For a long time I have feared I was too complacent about the ever-lurking dangers which inhabit every corner of this earth. I felt alarm over my calmness until I became indifferent about my angst. So I was relieved to find out recently that Time magazine had finally asked the
panic-inducing question:
What happens if the pirates join forces with the terrorists?
My. Vengeful. God.
Contemplatively, my mind raced. What happens? What happens? What
happens?
Intuitively, it shockingly dawned on me that somewhere within International Terrorist Headquarters, someone's multiline phone was blinking like seizure-inducing anime, and this time operators were standing by. All those pamphlets advertising "Career growth and exciting work-at-home opportunities in the fields of Terrorism, Beheading, and Criminal Martyrdom" they dumped in the Suez Canal must have made a beeline for Somalia's pirate-rich coast.
My self-composed countenance revealed pure undiluted horror. What happens if the pirates have bombard cannons? What happens if they fire upon Baltimore with said bombard cannons? What happens if they release a series of parrots, each of which has a steadily increasing chance of having bird flu? What happens if the pirates demand to be addressed as privateers or corsairs, when in fact they are not under commission of the King. This may cause all sorts of consternation among the haters of political correctness and the overly-technical alike.
Reading the article, it was comforting to know that someone was thinking about the sort of evildoer collaboration possibilities that will paralyze one with fright. Consider, thoughtfully, these terrifying potential threats:
- Terrorists and pirates collude to drink ale and explode themselves on countless, unintended underwater targets.
- The terrorist motherbrain uses pirates to oversee and lay claim to two thirds of the Earth.
- The terrorists row and the pirates steer for a 10% speed boost.
- The pirates, influenced by the no-nonsense attitudes of the terrorists, begin to react with irritation at their mockery.
- They conspire to desalinate the world's salt water supply, coincidentally depleting the world's already strained mackerel supply.
- Ninjas flip out and kill people
- Pirates call their allies, the Hell's Angels, to ride around your neighborhood singing Off-Broadway showtunes offkey. To the extent that you can hear them over their motorcycles it will be subpar. But there's a twist: the Hell's Angels and the pirates have swapped bandannas.
- What do ninjas and terrorists do when they're not cutting off heads or flipping out? Probably collect welfare. That's gonna piss off Bill O'Reilly and then we'll have to hear him complain about it forever.
- Ghosts appear, distracting hapless day traders from the oncoming groin-crushing multi-phase Ninja Crotch Kick. The Dow never recovers.
- Pat Robertson retracts this summer's controversial statements and instead claims that through one level of indirection, God punishes our sins by allowing terrorists to create storm systems and use the buccaneers to push the storms toward us with some sort of large, storm-towing aparatus.
- Pirates use their degrees in evolutionary biology to make land-walking sharks attack Bedouins, further destabilizing the Middle East
- The sneaky Pirate / Biker / Ninja / Terrorist / Ghost / Shark / North Korea axis of evil focuses primarily on proactively synergizing paradigms.
Those frenzied souls who had furiously asked the question of whether or not their safety was imperiled by 21st century buccaneers were contented to discover that the pirate threat is all too real. The copious and varied potential implications will be carefully studied and recklessly broadcast.
It is our national duty to prevent the hypothetical from becoming the historical. Whenever I feel the desire to sink back into anxious apathy, I will resist and instead lackadaisically enumerate every horrifying scenario. After all, if I don't, what happens?