Ahoy there, ye scurvy swabs. Many of ye, me hearties, will already know that it be International Talk Like A Pirate Day today where ye has to talk in the pirate lingo as much as is possible.

Anyone failin’ to talk like a proper swashbucklin’ buccaneer will find themselves consigned to Davy Jones’ Locker after being made ter kiss the gunner’s daughter and possibly bein’ keelhauled an’ all, or my name’s not Captain James the Silver of the good ship Turbulent Cadaver.

It’s the time of year us pirates git together ter discuss the critical issues of the day: how many man can you git on a dead man’s chest? We’ve managed sixty three, but admittedly we did have to snap some of the rib-bones off ter git a bigger surface area for me dastardly crew to stand on. Took a while to get the fo’castle cleaned properly that day, I kin tell you. I was whippin’ away half the afternoon to get the salty seadogs that make up me crew to get it sorted.

Now, if ye’ll excuse me, I’ve got ter go and set the black spot on a piece o’ landlubbin’ scum who never paid back the doubloons he borrowed off o’ me. And I need to get the Turbulent Cadaver into dock anyway. There’s a problem with the mizzen mast. It broke off in a blow, and now it’s mizzen’. And don’t forget to shiver yer timbers, lads. And not just lads: Cap’n James the Silver is always prepared te offer any lusty pirate wenches a warm welcome… and something more besides.

Finally, I’ll leave you with a joke I’ve pinched from Mr. Conyard in the dockyard:

Q. How can you tell if yer a pirate?
A. You just arrrrrr

[Anyone wanting the pirate image for their own purposes is welcome to use it, but please don't hotlink to it - take your own copy and don't leach my bandwidth. It is by J.J. McCullough, who has released it into the public domain. You can find a much larger, better version of the image at file:piratey on Wikipedia.]

I’m then supposed to tag a further fifteen people with each list, but I can’t be bothered to do that. Instead, I’ll offer it up as a meme for anyone to take part in and will suggest that maybe Stephen Lang, John H and Chartroose might want to give either or both parts of it a go, but anyone else is welcome to as well.

It’s important to note that you do not have to define why a particular book or film has stuck with you. For reference, any book marked with an * is non-fiction, and they are in no particular order…

Books

1. Lord Of The Rings — J. R. R. Tolkien
2. The Mismeasure of Man* — Stephen Jay Gould
3. Fire And Hemlock — Dianna Wynne Jones
4. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
5. The Moonstone — Wilkie Collins
6. Freakonomics* — Levitt & Dubner
7. The Black Widower Mysteries — Isaac Asimov
8. The Legacy of Heorot — Niven, Pournelle and Barnes
9. The Belgariad — David Eddings
10. The Blind Watchmaker* — Richard Dawkins
11. The Demon Haunted World* — Carl Sagan
12. Bad Science* — Ben Goldacre
13. The Riddle And The Knight* — Giles Milton
14. Left Foot Forward* — Garry Nelson
15. Notes From A Small Island* — Bill Bryson

Films

1. The Ghoul (1975 Hammer Horror version)
2. Lord Of The Rings (Peter Jackson)
3. Moulin Rouge
4. The Mummy Returns (film for first ‘date’ with my wife)
5. Goldeneye
6. Dark Star (John Carpenter)
7. Way Out West (Laurel & Hardy) — notable for the ‘Lonesome Pine’ song.
8. Ring (the Japanese version)
9. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
10. Alien
11. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
12. Star Wars
13. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
14. Trainspotting
15. Heat (1995)

Don’t forget, September the 19th is officially Talk Like A Pirate Day. Please do consider blogging your pirate talk and there are a number of resources available to ensure that your talking like a pirate goes smoothly.

If you don’t know your belayin’ from yer Avast, me hearties, you can head over to the Pirate Glossary where you can learn all of the terms properly, so you don’t embarrass yourself and end up getting a taste of the cat or kissing the gunner’s daughter.

If you’re not sure what sort of a pirate you be, you can take the Pirate Personality Quiz, determine the name of your pirate ship using the ship name generator and there are a couple of different methods you can use to determine what your pirate name is.

Remember to get all of this up and running so that when the time comes and it’s September the 19th, you can show your pirat-i-tude.

