Photo: Courtesy Disney.
Here are the facts, gals and guys. Today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you don't know what that is already, take a few moments to process or just go right ahead and read this helpful Wikipedia article. Whether it is truly international, we do not know. Did Iranian President Hassan Rouhani greet NBC News today with "Arrrr! I be havin' no nukes in me hold, matey"? Probably not. But it has been officially recognized as a holiday by our great state of Michigan, where, until 2006, a man could collect a 3 cent bounty for each starling and a 10 cent bounty for each crow killed in any of its villages, townships, or cities. They had a bird problem in Michigan.
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But that's entirely incidental to Pirate Day, which has been around for nearly two decades. During that time, a predominantly male population gets rowdy-drunk, dons floppy boots and plastic hand hooks, and chases women around with smooth lines like, "I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon." Because who doesn't want to shtup a pirate, right?
Wrong. Dead-man's-chest wrong. It seems to us that the only way to do ITLAPD correctly is by reclaiming it with some additions to its lexicon. Here are a few phrases you might pepper into your salty seamen's slang today:
-"I see you be eyeballin' me treasure chest, ye bilge rat. I've got pepper spray, FYI."
-"Shaver me timbers." (Best used with your aesthetician.)
-"A comely wench, you say? Let's see what you think of this coming wrench. Which I am throwing. At your head."
We'll be here all week, folks. Try the veal.
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