Caraccioli

Beer of the month is neat for people willing to try new things. Wine of the month is a nice couples gift. My dad got my mom this bouquet of month program - obviously most appropriate for women. (The "x of the month" people know a good thing when they see it.) You know what a great gift for someone would be? A Paypal gift card. It makes far more sense to me than a brick-and-mortar store gift card.

My favorite line is actually, "One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!"

I sincerely doubted anyone would even read that! *pirates - OK, I'm there - but only fantasy I think it was the combination of skeletons with pirates that really hooked me as a kid. The historical interests me theoretically because it is actually similar, yet different, than the fantasy. The period thing hasn't completely caught my fancy. We shall see what we shall see come late November in Key West. *educational theories and testing - ehh...not really - had enough of that with MUD (see below) - plus was married to an Early Childhood Education type I like the revolutionary, "throw the poorly designed system overboard and plan it better for today" approach *Deloreans - never got into them as such, although they intrigue me - I'm more a Vette guy (had 3) - Vette's and DMCs are mortal enemies! (It's just that most Vette folks didn't know it. Kind of like the mosquito attacking the elephant, I think.) I think the design is cool. *drawing - blood? charcoal? finger-painting? colored pencil http://www.markck.com/drawing.htm *Classical music - taught myself "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" and "Air on a G-String" on a Fender-Rhodes-88 and original-model Moog Mini I haven't played an instrument in decades, but I tend to like music without lyrics. Strauss' Waltzes, Bizet's Carmen, Ravel, Gershwin, etc. *creativity - don't have any Everyone has it, some don't develop it. *metaphysics - "MUD" - My Useless Degree, as a ladyfriend always told me There's a degree?! *regular physics - as opposed to "irregular"? Not really into it except as it applies to beating people up LOL The fact the parts of the world are so contrary to our intuition fascinates me. *anti-Global Warming rhetoric - GW is just a by-product of Eureka research - didn't you know? *Richard Feynman - who's that? - A really wacky physicist who was into bongos, biology, picking locks, codes, art and other variegated things. An iconoclast. I seem to like iconoclasts. *psychology - "MOUD" - My Other Useless Degree I'm working on a useless degree in this field. Experimental Psych interests me. (Clinical bores me.) *Myers-Briggs testing - *INFP groans* - have I got a site for you - I'll email Send it along! For awhile I was a member of an INTJ forum. It was like swimming with hungry sharks. I learned a lot, though. I also made what appears to be a life-long friend there. *movies (I do so love movies) - very selective in this respect - or should I say, eclectic A wise choice *writing - oh, yeah - big time - can't ye tell? I actually write a monthly success newsletter. Oddly, I never thought it was your cup of tea, so I never mentioned it to you. *website design - yep - I'm there Fun, fun, fun *engineering - never understood the appeal of running a train Uh huh. Maybe I should have said "designing" *locomotives - ibid *Key West - OH yeah - I want to live there again before I die - actually, I want to live there UNTIL I die Freaky place, freaky people - good time *Mad Magazine (the old ones that were good, not the new ones) - agreed *James Bond - one of my childhood idols - well, him and Capt. Kangaroo *Buckminster Fuller - again, I fail to see the appeal of the inventor of Fuller's Earth, but different strokes... He certainly went off in his own direction, though. I admire that. *Star Wars - funny, but I never really got into it - Star Trek, tho, yeah *coin collecting - used to - now I only practice coin spending Admittedly, I'm not very serious. I just pick stuff out of change anymore. *ethics - have none - *plate block stamp collecting (but only occasionally) - sorry - stamps bored me to dizziness - must have been all that licking *movie soundtracks - depends on the movie - Instrumental music again *training people about self-help - my life work - well, that and pleasing the female population of the US This aspect has always puzzled me because in my perception these two things are at odds - but that is just my perception *personal responsibility - have none (PR as opposed to diffused responsibility or irresponsibility. A favorite quote of mine..."You are where you are and what you are because of the choices you have made." Don't like one or the other? Make new choices *SCUBA diving - used to - see "Key West" It can actually be sort of dull after you get over the initial thrill, I think. My brother-in-law likes accumulating dives and going up levels. My other brother-in-law likes photographing and categorizing the fish he's seen. I just think it's an interesting thing to do on occasion. (I've always wanted to dive the site of a wrecked GAoP ship in the Keys. I mean, I know there's nothing much to see, but just the experience of being where one once lay...it would be cool. Shipwrecks are sort of cool - unless you're on the ship. *economics - have none *Australia - hmmm...used to be interested - not sure now I do have a few friends there, though I must confess, it is quite like the US, only a bit more laid back. I was just fascinated as a teen and it's one of those things I find interesting even after having gone. *AC Bulldog Mack Trucks - if that bulldog EVER gets up on his hind legs at ME, I'll knock him back to his Momma's womb! - It's that design thing again. An AC Mack just looks cool. I almost bought one about 15 years ago before I came to my senses. (Then lost them again and bought a Delorean instead. ) http://goldenagetruckmuseum.com/featured_truck.shtml *business - have none *Warner Brothers cartoons - OH YEAH! *Jazz - certain types - hate wailing saxes; love Chick Corea Instrumental music - it frees the mind. Lyrics weigh my thinking down. *the inner workings of the brain - have none I suspect we'll not be able to figure it out entirely, but it's still interesting. "You cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it." --Albert Einstein *magazine design and publishing - eh...only principles shared with web design I was an editor for several years. It was interesting. Deadlines were a pain, though. *Haunted House design - I suppose it would be an intriguing concept, but never had the opportunity Design again + skeletons. I should have put skeletons on my list. *just ideas in general - have none

