I have been interested in pirates as long as I’ve been a child, which is pretty interesting considering I’m no longer a child. There’s a mystery there that I can’t quite understand, but that’s alright, because pretty much everything’s a mystery, including squirrels and pizza. Think about pizza for a second. Do you understand it? I didn’t think so. Who can ever know the motivations of a pizza, or fathom it’s dark sayings? What is the pizza trying to say when it brings forth a beautiful olive, or speaks in tomato sauce? Are there races of pizza that war against one another? Does a Hawaiian pizza come from Hawaii, and does a meat lover pizza come from a meat lover? Is there pizza on Venus? Is there pizza on my chin? Why, yes. Yes there is pizza on my chin. Note to self: shave off long flowing beard.

Speaking of beards, pirates have them. Remember the names of the many famous pirates that have terrorized the high seas and the MPAA: Blackbeard, Blueberrybeard, Flamingbeard, and the infamous Napsterbeard. Even the pirate Nobeard had a beard, although it was made from the hair of his unfortunate prey in the hills of Montana.

I’ve had opportunity to speak with a pirate, a real honest-to-badness pirate, a pirate by the name of Jimbeard. I sneaked aboard a pirate ship and was being flogged for stowing away when this exchange happened.

Mebeard: So what’s it like being a pirate?

Jimbeard: Pretty good, and excellent cuisine, but the managerial aspects are mind boggling.

M: Managerial aspects?

J: Yes, totaling the goods we relieve their owners of, and filing false insurance claims. I also have to keep track of something close to six hundred thousand songs I’ve gotten from the good ship Internet.

M: That must be tough. Do you do any swashbuckling and shouting, “Avast me mateys! Board yonder vessel!”

J: No, though you just did. Mostly, I’m ordering people around, telling them to do things like “Swap that poop deck, and make it shine.”

M: That must stink.

J: Not really. I have a very nice office chair. Ergonomic, you know.

M: I mean actually swabbing the poop deck.

J: There’re worse jobs.

M: I’ve always wondered about poop decks, though.

J: [shrugs] Not much to them, really. Just a bunch of boards.

M: But don’t you have washrooms and such?

J: Yes. Very sanitary. Below decks.

M: So why have a poop deck?

J: It’s just the way they design ships, I think.

M: Are pirates too lazy to use the washrooms, then?

J: I’ve found most pirates to be quite neat. Very tidy bunks. Fresh laundry, that sort of thing.

M: Is it called the poop deck because of birds maybe?

J: Birds?

M: In the rigging. You know, the guano?

J: Sorry, I don’t speak Hindustani.

M: Well, the poop must get there somehow.

J: There’s no poop on the poop deck.

M: Then why the name?

J: Sadistic engineers, I imagine.

M: Speaking of sadism, why have your fellow pirates swab the deck? That must take a long time.

J: I like it to shine just so. It’s the way we’ve always done it.

M: Do you carry a large cargo of Q-tips?

J: No.

M: So you get the swabs by raiding other ships?

J: I’ve never raided a swab before. The commodity market for swabs is really low-margin.

M: So then how do they swab the poop deck?

J: With a mop, usually.

M: So you’re telling me that when you say, “Swab the poop deck,” the only thing in that sentence that actually exists is the deck bit?
J: I suppose, if you look at it that way. I guess it was a marketing move to make the whole thing look more “wicked” for the kids. A gross-out factor is always cool.

M: That makes absolutely no sense.

J: Neither have any of your questions.

M: You’re not really what I imagined of a pirate.

J: That’s because we’ve been actively spreading disinformation about pirates to discourage all but the most hardy of skateboarders and extreme sportsmen from entering for a position.

M: I just can’t get over the fact that the poop deck has no poop on it.

J: And that we don’t use swabs at all.

M: And that you use a Mac.

J: You got problems with Apple?

M: The Ipod’s too expensive.

Apparently Jimbeard was a bit of an iPod zealot, and took offense to the way I spelled it with the capitalization all backwards and whatnot, because he added another twenty lashes after he was done, and made me walk the plank to be devoured by sharks. Thankfully we had just entered Lake Ontario and there were no sharks to eat me. However, I did catch a bad case of flesh-eating disease, and can cook my own food by touching it thanks to the fact that I’m ever so slightly radioactive. Also I glow in the dark.

I think the moral in all of this is that I’m not cut out to be a pirate, even though I’m now in full possession of a wooden leg, a wooden pelvis, wooden kidney, and wooden eye patch. Thankfully, I’ve started breeding termites to relieve the boredom of being partially immobile, which I think is a smart thing to do.

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