Misson

Still, a highly recommended book. I'm reading Daniel Dennett's Kinds of Minds: Towards and Understanding of Consciousness. I must confess, while some of his ideas interest me, his writing style is too disorganized for my taste.

Yep. Great flick. (Everyone sing it!)

WAG = Wild Assed Guess. (I confess, I have not seen this movie, but I know what part Sam Houston played in history and I remember the trailers for the Thorton movie.) Ok, now I get to reveal my long held quote... "I've got a gun rack in my Chevy For when the surf and the flak get heavy And we'll have fun with our guns 'Til our lifeguard takes our ammo away."

WAG: The Alamo?

For those of you who like good movies, I highly recommend Secondhand Lions. To be honest, I had avoided it because it looked a ) too sappy and/or b ) too kid-oriented. In fact, it is a nice balance of traits and quite an enjoyable movie. (While there are no pirates, there is a sheik with an eye patch. ) "Just plant us in the damn garden, next to the stupid lion."

Using our newfound rule, I looked it up and Graydog is right. Your turn, Graydog.

Seems like a good rule. In fact, knowing I do not know a quote often means I will look it up on Google, so I frequently know the right answer. I'll be happy to confirm a guess when I don't know the quote and I cheat. (I don't guess when I cheat.) I know I am correct too. My first Haunted House haunt role was Beetlejuice back in '92 - so I watched that movie literally dozens of times to observe Keaton's mannerisms and pick out some of the less popularized lines. Plus it's a funny movie. The best part of the quote is the way she says it... one...big...dark...room. Anyhow...that actually makes it your turn, Blackbead. (Even though I've got a quote burning a hole in my ST memory...)

Is that from Beetlejuice? "One...big...dark...room."

Yes, but I love it and nurture and hope someday to see it grow and flower into something more beautiful... Actually that's BS. I wish I could post a quote... I wonder what happened to Fancy? I sort of brought her over here from another forum.

Well, either Cheeky isn't around or she doesn't check in on this post, so I say go ahead and post another quote, Blackbead. Otherwise this thing just dies again.

That does sound really cool. Please post pics! Your scarecrow looks interesting - I take it there are mechanics inside? There used to be a company called Death Studios that made a scarecrow mask that I really wished I had purchased. But it was too expensive, so I never bought it. (And think about it every time someone starts talking about scarecrows and Halloween.) [edit] Well, I'll be...they're still in business and selling that mask! http://www.deathstudios.com/Masks/Mask.cfm?MID=90 They're expensive, but they make damned nice masks. In fact, for their price, they're some of the best I've seen.

It's been a day, so I'll just post the answers here. (If you want to keep working on them, skip this post!) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1. After 3 years of no food, the lions would all be dead. Choose the third room. 2. Freeze the water in the jugs, then place the frozen water into the barrel. 3. Charcoals. 4. Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. (There is definitely more than one way to get this one right, though. 5. There are no 'e's in the paragraph. 'E' is the most commonly used letter in the alphabet, which is why it is unusual. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

However, there were "entry level" jobs on ships, just like any trade. Certain skilled trades like surgeons (barbers), carpenters and tailors would be desirable on a ship. Plus, keep in mind that a lot of the people who would do this were probably in their adolescence or teens. We as 21+ year olds would have been already well ensconced in our (most likely) life-long career. The idea of not "finding" your career until you are in your 20s or 30s is a very recent social phenomena. Just as the idea of multiple careers and jobs is a very recent social phenomena. (I just read that the average "young person" today will have 12-15 jobs and 4-7 careers in their lifetime. I've heard even higher estimates as well. Pretty amazing, isn't it?)

I always though the same thing as Abrams. This sounds like there's an interesting story buried in it. Do tell! (Possum? Raccoon? The imagination wanders...)

I'm going to, respectfully of course, disagree on part of this. "Running away to sea" was the best way to change one's position in life, especially for those sons not born first. Yes, I have heard this as well. Still, do you think this was the norm or the exception? In other words, would the majority of people have wanted to do this? My guess is not. Just throwing numbers about willy-nilly, I'd say 10% or less of the young male population would go this route. But I could well be wrong and you do bring up a good point. I wonder what percentage of men who did go to sea wound up turning pirate? I conjecture that this also would be small, although I have also wondered what percentage of pirates were successful enough that we know little about them? When I used to talk with Tony Malesic, who researched pirates extensively, I learned that most of our knowledge of people specifically involved piracy from the GAoP comes from legend, the few histories that were written down that cite names and court records. If a pirate were successfully picking off small merchant ships, we might not know about them. I suspect this sort of behavior has been overstated to appeal to the increase in female independence in our country. (Where's that quote I was bandying about in another thread....) "Each age tries to form its own conception of the past. Each age writes the history of the past anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in its own time." -Frederick Jackson Turner In regard to women, I would guess that the percentage of the female population who would step far enough outside of the norm would drop to less than 1. Did it happen? Evidence agrees that it did. But was it typical behavior? No. My guess is that the number of women who did this would be less than 100. Maybe 200. Of course, here we have an event that would rarely be recorded, so I could be way off and we'd never know it. Still, more of the behavior we engage in comes from social custom than we realize. (I'm probably be overly analytic on a thread that wasn't intended to be. This ain't Twill, so feel free to ignore me and post what you think you'd like to have done. My picky pirate knowledge muscles have gotten flabby and I thought I'd exercise them after Red-Handed Jill's post excited that buried store of era info I have gathered. )

