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….