Pirates.

Two years ago I spent an entire year of my life in Piedmont North Carolina, in the capital city of Raleigh (motto: Hey y'all, tobacco shur is one of them there vegetables, ain't it?). One of the more interesting aspects of North Carolina is the legacy of the pirates who prowled the Outer Banks, doing their fun pirate things: raping, pillaging, looting, smelling really really bad, etc. One of the things I genuinely regret in my life was when I saw a shirt in Nag's Head, Outer Banks, that had a wee skull and crossbones and said "Hey, wanna swab my poop deck?" and I didn't buy it immediately. There are tears in the land on that one, my devoted readers. If any of you see that shirt, and if you send it to me, I will send you a good old-fashioned Catholic indulgence, sortof our "Go to Heaven free, do not pass Go." I have that power, oh yes: unbeknownst to all y'all, I am only one step away from being a bona-fide monk. The life of a grad student is a lonely one. There's chanting, lit candles, bad, saltless food and drafty living quarters. All I need is a cruciform and one of them fancy sackcloth robes and I will be all set.

But yes, pirates. They were fun. They got lots of booty. Interestingly, piracy in the modern world is on the rise, especially in East and Southeast Asia, as well as in the Eastern Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. These pirates are far less interesting: their booty is usually Japanese-made televisions and cargoes of foodstuffs. Blackbeard would not have deigned to steal a Sony flat-screen television and a bag of flour, let me tell you. Not very romantic.

Today I thought of a fun game that my friend Jane made up. It's called "Which would you rather have happen to you?" Originally a drinking game, it can also alleviate boredom on car trips so that you don't have to do License-Place Monopoly or "Guess which communicable disease I just contracted at that last truck stop?" The following are actual questions I posed to Jane on our last "Which would you rather have happen to you?" outing.

Would you rather be run through by a pirate or fall from a twelve story building onto steel posts?

Would you rather drink a gallon of warm human urine or eat a bite of a rancid raccoon carcass you happened upon in the forest?

It's a fun game. More sophisticated and far more intriguing is "The Game", which was invented by myself and Elizabeth as a way to torture each other over what we had purchased for each other for the holidays. In "The Game", you must ask questions so oblique as to be utterly irrelevant to the nature of the gift. For example, you could ask "If my gift were a 19th century world leader, who would it be?" but not "what color is it?" One Christmas, Elizabeth told me that my gift would be "ivory" if it were a precious stone/metal/substance. My gift was a dolphin puppet. Why "ivory?" Because the dolphin had teeth. Yes. Nobody but us likes "The Game." That's OK: it's because I believe everyone is jealous of how well Elizabeth and I play it. Nobody can be quite as oblique as we.

Today I turned on the television and there, on the screen, was a creature that made me shriek like a seven-year-old girl who was being pecked to death by blue-footed boobies. It was Charro, whom I had thought had retired to the swamp from which she was spawned. What the hell is she? Why is she so goony looking? Will she come to me in the dark of some night and point a finger of dread reckoning that will shudder me with her be-webbed scaly reptilian hand? Will she gnaw my face off my skull as a snack? It's true, and you heard it here first, since nobody else seems to want to say it: Charro is some sort of upright-walking lizard, and not the cute ones, either. No gecko for Charro. She's like a monitor lizard; you know, one of those ones that can bring down a goat.

Well, I have Turkish to do, and then the bliss of slumber. In my belly is the product of today's soiree that Tony and I put on for a few of his coworkers. It was Loinfest 2004. Tony grilled two giant pork loins on his flame machine and we feasted. Hahahaha, Loinfest. That sounds way dirty.

Goodnight, Indiana.

Dom