You're Not Talking Like A Pirate Day

Friday was "Talk Like A Pirate Day," a silly tradition that's nearly 20 years old, in which people go around saying "Ahoy, matey!" and adding a grunting "Arrrrr!" to every sentence. When I say "people go around," I really mean radio personalities who think they're being clever ever year when they do their talk-like-a-pirate shtick, in which everyone sounds like Captain Hook in a community-theater production of "Peter Pan."

It's time to stop this nonsense, because our image of pirates should have changed by now -- if not by several real-life episodes of, for instance, Somali pirates capturing boats and hostages off the African coast, then by last year's hit movie, "Captain Phillips," based on an actual incident in which pirates took over the Maersk Alabama at gunpoint:


Funny, I didn't hear anyone uttering "arrrr!" in that entire scene.

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