Oh, and I forgot to add, "'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe."

Ah, the classics...writ large in the original tongue. Brings a tear to my eye. Or as me great, great, great, great, near-great, great, great, great, great, well, pretty-darned-close-to-being-great, great, great, great, great, all-right,-but-not-quite-great, great, great, great, swell, great, grate, great, grating, great-grandpappy always used to say, "ĦŦŃŁŽƏŴǔǑǍΈΐΏ ΓΩΨΧΦΣڌڇ۩۩!" "Oh freddled gruntbuggly, Thy micturations are to me As plurdled gabbleblotchits On a lurgid bee. Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes And hooptiously drangle me With crinkly bindlewurdles, Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, See if I don't!"

I don't mean to drag period into this, I was just playing on Iron Bess's comment that the clothes "..DO look old." I think my post missed having inflection, although I tried to indicate that with the emoticons. Would it make more sense like this? Didn't every pirate wear bucket boots? Period is only something I recently became aware of and must confess still only mildly concerns me. My connection to piracy stems from the old POTC Zap!-Action models. (Which were, naturally, very concerned with period.) I still don't quite get why they'd cut up antique table covers to make a "period-looking" outfit for a show that, in most respects, isn't really all that concerned with period, except as window dressing. But I'm sort of a collector at heart and know what happens to their value when you modify antiques. (Which, when all is said and done, even that sentiment is really sort of silly, actually. Still, I love finding old, unmodified things - like my Art Deco bedroom set. )

Actually, my folks are like that. I usually try and do stuff with them that they like or find some odd thing that they can get on a regular basis. I got them into a wine club a few years ago and they loved that. If he exercises a lot he might like books on tape. I'm signed up for Simply Audiobooks which is like Netflix for audio books. (Only they are slower than Netflix to deliver because the don't have as many shipping points. You take the good with the bad, I guess.) We once took my folks wedding pics and had them airbrushed in color. (This only works if the original photos are in b/w of course.)

I have never yet found the perfect forum. Where can I find a place where they discuss pirates, educational theories and testing, Deloreans, drawing, Classical music, creativity, metaphysics, regular physics, anti-Global Warming rhetoric, Richard Feynman, psychology, Myers-Briggs testing, movies (I do so love movies), writing, website design, engineering, locomotives, Key West, Mad Magazine (the old ones that were good, not the new ones), James Bond, Buckminster Fuller, Star Wars, coin collecting, ethics, plate block stamp collecting (but only occasionally), movie soundtracks, training people about self-help, personal responsibility, SCUBA diving, economics, Australia, AC Bulldog Mack Trucks, business, Warner Brothers cartoons, Jazz, the inner workings of the brain, magazine design and publishing, Haunted House design and just ideas in general (And that's just the things I can think right now)? No place. So I just discuss them whereever I am at. (Whether anyone's listening or not.) I wonder what I will be interested in next? I looked at MySpace briefly. I'm too old school. I have a vanity website that no one knows about.

I suggest you check out this page. For the guy who has everything. (Hey, I'd take one.) [Note: this is in no way an endorsement for Gary's site. In fact, I didn't know Gary even had a site before I Googled this. Nobody tells me anything.]

