Pirate Day...

[fajrdrako]

It is my intention to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day by not talking like a pirate. Pirates don't conform.

But I was delighted to find this delightful song by the talented filkertom which gave me a big smile to last me the morning. And thanks to pegkerr for pointing it out to me.

One way or another, many of my favourite characters are pirates of one sort or another - renegades and outcasts who go their own way, even when they are lords and kings.

So I'll raise my mug of rum to toast Captain Jack Harkness and Captain Jack Sparrow and Captain Cairo Azarcon and Captain Charlie Allnut and all those other brave seafaring souls who elude authority and win the day.

Comments

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

And since my Pa is ex-merchant navy, pirates are not something of which we have a particularly romanticised view! It's still a lethal problem in some parts of the world...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes indeed. Criminals are criminals. But "pirate" has become a code-word for a certain kind of anarchic thought, a freedom from convention, that has nothing to do with the brutal rapine of the literal pirate.

I've always thought it was delightfully ironic that (at least in our cinemas in Ottawa) they showed ads to convince us not to download pirated movies right before showing the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. Tell us not to be pirates - and then show us the example of most glamorous and funny pirate of all. Exercise in futility!

[rosiespark.livejournal.com]

Hermione Granger the Pirate Queen, the pride of Gryffindor! Hurrah! Or do I mean... Arrr!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I like the sense of style.

PS

[rosiespark.livejournal.com]

Who's Captain Charlie Allnut?

Re: PS

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Charlie Allnut was Captain of the African Queen, a.k.a. Humphrey Bogart.

Re: PS

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Forester wrote the character as a Cockney. The film-script changed him to Canadian to accommodate Humphrey's Transatlantic (but not Canadian!) accent.

Re: PS

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

We don't get a lot of fictional Canadian heroes: I have to appreciate the ones we get, even if by chance. Wolverine! (Who turns out to be British by origin, but seems to still consider himself Canadian.) Stargate Atlantis fans have their Rodney, Due South fans have Benton Fraser. We make the most of those we can find!

Re: PS

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Yes - But it just amuses me that the film industry used to think that you could cast any American (even some with quite distinctive regional accents) and pretend they were Canadian!

Re: PS

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Oh, the terrible things that have been done to Canada and to Canadians in movies and film - one shudders to think. It's almost as bad as the terrible things that have been done to our twelfth century heroes and their society.

But my favourite offhand reference to Canada came from a British Esperanto text book as an example of the use of the conditional verb: "Se mi estus ricxa, mi vivus en Kanado." - "If I were rich, I would live in Canada."

I suppose I could say, honestly, "Se mi estus ricxa, mi vivus en Britujo." Or even Skotlando!