An update about the True Authorship of the Pirate Resignation Letter– now with 100% more Angus scrotum:

Back in April, in the comment thread of a post about our recondite plans for global dominion, a Popehat visitor using the nick "Will Nobilis" seemed to claim authorship of the well-known Pirate Resignation Letter. In one comment, Will Nobilis wrote,

"…a random web search led me to find out Ken and Patrick (and someone named Mike) wrote about my pirate resignation letter…."

This claim surprised me, so I poked around for other posts by Will Nobilis, and, behold!, appended to Ken's variant of "The Nymph's Reply" there was the following humblebrag from 2011:

"I am glad to see it has made it to a site I frequently enjoy reading and I hope it brought you as much amusement as it did for me to write it and send it to my bosses back then."

In Will's claim I detected a whiff of Alvarez. So I asked him to clarify. I haven't bothered to grep the logs for a visit from him to that page since then, but we haven't noticed his nick or IP since. Whatevs….

This little episode is what prompted my recent post on The Origin of the Pirate Resignation Letter. A few years ago, by the usual means, I had traced the PRL back as far as the early aughties–specifically, to the third of May 18082001–and had come up with a tentative attribution: "As far as I've been able to tell through clever googling in my favorite search engine, the renowned and much beloved Pirate Resignation Letter was written by Chris Castle…." This Castle chap had posted in a forum, now defunct, under the nick "The Bartender" and had stated that

"In the interest of disclosure I should note …[that t]he entirety of the letter was not drafted by solely myself[.] I prefer to think of myself as the 'Producer' of the document".

As if summoned by low-tier conjuration, a Popehat commenter named "The Bartender" bearing email and IP affinity to Castle turned up to comment on the thread (without disclaiming credit): "Thank you for finding this!…" In neither case did the drinkslinger cited a source.

Anyhow, I don't mean to get exercised, but the pilates thickens: there's new evidence that may set the record straight. For comes now a future reader of Popehat, the humble, scoundrel-hatin' Rob G——-, who intimates that all the preceding claimants, real or imagined, are right bastards, and who adduces credible evidence to support his own authorship. He confirms that he was not posting as "Will Nobilis" and that he ain't "The Bartender". By email, RG explains:

A friend of mine sent me a link to a recent post you guys made about the supposed "original" author of the pirate resignation letter.  (To wit: http://www.popehat.com/2013/04/24/origin-of-the-pirate-resignation-letter/)  She suggested I send you a note and square the issue – because I indeed wrote the pirate resignation letter in the winter of 2000.

I've been gratified for over a decade that it's been re-posted and reused more than a few times, but I don't believe I've ever before seen someone attempt to claim authorship, until now.  As such, I direct your attention to the following link on the Internet Wayback Machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20010408002129/http://www.i-resign.com/uk/letters/ViewLetter.asp?ResignationID=91

As a bit of background, I was a miserable IT guy at Merrill Lynch back in the 1990's, and during the waning moments of my career I took to writing resignation letters as a bit of a hobby.  Two of the ones I wrote I later forwarded on to i-resign.com, and the pirate letter was the one I actually did use as my resignation letter from Merrill in December of 2000.  The "Chris" mentioned in the letter was my boss at the time, a guy named Chris O——-, and the word "porcine" was actually "bovine" in the original letter.  (When you work for a company with a large, scrotum-displaying bull as its logo, it's obvious to see the reasons for my use of the term.)  The eventual recipient of my actual resignation letter was a gentleman named John F——-, who had, at time of receipt, long been convinced of my eccentric incompatibility with Merrill.

Someone sent me a link years ago to a reply I suppose you guys did – it was droll and appreciated.  I don't really want any notoriety or "credit," but I wanted to set the record straight – I don't like liars.

Best,

Rob G——-

Thank you, Ray. You moved me.

There's a map floating around the Twitterverse that I find fascinating:

(Click to embiggen!)

The main populations in the circle are these:

I'm reminded of Hans Rosling's intriguing videos. Especially this one.

What does this geographic concentration of us humans suggest or imply about current Unitedstatesian foreign policy? What does it suggest about possibilities for sustainable development of underindustrialized (or post-industrial) areas? How does the leveling influence of communication technologies intersect the social stratification that inevitably comes with such development? How should foreign language instruction and cultural education change in regions outside the circle? Which languages should Popehat support with i18n/l10n?

There's a conceptual zone within which the romanticized historical past and the immanentizing historical future converge in a swamp of misapprehension and misstep. It's called "the present".

Is there a better way of doing today in view of tomorrow's important issues?

Marian Call will be spinnin' the discs for KRNN this Wednesday night for a couple of hours from 8pm PST (11pm EST).

She says she'll be playing "music by [her] favorite artists — several Alaskans, several utterly obscure artists, and a few very popular ones".

MC puts the work in 'quirk' and the cover in 'discovery' and the fun in 'latifundium'! So if you're so inclined and you've got the time, feel free to stream netwise at http://krnn.org/ .