Well, thanks! I, too, enjoy conversing about this. There seem to be two kinds of people; those who like to read such stuff and discuss it and those who can't understand why I write such tiresomely lengthy posts. Now, if I could get you, blackjohn and Duchess all in the same post discussing philosophy and metaphysics that would be ideal (for me - you guys would have to sort the rest of it out amongst yourselves. ) Alas, they haven't been around much. "You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig." -Blondie - the Man with No Name

It was a joke. Bucket boots are not considered period correct for sailors in the GAoP. Go and ask them which bucket boots are most period correct in Captain Twill (but be prepared to step back from the backlash.)

Didn't every pirate wear bucket boots?

You have to give the girl credit - she's almost Madonna-like in her ability to remain in the public eye. (I suspect that's what matters most to her - if so, she's really quite clever.) Even I, in my chosen mostly-media-ignorant state knew about her jail stay.

I suppose it depends on you goal. If it's "speak like a current day perception of a pirate", you'll want to go watch a bunch of old 40's and 50's pirate movies. That's where much of this "Yarrrr! Avast me hearty maties!" junk came from. If it's like a genuine person who would have become a pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy, Sir Henry is right. You might then want to read two period books on or related to the topic: The Buccaneers of America by Alexander Esquemeling (~1678 just before the GAoP) and A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson (1724). I believe I've seen some where the language has been "modernized," so you'll want to steer clear of them. I suggest your local library. If you find copies where some of the f's look like S's, you're on the right track. Be aware that writing was much more formal during that era than the spoken language. Today we are pretty happy to write in dialect - which reads pretty much like it sounds. Back then this was not generally accepted. So the spoken language was probably a bit different than the written. Still, it's a genuine window into that era. You can also find court documents and the like from the period if you look around. Those would also be helpful for a scholarly dictionary.

Isn't that funny? The implications of that song never even occurred to me. I just like the way it goes. Watch? Great fun and very enlightening. Watch the watcher watch? Mind bogglingly fascinating. Good point. It's amazing what you notice about yourself when you chose to step back and see what you're doing. I sometimes wonder how far out my perceptive view I am breaking, though. Even when playing at this, you still don't know what you don't know.

Magic feather? "O mighty warrior of great fighting stock Might I enquire to ask, eh, what's up doc?" "I'm going to kill the rabbit!!" "Oh mighty hunter t'will be quite a task How will you do it, might I enquire to ask?" "I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!" "Your spear and magic helmet?" "Spear & magic helmet!" "Magic helmet?" "Magic helmet! "Magic helmet." "Yes, magic helmet and I will give you a sample..." More to point... "Did you ever see an elephant fly?" "Well, I've seen a horse fly." "Ah, I've seen a dragon fly." "Hee-hee. I've seen a house fly." "I seen all that too! I seen a peanut stand. And heard a rubber band. I seen a needle that winked its eye!" "But I've been, done, seen about everything, When I see a elephant fly." "What'd you say boy?" "I said when I see a elephant fly." (My favorite song in the whole movie. But I'm judging it...) Actually, as I've said before, I don't think we can ever really see the Truth. We are always filtering and perceiving - mostly without realizing that we're doing it. Even the masters. My belief (or perception) is that that is how our minds are structured. So rather than all agreeing as to what is the Truth, we agree on a consensus as to what the truth might be (or, in some people's cases, should be) and then we stick with that until proven wrong. Then we make up a new approximation to the Truth and the wheel keeps turning. However, if you think you can eliminate all perception, go for it. Just don't be surprised if you decide to announce what you perceive to be a truth and few agree. (Of course, you won't care because you will perceive that they are judging things based on what is clearly a flawed perceptive lens.

(shrug) I don't know. If I were an admin, I'd have a second ID that I'd use most of the time. In fact, there was a thread debating just that and who Bloody Buckets really was a few years ago in Beyond. (I thought it might be Duchess. ) Apparently the whole idea was wrong - Bloody was just busy. My understanding is that he runs a business. SEO can bring a flood of new users...and spammers...and trolls. I remember when Episode I hit at TheForce.net. Dear God... ...there was a flood of new users. Some of them wound up being really good posters, but my impression as a mod was that there was also a significant increase in the number of troublemakers as a percentage of total posters. It's a gilt-edged sword. Plus it completely changed the tone of the forum. (Be careful what you wish for...) I actually left TF.N a short while after that. The forum wasn't as much fun and a lot of the older posters that I liked to chat with had gradually left. If I could have one wish, it would be to change that stupid dark brown background.

