Happy St. Zwintscher's Day!

“St. Zwintscher’s Day: A holiday celebrated on the Fourth to Last Day of the Year named in honor of Zwintscher, the first and only Pirate Saint.  Soon after his canonization, followers of St. Zwintscher declared that the Fourth to Last Day of the Year be set aside to honor the great man.  Early celebrations included tapping kegs of rum, drinking till blind drunk, then raping and pillaging.  While these practices were toned down as the years progressed (modern celebrations have been altered slightly to replace the raping and pillaging with a rousing exchange of gifts and consensual sexual favors, and a preferred spirit is often substituted for rum) there has always been a strong undertone of drinking, debauchery, and rebellion present in the celebrations.

St. Zwintscher, Captain of the infamous pirate ship Grin of the Albatross, was the scourge of the Seven Seas at some indeterminate point in history.  Indeed, records of his activities date from as early as 721 and as late as 1855.  He and his crew were said to be of the most unsavory of sorts; misfits and malcontents that sailed the world doing as they would, taking as they pleased.  Rumors of his exploits ranged far and wide.  He apparently ventured as far as the nations of China, India, and Japan and had amongst his closest associates a Ninja Master known as Shogo, a Taoist Sage that took no name, and an adventurous sultana of surpassing beauty.  It was also said that there were a great number of dark magicians in his employ.  Of all the rumors that circulated, however, the most popular was that he was impossible to kill.  

Officially canonized by the rogue Black Pope in the Year of Our Lord 1147, Saint Zwintscher has always been a countercultural hero.  Records and details of his life are drawn from a fragmentary reference in the Book of Broken Shadows, an apocryphal history of the dispossessed.  It was said that he left behind memoirs under the title Black Sun Rising referencing his flag: the rising black sun on a field of white.  There are no known copies extant.  It is interesting to note that his flag has been adopted as the flag of the literary movement the UnEnlightenment.  Moreover it was members of the UnEnlightenment movement that revived the modern celebration of St. Zwintscher’s Day.”
- The Encyclopedia of Both Good and Bad Things

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In the dark of the night, daring the World to do something; anything.

Somehow I have always known that I would make my stand alone.

They weren’t the ones that I was waiting for.

I lie here listlessly, wanting little more than to carry out acts of ever increasing violence and unspeakable depravity.  “But I want to break free … Oh how I’ve got to break free.”  Something needs to happen.  Soon.  I don’t know what’s to become of me.

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“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, – and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.”

- The Shakespeare, “Sonnet 29”