Alternate Mes

I had an idea for a post, it could even be an idea for a story or book, about possible alternate versions of myself.  Say, for instance, I had been born in a different century.  I could have been born into a far flung future(if humanity indeed exists far into the future) or into the distant past.

Perhaps there is an alternate me wherein my pirate garbed persona is not just a costumed affectation I don for SCA and other just for fun events, but is, instead, my true swashbuckling self; a salty sea dog aboard a ship of other scoundrels taking what we can from those weaker than us.  If an alternate, pirate, me exists, I am sure that he/me would not be a very nice person.  As much as Hollywood and books would like to have us believe in the fantasy of the noble and honorable rogue of the sea, the handsome trickster who may be a thief but he loathes to kill and he fights on the side of right, I doubt such fantastical heroic figures existed among the bloodthirsty lot of murderers, rapists and thieves who actually roamed the seas in search of ships to plunder and booty to loot.  So, Josh the Red, would likely look upon the version of me who is writing this blog as a weak-bellied land-lubber, and kill me for even pretending to be any kind of relation to his vile rum-swilling self.

Still, it would be interesting to live a day in the life of that cutthroat pirate.  Even to experience the more distasteful elements of his sea fairing and marauding, the actions of true pirates, that have been sanitized from all the Disney and family friendly pirate portrayals.  Murder, death, sickness at sea, kidnapping, rape, ransoming, primitive medicine and nutrition.  Truth is painful in many ways, even the true lives of our stories' white knights in shining armor were much grittier and less honorable than they are portrayed in the stories we tell today.  I wanted to go further with this post.  Maybe even write an imagined 'Day in the Life Of' Josh the Red.  Perhaps I will get around to that in a future post.  I would also like to hypothesize on a future-born self. I've met many people who say that they feel as if they were born in the wrong century, wishing they lived in simpler times like the olden days or during the renaissance(often seeming to overlook just how HARD life was in those times..)  I am not one of these, I am a lover of sci-fi and often wished as a kid that I lived in the world of Star Trek, where money is an outmoded concept and teleportation as a mode of travel and replicators that can make any meal you desire in an instant are a reality.  I do not know if such a Utopian vision of humanity can ever come to pass, but if it could, I would wish to live in THAT century.  Even the gritty, near-future world that William Gibson describes in his cyberpunk novels appeals to me more than our world of menial jobs, mortgage payments and reality TV.  I don't know.  Maybe I am just a dissatisfied soul, and I would find something disagreeable even in an alternate life where I was king of a peaceful empire and had my every need catered to.  If so, blame my pessimistic Cancerian nature.  I DO love the internet, so I am least grateful to live in the age of Google and information at our fingertips.  I know not everyone agrees that this is a good thing, but that is a part of what makes this me ME and I would not have it any other way.