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ASPECTS OF PIRATES, PART I Parrots When you think of the things pirates live for, "treasure" and "violence" top the list, maybe with "hornpipes" coming in a distant third. "Stewardship of colorful avian wildlife" doesn't seem like it belongs there, but somehow pirates attract parrots the way science fiction movies attract snotty weblog reviews. I'd really like to see a wider variety of pirate shoulder pets. You've got the parrots and the odd monkey. What's wrong with the idea of a pirate captain with an armadillo clinging to his shoulder, or a bos'n struggling under the weight of a tapir? It could be a status symbol to have a heavier shoulder pet than anyone else. "We'd best lay off, me boyos! They're hefting llamas!" B Eye Patches The open sea must be a pretty risky place for eye hazards. I'm not sure what specifically is likely to take your eye out and leave the rest of your face largely intact. I'm guessing carelessly handled sextants and spyglasses are the cause more often than your average salty sea-dog is likely to admit. "Me eye was taken by the tip of Long Jack Scabbard's sword" sounds a lot better than "Well, it was a stormy day and those sextants are really pokey." C Accents Pirate accents are fun and all, but the weird thing is that they appear to be exclusive to the piratical lifestyle. It's as if they all grew up speaking Buccannese and learned English late in life. I've read that it stems from Robert Newton doing a Welsh accent in Treasure Island, but Tom Jones is Welsh and you'd have to get him competely drunk, scrape the back of his throat with a shrimp fork, then hit him on the back of the head with a cricket bat to get him to talk like that. If you do, though, make sure to get a recording of him singing "It's Not Unusual" afterwards. That would be great. A- Walking the Plank I don't know why pirates stand on ceremony so much, with the plank and the blindfold and the poking with the scimitar when a firm hobble and a stiff shove would be an equally convincing deterrent. More so, when you think about it. When was the last time you saw someone walk the plank, fall down into the water, drown, and that's it? The "victim" always ends up pulling some flippy action with the board, or being saved by a dolphin or something. Someone needs to publish a self-help book called Why Pirates Fail: A Guide To Stopping With the Plank Thing Already. D Buried Treasure Another example of self-defeating pirate behavior. Most stores don't accept buried treasure in payment. Even places that take the Discover Card don't generally deal in underground currency. But without the treasure, you don't have the map. And without the map you don't have the adventure. You just end up drifting around the new world waiting for Francis Drake to sail by so you can jack him for gold and potatoes. If pirate life was that simple Disney would have created "Travel Agents of the Carribean" instead. C-
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