William Brand

The Pirate Primer is a fun read, but it draws primarily on pop culture quotes. I recommend dictionaries like "1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose" http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5402 and the "Canting Dictionary of 1736" http://www.fromoldbooks.org/NathanBailey-C...nscription.html .

Happy Baconfest!

Bacon wrapped eggs with polenta...

Bacon wrapped scallops...

Bacon wrapped fillet mignon...

Bacon wrapped monk fish...for all my friends from PIP.

Today's special is Bacon, for reasons too obvious to point out.

Want it deleted...? It was deleted. Who dug it up again?

William shakes his head as he walks over to join Dorian's table.

Aye...

Well, well, well... ...it seems that we've been resurrected from the dead. We requested that this thread be deleted some time ago. Why has it been raised from the dust to wander the Earth seeking brains...?

William shakes his head ever so slowly as he takes the plate away.

A very happy birthday to my friend, Edward O'Keeffe. A fine fellow, remarkable carpenter and the most indignant pirate ever to be raised from the dead only to go storming about yelling for a hat. Raise a glass!

Now I'm craving spider rolls...

Welcome aboard. I wish I could say that I will be there personally to show you about the place, but I won't. That said, you won't find a better lot than those who attend. Every crew there brings something unique to the puzzle. You're sure to find several groups to choose from, but I suggest you meet them all and be certain to visit the beach encampments at night. Good song and good company in that lot.

The Making of Tawny: Part Four It would be pointless to describe the thousand odd and complex moments that made up the sum total of David-Tara. There are not words sufficient to define any given soul on Earth, but to define the boy outside the scope of even the strangest upbringing, borders on the impossible. Add to this the complexity of his own divided perceptions of life as we define it and one is faced with a monumental task. It therefore falls to this poor writer to pick but a few simple, albeit horribly complicated experiences from Tawny's life to illustrate both the paths he was shown and the paths that he chose. Now I caution you not to pity the creature too much, for despite the myriad of twisted moments, lies and misconceptions he was exposed to, in the end Tawny was a creature of choice, just like any other person. He was after all gifted with a remarkable intelligence and a natural curiosity. He was also of good carriage, well nourished and provided for better than most of his age during an age devoid of reason. His parents, though naive and morbidly distracted by personal dreams and pursuits, were not openly cruel, though they were certainly guilty of a pathetic ignorance regarding each other and their solitary offspring. No, Tawny was intelligent enough to escape the unnatural circumstances of his early years, or at least he might have been, but he chose the secretive strangeness of the one life and the open, but carefully crafted lie of the other. In short, Tawny decided to return the favor of his upbringing by becoming the monster he began to suspect he could be. Of course, this was not a choice made in a single moment. No, it was rather an evolution, much like his self discovery about his own confused sexuality. Indeed, this next step of evolution came as a result of this budding understanding of strong emotions and physical appetites and it began with his mother. She did not encourage such a step of change openly or by the steps of manipulation as she had done in his early years. Quite the opposite. To put it simply, she stopped holding their little sessions altogether, choosing instead to pursue an altogether different road for her revenge. She had an affair. Now she might have kept at the mad alteration of David-Tara, but it was taking too long and she grew impatient and a little bored. Also, she was uncertain that her efforts would or even could make a monster of the boy, so she simply set him aside in favor of something else. It didn't help that she was getting older and she feared aging almost as much as being treated as a second class citizen, so when the boy did not show the adequate promise of becoming strange she decided to fill her days with other activities, employing her time and wealth to court a young lover. At first, David-Tara was hurt by this abandonment. He was possessed of enough natural affections to be hurt, but being naturally curious, hurt soon turned him to action. Each time she pushed him away to his studies or some distraction that she might free herself to imbibe in secret pleasures, David-Tara would find ways to listen or peer in at keyholes. He soon learned the greater secrets of adult appetite better than most men might in a lifetime. It didn't help that she used the private, secret rooms once meant for her son's instruction to hide her new unfaithfulness. David-Tara, being apprised of all those rooms and their many secret nooks, would often hide in them in silence with rapt attention, learning more from his mother and her lover than she might have ever hoped to teach him in his more formative years. To put it plainly, she drowned him in more misconceptions about love, intimacy, lies, truth and appetite than he was prepared for, doing the damage in ignorance that she had hoped to do by choice. In those weeks and months the seed of Tawny was sewn. Added to this were the experiments he began to pursue on his own. To describe these morbid escapades I must first remind the reader of David-Tara's skewed innocence, for what might be seen as a kind of monstrous barbarism for a boy, was simply a callous kind of dispassion in the face of pursuit. That pursuit being understanding at all costs, or rather, understanding for understanding's sake without care for moral limitations or the second guessing of the naive. For example, David-Tara would often sneak dusty tomes from his Father's bookshelves. Tomes purchased more for status than education. David-Tara would seek out every scientific volume he could find, often borrowing illustrated texts containing dissections and exploded diagrams of anatomy. In an effort to understand more, and against the backdrop of his split perceptions, his pursuit became and obsession. Discontent to rely on the diagrams of published works, he would venture far afield on his Father's properties searching for carrion. While most young men of his day were content to poke a dead bird or an animal carcass crushed rudely under a passing cart, David-Tara would secret these remains away in order to pry them apart. When pickings proved scarce, he would wring the neck of a chicken or capture vermin to peel them to his purpose. He did not kill such animals with an air of cruelty. In fact he was almost dispassionate in his weekly slaughter, but slaughter he did, killing more animals to bend them inside out than any hunter might do for daily sustenance. David-Tara's need for sustenance was born of appetites more unnatural. Stranger still was his return to the path of self discovery as he returned to his own sexuality and even pondered on questions and actions that would make us turn in horror out of sheer reflex. He quite considered doing himself bodily harm, but only to know. He had to know. He was saved from this idea by another one, which came to him in a strange moment of clarity, if such a word can be attributed to him. One day he was standing in the yard when he chanced to witness a girl flirting with a man above her station and many years her senior. He couldn't imagine what an obvious, but poor beauty should see in a weathered and wrinkled old man. Perhaps it was something about the way the sun caught her hair and his jacket buttons, but he suddenly understood. Rather than perceiving it as wealth, or youth or appetite, he saw it for what it truly was. It was a kind of commerce. A trade of goods for power, subjugation or goals outside his immediate scope. David-Tara was giddy. He was not so very old that he should have understood the concept of give and take, of wealth and poverty, or of the currency of youth, but he did. He suddenly saw past the veneer of life's simple definitions. The young girl was poor, but of great beauty. She understand this asset as did the older man, who would raise her from the dirt, while lowering himself to baser desires and needs of his own. It was a kind of commerce of flesh, ambitions and secrets, but more than this it was a kind of harsh underlying truth. It was one more piece of the puzzle, and it opened David-Tara's eyes to possibilities he had not even considered. In that moment...in that awful epiphany...the first real seed of Tawny first took root and germinated. A bad seed in cruel soil destined to bear fruit unfit for human eyes.

The creaking of the ward room.

It's better then my canoe by a long shot.

I'll make that that special of the day...

I love mine and I haven't even bought shoes yet. I keep them in a box with coins and other precious metal specie, so they just looks like trade goods I mean to sell for the time being.

Welcome aboard, Captain. Do you happen to have any photos of your scrimshaw?

As I told Dorian, I plan to watch Cool Hand Luke in tribute while eating nothing but boiled eggs.

Aye

I have yet to hear of a confirmed Soy Baconfest. You should start one and be the first.

I'm seriously considering Balticon now...