And, if you want to also consider something serious for a moment (me hearties), there’s the UK Pirate Party which is a properly registered UK political party wanting to reform copyright law and end a lot of surveillance. These are all very noble goals, so it might be worth taking a look and seeing if it grabs your fancy (aar!) but it does have to be admitted that they don’t say “yo ho ho” very much, and there is a distinct lack of policies on two of the main pirate areas: grog rations, and exactly how many men should you ideally have on a dead man’s chest.

thepickards is 55% HeteroHow hetero are you? How hetero is Martha Stewart? Try out any Twitter name and get the real picture. Are we really the words we use? Hope to see you at Stockholm Pride!

You’re confusingly hetero. Your friends know. Your family know. You’re probably the only one who isn’t sure on where you stand.

Only now I’ve just taken a test from Stockholm Pride which analyses your twitterstream and attempts to work out how heterosexual you are, and it reckons I’m 55% hetero, which I’m not entirely sure how to interpret. Am I as camp as a row of tents, or is it just that part of me is a lesbian trapped in a man’s body? Some how I really can’t imagine that people perceive me as camp, but maybe those following me on twitter do…

Does it think that I’m a bear? I could maybe just about manage the working class masculine image, but I don’t really fancy tattoos and piercings, and somehow I don’t really think I’m cut out for the tight white t-shirts type. I do like Kylie and the Pet Shop Boys, but there’s no way you’re going to get me to watch Will And Grace.

To be honest, I really am fairly certain I’m straight — does anyone know what the official ‘pass’ mark is? And whether or not you can do a re-sit if you’re not happy that you’re straight (or gay) enough?

And is this something I need to tell the wife?

I came across one of those quizzes (created by The Oatmeal) designed to tell me how addicted to twitter I am. I’m not quite sure why the number of people who are following me, as opposed to the number of people I follow, is deemed to be a good indicator of this, although I maybe have to concede their point on twitter clients.

So for all the rest of you who have been playing about on twitter, why not pop along to the quiz and see how addicted to it you are?

I am apparently 57% addicted to the thing. And yes, obviously I did tweet the results also, but this didn’t increase my addiction rating — I want to complain!

However, I was tagged in a Facebook meme and so feel kinda obliged to give it a go. So again, this is for Walshy, who keeps me well supplied with bad jokes.

Where is your mobile phone?

In my shirt pocket. Although the inclusion of this question — after losing my previous phone while out on the beer with Walshy — makes me wonder whether she’s taking the piss somewhat.

Your hair?

Where is it? Well, mostly on my head, but also scattered around elsewhere.

Your father?

Are we still doing the where is it? Or do you want to know what colour my Dad’s hair is? It’s grey, and it’s probably in Essex, as that’s where the rest of him is.

Your favourite thing?

Brown paper parcels tied up with string. Or maybe having fun with my kids

Your dream last night?

Can’t remember last night, but I did have a good flying one only a few nights ago, where I had to hide out under the Tyne Bridge, ‘cos my dad for some reason had become a mob boss and now people were after me.

Your favourite drink

Orkney Dark Island, probably. But my usual is Marston’s Pedigree

Your dream/goal?

To be able to make a comfortable living writing/blogging

The room you are in?

Office

What you fear?

Death

Where do you want to be in 6 years?

Haven’t really planned that far in advance. Having fun, hopefully

Muffins?

Phwoar!

One of your wish list items?

Books. Or maybe some more books. Oh, and a nice little cottage in Keswick to read them in

Where you grew up?

Haven’t

What was the last thing you did

Writing ‘Haven’t’

What are you wearing?

Sheer black stock– naah, black jeans, black shoes, black shirt. A bit Johnny Cash today.

Your TV?

Nowt fancy, but you can get moving pictures and sound on it.

Your pets?

Darwin and Einstein. Cats.

Your computer?

…is probably in need of replacement next year.

Your life?

…or your money! Wait, no I’ve phrased that wrong.

Your Mood?

Playful

Missing someone?

Yeah. I’ve only they’d stand still, so I could take aim properly.

Your car?

I’m quite a fan of cars; I have developed my own classification system for them that is in advance of the traditional make/model scheme. Under my classification, my car is a red one.

Favourite shop?

Any one with books in

Your Summer?

No thanks. Hayfever and wasps I can comfortably live without.

Your favorite colour?

