On Piracy (The Real Kind, Not The Fun Kind)

Let's just let the RIAA sue any Somalians who steal from us.
I'm sure that'll be incredibly effective.

So apparently, when you board an American commercial vessel, hold the crew hostage and try to steal all their stuff, we kill your crew and try the lone survivor for piracy. That's a pretty straight-forward, sensical system, I'd say.

Well, apparently, when you try and convict him, you place him in American prison for 33 years.

Yes, he turned to a life of gang-based violence in order to escape the crippling destitution and starvation rampant in his nation. And as punishment for that, we're paying to lock him in a gang-based, violent compound where there is no money but free food and medical treatment.

Man, taking an American hostage is like the Somalian Pirate fucking retirement package. I mean, if you survive and all.

On Being Bi-Curious

I mentioned earlier that it took me a long time to admit to myself my own inner Pirate-ness. In fact I've long been toying with a long, anime-scale television series focusing on a ninja who becomes stranded on a desert island and must pose as a pirate to secure passage to his home port. It would have been initially funny and later more serious and heartfelt. It would be titled "Bi-Curious: The Life and Times of A Ninja Pirate."

The one thing that always kept me from believing I was not on Team Ninja was my grace and stealth. Frankly, I have a habbit of sneaking up on people. I don't mean to. I mean, sometimes I completely mean to, but I frequently sneak when I have no intention of sneaking.

Apparently I walk softly. My footfalls come light and quiet, trained through years of living with other people who for some reason to not keep to a predominantly nocturnal schedule. I'm good at keeping quiet as I walk over squeaky stairs and creaky floorboards. I know where to step and the ancient ninja methods of landing the foot flat with its weight dispersed.

Unfortunately, I only weigh about 133 pounds, so when I tread lightly I really go full-on stealth. I just end up arriving in people's blind spots. Eventually they turn around and I've been the asshole who freaks them out for the hell of it. I don't enjoy that. It completely changes the direction of a conversation that I have very likely been waiting several minutes to carefully worm my way into.

Do you know what it's like to wear giant boots and still have to purposefully make clunky walking noises to keep other people comfortable?

It's a good thing Han Solo made space pirates cool, cowboy-lookin' dudes. Otherwise I'd just be completely confused about myself.

Who isn't a little stereotype-curious for Han Solo?

In the Pirish Spirit

I didn't celebrate it with you all since I was out, busy having a life with people and events and things (a change of pace for me), but yesterday, September 19^th, was International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Sadly, I was in denial about my own Pirishness for many years, thinking and hoping that I was more a ninja type. Eventually my cavalier attitude and preference for samurai and that I look a damned good deal better in leather and pistols than black pajamas simply forced me to admit that I was not the ninja I had hoped deep down. Much like the child who grows up to accept that he he is not adopted, that his "real" parents are not the monarchs of some far away kingdom set to come for him in the dead of night, but are instead Don and Donna, the accountant and her husband from billing, I accepted that I was a pirate.

Of course I'm about as Pirish as I am Jewish. (There were actualy a great number of Jewish "privateers" back in the heyday of swashbuckling. Many were Sephardic Jews kicked out of Spain during the Inquisition, seeking either a better life of just straight revenge theft. Several even went on to become successful, legitimate merchants, which just goes to show you something horribly stereotypical.)

Anyway, I haven't been in a synagogue since my brothers were bar-mitzvahed. My own before that. I've been in more churches. Similarly, I tweeted in Pirish once today. I used the word "garr…." Last year I set my Facebook account's language setting to "English (Pirate)."

So to alleviate my Jewrate rum-guilt and cease paying lip service to Jean Lefitte, I am going to tell you my Pirate Joke. This is my favorite joke to tell because it is short but sweet, just a little off color and the only joke I can remember when I'm put on the stop that doesn't take ten minutes to tell.

Ahemm.


A pirate walks into a bar with the captain's wheel of a ship hanging from his belt buckle. He hobbles difficultly up to the bar and orders some rum.

The bartender gets him his drink and, as the pirate drinks, the bartender says to him, "Hey, um, I don't usually pry into people's lives like this, but are you aware of the very large wheel hanging off your zipper?"

"Yarr…" the pirate says.

"Well, doesn't it hurt?" asks the baternder, to which the pirate looks up at him from his drink and says, "Garr … it's driving me nuts!"


Garr….