Arrr! International Talk Like a Pirate Day is only two days away and I bet you haven’t figured out your menu.

In fact, I bet you haven’t even figured out what the heck I’m talking about, so let’s back up.

In July 2002, an Albany (Oregon) guy I know, John Baur, and his buddy Mark Summers, e-mailed Pulitzer prize-winning syndicated humor columnist, Dave Barry, hoping he would help publicize Talk Like a Pirate Day, a day they’d established seven years earlier which basically centers on talking like a pirate all day every Sept. 19.

"Avast, matey, care to join me for some grog after work?"

The wise blokes even made Barry an offer he could hardly refuse if he came on board: the title of National Spokesman for Talk Like a Pirate Day.

To make a wacky and long story short, Barry actually responded to their e-mail. But everything was left up in the air until, as John and Mark (also known as Ol’ Chumbucket and Cap’n Slappy, respectively) describe on their Web site (www.talklikeapirate.com):

"In early September (of 2002), John got a call from the features editor at the Corvallis Gazette-Times, someone he had worked with for several years before leaving the newspaper business. She sounded confused. ‘John, I was editing this week’s Dave Barry Column and it’s about … is this you?’

"It was. The nationally syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning writer of ‘distinguished commentary’ (the Pulitzer committee’s description, not his own) became convinced of the great potential of such a holiday.

"Or maybe he had run out of fresh column ideas and didn’t want to do another one on toilet training his infant daughter. Either way, he had written the column."

It ran in newspapers across the country on Sept. 8, 2002. And that’s when hell broke loose.

Talk Like a Pirate Day became a national event quicker than a serving wench can deck a landlubber. Calls and requests for interviews from media were that immediate. Of course, within only a few days it became international Talk Like A Pirate Day thanks to a Sydney, Australia radio station interview.

In the wake of all this silliness, an extremely clever Web site was created, originally conceived by Tori Baur, John’s lusty pirate wench, er, wife, then ultimately designed and maintained by their clever "Web wench" Pat Kight/aka Jezebel.

It tells the two Pirate Guys story of course, but has all sorts of other cool stuff on it too, like a pirate personality profile test you can take to find out what kind of pirate you’d make, pirate links, and even a "pirate booty" page, where you can acquire everything from Talk Like a Pirate outerwear and underwear to Talk Like a Pirate lunch boxes, beer steins, coffee mugs and bumper stickers.

Then in Barry’s column two Sundays ago, he reminded folks that International Talk Like a Pirate Day was Sept. 19, and to mark the date. Again, it’s been nonstop wildness with a massive increase in hits on the Web site and requests for interviews.

When I contacted John to find out what he and Cap’n Slappy would be eating on ITLAP Day, he started off with a caution: "This is talk like a pirate day, Jan, not eat Like a Pirate Day."

To which I responded with a hearty "Arrr!"

Also, John stressed that he and Cap’n Slappy are not historians or pirate re-enactors.

"There are such things," he added, "and we’ve been in contact with many of them, who assume we know much more about the subject than we actually do. What we are are two guys who think it’s funny if there’s one day a year when everybody talks like a pirate.

"So our ‘research’ was a tad more casual than that of, say, a doctoral candidate preparing to defend his thesis. It involved a lot more beer and pizza than actually looking stuff up."

So in answer to my question, "What do pirates eat?" John said, "Something not really that good."

But," he added, "if you ask us, ‘What do The Pirate Guys eat?’ we’d be happy to tell you, because we are in fact The Pirate Guys."

As it turns out, the number one thing on The Pirate Guys’ menu on ITLAP Day is barbecued pork ribs.

"Not because we love them, although we do," said John. "But because they are the most appropriate food for the day from a historical perspective. The word buccaneer comes from the French word ‘boucanier’, which literally means ‘barbecuer’."

John says it all started out because the Spanish wanted the Western Hemisphere to themselves.

"The Spanish had a tendency to kill any non-Spanish colonists they found in the New World. Groups of settlers in the Caribbean, first French and then Dutch, English and others, lived in isolation and subsisted mostly on wild pigs that lived on the islands.

"These island dwellers became really good at chasing down the pigs, catching them and killing them."

The meat was cut into strips and laid on a grating of green wood called a barbecu ("From which comes our word, barbecue," John said, "but you’d already guessed that").

The meat, which was slowly cured over the slow-burning fire, was called "boucan."

The Spanish left these buccaneers alone for a while, but eventually decided they posed a threat and had to be driven out, John said.

"They tried killing off the wild game, but realized it would be easier just to kill off the buccaneers. This naturally did not endear the Spanish to the buccaneers, and made the latter easily recruited by the English for pirateering."

These early buccaneers developed a profitable lifestyle on the open seas preying on Spanish treasure ships. ("Much more satisfying than chasing pigs around on their islands," said John.)

Well, last time John checked the meat department at Safeway, he said, "there was no wild pig to be had. So we’re improvising here. Pork spareribs take the place of strips of wild pork, but the barbecue remains the same."

On the evening of TLAP Day you’ll find the pirate blokes dividing their time between two popular downtown Albany eateries where they’re hoping to find pork ribs on the menus.

"Otherwise," added John, "I’ll be cooking my own at home beforehand. But come hell or high water, barbecued ribs are on MY menu."

Of course there’s also something called salmagundi, which was apparently quite a delicacy on a pirate ship. A pirate favorite, if you will.

John described it as a dish of chopped meat, eggs, anchovies, onions, "and perhaps whatever else was lying around aboard ship." In other words, any assortment or medley of ingredients.

Well, the two Pirate Guys encourage folks to focus on the spirit of the definition.

"Order a large pizza with everything — I mean everything — and call it a salmagundi. Heck, you might even convince the pizzeria owner to adopt that as the name for a giant pizza with everything."

John also speculates that any kind of fish would be appropriate for the day, "Preferably fish and chips eaten with the fingers. And any kind of dessert based on citric fruit would be good to fight scurvy. Lime sherbet, anyone?"

You might think that grog would be the beverage of choice on ITLAP Day, right?

"Wrong," John said. "Grog is water with rum in it. Like all the other comestibles aboard ship, the water was stored in casks, which could get kind of green after months at sea. Rum was added to kill the rancid taste. So no, I don’t think I’ll be drinking grog."

What they will be drinking are Oregon beers.

"Right now my favorite is Rogue Brewing’s Dead Guy Ale. Partly because it’s really, really good, and has a bottle with a skeleton on it. And when people ask, ‘What do Pirate Guys drink?’ it’s fun to answer, ‘Dead Guys.’ "

But they’ll also be sampling Arrrgh!toberfest Lager from the Oregon Trader Brewing Company in Albany. And yes, it was specially re-named for the occasion.

"Rum-based drinks would be good though," he added, "because of the tropical connotation. And you can’t go wrong with a gin and tonic, because of course it has a slice of lime in it and you want to make sure to avoid scurvy."

But again, John wants to stress that it’s talk Like a Pirate Day. "So if people want to eat like a pirate or dress like a pirate or watusi like a pirate, that’s all fine and everything, but totally beside the point. It’s talk Like a Pirate day."

So here are a few pointers from Ol’ Chumbucket himself: