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I'm becoming somewhat obsessed with pirates.  I blame the whole thing on Aaron Renier, who kindly created a book for us where 50% of the action happens on board a ship in an alternative Napoleonic-era worldlet. 

Subsidiary blame gets assigned to Drew Weing, whose Set to Sea I got to see this weekend at SPX (but alas, have not yet read — soon!), and Yuko Ota, who signed a book for me with a character who was wearing a three-masted galleon as a hat!  And also these two books (prose, mysterious!) that I happened to read as well.

This is all coincidence, mind you.  But I'm wondering if there are cultural cycles that are spinning a return of the pirate post-Pirates of the Caribbean in 2007.  Or maybe it just takes that long for the literary consumer cycles to echo the movie ones? 

In any case: Talk Like a Pirate Day is this Sunday, and you should celebrate!  Possibly with an utterance of 'arrrrr, matey!' or two, and definitely with some grog.  And also with these:

Kitten Plank

(This picture is awesome; it's of the planks that 826 Valencia sells at their piratical store.  Everyone should have one, if only to hold over your kittens' heads when they misbehave!  Picture ganked from seany@flickr [http://www.flickr.com/photos/seany/3158063162/]. Thanks, Sean!)

Have kids you want to celebrate your piraticalness with this Sunday?  Try our Piratical Activity Kit.