I’m bully in the alley,
Bully down in shinbone al!Well, Sally is the girl down that I love dearly,
Way, hey, bully in the alley!
Sally is the girl that I spliced nearly.
Bully down in shinbone al!For seven long years I courted Sally,
Way, hey, bully in the alley!
All she did was dilly-dally.
Bully down in shinbone al!I’ll leave Sal and I’ll become a sailor,
Way, hey, bully in the alley!
I’ll leave Sal and ship aboard a whaler.
Bully down in shinbone al!I’ll come back and I’ll marry Sally,
Way, hey, bully in the alley!
We’ll have kids and count them by the tally.
Bully down in shinbone al!
You can hear part of the song here.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Pirate Ballads and Sea Chanteys
Sep 5th
Probably one of the best things to come from the Pirates of the Carribbean Trilogy was this masterpiece collection of old sea songs and work chanteys. The CD, which is a brainchild of Johnny Depp, features top artists recreating and interpreting the old sea songs to excellent effect. Bono and Sting are featured, as is Lou Reed and Gavin Friday.
The CD comes with a summary of each song, what the song means, how it was collected, and how important it was to the sea-faring community. Not all of the songs are about pirates, but they all deal with sailing the lonely, cold high seas, and the life that comes with that. There are songs about being a merchant, songs about whaling, chanteys about hauling sails, some drinking songs, and even sad songs about dying at sea. There are songs about going to war, the uncertainty of safe returns to home and family, and songs of broken hearts that drive young men to the sea.
But the best of all are the bawdry songs dealing with prostitutes and ship-board wenching. You can download little snippets of the songs here at Amazon, but if you like history, are fascinated by the old sailing ships, or just like pirates, you should get this CD.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...AOL Digging Up Yards Looking for Gold
Aug 16th
This is a strange case. So AOL sued a notorious spammer Davis Hawke for spamming its userbase, and they were awarded 12.8 million dollars by a Federal Judge. The problem is that Hawke dipped out and never paid AOL the money he owed. And supposedly, he was pretty good at sending spam, because he bought gold and platinum bars with his ill gotten gains, and he buried them somewhere like some type of pirate booty.
AOL thinks they know where Hawke buried his treasure, and they are going after it with a court order and a bulldozer.
From the WaPo here:
AOL Looking for Gold in Spam Case
To Collect $12.8 Million, Firm Wants to Dig Up a YardAOL is preparing to dig for buried gold and platinum bars on property in Massachusetts owned by the parents of Davis Wolfgang Hawke, a man it sued for sending millions of unwanted spam e-mails to its customers.
AOL won a $12.8 million judgment last year in U.S. District Court in Virginia against Hawke but has been unable to contact Hawke to collect any of the money he was ordered to pay.
“I don’t care if they dig up the entire yard. They’re just going to make fools of themselves,” said Peggy Greenbaum, Hawke’s mother.
She said AOL’s lawyer notified the family that the company intends to use bulldozers and geological teams to hunt for gold and platinum on their property.
Greenbaum said she has not talked with her son in more than a year and complained about the embarrassment and humiliation he brought to the family.
“This exercise isn’t something out of . . . ‘Treasure Island,’ ” AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham said. “This is a court-directed, judge-approved legal process that is simply aimed at responsibly recovering hidden assets.”
To win a judge’s permission for the search, AOL submitted receipts reflecting large purchases by Hawke of gold and platinum bars, Graham said. The company indicated that it thinks Hawke buried the gold and platinum on his parents’ property.
With the price of gold going up, I suppose this is a pretty good idea. But this whole story puts a new twist on the phrase “software piracy.” Arrgg!
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Well Behaved Women…
Aug 3rd
Rarely Make History. There are plenty of t-shirts on Ocracoke that have this moniker on them. Most of it is in reference to Pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Yeah, these were real blood thirsty pirates who stole ships and treasure. And since Ocracoke was the famous hiding place of Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard the Pirate, there is lots of pirate lore floating around the island.