I only know of two people "behind the scenes." There's Bloody Buckets, who (if I remember what I read correctly) took the site over from someone else and is essentially in charge of it, but is too busy to be here much. And there's Booty, who I think works with or for BB and takes care of pub management as a favor or something. There used to be a thread in Beyond Pyracy that explained some of this (pre- Booty), but it was deleted when they cleaned up that forum a few years ago. Maybe Iron Bess, Black Hearted Pearl or Rumba could tell you more. They've been around for quite awhile - much longer than me. (December 2004) As for us mods...we just take care of our little areas. We can move and edit threads, change thread names, lock them, delete them, slice and dice them and combine them and so forth. But we can only do that in our forums. I doubt we could fix your broken sub-forum, but I don't have any sub-forums in Beyond Pyracy, so I don't know. You could ask Mad Jack or hurricane. We don't get a lot of feedback, but this is a pretty loose and open place. (I've experienced two kinds of forums as a mod - those that are loose and open - which is most of them - and don't have a lot of day-to-day involvement from the administrators and those that are run by control freaks. Believe me, the first is far better.) The admins are there when we really need them, though. That's a big plus. I used to mod a forum where the admin wouldn't get back to you for days.

They were talking about Elizabeth's dresses. Something about a lovely antique tablecloth or bedcover from the...17th?...18th?... century that was made into a dress for her along with some other stuff I don't recall. Tip of the hat to SilasTalbot. No offense intended to those who enjoy the bard. He's just not my cup of tea. {Kind of like literary poetry. You could ship all the poetry in the world to Hades and I wouldn't miss it.) Ok, back to wiki... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_%28mythology%29 "In Greek mythology Calypso was a naiad, daughter of Atlas who lived on the island of Malta. Her name has also been listed among the list of the Nereids, which would make her a daughter of Nereus. She delayed Odysseus on her island (Ogygia, which is thought to be modern day Gozo) for seven years. While he was there, post-Homeric sources add, she bore him a child named Nausinous. Athena asked Zeus to spare Odysseus of his torment on the island, as he wanted to go to his homeland. Zeus sent Hermes, the messenger of the Gods, to tell Calypso to release Odysseus. As Zeus was the Lord of the Gods, she was unable to refuse him, although she wished to. Odysseus eventually returned to his homeland of Ithaca, to be with his beloved wife Penelope who waited for him at home, even though Calypso had promised him immortality if he stayed. Some legends say Calypso died as a result of her grief. VARIANT Calypso also refers to an Oceanid, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys." Nausinous! Imagine what the poor kid had to put up with in grade school!

I thought the implication might be in the statement, but for clarity's sake: "The point is that how we perceive something appears to dictate how it will be for us." If you perceive me as evil, then you will interpret every action I take in light of your perception. I see that go on all the time. If the neighbors become the mental enemy, everything they do is interpreted as a threat to the perceiver. If they improve the landscape, "they did it to make our yard look bad." Etc. As for the elephant...not sure what to make of that one. You can believe it is an elephant if you like and for you it may seem to be so. But I wouldn't tell too many people about your belief. Just because you believe in something doesn't mean it is that way. It's just how you will mentally experience it until you believe differently. (Want proof? Look at how many people think anthropogenic Global Warming is the main cause of the temperature change. )

Historically accurate isn't their goal, except inasmuch as it is the style of the times. (For another style of the times in:re pirates, check out The Crimson Pirate ) However, grubby is in now. They go on and on in that "Marking of..." book about how realistic they tried to be with the clothing. Something about using old fabrics which are worth a lot of money to make Elizabeth's dresses and so forth. Seems like a waste of a good antique cloth to me, but... Calypso is actually a real myth? I didn't know that. (I can't abide Shakespeare in any measure. We had to read Macbeth in college. Wretched stuff to my ears.) I'll have to see if Calypso's in my book on superstitions of the sea.

