Pirate Booty

I went to the big combined campaign kick off fest. It was, as promised, Piratlicious.

Although, I don't think anyone would want to taste a state employee channeling his ir her inner Jack Sparrow. A tragic amount of mascara was sacrificed for the event. The last thing you want to be faced with at 2:00 in the afternoon on a Thursday are a bunch of 45 year old state employee lifers ( more than half, women) dressed in Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow drag. There were all these people forced by their supervisors to show up and be piratty and not one of the supervisors forced any of them to contract scurvy! or amputate a leg or allow themselves to be flayed! I mean, if you are going to do it, you should do it. Cut that leg off! take a beating! develop scurvy! contract syphilis from some dock side whore! At least pierce something. Be the character!

When I arrived there was a bunch of kids from the daycare dressed in matching tee shirts and Long John Silver hats, I never saw them go inside so maybe they were on a smoke break. The entertainment seemed to be a flock of dancing cross dressing pirates or maybe it was a group of epileptics suffering synchronized seizures - Hey, anything for the United Way, right? It wasn't clear. Through the fog of pirates, I did see that someone had brought parrots.

Parrots are too big to ride around on your shoulder. You would need very wide shoulders to carry one of those feathered monsters around and if you were that broad shouldered, why on earth would you be wasting your time as a pirate? with the scurvy and syphilis and all the pirate politics?

I think all the pirate movies must have used really butch parrakeet's as parrot stand ins because the birds I saw today were massive and way too big to casually ride around on your average syphilitic pirates shoulder blade. Maybe they wore some sort of proto-snugly thing. But very butch and allegedly made of the bones of rival pirates.

I would bet that some long ago OSHA inspector fined the hell out of somebody for all the parrot realted injuries and since the smaller the parrent the lesser the injuries they also probably broken some long gone juvenile parrot labor laws too. Ye Olde OSHA ordered them to make changes regarding the use of live parrots as accessories and there is some evidence that some ergonomic parrots were bred for the trade... The bones-of-your-enemy-parrot carriers and the ergonomic parrots available through Sharrrrrrper Image, of course.

This years freebies, er, booty as follows

9 cheap magnets
1 bag clincher
2 rubber wrist bands
1 stress squeezy
3 recycled pencils
1 recycled coaster
3 pens
1 sticker
2 note pads
1 kewl water bottle
1 can coozy (compliments of "Drag Bingo")
10 pamphlets
3 hand outs
1 notice of a nature realted film festival
1 guide to levels of poison in fish found in local lakes
1 bag of Frito's
1 bag of Cheetos
1 crispy cream donut
3 snack sized candy bars