(I got 1, 4 and 5 without looking at the answers. How about you?) 1. A man is condemned to death. He has to choose between three rooms. The first is full of raging fires, the second is full of assassins with loaded guns, and the third is full of lions that haven't eaten in three years. Which room is safest for him? 2. There are two plastic jugs filled with water. How could you put all of this water into a barrel, without using the jugs or any dividers, and still tell which water came from which jug? 3. What is black when you buy it, red when you use it and gray when you throw it away? 4. Can you name three consecutive days without using the words Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday? 5. This is an unusual paragraph. I'm curious how quickly you can find out what is so unusual about it. It looks so plain you would think nothing was wrong with it. In fact, nothing is wrong with it! It is unusual though. Study it, and think about it, but you still may not find anything odd. But if you work at it a bit, you might find out.

That's an interesting point about the schooling. Now that you mention it, most of the women who ran things in the background that I have read about were privately educated - an unusual occurrence during this period.

Actually, from my understanding of the period, the men would all probably be in a trade similar, if not identical, to their fathers and the women would be wives of the men. (Independent women are a very recent phenomena, statistical outliers (exceptions that we hear so much about) notwithstanding. Although Jill probably has a good point on that front; strong-minded women likely had a lot of say - even if it was confined more to the background for sake of appearance. I have read short biographies of several women from around this period who basically ran the household and even the business for their less competent husbands. ) I understand that many societies in that period were almost caste like, including Great Britain. So if your father was a tradesman, you were a tradesman. If he was a sailor, you were likely a sailor.

Probably be a writer or a craftsman. (Probably be dead without insulin.) I'm too honest to be a proper pirate.

Attachment leads to suffering but Does detachment lead to joy?

I was wandering around Amazon and I came across this: The Buccaneers Robert Shaw as a pirate! Has anyone seen this? Has anyone heard of this? It's the first time I've ever come across it. $8.47 for 39 episodes...hmm...

Er, yeah... may I suggest you get The Black Pirate instead? Or Captain Blood? (Or possibly Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd? )

I guess we know now...I become Misson (the correct spelling of Mission from a pirate's POV.) Gee, it's been a long time since we had this post up near the top. Someone asked me about the meaning of another user's name, so I thought I'd resurrect this for all those who've never seen it...or those who want a refresher...

I just saw The Black Pirate last night and I must say it is an amazing bit of work. Half the stuff you see in the first POTC movie seems to have come straight out of that movie. The wonderful sword fights, knifing down the sails (repeatedly), swinging on the lines, cutting the rudder control ropes, the secret stash of gold, the powder trail, starting it with a flintlock, the monkey, and on and on and on. The Pyle connection is also definitely marked. The scene where Flynn is moping by the palm tree right after the title card "Marooned" couldn't be much more like Pyle's picture - that was actually when it struck me that he must be using Pyle as a reference. (Wrong though Howard was in some of his details...) That jumpsuit is just...odd. So are the dangley earrings he wears. Very strange. It's interesting to compare the depiction of the pirates (most of them, anyhow) to how pirate villains have been shown in more recent films. There is little sense that these men are even remotely heroic or misunderstood. (Although the mob scenes of the pirates are strikingly like POTC's cavern scene.) Most people would be hard-pressed to identify with them or find hidden redeemable characteristics in them to make them subtly appealing like Barbossa or Davy Jones. You really believe all the pirate captain wants to do is rape the princess regardless of the cost to him or his crew (in gold, that is). JosuaRed notes in another thread a scene where a prisoner swallows a ring to avoid it being captured. One of the pirates hands another a knife to cut the man open (shown off screen back in 1926) - he returns with the bloody knife and ring in hand. This seems like an amazingly violent concept for the period and certainly helps to cement the image of these pirates as a two-dimensional, bloodthirsty, greedy rabble. Quite an interesting film. For those who don't like silent movies, this is probably one to make an exception for. It's fast-paced, interesting and easy to watch. And then there's Doug in that weird black jumper...

"Ok, I'll shut up. I'm not one who has to keep talkin. Some fellahs just have to keep their mouths a flappin'. Not me. I was brought up right! My pa used to tell me shut up and I'd shut up. I wouldn't say nothin! One time I darn near starved! WOULDN'T TELL I WAS HUNGRY!" (Blabber-Mouth Santa aka. Foghorn Leghorn)