Yeah...the Dutchman and Davy Jones are only linked in Disney's world. As I said, the genuine origin of the term "Davy Jones Locker" is unknown for those of you interested in history. Actually, I hadn't thought to use Wiki to search the term. Very interesting! They have a piece of data I was not aware of when I first started looking into this a few years ago on another pirate forum. "Daniel Defoe mentions the phrase in his 1726 book The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts: "Heaving the rest into David Jones' locker..." The phrase appears not to have yet taken on the later connotations of misfortune." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Jones_Locker As for the pile of stone crabs comment, that was sort of euphemistic...I was suggesting that a human loving a deity would be a problem. Then again, who knows? Maybe Jones could hook up with Calypso and have a child - played by Kevin Sorbo. And then she could bite off Jones' head. (You know how those wacky heathen gods are... )

I was listening to podcasts from Radio Australia...this one from last week's All in the Mind which focuses on psychology and mental processes. Anyhow, the host was talking to a panel of people on happiness and something one of the panelists, Corey Keyes, said really struck a strong chord. To quote: "...I'm convinced more than ever we now live in what's can be described as the hedonic age, which is...and there's good reasons for this. We've moved away from placing our trust and tethering ourselves to institutions, where we feel most authentic. Institutions provide standards of excellence. As we lost trust in those institutions we were left with nothing else but our impulse, our emotions. And our students [from his study] reflect a culture that says well, you're left on your own, what do you trust most? When I feel good I trust it, when I felt bad I trust it. So we're left to our emotional life because we've lost trust in most of our institutions. So people tether themselves to the last bastion, which is their internal emotional life. Now I think...you talked about prisons...that is in some ways a prison as well." Many psychologists believe that emotions proceed from thoughts. Of course, our thoughts are composed of what we are experiencing and are not necessarily (or even likely) genuinely factual. Our reality is in many ways what we decide it to be. Our emotions are reactions to that created reality. (I consider reaction to be a poor response to a situation.) Ergo, our emotions are often knee-jerk responses to what we think is going on. Since I've come to that conclusion, I have been able to monitor and change how I deal with situations, especially trying circumstances. Sometimes it's nothing more than recognizing that I'm dealing poorly with some crises because I have perceived it in a poor way. While this may not create a better emotional response directly, it indirectly forces me to at least accept that I have chosen the current emotion on some level and can change it if I so choose. Curiously, I had previously been thinking about the impact we allow external sources of information impact our emotional state. Music, movies and other media can all make us view the world through an externally dictated perceptive lens - basically giving our thought patterns, and thus our emotions to some degree, over to someone else. I have lately been reading a series of articles on the economy which basically point out all these positive indicators that are not widely reported or discussed. Thus many people don't perceive the economy to be strong, despite all sorts of evidence to the contrary. As an aside, I think the economy is a fascinating creature. I first came across the idea that the future of the economy is largely based on people's perception of the near future when I was listening to Napoleon Hill explain his experience working on FDR's staff. Roosevelt felt that if the people only believed that things were getting better, they would start to spend money and the economy would improve. Hill made the case that this was the strategy used to end the Great Depression - they got the message out through the media, the churches and the government resulting in an improved economy. But that's another discussion, I suppose. The point is that how we perceive something appears to dictate how it will be. Emotions are a reaction to this and thus (IMO) are mostly unreliable indicators for making ourselves happy. In fact, in my experience, when I have been "happy," I have often failed to notice until after the moment of happiness was most acute! I suspect many people would agree. Taking it a step further still, memories of happiness are tied directly to how we perceive the events we have experienced. What one person may have experienced as a happy series of events can be turned on its head by another person who will pick out all the problems and inconveniences of the same series of events. To them, the events were unhappy. (Happiness is a notoriously unreliable indicator from what I've read. Yet, there's lots of info in the press on it recently.) I think it sort of comes down to the fact that if you have structure -not necessarily "externally enforced" structure, rather "self-enforced" structure (at least in my case) - you are more likely to be happy in the long run. This is how I understand Mr. Keyes' statement. The movement into hedonism would thus be ultimately doomed as a reliable method for achieving long-term happiness. I like it. (But then I thought of it.)

Maybe because it's as close as you can get to the Joker. I'll bet you'd make a good Joker. (Without the extreme malicious streak.) "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"

I don't have fake ladybugs, but my house does have a fair share of spiders. I've always kind of liked spiders, so I usually leave them be unless their webs become too apparent. Then I unceremoniously catch and dump the spider outside. You have to have standards. (Actually, I nearly always shuttle unwanted insects out. I got new windows last year so now I can open them easily which facilitates the catch-and-release program. Just sent a moth on its merry way this morn'. The exception is mosquitoes. No mercy for those mercenaries.)