In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity

“Pirates?!  Suddenly, everyone is talking about pirates.  Welcome to the party that’s been going on for…ever.  Legend has it the designer of the first dugout canoe was admiring his work when the designer of the first oar cracked him over the head and stole his boat.  Since that moment, buoyancy and robbery have been forever linked.  So how do you end piracy?

1. Stop using boats.
2. Drain all the oceans, lakes, rivers, canals, gigantic puddles, etc.

Doesn’t seem plausible?  It’s not!  Piracy, like STDs, is here to stay, but there are measures we can take to help control and prevent the spread of marauding:

• The glorification of pirates by the media must cease immediately.  I suggest we do away with the light-hearted pirate jokes so prevalent in modern comedy, the boozy good times promised by Captain Morgan, and of course, Jimmy Buffett.

• Build Long John Silvers all along the Somali Coast (and perhaps the entire Horn of Africa).  These restaurants will create a boom for the fishing industry as well as provide employment opportunities for out of work pirates looking to change their ways.

• If a pirate is caught marauding, don’t make him walk the plank—that’s exactly what he wants!  Put him a hot woolen suit, chain him to a desk, and make him do data entry for the remainder of his life.  Then take pirate children and give them a first hand look at what happens when you pursue a career in piracy.  It’s called “scaring them straight” and if it worked for my gay uncle Fritz back in the old country, then it can work for a bunch of punk kids too.

• Stop calling the widespread practice of illegal song and movie downloads, “piracy.”  Yes, illegal down-loaders are criminals and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law (maybe even above and beyond the full extend of the law), but there’s nothing “swashbuckling” about illegal downloads and so the name is complete misnomer.

• Finally, if you travel the high seas, and you’re trying to determine whether or not someone might be a pirate, look for automatic weapons and ignore the classic myths about pirate appearance.  The common belief that parrots, eye patches, peg legs, etc. are still the defining features of pirates has been greatly exaggerated by the family of Robert Louis Stevenson in order to continue their highly profitable pirate costume and souvenir business.  That being said, if a pirate does enter a hospital missing a leg, under no circumstances should he be given a wooden peg leg, because that just enables him to get back on his feet.  He’ll be raping and pillaging in no time.”