Dear y'all,

We're using WordPress. From time to time, we have tinkered with caching software. At the moment, we're using none because we enjoy our banning software more, and cache seldom plays nicely with ban. Our server also offers caching for interpreted php modules, but we've turned that off. None of the other plugins we employ makes conspicuous use of caching, and we're presently not (knowingly) relying on a CDN. (The server bills at a flat rate, not by the mile.)

Nevertheless, folks occasionally report that they're encountering a ban notice on the front page or on a given post. Typically, these are not folks we've banned (whether directly or by ip range). So far, the false ban message seems to affect only, say, 5 visitors in 20k.

In every case, we've asked these victims of technology to clear their browser's cache and to revisit the site. In every case, this has worked.

We're currently investigating whether the hosting provider employs a pagespeed or caching module in their preconfigured, managed web server. We're also probing the logs to see whether the false bans happen to follow closely on attempted visits from folks actually banned. Meanwhile, if you suddenly find yourself banned and have no reason to think you deserve it, then go ahead and force a reload (CTRL + F5 on Windows; Apple+R or AzaleaBlossom+R on Mac; F5 or CTRL+F5 or meta+F5 on Linux) and see whether that fixes the problem. More aggressively, go to your browser's settings and explicitly delete your local web cache (Option+AzaleaBlossom E on Mac).

Once we're done troubleshooting and making this annoyance go away, I'll report back. And of course, if you're comfortable with the Dreamhost/Debian/Apache/Wordpress stack, feel free to make troubleshooting suggestions in the comments below!

Update! Tickets on sale now!

If you'll be in the Los Angeles area this June, and if you enjoy Golden Age detective stories, then the Hollywood Fringe Festival will be offering a special treat just for you: Kill A Better Mousetrap. This one-act comedy (with a legal twist!) by actor/writer Scott Ratner will be playing every Saturday that month.

As far as I've been able to tell through clever googling in my favorite search engine, the renowned and much beloved Pirate Resignation Letter was written by Chris Castle and delivered to James Bear (deceased), former managing partner of Knobbe, Martens, Olson & Bear, LLP.

After using the letter, Castle shared it with his friend, user "Otter Von Pop" of the (now defunct) BirdSunEye.com forum, and that user posted it on 17 October 2003 both as a forum post and as a Word doc attachment.

Later that morning, Chris Castle, posting as "The Bartender" confirmed the story and reported on the (first ever!) recipient's humorless (or brilliantly funny!) reply.

Harvested from the past and hosted right here on Popehat is that original forum thread:

Original Pirate Resignation Letter Thread

Enjoy this bit of net.history! And if you have anything to add about the people or circumstances, please share what you know in the comments.

UPDATE: There's a new pretender to the helm!

I have one of each of the following oldie-but-goodie games to give away within the Steam ecosystem:

• Half-Life 2 (taken)
• Half-Life 2: Episode One (taken)
• BioShock (taken)

Do you play games via Steam? Do you, for some inexplicable reason, lack one of these games? Would you like one of them?

If you have answered "Yes, Yes, Yes!" to these questions, then send an email to me, david at popehat dot com, requesting by title exactly one of the three games.

Each game will go to the first person who requests it, and each will go to a different person.

Enjoy!

"Welcome to an Internet without privacy, and we've ended up here with hardly a fight."  ~ Bruce Schneier

Do you remember with fond affection that masterpiece of PC gaming, Planescape: Torment? Have you never heard of Planescape: Torment? Do you wish you could dropstop everything right now and replay Planescape: Torment?

Well, you're not alone. But Big Publishing is too rational or terrified to make that sort of game anymore.

Happily, we can acknowledge the waning importance of what Big Publishing thinks about this or anything else, for we now have tubes full of Kickstarter. (What can change the nature of games publishing?)

Many of the folks who made Planescape: Torment now work at inXile, and they're making a new game: Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Not actually a sequel to the previous game's story, which is self-contained (and recursive), Tides of Numenera will offer the same kind of thematically rich content within the framework of Monte Cook's (already funded) Numenera RPG system.

Anyhow, the studio's Kickstarter campaign began this morning and raised its 30-day target of $900,000 in six hours. That should tell you something about how the fans of Planescape: Torment regard this franchise and these developers and this plan.

There's still plenty of time to buy in, and there are plenty of perqs for berks, so if this is the sort of thing you're likely to like, then you know what to do!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-numenera

Silent Moon, Jia Peng Fang (賈鵬芳)

Whim 'n Rhythm 2011 in DC

There. I said it. I. Bullied. Ken.

No, I'm not proud of the fact, and I only really mention it in company that knows him (at least by reputation). And only after a few drinks. Or if someone waxes nostalgic about those bright high school days.

