Ahoy There, Nutbags!

I don't mean to go all 'Seinfeld' on you, but what's up with Pirates recently? It's like they've all decided to come out of the woodwork at once and scare us all with their frilly blouses, sparkly jewelry and long curly hair, etc.

First, it was International Talk Like A Pirate Day last week. That's the official day when pirate nerds like these people:




... try to look like this guy:




... but invariably end up looking like this guy:




... or possibly this guy:




Hey, at least they're having fun. And we've managed to restrict their craziness to just one day per year. (Unless they start up their own blog, of course!)

Then, Triple M in Melbourne had 'pirate' as their code word of the day the other morning.

And then there was this item in the news two days ago.

In case the link is removed shortly, I've reproduced the article here:

"Billion-dollar pirate treasure trove found. From: Correspondents in Santiago. September 26, 2005.

"TREASURE hunters believe they have found a legendary trove of 18th century jewels and gold coins worth billions of dollars on Chile's Robinson Crusoe island.

"The island in the Juan Fernandez archipelago, 700km west of Chile was a refuge for corsairs crossing the Pacific Ocean.

"Legend has it Spanish navigator Juan Esteban Ubilla y Echeverria stashed a fortune on the island in 1715.

"It was later found by a British sailor Cornelius Webb and reburied in another area. An expedition using a metal-detecting robot believe they have pinpointed the site."

The late night news item I heard on this the other night actually said it was "pirate's treasure" that'd been found, and that the supposed finders weren't going to say where it was until the government (who claimed it was all theirs) agreed to give them half of the spoils. Sounds like we've got the makings of a real-life action movie here! Fight it out, dudes!

A couple of things I notice about the above article, too, before I proceed.

(a) They used a metal-detecting robot. I don't know about you, but all my robots at home are only good for cleaning up around the house, fixing the car, and one has the ability to turn back time (so I suitably and tastefully dressed it as Cher from the music video of the same name). None of my robots are able to detect metal. I want one of those. It'd be really handy when I lost the remote, or dropped a paperclip under the couch, etc.

(b) What was this idiot Cornelius Webb doing finding the treasure only to re-bury it somewhere? Are we to expect he never came back for it? Maybe he was killed for his secret ... and maybe it's a pile of hogwash. If I'd found billions of dollars worth of jewels and gold coins, I might pretend to have buried it somewhere as well. (In fact, that's exactly what I did. Just don't check my bank balance. Please.)

(c) Who has a middle name which consists solely of a lower-case 'y'? Crazy Spaniards!

Anyway, back to all the Piratey news of late. Elaine must be giddy.

Are you, Elaine? Huh? Are you giddy?




I'll take that as a yes.