8/01/2006

Pirate Booty

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So I was reading "Under the Black Flag" last night and there were lots of interesting details. One stood out, however. There was a section on Life at Sea, and how the Pirates were actually very organized, having contracts and even a rudimentary Workers' Compensation fund. For example, if you lost your right arm taking a ship you got 600 pieces of eight. If you lost your left arm, 500. If you lost your right eye, only 100. Basically, I think this is why so many pirates were walking around with some sweet-ass eyepatches and hooks. They'd just got a bunch of money, why not blow it on some fashion accessories, and turn a negative into a positive, eh matey? There was probably enough left over for a couple jugs of wine and a wench's company too. It makes me wonder about modern day gangs, that I just read about in "Can't Stop, Won't Stop". If they'd had some type of Workers' Comp system like this, I bet youd see all these dudes with iced out legs.

"Yeah man, it's platinum."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's funny that you saw miami vice, I just saw the first preview for it in the theater last night. I dont think it comes out for a couple months here in Europe.

Drew said...

yeah it was pretty good, i was so amped for it that it couldn't possibly have measured up to my expectations. that's the problem with previews sometimes.