We all knew it, but the answer, of course, is yes, it would.
Pirates and baby showers DO NOT MIX.
(for purposes of clarification, in the following description of the events of said baby shower, pirate actions performed in my mind, not in real life, will be highlighted in italics. No blood was shed at the actual event, which sorely displeases Sinister-Boots)
The only upside was that everybody was wearin' hats provided by the teahouse (by gar, a dastardly womanish place if ever I laid me eyes on one!), so they let me keep my plumed pirate concoction on. But they urged me to choose a more appropriate sissy hat with a veil or some such nonsense. I ran the first woman to do so through, so no more was said about that.
Well, there was one other upside, which was that the dainty finger sandwiches, while difficult to hold (I ended up spearin them with me knife in order to grab a hold of 'em), were delicious, and finer food than a pirate has eaten in a while.
But sittin' for over an hour drinkin' tea with my pinky out (and reg'lar tea, me hearties, not tea with a shot o' whiskey in it) while the baby-bearin' wench opens pink gifts causes a pirate to get mighty restless. It was all I could do to resist the urge to jump up on the table, crushing the china beneath my boots, and jump from table to table swinging my cutlass and emitting loud growls of disapproval.
But I don't really want today's post to be about a situation which we all knew was fated for disaster. I'd like to discuss a man I came across in the New York Times today, a man whose actions are so piratical that I am obliged to hoist a mug o' rum into the air in his honor.
(okay, the pirate English has ended. This is just too important to mess around with grammar)
The man's name is Aleksei Plutser-Sarno (he's a Ukranian bastard, he is), and he's part of a radical Russian art collective called Voina (which means war-arrr). This be his likeness (note the colorful slippers that a pirate would be proud of):
Wait, you may interrupt, a sissy artist a pirate, you say? Poppycock!
Well listen to this! Voina is dedicated to undermining the status-quo and making extreme commentaries on government and the law (YARRR!). As such, their actions have included: 1) painting a 210-foot penis on a St. Petersburg drawbridge, so that when the bridge rose it pointed at the offices of the Russian security service, and 2) running up to parked police cars and flipping them over as a commentary on police corruption.
Individually, Mr. Plutser-Sarno has compiled a multivolume dictionary of Russian obscenities and hosted a TV talk-show he described as "52 minutes of noisy philosophical debate, with shouting, uproar, and fisticuffs."
Truly, Aleksei's love of fisticuffs, loud cursing, and bawdy damn-the-man actions make him pirate enough. But as icing on the delicious, delicious cake, he is running from the Ukranian authorities and keeps giving them the slip. And there is a beautiful paragraph in the article that reads as follows:
"When he was asked whether the lifestyle had come to weigh on him, Mr. Plutser-Sarno responded with a radiant smile. He likes it very much."
It brought tears to me eyes, mateys. And this time, it wasn't my stench that did it. 'Twas the miraculous and profound discovery of a true pirate both in action and temperament, which is hard to find in this age of sissy latte-drinkers.
So let's hoist a mug and sing a bawdy shanty for this brilliant man and the other artists of Voina (many of whom have been captured and detained-a prayer for their souls, mateys). May the grog be sweet and the women be plentiful.
If ye be wantin' to read the article yerself, navigate to http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/world/europe/22voina.html?_r=1&ref=ukraine.
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