Daily archives: November 26, 2007


Black Barty

The life of the eighteenth century pirate was significantly different to the romanticised version portrayed in the movies. A ship that spent too long at sea was a smelly, damp, disease ridden vessel that needed constant work. Hulls required regular careening, where they were grounded and tipped to be cleaned below the waterline. The slightest wound could go gangrenous and become fatal. And shipmates were violent drunkards or forced men enlisted against their will from victim vessels.

On the other hand, a pirate ship was a surprisingly democratic place. Captains served at the whim of their crews and could be voted out at any time, particularly if they didn’t provide sufficient plunder or were considered unlucky. Booty was shared fairly. Captain, quartermaster and boatswain received extra shares and there were bonuses for being in a boarding but the rest was shared evenly. Given the appalling conditions endured by crews on commercial ships and indentured servants in the colonies it wasn’t surprising that many a forced man became a willing rapscallion.

Black Barty, subtitled The Real Pirate of the Caribbean, tells the tale of one pirate band and their most successful captain- Bartholemew Roberts. The welsh seaman was one of the enthusiastic converts after being forced and was voted captain within months of joining the crew. Roberts was more daring than most pirate captains, understanding that the greatest rewards were to be gained from the greatest risks. He took to raiding ports, catching several ships at a time rather than hoping to catch individuals on the high seas. Changing ships regularly, but usually renaming them some variant on Fortune his crew roamed from the Caribbean as far north as Newfoundland and across the Atlantic to Africa, where the Royal Navy finally caught up with him.

This is an interesting book let down by poor editing. Pull quotes are regularly wrongly formatted and far too many sentences had grammar errors or confused phrasing. If you can get past these, read it to find out details of the pirate’s life that Disney left out.


Going down

As an aside to a conversation on Messenger, I went off and typed “cunnilingus” into Amazon’s site search. They have three books and one dvd listed that are specifically about it-

The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus: How to Go Down on a Woman and Give Her Exquisite Pleasure

From one of the reader reviews-

My girlfriend was blown away just hours after I read this book. A lot of the techniques contained in this book will make your performance well above the average man.

My only complaint is that the material in this book is available to other men as well!

The Master’s Guide to Cunnilingus: How to Perform Successful Oral Sex and Provide the Highest Degree of Pleasure Possible

A bit of a cumbersome title, but it gets 5 stars from its reader reviews.

Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus

More from the lesbian perspective, but possibly of use to us men.

Nina Hartley RN Guide to Cunnilingus

A Region 1 dvd that isn’t available at the moment.

Maybe I should add them to my wish list.


The CBI goes Green

The Confederation of Bitish Industry has released a report saying they must do something about climate change. Coming from what used to be an institutionalised denier this is a big step forward. But the details could be more promising. They’re calling for the development of nuclear power and have plans to cut 1 million of teh 370million tons of carbon dioxide produced by member corporations. And they may still back such unGreen proposals as airport expansion.

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