Depends. I like wearing blue; but I also like red; I like dark green cars. So I’ll instead just go for the colours I like to see best on other people. Flesh tones…

When is the last time you laughed?

Today.

Last time you cried?

Not sure about actual tears, but there’s a scene in The Dark Knight made me sad the other day…

Three people who email me?

Spammers, spammers, and work people.

Three of my favourite foods?

Bacon sandwiches, ‘sunday dinners’ and ice creams and sorbets.

Three places I would rather be right now?

The Lake District, Receiving a ginormous National Lottery cheque, and the pub.

Three people I think will respond?

No-one, since I’m not tagging anyone. But anyone wishing to take part may either copy and paste into their own blog or Facebook thingummy, since attempting to do so in the comments would result in ridiculously long comments.

So natch, I had to give it a go. I failed, I only got 37%, so apparently I’ve not got a personality. Naah, just joshing chief, apparently I’m an ENTP, a visionary, although it doesn’t actually tell me what ENTP is supposed to stand for. Fortunately Wikipedia does.

You are charming, outgoing, friendly. You make a good first impression. You possess good negotiating skills and can convince anyone of anything. Happy to be the center of attention, you love to tell stories and show off.Blogthings: Your Personality Type

Well, yeah. I’m charming, friendly, and all that. I’m basically lovely and everyone should adore and worship me.

Although I have to take issue with some of the things it said after that –

In love, you see everything as a grand adventure.Blogthings: Your Personality Type

In love? Not just in love, life is a grand adventure, bucko. We get to play and have fun until that big “Game Over: Insert Credit” sign appears…

When other people don’t get you, they see you as: Detached, wishy-washy, and superficialBlogthings: Your Personality Type

Now I don’t think anyone — at least to my knowledge — has described me as any of those. But that’s what you get for assuming that everyone falls directly into one or the other category without there being shades of grey — for all I know I might have been only just more ‘thinking’ than ‘feeling’, yet obviously once it’s categorised me, it has to associate me with everything in that category, and nothing in the other one.

Superficial I can maybe understand. I have been accused of being flippant, because my way of supporting my friends through times of emotional stress tends to involve taking the piss and trying to make them laugh. People who don’t know me might perceive this as me not understanding the seriousness of the situation; those who do would simply realise that if someone is feeling depressed, what I think they need is to start smiling you miserable bugger, rather than continuing to mope about.

So while obviously I don’t agree with all of these tests pigeon-holing, they can be a bit of a larf, so you might want to pop over to Blogthings and find out What’s Your Personality Type?.

But on we must go, from S through to Z.

S is for …

Well, recently, I have been very impressed with the Scissor Sisters; I’ve always liked Paul Simon — in particular the ‘Graceland’ album; Steppenwolf got my motor running; System of a Down are perfect for when I need something heavy; and the Small Faces and the Stranglers have produced two of my all time favourites (with ‘Itchykoo Park’ and ‘Golden Brown’ respectively). Oh, and there’s Stiff Little Fingers.

In the end however, I was torn between my Ska and Goth sides: The Specials or The Sisters of Mercy. Again, the Specials produced one of my favourite records of all time — Ghost Town, their take on Thatcher’s Britain. But in terms of ‘most listened to’, Sisters would probably top my list; only a couple of albums, but some of the songs I just love.

But, in the end, even though for all intents and purposes I probably prefer the Sisters of Mercy to the Specials, I’m going to go for the Specials for two reasons. One because my kids love the Specials and keep asking for them in the car — “can we have the Rudy song, Dad?” — and the other because I really, really wanted to have the Ghost Town video in here.

T is for …

I was going to have a proper think about this one, and go through all of the bands that I like beginning with T, and arrive at a sensible, rational decision, but as Mark pointed out, he’d be upset if I picked the wrong band for T.

This ones for you, Mark.

Besides which, ooh yeah, I’m a rocker.

U is for …

Well not that bloody Bonio and his mates, that’s for sure. Unfortunately, this leaves me with a slightly more limited choice. There’s UB40, if I want a bit more pop-reggae; there’s Ultravox who produced the magnificent ‘Vienna’, and there’s… er…

Er… ah! There’s this lot:

V is for …

Vendetta. No, wait, that’s the film, innit?

Alternatively, going from my iPod listings, there seems to be one band who begins with V and whom I probably own more albums by than any other band. They are the internationally reknowned ‘Various Artists’. So I’ll not pick them either.

