Arrr me hardies!
I’m fascinated by pirates. I love pirate movies (yes I enjoyed all of the Pirates of the Caribbean – sad but true), I also loved the Disney ride “Pirates of the Caribbean”.
The latest news that an oil tanker holding about US$100M of oil has been captured off the coast of Somalia had me reading all about modern day pirates and their hijacking exploits.
Turns out it’s really common, there are almost 100 yachts and cargo ships, currently under pirate control in this area, undergoing ransom negotiations. The political unrest in Somalia means there is no real government to step in. These pirates are living a lavish life of wine, women and song on their profits too.
I do find it strange that the US military isn’t making a move to help out this tanker. It is a private ship, but it was headed to the US with it’s oil, you’d think they’d been keen to get hold of that eh?
The romantic idea isn’t making me want a change in career though…
When OJ, OD and myself were taking the ferry from Italy to Greece there was talk on the ferry that another ferry had been taken by pirates and held hostage. That was back in the heady days of Albania collapsing because of some big triangle investment scheme back in the ’90′s. At least that was my memory of the ferry crossing. I could be way off on that, I was pretty drunk through out Europe. And chances are I had a girl on my lap, so my memory was probably even more foggy. I do remember though that Albania was in some financial meltdown cause of some investment triangle thing, of that I’m certain.
Not at all like the sub-prime investment bank mortgage scheme that was going on in the US recently. Nothing like it. It may be more like it if there were pirates running around capturing boats. THEN we’d have a nice second world meltdown like Albania’s. Does Albania qualify as second world? It’s not third world, and I don’t think it’s first world…you just never hear of places being called ‘second world’ :
“Oh don’t go there, it’s so Second World. They still listen to MC Hammer and think that Jolt cola is da bomb.”
I’m with SlantyOz though, we need more pirates. Not the ones that’ll shiv you for your coffee and run off with your car, but ones that like to hang around in bars drinking their grog, singing, and yelling at the bar wench. I could go for some pirate karaoke. That’d be good times. Not great times, but certainly good times. Possibly with some bar wenchss it’d be great times. Times are always better with bar wenches around. And Rum. Rum always makes times better. Like now, the time is good, and I blame it partially on the Rum. Probably be better if there was a bar wench here though. Probably.
Sounding like a rum induced rant, not that that’s a bad thing! But Pirate karaoke does sound like an idea – maybe the way we make our retirement $ eh? Not sure that i’d like to start a bar in Somalia though, even a pirate bar…