The Sack of Long Beach

I am working on this chapter right now and i am finding it quite difficult. i want to convey the deep desire of the pirates to be acknowledged for their adventures while at the same time showing them to be the pillaging bastards that they really are. basically, they wanted to be loved, when they found that the people of Long Beach didn't really give a fuck and were more interested in the sunset, the drinks, the flirtations with sunnyside dudes who preach to high heaven about their 10 day meditation retreat, etc, anger and resentment forced these guys into a liquor and debauch frenzy that was ... basically the catharsis of warriors after battle returned home to a peaceful and blissfully unaware homeland.

So it was a sack that could have been prevented. Like Nanjing. Some people say the Japanese went berserk because the Chinese army defended Shanghai for two months and that infuriated the arrogant "liberators" so they took it out on the capital. It is interesting to note that Chiang Kai Shek supposedly sacrificed his army in order to convince the Allies that the Chinese were capable of fighting the Japanese, thereby garnering support, cash and Gen. Stillwell. Or the sack of Constantinople when the Crusaders arrived and realized they did not have their shit together for an assault on the Holy Land and so they took it out on their "hosts" the Byzantines who were rich, decadent and standing in opposition to the Roman Pope. The Byzantines asked the Crusaders to help with those dastardly Turks, and ended up getting raped and pillaged by their "saviors."

So i am trying to get the mindset of the pillager down. How does one go from wanting to be loved by a group of people to wanting to destroy them? Its a feeling of inferiority in a way, that makes the pillager resort to pillaging. It i also interesting to realize that the Japanese must have felt conflicted about destroying China because China was once the beacon of light for an island of semi-civilized immigrants. How must it have felt for the student to look upon a fallen master, groveling and weak before hairy barbarians? It drove them to destroy. To wipe out their own shame.

And writing that is kinda painful. Cuz i was one of the pirates.

Originality

Courtesy of my man Charles "Himmler" Moseley:

In Defense of Piracy

Today's NYT has a story about the Beijing Silk Market and the struggles between big names brands and the pirates that knock-em off and slang em to tourists.

I was at the silk market every day last summer during the Olympics. The big brand names do have a point: China does need to "graduate from manufacturing to designing" and stop biting other people's ideas. At the same time, the Silk Market is not a place where Chinese shop, unless they want to be foreign or have a foreign partner. Foreigners from all over the world hang out there all day and eat Subway or drink Lavazza. Tourists make it their first stop, women dragging men down into the depths of the market to shop for excellent quality knock offs.

All the dork gear I got in this post was from the silk market. Passed the cubicle test and cost me about $35. A while back I wrote this column, also called In Defense of Piracy, and I pretty much said all I have to say on the subject in the column.

But for those of you who only have 1 minute and want the gist of it right now, here's the deal:

Francis Drake was a fkn pirate. The Spanish tried unsuccessfully to have the Queen control him. Finally, she knighted him. He led her navy to a victory over Spain that ushered in a Golden Age. The big brands should grab these people before the CCP does.

They got skillz: making great stuff, good distribution network and AWESOME sales skillz. These peasants from Henan beat the pants offa any Shanghai MBA grad in terms of gettin that sale.

Hire them. Or get out of the way.

i might as well drop it

So i been working on this epic novel and such and as the days go on the story gets more fun to mess with. I am going to lay a bit on ya'll here cuz I figure why not and people be asking me all the time "YO Sasch, wassup with the book dude?"

(and by putting it down here i make it MINE and anyone who steals will get chased down beaten then sued.)

the story goes like this:

its just a bit before the breaking of the world and the new age is bout to dawn. gods and goddesses have been messing with man's emotions for millennia and they live off of the extracts of love, happiness, suffering, jealousy .. its like cash to them. After a while, the deities, like the church, become more interested in the cash aspect of being a god then the moral/spiritual guide they should be or at least what people see them to be. devotion and sacrifice and extracting them emotions is more important then raising up man.

So at this point in time, the gods are divided into peaceful and wrathful gods that tolerate each other but have nothing really to do with each other. like russians and americans back in the day. as soon as they meet, they might end up fuckin, but cuz they have been told all their lives that they should hate each other ...

and the peaceful gods are further divided into the Cultists and the Department. the dept kinda being like the corporate side of godliness. they have hierarchy and structure and all that and they go about fuckin with man in an orderly fashion. the cultists are like heavens hippies. they have all the morals of hippies: love man, love each other, spread the goodness, but they also have the cliquey hypocrisy and latent desire to be on top that some hippies have, its that righteousness born of believing in one's own superior but outcast status. they would love nothing more then to take over and rule the way things "should be run"

the wrathful gods, well, they are a interesting but i dont want to give it all away.

throw in a group of humans currently being messed with. These guys are basically me and my crew. aimless but fun to be around.

the book ends with:

i have an ending but i think it would be fun to solicit random passages from you all. take what little i have given you and write something down. it would be a cool little experiment. it prob. will not influence me that much, but it just might and if it does i promise i will credit you with a name or a place or maybe you are one of the gangly canadian chics that gets ... ummm ... ravaged during the sack of long beach. or maybe i will give you a gods/goddess's name. like Genuss, the beautiful blonde goddess who just learned she was downsized just before the new age. or chocho the rebellious little goddess who has a thing for a wrathful demon named tsochi. or xam (named after a real dude) who is the sexy leader of the cultists with his devious hippy plans and long blonde locks ... you know. play with this and have fun.

love
sascha

Pirates with no Boat

I hereby claim "Pirates with no Boat" as my intellectual property. It does not matter if you read this post or not, the title now belongs to me. If i find it anywhere else, I will have my lawyer, my brother, sue you. That's right.

Go Bills.