PHH: Who will haunt the abandoned amusement park now?

In this economy.... um... In this economy... Sorry. I got nothing off that. I'm contractually obligated to start every rant with that phrase, but I don't see where I can go with that. Frankly, I'm still recovering from my overdose of peeps made out of kosher matzoh from the weekend. But man, did anyone else catch that TV miniseries last week? I swear that was the worst "Pirates" movie that Disney has ever put out. You couldn't even see Johnny Depp this time. Wait...what? That was real? Pirates??! WTF? What century is this again? In THIS economy, now we have to deal with an international seafaring crisis? (yes!) But I don't even have all the usual pirate jokes ready! OK...blue beard, shiver me timbers, swashbuckling...uhh parrots, arrr. There. Now, you can make your own hackneyed jokes, mad-lib style.

OK, raise your hand if you ever thought we'd hear NPR dominated by "what do we do about the pirates!?" stories. But seriously, there was our president, Barack Obama, just stone cold killing nefarious pirates! Wow. And all it took was several US Navy warships carrying 3 sniper bullets to take down 4 guys in a rowboat. But we won! It was an effective and heroic end to a crisis that in the past would have dragged on for months. Why, it's a pretty fun game to figure out what Bush/Cheney would have done. Here's my answer: They would have bombed Denmark and paid Halliburton to set up military bases in Argentina. So Change has indeed come to America! I just wish Obama had worked in "I will kill muthaf#cking pirates" into his campaign platform, but that probably would have made everyone downloading the latest Jonas Brothers album soil themselves.

And so, fellow ninjas, now that our enemies, the pirates, are on the run, I invite you to first stealthily infiltrate Kino Kafé at 7:30pm at La Paloma tonight for the screening of "Heavy Metal in Baghdad." Following the documentary, mystically appear from the shadows at Red Rock Tavern (Kenny's in seafaring times) for pitchers of beer and curly fries. We will discuss how we can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

--Capt. Richard "Sully" Phillips