Burn The Ships

Hernando Cortes was an asshole.

In 1519, Hernando landed with 11 ships and 600 men somewhere near Cancun before inclusive resorts littered the beach. He had one goal: steal.

Hernando was the first CEO, but that is another story we will save for later.

His first order to his men was to “burn the ships.” Naturally, his men thought he’d done too much PCP, which he was known to do along with yard-long lines of pure cocaine, to stay up all night and hallucinate about such nonsense as burning his own ships and opening hotels that offered free liquor.

But his boys did it because they were, in two words, retarded and hungry, and after they off loaded the last of the rum and swilled it like the drunks they were, they burned their own transportation.Now some would say, “That’s fucked up.” And they would be right. In Cortes’ drug-addled, syphlliltic mind, he would conquer the Aztecs and use their ships to return to Spain after raping and pillaging an entire population.

One problem Hernando faced: he stole the ships to begin with and then burned the evidence.

But, while Hernando was no-shit insane, he understood a few basic rules, the most important of which was money can solve a lot of problems, including this one. He wrote the King and told him of his success, offered to share his booty, and all was forgiven. For a fee, almost anything can be forgiven - even felony theft and arson. Rather than return to Spain immediately, Hernando decided to hang around Mexico after meeting a hot young chiquita named Dona Maria. He banged her like a gong and knocked her up, which is not a material fact to his story.

So, back the ships, or the former ships, the ones he torched ...

If you look up Cortes on the Internet, his singular devotion to greed is cited as not only admirable by various sales organizations and management consultants, but essential to success. The lesson is simple and straightforward: it doesn’t matter your goal, however vicious and self-ingratiating, if you are focused and willing to do anything to get what you want, society will admire you.

Hernando returned to Spain after he got tired of fucking Dona and died a few years later, miserable and bitter, the part of the story we are not supposed to know, or focus on, or learn any lessons from.Burn the ships, chumps. subscribe here

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