I wish I could say that I was tired of this news cycle
If Justin Taylor has taught me anything, it that we won’t be able to beat the pirates until we understand the pirates. I’ve put together a quick primer for budding armchair piracy experts:
1) Seven Tenths: The Sea and its Thresholds, by James Hamilton-Paterson. The ocean is vast. Real vast. Supports much life (including buccaneer life). Says Hamilton-Paterson:
It is well known in these parts that fish choose not to speak in order to risk nothing worse at men’s hands. Being wrenched from the depths into thin and bitter light to drown slowly in is bad, but not bad enough to merit speech.
Somali pirates can’t hold the jock of space pirates
Back in ’93, a younger, debatably handsomer Drew Toal used to, before school, watch a pair of largely forgotten cartoons—Conan the Adventurer, as well as the poorly animated, yet colon-cleansingly awesome space drama, Exosquad. The latter, in particular, was—in the parlance of our times, “the tits.” It’s set in the future, as all worthwhile stories are, and chronicles the goings on of a group of soldiers in the Exofleet, as they battle the evil space pirates of Jonas Simbacca, and later join forces with him to fight a greater foe, the Neosapian menace (Perhaps one day we will have to strike an uneasy alliance with the Somali buccaneers against a resurgent Mongolian military? Time will tell). Now, the animation looks like it was done by a not-particularly-gifted two year old (creater Will Meugniot also made this terrible DragonLance cartoon adaptation awhile back), and the show was canceled before the story could be totally resolved, but man, what a story. So, yeah, I’ve been waiting patiently for about a decade for this business to come to DVD, and on April 14, my long wait appears to be at an end. Stop laughing at me.