But I’ll veer away from the verve, I’ll jump away from Van Halen, and if the Vengaboys really want to go to Ibiza, they can go without me. The Village People were contenders here: real disco floor-fillers, with whom you can ‘have a good time’ when you ‘hang out with all the boys’.

But instead I’ll go for Suzanne Vega, a woman with a wonderful, powerful, and haunting voice. There’s a lot of lovely upbeat high-tempo stuff that she does — I’m quite a fan of ‘Blood Makes Noise’ — but the song that generally sticks in my head is the rather sad one told from the perspective of a sufferer of domestic abuse.

W is for …

Heh, heh.

Now, there’s a lot of quality bands or singers that I like who begin with ‘W’, but in order to piss everyone else off, I’ll restrict myself to comedy bands.

I’ll rule out Terry Wogan, as he was something of a one-hit wonder with ‘The Floral Dance’. This leaves me with two great choices, one of whom have a brand-new combine harvester. Aah, the Wurzels. Drink up thy Zider; Chitterling; In The Back of My Old Car; Twice Daily. All robust, earthy songs, which are very heavy on the old double entendre stuff (in fact, sometimes it’s laid on so thick, it’s pretty much a single entendre). The band who defined the Scrumpy & Western genre.

So it is with a degree of sadness that I tell you that I’ve not gone for them.

I’ve gone for Bob Dylan. Er… well, it looks a bit like Bob Dylan…

(Note, I know some people would file him under ‘Y’, since that’s his surname, but as I always think of him as ‘Weird Al’, he gets filed under ‘W’ in my head, okay?)

X is for …

Well, as there was only one band I could think of off-hand which began with an ‘X’ the choice was fairly straight-forward. I did double-check and additionally found the rapper Xzibit, but I’ll stick with the identity of my first choice.

…besides which, how can you not like a band when the singer is called Poly Styrene?

Y is for …

Again, a somewhat limited choice. There were a few — the Yardbirds, for example — where genuine talent was on show. The question was, who would win the race? And then, it suddenly wasn’t a question any more…

Z is for …

I know Steve’s got a good one lined up here — he’s already said so — but at this stage, and with a letter like this, it is for me simply a case of trying to work out which bands I can think of qualify, and then picking my favourite of them.

There’s a few who qualify — Rob Zombie, the Zutons, Frank Zappa, ZZ Top — but the difficulty was coming up with a favourite from this lot. I tend to remember the Spitting Image version of ZZ Top as my favourite version, with the song “We’ve Got Beards”.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing actually stands out for me here if I follow the traditional line of using the name of the artist or band. But then, there is one name which springs to mind. It’s kind of a band-within-a-band. And since I didn’t have a place for him earlier, it’s time to introduce Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars…

J is For …

Apparently, Johnny Hates Jazz. Meanwhile, Jack dislikes both Jazz and Johnny Hates Jazz. There’s a few in here which have some resonance for me: when you’re in the need of a Metal Meltdown, Judas Priest can supply that for you: Elton John wrote ‘Your Song’, which was the song for my first dance as a married man, and at the other end of the romantic spectrum, you have Joy Division, and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’.

But my list simply must have a place for The Modfather, and so I am happy to introduce you to The Jam, and their Town Called Malice…

K is for …

Well, there’s the Kaiser Chiefs, whom I’m quite fond of, the Kings Of Leon are growing on me, there’s the KLF who were absolutely fantastic, but the stand out winner for this letter is The Kinks. No matter which sort of mood I’m in, there’s a Kinks song that will match it: from Death of a Clown through Lola to Apeman to Sunny Afternoon to Autumn Almanac, the Kinks music covered such a range, and was so influential for other bands, that they’d probably deserve a place in here even if they weren’t that good in their own right.

But they were that good.

L is for …

Lennon. Whatever he may have been like personally (let’s remember, he was a fallible human being rather than something god-like), he was a good singer-songwriter, wasn’t he?

I’ve therefore chosen a song to illustrate this which illustrates both the fact that he was aware of his own personal imperfections, and also a song which has been covered a good many times — illustrating the quality of the song.

M is for …

There’s only really one band it could be. The band who introduced me to the genre of Heavy Metal, from where my musical tastes spread further into the much wider more eclectic mish mash it has now. I have that to be thankful to them for.

