Captain Charisma

 

Maths exam was today. Allow me to illustrate:

 

 

Illustrated blogs - what a great idea!

 

 

Bloody exams.

English exam tomorrow: 500 word formal commentary on some war-on-terror documentary which takes the marginalized perspective.

In other words, this documentary is the pebble in the shoe of mass public opinion.

 

I love writing. It's my passion. It's my calling. I'll kick formal ass.

But it's bullshit. Formality defeats the purpose of writing.

 

 

I like the third line - I'll be sure to use it.

 

 

 

My dad has always had an incredible connection to the movements around him;

I could never figure it out.

Dead set on his beliefs of spirituality, he couldn't deny any longer that his happiness lay not within the church walls -

I think it's part of what faded his marriage; mum didn't like the sound of that.

But nothing sways him. You can feel it in the air.

 

Took me under his wing when mum left, allowed me to detach from her and God;

My first step into embarking on the journey of my own developed path;

Like learning to walk, on the inside.

And still, his life further alligned around his spiritual path;

Emily and I always scoffed and made fun of his "new age bullshit" between cigarettes and coffee,

Behind his back, and when he was there -

And winters pass, alongside the brothers of the congregation asking when he'll be back -

But nothing sways him.

 

Dad has this total knack with machines; his shed is a mass of dismembered motorcycles and a far from finished Land Rover.

His clothes constantly smell of motor oil, even when they're washed,

His hands are thick and leathery, mapped with cuts and oil stains...

Yet he has a respect and love for the surrounding nature that would see our red-skin blood most proud:

I became incredibly used to the fact that he even comments age old trees as if he were speaking to them.

I find it funny and tease him about it,

But nothing sways him.

 

He calls me to see how I am sometimes,

Nobody could ever care so much about the long dead pirate ancestor more than him.

"I think you should ask her out," he suggests in regards to the tale of Megan,

"Oh, and the cat misses ya, I've found her curled up on your pillow every night for the past couple of weeks."

From there it's more brisk chatter until time's up and we make casual goodbyes.

 

I keep thinking of this photo I left behind. It's from when I was about 5, a time when dad's hair was a dark silver and mine was so white it was like snow. The both of us are sitting on his old olive-green military motorcycle, speeding ferociously loud in a loop around the house, the pair of us grinning wildly at the camera...

 

I don't think he knows just how much I really miss him.

 

 

On June 30th 1704, the condemned Captain John Quelch was marched under escort to a church nearby the gallows of Boston Harbour, so that a minister could beg him to purge himself of sin and shame. There, he was preached to, prayed over and exhorted.

 

There, he heard: "We have told you often, we have told you weeping, that you were born a sinner... and that the Sins for which you are about to die are of no common aggravation!"

Shackled hand and foot, the hapless and helpless prisoner was told of the many agonizing torments and unbearable pains that would be his lot in the next world unless he repented.

 

That afternoon, the area surrounding the gibbet was a mass of milling people. Men and women, who had come from near and far to witness the gruesome event, considered it a treat to witness such a number of prisoners publicly executed at once. They had a long wait for it was mid-afternoon before the condemned Quelch, and six of his crew, guarded by a contingent of 40 red-coated musketeers, was led to the scaffold.

 

There, John Quelch - mutineer, murderer, pirate - was compelled to stand beneath the noose that was to claim his life and listen to yet another lugubrious, long-drawn-out prayer that served to prolong his agony and tantalize the anticipation of the audience.

 

"Oh," apostrophised the Rev. Cotton Mather, who was well paid (from a fraction of Quelch's captured loot) for his sermon, "that the poor men who are immediately to appear before the awful Tribunal of God may first by Sovereign Grace have produced upon their Souls those Marks of Thy Favour... Oh, Great God, let thy Sovereign Grace operate on this fearful occasion!"

 

Quelch, who seemed unmoved by this, replied, "I am not afraid of death. I am not afraid of the gallows, but I am afraid of what follows; I am afraid of a Great God, and a Judgment to come."

The ministers had, in the way of his execution, much desired him to glorify God at his death, by bearing a due testimony against the sins that had ruined him and for the ways of religion which he had much neglected; yet now being called upon to speak what he had to say, the strutting, swaggering rogue showed no fear in the face of death...

 

Instead, he pulled off his hat, bowed to the spectators and added, "Gentleman! 'Tis but little I have to say to my fellows, save this. Take care how you bring money into New England, to be hanged for it."

 

 

Neither man, woman nor child survived Captain John Quelch's brutal attacks within the foregoing year he rose to become the most feared pirate off the east coast of America. Quelch was a good deal more of a man than Captain Kidd who skulked homeward, parleying with Governor Bellomont at long range, afraid to come to close quarters. An intrepid, cocksure villain was John Quelch, daring to beard the lion in his den, trusting to his ability to deceive the authorities who hopelessly pursued him for months. To have run away with a privateering vessel, thrown the captain overboard, filled the hold with loot, and then sailed back to Marblehead was no ordinary achievement among even the most infamous corsairs.

I bought this stylish T-shirt after seeing it in the window of the army surplus back in Auckland. It's black and it has a print of a war poster (pictured below), which hung in the Soviet Union during World War 2, down the front. How cool? Too cool.

 

So, thanks to ground-breaking NASA technology, I spent some time finding out what it says in english...

 

 
  “EVERYTHING FOR THE FRONT!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 





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  RIFLES, PROJECTILES, CARTRIDGES!”