Yar!
September 19, 2011, 8:25 am
Posted by unagidon
Today be National Talk Like a Pirate Day. And since me Somali be a bit rusty, I will do me best to imitate that immortal actor what’s his name from the movie Treasure Island.
So riddle me this. All over this great continent of ours, white collar workers will be talkin’ like pegged-legged parrot-bearing old salts like meself. What do ye think about these kinds of “let’s have fun at th’ corporation” holidays? Be they real? Or be they just a distraction from th’ awful truth?
Ye get extra points fer talkin’ like a pirate.
Shiver me post-modern timbers!
Ahoy, mateys! Are you ready kids? ….Aye aye, captain!! ….Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?
Well, on the port hand, Irene be right – Mr. Krabs, the Flying Dutchman and that lubber Patchy be the most entertaining examples, by a thousand fathoms, of mass-media pirate-talk. On the starboard side, I warrant Captain Jack Sparrow’s character is supposed to be channeling Keith Richards, so maybe we should talk like football hooligans today.
“… absorbent and porous and yellow is he.” I love SpongeBob, especially the Flying Dutchman and his “fly of despair.”
I refuse to talk like a pirate or participate in any of these “forced fun” days, which, thank God, my current employer does not foist on us.
I did work for two companies where this kind of thing got way out of hand.
At one, the CEO was a Rotarian who loved group sings, and we were regularly herded into the conference room en masse to sing to visiting board members. It was usually some saccharine lyrics the admin assistant made up to be sung to the tune of “The Sunny Side of the Street” or similar. I weaseled out of this by slipping into the Ladies on the way to the Board room.
At a tech company where I was the oldest employee, there was a mandatory “fun day” where, during the afternoon, we adjourned to a sports bar and were forced to ESPN on the big screen TV or play video games in the adjoining arcade. I showed up for 30 minutes and after watching the 20-something technogeeks make out with their 20-something girlfriends, get drunk on beer, and play hyper video games, I went back to the office to get some work done.
My employer has the right to demand my full attention, my best work, and willingness to work cooperatively with other employees on money-making projects. But if “forced fun” events are not part of the job description, I feel no compunction to participate.
If anybody dressed as a pirate came into my office and started “yar-ing” me, he’d be wearing his fake hook out of his left eyelid.
FWIW, the definitive Long John Silver who invented pirate talk was Robert Newton. Tim Curry did a creditable job in Muppet’s Treasure Island.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvUbbYX9BMs
And Eddie Izzard is doing the role in a 2012 version. In drag perhaps?
OK, I was going to refrain, but now TWO SpongeBob errors make it impossible.
First: Irene, you left out the “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh” before “Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?”
Second: Jean, it is “absorbent and yellow and porous is he,” not “porous and yellow.”
Shiver me timbers, if there be one thing I am known for on the seven seas after having to listen to that show over, and over, and over, and over again, is that I be knowin that darned theme song like the back o’me hand!
Blimey! Maybe we should throw Jean overboard? ‘Twould be a kindness, p’raps.
Here’s something just for Joe Petit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu0H4UD-1sQ&feature=related
Ann, yes, make me walk the plank, throw me overboard, or keelhaul me. I don’t want to participate in Talk Like a Pirate Day.
Though if you wanted to set me adrift with Captain Jack Sparrow for, say, three or four days somewhere around Tahiti, I wouldn’t say no …
Arrgh, Jean! You be a hard lass. Shoulda known better than to mess with the likes of you! To make it up to ye, I’ll be on the lookout fer Capin’ Sparrow.
Mille millions de mille sabords! Ne touchez pas a Jean, tonnerre de brest!
I think I would like a Pirate Day. People could all come to work in Sailor Jerry clothing and we could sing Jimmy Buffett songs (A Pirate Looks At 40)and drink Blackbeard Spiced Rum. Is that what corporate America did today?
Ha ha, Joe. Hope you didn’t open this up at home. Screaming SpongeBob will jack up a 6-year-old faster than a double espresso with sugar-fortified Fruit Loops on the side. I’ve got my purse by the door in case Cap’n Jack shows up.
Claire, thanks! Now, Talk Like a FRENCH Pirate–that has class!
Und the laddie, Patrick?
We had a (sort of ) French pirate down here at one time — the so-called gentleman pirate Jean Lafitte. His reality was as wild as some of the legends about him. He actually did help win the Battle of New Orleans. My favorite legend has him eventually going to St. Louis, making a fortune in munitions there, then going to London and helping Frederick Engles bankroll Karl Marx.
Wonder what sort of accent he had. “Allons to the stern, y’all!”
“We had a (sort of ) French pirate down here at one time — the so-called gentleman pirate Jean Lafitte.”
There was a great semi-fictional film account of Jean Lafitte’s coming to the aid of Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans in the War of 1812 directed by Cecil B. DeMille called “The Buccaneer”. Even better, in my estimation, was the radio adaption for The Lux Radio Theater starring Clark Gable as Jean Lafitte (without an accent but still excellent). I think both the film and the Lux production were done in 1938.
Btw, when I mentioned to one of my children that today was national talk-like-a-pirate day, she noted that her language preference on Facebook is Pirate. That sent me along one of those skeins of thought that goes, “If only the ingenuity that it took to add that feature could be applied to world hunger …”
And, on Pirate Day, the Pirate Party won 8.9% of the vote in the Berlin State elections. An historic victory, keeping the Internet free and safe for all of us. http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/19/german-pirate-party-wins