But that’s not the only reason. They have a range of tracks from thrash, through more thrash, through slower, more melodic — yet still gritty — performances. They are of course the hardcore metal monsters with Hetfield and Ulrich… Metallica.

And here they are with what in my opinion is one of their most powerful songs, Unforgiven, demonstrating that the musical tone can get your message across just as well as the frantic thrash-speed guitars which had served them well earlier.

N is for…

Well it’s certainly not Nirvana, I can tell you that much. Yes, they influenced a huge great big music ‘scene’, but I didn’t like them much to begin with, and the fact that seemingly every third student on campus at time spent about three months wandering around being all sad and generally trying to make out like they were really suffering, and that the world had lost it’s greatest ever musician really got on my nerves. So not Nirvana, then.

I almost selected Nine Inch Nails pretty much by default, because I do listen to them quite a bit. Then it occurred to me that I was missing out a band I far preferred, whom I owned more albums by, who have one of my all-time favourite tracks, and are named after something relating to the English Civil War.

They are a difficult band to pin-down: their songs are frequently angry but sometimes joyous; sometimes political, sometimes social commentary, sometimes just about life experiences. Post-punk, possibly.

Say hello to New Model Army.

O is for …

This was another problematic one. I appreciate Oasis’s talents, but I don’t like them, so that rules that one out. Des O’Connor was never in the running, nor was O.M.D. or Mike Oldfield. The problem here was that when I went through my iTunes and my CD collection, I found I didn’t actually own any albums by someone beginning with ‘O’.

It was time to call upon the book of British Hit Singles and Albums to find someone. After ruling out the Osmonds (too much in the way of teeth, and not really my genre anyway) this left me surprised at how few bands actually did begin with ‘O’. I nearly went for Roy Orbison, as I do quite like some of his stuff, but in the end, it was the video that convinced me to plump for André 3000, under the Outkast umbrella, specifically for Hey Ya!

Although rather annoyingly I couldn’t find a version of this where embedding was allowed, so you’ll have to bugger off to YouTube to see it.

P is for …

Ah, some proper candidates again. I’ve liked PWEI for some time, so they are the first band to put down a ‘marker’. Pantera I quite like (or at least some of their stuff), but crucially not as much, the same problem that P.I.L. and The Prodigy have.

I also like the Pet Shop Boys, and Placebo, and Public Enemy and Pulp. But I am instead going to pick another ‘classic’ band — The Police.

Q is for …

There can be only one. As they themselves said. Not only did they have a lot of great songs, but they also certainly knew how to make a pop video.

Freddie Mercury. Gone, but never forgotten.

R is for …

Well, this is another one where I thought there was only one real candidate — at least for me. And that was Rage Against The Machine. And then I started thinking of other ‘R’ bands I liked: R.E.M., Chris Rea, the Chillis, the Ministry-inspired Revolting Cocks, Right Said Fred, Roxy Music and the Rolling Stones.

Hmm. Okay then, a choice of two: the Rolling Stones or Rage Against The Machine. The Stones are more influential, cover a wider musical genre, lasted an awful lot longer, have had a bucket load more hits; Rage Against the Machine were more in your face, spitting out energy and venom, part of that sort of Rock/Rap crossover genre I like when done well, and few did it better than Rage.

And so even though I’ve often said if I could pick one band I like to be liked by my children, I’d pick the Stones — because they are musicians, because you can get from there to rock, to blues, to a lot of other things with quality music — I’m going to take advice from Zack de la Rocha, and “fight the war, fuck the norm”. So here’s RATM with ‘wake up’.

And S through to Z

…me dear daddy said, will be written on the street barricades. Or possibly included in a third post to follow at a later date.

Here’s your route to Top Of The Pops:

1. Go to “wikipedia.” Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days. Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

I had a problem with this last one, as I kept hitting ‘all rights reserved’. So if you encounter this, I have an alternative: go to Flickr advanced search, and search for any photo that was taken within the last week, where there is a creative commons licence that will allow you to adapt the work.

Credits:

• Anchisaurus: a sauropod dinosaur from the early Jurassic
• …by the corrupt few: George Bernard Shaw, the last few words of a quotation relating to democracy
• Photo: miss blackbutterfly on flickr.