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19 September 2008

aaaargh mateys! avast ye landlubbers! Today is INTERNATIONAL TALK LIKE A PIRATE DAY!

Flag of the Dwingeloo Pirates,
Dread & Scourge of Space

around planets Vleeptron, Yobbo,
Hoon & Mollyringwald


Mesdames & Sirs

today

Friday 19 September 2008

is

INTERNATIONAL
TALK LIKE A PIRATE
DAY


aaaargh matey
shiver me timbers
yo ho ho
walk the plank

drink rum!


if you don't drink, uhhh ... well, do whatever non-drinking Pirates do or ingest.

but do all the other Pirate stuff:

* dress like a pirate
* talk like a pirate
* wear an eyepatch
* put a parrot on your shoulder
* put 1 gold ring thru 1 earlobe

* terrorize a coastal community
* or a ship of innocent travellers at sea

Historically,
Ladies & Gentlemen
(and boys & girls)
can ALL be Pirates

& Pirate Captains

it's just one day a year

5 comments:

domnul said...

Such a day; rum all out. Our company somewhat sober; a damned confusion amongst us! Rogues a-plotting. Talk of separation. So I looked sharp for a prize [and] took one with a great deal of liquor aboard. So kept the company hot, damned hot, then all things went well again.

Captain Edward Teach (Blackbeard)

"One of the greatest prose stylists of the 18th century" (George MacDonal Fraser)

Vleeptron Dude said...

A sad discovery -- George MacDonald Fraser (OBE) died in January. He was one of my favorite novelists, with his loony novels detailing the bizarre, perverted, cowardly career of Victorian war hero General Sir Harry Flashman. Fraser made the history of this era -- in England, Scotland, Germany, India, the Crimea -- come hysterically alive. Because of Fraser, I learned that Lord Cardigan spoke like Elmer Fudd.

aaargh matey, may I bring to your attention a wonderful discovery, "A General History of The Pirates," a bestseller when published in 1724 by the author "Captain Charles Johnson," but only very recently proven to be the work of Daniel Defoe. Arrrgh it's a Dover paperback.

Chapters on

Captain Avery
Captain Martel
Captain Teach, alias Black-beard
Major Stede Bonnet
Captain Edward England
Captain Charles Vane
Captain John Rackam
The Life of Mary Read
The Life of Anne Bonny
William Kid(d)

many, many others.

Defoe is my superfavorite novelist, generally considered as the inventor of the English novel. He always writes as if he's just an ordinary joe (like Robinson Crusoe) who witnessed or endured great historical events -- my fave is "A Journal of the Plague Year" (though Defoe was just an infant during the Great Plague). But he has the magical gift of convincing you that he was there.

Arrrrgh, buy it. Or loot or pillage it. And of course the Flashman novels, too, if you haven't had the pleasure already.

And try to get your hands on some of Newfoundland's wonderful Screech Rum, first concocted during the days of the pirates and the Triangle Trade -- slaves, molasses, trees for the wooden ships and the iron men.

Vleeptron Dude said...

whoops whoops Defoe spelled it "Pyrates," and here's the original title page:

* * *

A GENERAL
HISTORY
OF THE
ROBBERIES AND MURDERS
Of the most notorious
PYRATES,
AND ALSO
Their Policies, Discipline and Government,
From their first RISE and SETTLEMENT in the Island of Providence, in 1717, to the present Year 1724.

WITH
The remarkable ACTIONS and ADVENTURES of the two Female Pyrates, Mary Read amd Amme Bonny.

. . .

By Captain CHARLES JOHNSON.

London, Printed for Ch. Rivington at the Bible and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard, J. Lacy at the Ship near the Temple-Gate, and J. Stone next the Crown Coffee-house the back of Greys-Inn, 1724.

Anonymous said...

good thing you can google in pirate now.

Vleeptron Dude said...

lol!

it's 03:45 and i gotta crash, but this is a scream

soon it will be halloween, and Very Short Pirates will be knocking on my door demanding candy.

the Original pirates authentically scared the living crap out of big chunks of the planet.

but give anybody -- Blackbeard, for example -- just a few centuries, and they morph into Halloween costumes and Disney theme park rides and movies.

"Civilization and Its Discontents" -- the more we behave, the more we do our part to maintain civilized, safe, clean, sober, orderly communities ...

... the more, deep in our hearts, we dream of being pirates.

there was another famous woman pirate chief, in southeast Asia and Pacifica, a Chinese woman. I'll try to find her name.