A tour from Lileks:
We visited some houses, saw the CAVE CANEM mural, the word WELCOME embedded in the stones in front of a house. And above it all, Vesuvius . . . venting.
“Are those clouds?”
“It’s a cloudless day except for one cloud coming out of Vesuvius? I don’t think so.”
“Is it going to explode?”
“Some day. But not today.”
Some day it will, and there will probably a tour group in progress, and a few people will think “now that’s a good tour. They even give you the volcano” while others stare in horror: well, can’t say I wasn’t warned, but jeez, what are the odds.
It’s actually part of a series he’s been running all week, on his European vacation.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This is great, too:
On the ship it was Pirate Night. We got Pirates of the Caribbean bandanas in the restaurant. The menu was pirate themed. (It was also the best meal we’d had on the ship.) There was a pirate dance in the middle of dinner. There will be fireworks on board tonight; the Disney ships are the only ones entrusted with fireworks. Then a dessert buffet and general piratical merriment. I arrred well and hard at the maitre d’ when we entered: it’s table nine I’ll be wanting, me hearties – but once Bradford, our waiter, asked me if I would be dressing up, I explained that my sympathies were with the colonial administrators, just trying to get the money to the mother country without losing it to some thieves. Pirates are interesting, but not admirable, no matter how you gussy it up with yo-ho-hoing and avast-ye-matey exultations of a life unbound from convention and oppression. As all the waiters danced around the room, wearing pirate costumes, I had a vision of a ship 400 years hence, with all the waiters dressed up for Al-Qaeda night, wearing suicide vests and waving automatic weapons.
Sadly, he’s probably prophetic. Or maybe not so sadly. I’d feel a little more optimistic if we’d actually solved the pirate problem. We did for a while, but then decided to try a new, non-effective approach.
Why do you need Al-Qaeda night? Aren’t the modern-day 21st century pirates providing inspiration enough?
The Disney ships are awesome. We wanted to do the transatlantic positioning cruise, but were too broke — from the Carribean cruise.
I believe the majority of early pirates served as pawns in a greater global struggle between competing colonial empires. What one could consider a pirate to one nation were privateers loosely conscripted by another nation to raze the opposing nation’s ships into the water. The privateers were allowed to keep any spoils they came across on defeated vessels as a form of their payment. Problem is that many privateers would continue going on with the looting long after two nations would broker a peace deal which would of course move them into the pirate class. But often times pirates would then be reenlisted back as privateers, often times switching sides completely, as political winds continuously shifted back and forth. It wasn’t till the use of privateers waned completely after The War of Spanish Succession that the last few remaining pockets of the pirate caste were finally wiped out for good. It was really the last pockets of the pirate resistance that serve as the modern myth behind pirate lore. But in fact many of the early privateer vessels had codes of honor, standards of dress, and even forbiddance of foul language that were far more strict than on many formal military vessels. Many sailors serving aboard formal military vessels would often become privateers because they appreciated the high levels of comradery amongst the crew and of course the higher levels of pay.
Funny now that as the threat of modern piracy reemerges that we seek the assistance of private security firms to provide armed escort for merchant vessels traveling in dangerous waters. A new form of privateer is once again being conscripted to help deal with the threat of piracy on the open waters. It seems that where you find one you will most likely find the other.
Now as then, Al Qaeda has very little to do with piracy. I would recommend Jay Bandahar’s “Pirates of Somalia”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/books/review/the-pirates-of-somalia-by-jay-bahadur-book-review.html?pagewanted=all
Now as then, Al Qaeda has very little to do with piracy.
Apparently the point whizzed right over your head.
In one of Larry Niven’s stories a sports team several hundred years from now is named the Berlin Nazis.
“Apparently the point whizzed right over your head.” Yes, apparently, please explain.
No one said that Al Qaeda had anything to do with pirates.
My spin on the piece is that like those who romanticize yesteryear’s pirates today; people in the future will romanticize today’s pirates. Hence the paragraph:
“I had a vision of a ship 400 years hence, with all the waiters dressed up for Al-Qaeda night, wearing suicide vests and waving automatic weapons.”
When he refers to Al-Qaeda, I infer that he adheres to the conventional wisdom that Al-Qaeda, today, is behind the Somali pirates; ergo they will be romanticized in the future. That was my interpretation but others may disagree.
Nonetheless, the book I referred to in an earlier comment is still interesting because it is one of the few non-state sponsored or MSM reports on Somali piracy. What the author has to say doesn’t jive entirely with what you hear on CNN or Fox or in State Department and UN press releases.
Rand, you are a very gracious host, and you have been most generous in sharing your online forum. As an honored guest, I respect all of that and don’t want to be rude, especially by explaining a joke, but here goes.
Lileks was being Lileks in finding the humor in a Disney cruise, which is perhaps not too hard to do even if you don’t have Lileks’ whimsey and imagination. The history of Walt Disney and his corporate descendants, the very essence of Disney is to take our darkest fears — child abandonment (Hansel and Gretel), pillaging, murder, and worse (Pirates of the Caribbean), disfiguring disability (Beauty and the Beast), abandonment of a lover (The Little Mermaid), racial genocide (Pohahontas), remote parents (Mary Poppins) — and to treat these subjects in the most treacly and feel-good manner possible.
