Arrr, Matey!

As Dave Barry pointed out in his column this weekend, September 19th is "Talk Like a Pirate Day." Of course it has a website you can check out, including a glossary of common pirate phrases and an English-to-Pirate translator. Turns out it was started by two guys playing racquetball...fun.

If that's not enough, here's another site that will generate a pirate name for you:
http://www.stupidstuff.org/main/piratename.htm

I tried this myself and it gave me the rather disappointing name of "Frankenberry." (I almost felt cheated. What the $#*@!&^ kind of pirate name is that? I thought the only breakfast cereal pirate was "Jean LaFoote, the Barefoot Pirate" from those old Cap'n Crunch commercials.)

I then ran the names of my friends and fellow bloggers Matt, Lee and Zack through it as well, and they came out as, respectively, Bloodstain Bartholomew, Gentleman Jim, and Dry Bone Bronson (would've almost made more since for Lee to be "Dry Bone" since he's a bass trombonist and all).

I also tried this with a few famous jazz musicians:

Miles Davis--Black-Hearted Bob
Charlie Parker--Dread Pirate Read
John Coltrane--Cutlass Jim Breakman
Gerry Mulligan--Plunderin' Billy
Dizzy Gillespie--Calico Jack McGurk

Anyway, enough fun for tonight. Oh yes, and I now have money again, and cheap health insurance. Life is good. :-)

QUOTE: "An industry should know it is in trouble when it gets called Big anything."--Columnist Froma Harrop of the Providence Journal. In her recent column, she was referring to Big Pharma(ceuticals), Big Tobacco and Big Oil, but it certainly dovetails with my opinion of Big Music, a.k.a. "The Machine," which I ranted about earlier in this space.