Happy Stupid Holiday

Today is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Really. I forgot all about TLAP Day because my brain cells are occupied with more important things like the lyrics to "It's A Small World" and the fact that Bob Saget's latest sitcom, How I Met Your Mother, premieres tonight. I will not be watching it. But my boss, Ken, brought it up this afternoon, although I'd like to point out that Ken has not once, in fact, talked like a pirate today. Good for him.

Yet, according to a website by the guys who started Talk Like A Pirate Day (and by the way, who's surprised that men thought of this?) millions of people "from South Africa to Australia, from New York to the Pacific Northwest" are talking like pirates and just begging their co-workers/friends/family to kick the crap out of them. Unless you're participating in this holiday, you can probably imagine just how quickly stuff like "ahoy, matey" and "avast, ye scurvy scalawag" gets old. Damn fast. I mean, I just read the first page of the TLAP Day website and I wanted to keelhaul some peg-legged bastard.

Since any idiot can apparently create a holiday and have a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist carry it to modest success, I have a few ideas I'd like to test out. I'm counting on all of my eight or so readers to make these into the giant celebrations I imagine they deserve:

• November 18: Great American Horse-Tranquilizer Out. That's the same day as the Great American Smokeout, but I figure that if you weren't able to give up smoking, you could at least not feel like such a loser by going cold turkey from the horse tranquilizers.
• June 8: National Statue Humping Day. I think banks and government offices should be closed in honor of Statue Humping Day.