I’ve always loved that Johnny Depp. I’ve even tried to emulate, in a way, that little soul patch/goatee thing he’s got going.
And although I love those “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies as much as the next guy (OK, the first one’s pretty good), I think some people are taking it a bit too far.
First was the curious case of three teenagers suing Shasta County for $6 million in gold coins, stemming from an incident in which they allege they were “brutalized” by sheriff’s deputies. I don’t know a thing about the case, but to ask for the damages in gold coins certainly seems odd. How did that conversation go between the teens and the attorneys?
“Arrgh, matey, me thinks American money might not be any good in this economy. Me wants me reward in gold coins. Arrrrrrrrrgh!”
So that one’s a little weird, but what about the real pirates doing real pirate business?
Off the coast of Somalia, pirates just captured a super tanker ship with something like $100 million worth of oil on board. I started reading a bunch of stories about these pirates and was stunned to learn that Somali-based pirates have captured dozens of ships in the past couple of years and have received millions of dollars in ransoms.
What is this, 1750?
The reports are saying that piracy is on the rise because Somalia hasn’t had a stable government since the early 1990s. But how is it that some guys with rifles in little speedboats can travel more than a hundred miles off the coast of East Africa and capture a gigantic oil tanker?
Today it’s being reported that the pirates are asking for $25 million (although, I don’t believe in gold coins), or they will do very bad things to the crew and ship. Just exactly how is this happening? Can’t some agency pay the ransom, then when the pirates go off in their speed boats, just kind of blow them out of the water?
I’m not trying to make light of a very serious situation, but who’d a thunk in the 21st century we’d still be dealing with pirates in the traditional take-over-a-ship-in-the-middle-of-the-ocean sense?
By the way, do you know why pirates are such bad e-mailers? Every key on their keyboard is the letter “R.”
Arrrgh! Sorry.
But seriously, we really romanticize the pirates of yesteryear. They’re so cool and Johnny Depp-like. But weren’t they doing back then exactly what these pirates of today are doing off the coast of East Africa?
When you see what it looks like today — men with hoods and automatic weapons on boats — it looks pretty awful and unromantic. It has always been about greed and violence and intimidation.
I think Disney has the greed thing down pretty well, but nobody forced us by gunpoint to go see those movies. This is true ugliness on the high seas.