After all these years, I still sometimes wonder whether Ken wonders why we targeted him. From what he writes, I suspect he still hasn't quite figured it out. You see, it wasn't, as he suspects, because he was a fantasy role playing dork. Yes, it was awkward when the headmaster "seized" his Dungeon Master's Guide and Monster Manual and kept them for several days, supposedly to figure out whether there was anything Satanic or Communistic afoot during lunch period in that den of iniquity, the library study room. I was no Eddie Haskell, though. Everyone, bullies and bullied alike, recognized that the headmaster and his pencil-pushing goon squad were hapless, dickied oafs.

At all events, we didn't pick on Ken because he was, for a time, singled out for his nerdy interests. (Hey, Ken. How's the opera fan? Have you been getting cozy with the tutti frutti?) And it wasn't because he was a pudge. And it wasn't because of his mellifluous tenor, in that era still croaky from the change. And I, for one, have no idea what happened to his bicycle. I thought he was dropped off early by car each day so he could organize chairs in the home room, so what do I know.

Those of you who suspect that it was because of his smart mouth are not far afield, though as he has explained, he tempered his reactions for fear that he would incur more, or more vicious, attention.

Not that we were truly vicious. A wedgie here, a flat tire there. (On the trainers, not the bike.) That one time when we blocked the lavatory exit, we could've given him a swirly, but we didn't, for he was already balding and there's no fun in it if they don't walk away dripping wet. (On this basis, the scheme to hold him down and give him a 'hawk was also rejected, so we just cut his Peckham Rye.) And yes, the incident with his thermos was arguably out of line, but we labeled it with masking tape, so it's not as if he actually drank it.

In any case, it was his mouth that got him into trouble, not for the frequency of his retorts, for they were few, but for their quality. Specifically, for their allusive literary depth. You see, Ken couldn't just say "I'll punch you back" or "Go away and leave me alone." With him it was always, "I shall cry havoc, and Daddy will let slip the dogs of war" or "Verily, I do bite my thumb at thee." Not by accident did we choose figs to pelt him with on the day he announced his candidacy for Student Body Secretary. (Secretary, Ken?) And it wasn't just the precocious quotation of Shakes or Vonnegut or Burgess or Baldwin. We wouldn't have bullied him for pretense alone. No, it was something more. That look in his eyes– that yearning, needy look, sustained for just a bit too long and a bit too punch-worthily.

It was as if he were fishing for a similarly literary response, as if nothing would have made him happier than to spit out "a knavish speech sleeps in a foolish ear" and have one of us retort "My lord, you must tell us where the body is!" It was as if he were trying to lure us into playing a role in some creepy imaginary world where the crap they shoveled at us in English class actually mattered.

Milo to his Andrew? No thank you. I wanted no part of his itty bitty Mitty committee, and the idea of his watching Cheez Whiz drip down into his rucksack and muttering "Life is short, but the years are long" makes me want to puke even now.

Whatever world he was living in wasn't the real world. While most of us were prepping for iBanking or BSchool (back when MBAs meant something) after college, he was making a big show of having an imagination, and not only having it but wrapping it around everything else. He had this meta-layer of fiction that decorated his sad little existence. Even when I was shoving him repeatedly between the shoulder blades and taunting him with cries of "Try, Pythagoras! Try, Pythagoras!" I just knew, whether he said anything or not, that he was recasting the whole thing into some grand drama, probably based on Updike or something. And yeah, he did go into law, as I found out at the reunion, and that gave me some hope that maybe I had managed to straighten him out after all, and I even started following the blog. But soon it became clear that he even wraps his legal practice and firm management in some ridiculous layer of imaginary folderol to make it seem less soul-sapping. Well, guess what, Kenster! You can't bake moldy holiday without a rack, and six days does not a week make! Head out of the clouds, man!

It was my mission to show him, and everyone like him, the difference between reality and whatever imaginary sitch he thought he was living in. I like to think of it as an intervention to make clear to him that a fiction is a fiction, and a fist is a fact. (Ok, so maybe in a way it was because he was a role playing dork inhabiting his fantasy land that I bullied him. And maybe he figured that out more quickly than I did, but that doesn't mean he's any better than I am. And when he sits down in the Dr. Pepper that I poured on his seat, he'll realize that. And most importantly, he'll acknowledge it.)

That is why I stand with Ken now to defend the right use of the word "bullying." What I did to Ken was real, it was methodical, and he richly deserved it. These weasels and dirtbags and senators who come along and try to cheapen the concept must be stopped. Whinging that Mr. Adams called you a Jacobin is one thing. Calling Mr. Adams a bully because he calls you a Jacobin, well… that's just pathetic, and it gives bullying and Jacobins a bad name. Mr. Adams is not bullying you when he insults you! He's bullying you when he trips you into a puddle and ruins your uniform! Right, Ken?

To those who cry "bully" I ask: how will you lead a people if you can't even get this right?

I tried to achieve something in Ken. I don't want it diluted or cheapened by slime puppies who have no respect. And if they keep it up, I'll kick their collective ass.