Anne Bonny was a ballsy broad. As a little girl, Anne Cormac stabbed a slave girl in the stomach and ran away and married a small-time pirate named James Bonny. She eventually found her way to a pirate hub in the Bahamas where she met Calico Jack Rackham, a more notorious pirate. I suppose she wanted to trade up, and began an affair with Cap’n Jack. Rackham tried to buy Anne from Bonny, but Bonny complained to the Bahamian Governor, who had Anne Bonny publicly flogged and returned to her husband.
But Anne Bonney ran away with Jack Rackham, and the two stole a ship, recruited a crew, and began a long series of piracy together. The crew accepted the fact that she was a woman, and she was usually the most sober person aboard ship, so she fought better than most men. She was finally captured along with Rackham in Jamaica. Cap’n Jack wanted to see Anne Bonny one last time before he was hanged, and Anne Bonny told him, “I’m sorry to see you there, but if you had fought like a man, you wouldnt have to hang like a dog.”
Then Anne Bonny disappeared from history. Maybe she left the pirating career behind, or perhaps she died in prison. But she was a very cool woman who lived in a very cool time in American History.
My wife got the Tshirt.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Beach Vacation
Jul 31st
Blogging will be a little light this week since I am on vacation and it may be difficult or impossible to find a wireless access point. I am in the North Carolina Outer Banks for a week, to include a stopover on Ocracoke Island. One week of Sun, Pirate Lore and relaxation is just what I need.
One thing I have learned is that when travelling, it is imperative to carry a cooler full of ice with you. Then you stock the cooler with sodas and sandwich fixins. It is awesome to pull over anywhere you want and have an icy Diet Coke or a cold cut sandwich without having to pull off at an unknown exit to hunt for a convenience store. I have seen how some car manufacturers are beginning to include coolers built into the bottom or trunks of the minivans and trucks for tailgaiting. Its a great idea, as tailgaiting is becoming one of those Great American Pastimes.
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(No Ratings Yet. Rate It!) Loading ...Yo Ho Ho and a Barrel of Rum
May 4th
This is what you get when you hire Hungarians to renovate your house. They slack off and drink all of your rum!
From Reuters Here:
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungarian builders who drank their way to the bottom of a huge barrel of rum while renovating a house got a nasty surprise when a pickled corpse tumbled out of the empty barrel, a police magazine website reported.
According to online magazine www.zsaru.hu, workers in Szeged in the south of Hungary tried to move the barrel after they had drained it, only to find it was surprisingly heavy and were shocked when the body of a naked man fell out.
The website said that the body of the man had been shipped back from Jamaica 20 years ago by his wife in the barrel of rum in order to avoid the cost and paperwork of an official return.
According to the website, workers said the rum in the 300-liter barrel had a “special taste” so they even decanted a few bottles of the liquor to take home.
The wife has since died and the man was buried in a proper grave.
This may sound shocking, but these men have bottled one of the rarest drinks in the world- Nelson’s Blood. Nelson’s Blood is the name given to rum that is tapped from a cask full of rum and old Naval War Heroes.
One of my favorite stories of Admiral Horatio Nelson is here:
Nelson’s Blood – Another name for Pusser’s Rum, and still in use today by old salts – especially in Great Britain’s Royal Navy! At the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21st, 1805, Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson engaged the combined fleets of Spain and France. His flagship was HMS VICTORY. Although outnumbered, he sank or captured 17 of the enemy’s ships to not a single loss of his own. This victory still lives as one of the greatest in the annals of naval warfare. Unfortunately, Nelson was mortally wounded and died knowing that victory was his. Legend has it that to preserve his body for the long passage back to England, that it was placed into a large cask of Pusser s Rum. Upon arrival, when the cask was opened, his pickled body was removed, but the jack tars had drilled a small hole at the base of the cask through which they drained most of the rum, thereby drinking of Nelson s Blood. Since then, the term Nelson s Blood has become synonymous with Pusser s Rum, and is still in wide use today.
Now I’m craving a Pusser’s Painkiller.
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