So in Disney fashion, the cruise ship has a pirate-themed banquet, where pirates are “cute” and go “arrrr” and everything in the Disney world, but where the reality of pirates in the 16th and 17th centuries was a bit more grim, not only the reality of pirates and terrorists in the here and now, where it was not that long ago that terrorists commandeered a ship, a cruise ship in the very waters plied by the Disney ship and murdered a wheelchair-bound American.
So Lileks, being Lileks, asks if 400 years hence we will be having theme parties where Al-Qaeda operatives are suggested as being quaint and cute in some sense.
Some of us, myself included, in the annoying and pendantic way characteristic of the geeks that we are, questioned if Al-Qaeda was the right metaphor. Al-Qaeda are sort of like pirates in that they would commandeer a ship if they thought it would advance their cause in some way, and yes, Al-Qaeda is a mix of political as well as mercenary motives just as the pirates of yore. But the Somali pirates are much more like the romanticized pirates than Al-Qaeda, and we are questioning whether Lileks would have been funnier if he asked whether 400 years from now, whether instead of all of the “arrr”ing that we do now at these theme parties, we would use the style of affected English characteristic of sub-Saharan Africa in order to “do” pirates.
To riff on the Somali pirates instead of on Al-Qaeda is in a way funnier. Why? If you are at the wrong end of a weapon, both groups can make you equally dead and I suppose there is nothing funny about either of them. Al-Qaeda, however, maintains a reputation for a kind of religious and political earnestness that makes them distinctly unfunny, but that may change with revelation of the appetite for p0rnography of their operatives along with drone-cam pictures our people are supposed to have with their operatives and farm animals in the same frame. The Somali pirates, on the other hand, have a reputation for a more craven and mercenary and perhaps more clueless nature (when you are in a small craft in the Indian Ocean, tied by a tow rope to a United States Navy warship, you are NOT in control of the situation, and it does not matter who you are holding hostage). Hence, at the risk of political incorrectness, I assert that the Somali pirates are a lot funnier than Al-Qaeda to suggest as latter day stand-ins for the Pirates of the Carribean.
When he refers to Al-Qaeda, I infer that he adheres to the conventional wisdom that Al-Qaeda, today, is behind the Somali pirates; ergo they will be romanticized in the future.
I don’t know anyone who thinks that Al Qaeda is behind the Somali pirates. I’m sure that Lileks doesn’t. Lileks is hoping that we will romanticize Al Qaeda in the future as we romanticize pirates today because we will have defeated them and no longer fear them.
Whether Al-Qaeda serves as the crime-lord Godfather to the Somali pirates is, as they say, inside baseball.
The real question is what will replacing the “arrr”ing of Pirate Night — a Middle-Eastern accent or a Sub-Saharan African accent?
“Lileks is hoping that we will romanticize Al Qaeda in the future as we romanticize pirates today because we will have defeated them and no longer fear them.”
Rand, I respectfully disagree. Why Lileks would even go on a Disney Cruise I don’t know, but maybe it is hip to think Disney is un-cool — think of the Small World scene in the first Shrek movie — but to patronize Disney anyway. It might be kind of like visiting the Nixon Birthplace and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, where everyone there takes the place seriously, and having the docents staring at you for slipping into a bad Rich Little impersonation.
There is something corporate and plasticy and Disney about not only romanticizing the Pirates of the Carribean but going far beyond that and treating serial murderers as being cute. The suggestion was that it will be equally corporate and plasticy and Disney to treat Al-Qaeda the same way in 400 years. It has nothing to do with vanquishing Al-Qaeda — sword fighting is still considered romantic because it pits man against man, skill against skill, or at least it is considered romantic until your abdominal wall is cut and . . . OK, you get the picture. I don’t think that suicide bomb vests will ever be considered cute.
The real question is what will replacing the “arrr”ing of Pirate Night — a Middle-Eastern accent or a Sub-Saharan African accent?
No, because that would be racist, if separate races still exist 400 years from now. It’s quite possible humans could all (or almost all) be part of one big multi-racial mix by then and more’s the better.
So Lileks likes Disney. So shoot him.
I don’t think that suicide bomb vests will ever be considered cute.
They’d presumably be bowdlerized out of the picture, just like the more gruesome aspects of pirates have been.
The jovial Sallah is already featured in the Indian Jones ride right next to “Pirates” at Disneyland. “Asps, very dangerous — you go first.”
I’d feel a little more optimistic if we’d actually solved the pirate problem. We did for a while, but then decided to try a new, non-effective approach.
I don’t think we ever solved the piracy problem or ever will.
Piracy is simply robbery that takes place at sea. Hundreds of incidents reported worldwide every year. The oceans are harder to police than the land and cover 3/4 of the Earth’s surface.
Like any other crime, we can reduce it but never eliminate it.