How did you celebrate National Talk Like A Pirate Day?

It was Larry who first introduced me to National Talk Like A Pirate Day. I remember that Beth and I laughed about the idea and maybe said a few "Arrrs" and "Shiver me timbers."

I am not a big pirate fan, per se. I certainly enjoyed Pirates of the Caribbean (Hello. Johnny Depp. Orlando Bloom. Sword fights. What's not to love?) and my favorite character in Dodgeball was Pirate Steve (Alan Tudyk. He's so pretty. Waiting anxiously to see Serenity).

When Beth and I were in Portugal, we went to a town called Evora. Beth became a huge fan of Rick Steve and his travel book (we started calling him Ricky Steve for some reason) and pretty much planned out where we were going, what we were doing, how to get there, etc throughout the whole trip. This works out well for us. A typical conversation while in Portugal would consist of Beth reading passages from the guide book to me and asking me what I thought. Did that sound like a good idea? My answer usually was "Cool. Sounds like fun."

I adore Beth. She is the perfect travel companion. She is organized and logical whereas I am messy and, well, we all know that logic is not one of my strong points. She actually likes planning things which is just bizarre to me. Believe me, if the planning of the trip was left up to me, we probably never would have actually gone anywhere, let alone to Evora.

The post Beth wrote about our trip to Evora is located here. You are probably wondering what this trip has to do with pirates and I am here to enlighten you.

When visiting the Chapel of Bones in Evora (gorgeous but kind of creepy what with the Chapel being made out of skulls and femurs), Beth and I noticed a statue of Jesus. We both had the exact same thought. Please view the picture and let's see if you have the same thought as well.



If you are blessed with the same bizarre (and inappropriate) sense of humor that Beth and I both have, you would have immediately thought "Why is Jesus dressed like a pirate?" If you are not blessed with a bizarre and inappropriate sense of humor, I apologize greatly for offending you and am now wondering why you even read my blog. And also telling you to skip the rest of the post because you're not going to like it one bit and I want to save you the trouble of sending me hate mail (Yes, Mom, this means you as well. Not that you read my blog. I give you the perfect opportunity to keep track of what is going on in my life and you ignore it. I am so unloved. I bet if Kari had a blog, you would read it because it would be filled with news of your grandson. You love Kari more because she had Josh, don't you? I knew it! Do I have to have a child to get some attention around here? Because that ain't happening (Yes, Mom, I am kidding. I do not feel unloved. I know you have limited internet access. I just like to play the martyr sometimes. And I was serious about not reading the rest of this post. You will not be pleased)).

I want to make one thing perfectly clear. I do believe in God and Jesus and consider myself to be a spiritual person. However, does being spiritual mean that I can't have a sense of humor? I don't think so. I think Jesus probably had a pretty wicked sense of humor as well, some of the stuff he said to the Romans was rather interesting. And the parables are rather amusing as well. My viewpoint is that Jesus was a righteous dude.

Okay, anyway, we took several pictures of Pirate Jesus and, when showing the pictures to our friends when we returned, everyone agreed that, yes, he did look like a pirate. Char (who still has not yet started a blog, that slacker) looked at it and said he was obviously saying "Arrrr, my child." I think it is "Bless you, my matey." We all had a good laugh over it.

Fast forward several months. As you may or may not know, one of the blogs I adore reading is flea's, One Good Thing. Flea, for a long time, owned a sex shop geared towards women in Chicago. The store has closed but she still runs her website out of her garage. She's also a mother of two boys, one with special needs. She is an amazing writer and awes me whenever I read something by her, regardless of what it is about - sex, children, politics, her childhood, whatever. Beth occasionally reads her as well and we find ourselves sometimes saying "Hey, didn't flea blog about this (how Cold Stone Creamery employees sing when they are tipped (weird and very annoying))?" Or trying an experiment on men we know based on a magazine article she had read in Oprah and really confusing them (that was fun). I also ordered my Harry Potter book from her this year because, while she charges full price, 15% of the proceeds are donated to local Chicago children charities. Which made me feel like I was doing a good deed and getting a great book at the same time.

Anyway, monthly, she runs a contest and the winner will get something from her website. This month, I was amused to see that the contest was to win a new pornographic DVD called Pirates by telling pirate jokes (Do NOT click on this link if you are faint of heart. The contest is included in with a regular feature she offers on the site which is answering questions about, well, sex and stuff like that. But she is, as I said, brilliant and there are some pretty good pirate jokes). When scrapbooking at Beth's that weekend, I told Beth about the contest and said "You know, I bet flea would appreciate the picture of Pirate Jesus." That Sunday at karaoke, we were talking to Bryan and the subject came up. Beth said "I cannot believe you are sending a picture of Jesus to win Pirate Porn." My response was "I don't think I'll win. I just think that flea would enjoy the picture." I sent it off to her in email and never heard anything about it.

So you can imagine my shock on Monday, when I pulled up flea's site and found this post. Pirate Jesus was a hit. I won the DVD. I have no idea what I'm going to do with it but I still find it rather cool that I won. I suppose it will sit on the shelf next to Jeff's copy of the Gay to Z of Sex. And maybe I can convince Jeff and Keem to watch it with me some night - it would be good family time (this is what we call watching Survivor or Top Model), it would be a good laugh. The comments left on the post were fairly hilarious so they'll make a good read. And seriously, I cannot wait to tell Bryan that Pirate Jesus was a winner. I know he will enjoy that.

And now, I would like to thank the following people for my victory (imagine me standing at the Oscars, clutching my Pirates DVD in my hand):

Thanks to Johnny - if it wasn't for her, we never would have gone to Portugal for the best vacation EVER.

Thank you to Beth - it was her idea to go to the Chapel of Bones and I never would have snapped that picture if we hadn't have gone.

I would like to thank flea for choosing me as Captain DM. This is so cool!

And of course, I would like to thank Jesus. Who works in mysterious ways.

Yeah, I'm so going to hell. But at least I'm having fun.