Musings.

So you may recall something about some mystery good news! Well I can not contain myself anymore. So here it is! The revealing of the good news!

I got FREE TICKETS to the Miami Boat Show. Yes, while all the other people suckers had to pay to get in, I got in for free. I have the hook up. I got in last year for free too. When I say I have many minions I mean it. My operatives are everywhere, and are always on the lookout for free stuff I may want. Which is almost anything. If it is free, it is for me.

See how things work out? I wanted to go to the boat show for free, and I went to the boat show for free.

In totally unrelated news, do you brew your own beer at home? Well, do you? Cause the Boston Beer Company is sponsoring a homebrew contest! So if you are a homebrewer, enter your best brew. You may just win one of many fabulous prizes. Samuel Adams himself may even make a batch of your beer and distribute it! How cool is that? If my homebrewing stuff were not put away somewhere in storage I would enter this contest. I need to dig my stuff up and start brewing again. It is a lot of fun. It is a lot like cooking, only it takes several weeks and it gets you drunk. But it rules to have your friends come to your house and hang out drinking beer. You usually make 5 gallon batches at a time, so there is usually enough. That is FIFTY TWO 12 ounce bottles. If your buddies and yourself are heavy hitters you can make multiple batches.

Now for a little about today's sea shanty. The Sailor's Hornpipe. The hornpipe is a simple British woodwind musical instrument, consisting of a single reed and an animal horn. Think of a very primitive clarinet. Or a recorder with a real reed. Something like that.

Anyway, it was perfect for a life at sea. No metal parts to corrode. Simple to play. And so on.

There was a dance that went along with this tune. But sailors did not dance to this tune while ashore, so the exact steps seem to be lost to history. But the word on the streets is that sailors would preform dance moves to mimic the daily routine of a life at sea. Dance steps included "hoisting the sail", "swabbing the deck", "weighing the anchor", "drinking the daily ration of grog", and so on.

Oh another thing. For hundreds of years the British Royal Navy issued a daily ration of rum to all sailors. And in a strange coincidence the British were a mighty naval power for hundreds of years. They made the sea their bitch after Sir Francis Drake kicked the shit out of the Spanish Armada in 1588.

However, in 1970 the Royal Navy stopped the daily ration of rum. It was a sad day. Hundreds of years of naval tradition - gone forever. Silly Limeys.

Speaking of Limeys, we all know that means "the British". But do you know how this term came to be? Well I happen to know. I do not know why I know, I just do.

Sailors were prone to get scurvy. This is a condition caused by a lack of vitamin C. It causes your teeth to fall out, skin legions, and bloody mucus membranes. Your body can not produce collagen, so your skin looses its elastic properties and is prone to simply fall apart. So the British Royal Navy provided each sailor a daily ration of limes or lime juice. If I were British, I would not consider being called a "Limey" to be an insult. The term hearkens back to a day when the sun never set on the Empire.