It’s Talk Like A Pirate Day but I have no enthusiasm for it anymore. After several years, pirates just aren’t that funny anymore. I think they ran their course.
Now zombies on the other hand, now you’re talking. As of summer 2005, zombies are the new pirates. Someone needs to start a “Eat Brains Like a Zombie Day” to replace this pirate one. A passing of the meme torch, if you will.
A Whole Lotta Nothing 
I think we need a Zombie Pirate day to bridge the gap between memes.
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I dunno, I think zombies are sort of passe as well. Pirates of the Carribean had zombie pirates… I think it’s been all downhill since then.
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Didn’t Zombies hit their peak with Shaun of the Dead / 28 Days Later
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Pirates, zombies — bah! Fifteen years ago — good Christ, fifteen years ago! — we celebrated Eat Like a Viking Day. That, by God, was a day! Nothing says, “I’m eating like a Viking” more than hoisting a full leg of mutton to your mouth and tearing off a fist-sized chunk. A good, hard dose of gluttony will kick the feeble little arr-talking ass of those pirate weenies any time. And you can follow it with Sleep Like a Viking Night and Never Get Around to Pillaging Like a Viking Because You’re Still Feeling Kind of Logey Day.
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I’m with you. One of my best friend’s birthday’s was yesterday, and while I’m usually full of Arrrrghs, Yaaarrrrs, and Mateys, this year I could hardly summon a pitiful avast.
And while I’ve spent too, too many hours playing urban dead, I’m not quite ready to move onto braaaaaaaiiiins yet. Perhaps if there were a Simpsons character
Ninjas — Unfortunately, ninjas live by the grade school farting rules. Violent and silent, ninjas are hard to imitate at a cocktail party. Although blending into the drapes, clinging to the ceiling, and delivering swift, merciless death to your clients’ foes are pretty freaking neat, they don’t neccessarily translate well to snarky remarks made on message boards.
Also: a dearth of ninja-representation in the popular media since the demise of the G.I. Joe franchise and an overall downturn in the throwing star industry has really taken a toll on these otherwise magnificent creatures’ hold on the popular imagination. Another downside, I guess on National Talk Like a Ninja Day we’d all have to shut the f*ck up.
Vampires — Unlike ninjas and zombies, vampire imitation offers its practitioners a full English vocabulary to work with. Furthermore, the vampire vernacular is easily mastered in a few simple steps. 1. Substitute in a few “V”s for “W”s. 2. Speak tonally as if you were speaking Thai or Laotian. 3. Affect a movie-Hungarian accent. 4. Make numerous references to blood, garlic, coffins and crucifixes. 5. There is no step 5ive! Vow! Vasn’t that easy? Yes! Indeed!
There are, however, two obvious problems with talking like a vampire. Three, actually. No, wait, I just thought of a fourth. Okay! The first is the obvious failure of Hollywood to reproduce true patterns of vampiric speech over the last decade or more. Brad Pitt’s character in Interview with the Vampire, for example, spoke more like a southern Californian than a vampire, despite his status as a vampire. Another issue is that it’s easy to accidentally lapse into Jackie Mason when attempting to speak Vampire. I forget the other two now. One had something to do with Buffy, which I’ve never seen. Is it any good? I have a TiVo.
French people — I’m not quite sure why, but the French are funny people, with humorous accents. We should make fun of them more often, because they really like that. Plus, it’s okay because they tend to be oppressors, instead of oppressees. Furthermore, it’s easy. You don’t really even have to say anything. Just speak from the back of your throat, and try to be rude. It doesn’t really matter if French people are really rude or not, we’re trading in stereotypes! And everyone knows stereotypes are funny. (If you don’t believe me, just walk into your nearest bar and ask an Irishman.) Yankee-Franco relations are admittedly, at a low point. A National Talk Like a French Person day would help mend fences, more than likely. Especially if we could get our politicians in on the act. Trust me. The French would really love this one.
Jar Jar — No.
Medieval Knights — So there was a brief explosion of this dialect following Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but it never really took off with the masses and quickly was relegated to Ren Faires, bad Shakespeare in the park, and guys who carry around 12-sided die. But we shouldn’t let this tongue die out just because a few guys who’ve had too many twinkees have hijacked it and run those unladen swalloe jokes into the ground. For starters, there are so many great words. You’ve got your wenches and witches and, um, probably others. Like curse words. Zounds! Almond Joy has nuts, zounds don’t. And then there’s the hitting. When you’re talking like a medieval knight, it’s perfectly acceptable to knock the dogsh*t out of whomever you’re speaking to with whatever object you find laying around. Because knights were crazy mad about f*cking your sh*t up. In fact, the only think knights liked better than hitting people with random poles and broomsticks and things, was eating big hunks of meat. So that’s pretty cool right there. Hitting people and eating big hunks of meat, and saying “Zounds!”
Zounds!
If you were here right now I’d hit you.
Um, okay I’m all done now. Sorry Matt.
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I’m also adding monkeys to the list. Monkeys are not funny anymore. If you are someone who thinks monkeys are funny, please stop it. You’re embarassing yourself.
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yes, thank you!
things that are tired:
– pirates
– monkeys
– ninjas
– robots (esp. red)
– luchadors
getting pretty tired, too:
– zombies
– unicorns
previously tired:
– cowboys
– vikings
– cows
my vote for next fad:
– nuns
OK.
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i agree! i was just asking lia yesterday what the deal is with zombies. they ARE the new pirates. however i don’t find zombies funny b/c they don’t talk. blood and dead skin hanging off of your face isn’t that funny to me. but somehow they made stubbs funny. it also has that delicious soundrack.
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