Yep, you guessed it. The end of the day, I have about 3 minutes to get all my thoughts and links down before time runs out so here we go.

My first link is all about vitamins online. Most people buy their vitamins from traditional brick and mortar stores. Wal-Mart or their local Ralph's. But I buy my vitamins online. It's just a habit.

Next up, take a gander at this post about how to relieve stress. Stress influences every part of your life. Your mind is your most important organ, or muscle, what is the mind exactly? Actually, I guess it's just a bunch of fat, but important fat.

Kids today think of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, and the rest of the swarthy Disney crew whenever someone mentions pirate movies. Pirates of the Caribbean is a grand man-o-war of a franchise, an easily accessible, enjoyable story for all ages and types. Skeleton pirates, asian pirates, drunk pirates, pirates with washboard abs, the movies have it all, and they were incredibly successful.

But, this wasn't always the case. Historically pirate movies have bombed. Or more accurately, sunk the studios they were attached to.

And now I present....Choppy Waters: Summer Blockbusters and Pirates!

The first pirate movies were also the first Hollywood Blockbusters. Early films were shown in small rooms and lasted only a few minutes. A reel was about 18 minutes long, and no movies were 2 reels. The stories were simple and mostly cowboy in nature.

Then D.W. Griffith came along and made a 6 reel epic called "Birth of a Nation." It grossed 15 million dollars in a time when a million dollars could buy the presidency. Suddenly features were born.

Shortly thereafter came the exotics. Escapism was the big thing and people wanted to be taken far away from their homes. This brought us the "Sheik" in the wide Arabian desert, and "Captain Blood" on the high seas. Captain Blood was a spectacular pirate movie. Several sequels followed. The stunts in these movies outclass the best of today's stuntwork, and in the 20's every boy wanted to be a pirate, and every girl wanted to love one.

Into the 30's Errol Flynn became Hollywood's golden boy. He was a charming thief and a pirate in the movies, and he was pretty much the same in real life.

Until he disappeared.

Errol Flynn literally vanished, and with him pirate movies (he actually went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, though Hollywood didn't know for years). Before Flynn and his swashbuckling could be replaced, gunslingers and gangsters rose to power on the silver screen, and pirates were lost in the shuffle.

But within a decade even the gunslingers would be out trumped by new blockbusting leading men, the dancers...

Fred Astaire had always been kicking around, but when Gene Kelly tapped his way into major motion pictures, musicals reigned the summer. The late 40's, the 50's, and all the way through the early 60's, the summer musicals got all the buzz. Westerns were still being spurred along by John Wayne, but pirate movies were nowhere to be found.

With one exception. 1956 brought us the Seven Voyages of Sinbad, and suddenly pirates were keen, but only for a summer, then they disappeared into the nethers of B genre flicks.

The 70's abandoned the concept of the summer blockbuster altogether as studios tumbled and independent cinema had its hey day.

Then Star Wars broke the mold, and brought in an era of space sci-fi that lasted most of the 80's. Of course, many of these films were essentially space pirate films, but a space pirate just isn't the same. There were a couple real pirate films in the 80's, Cutthroat Island for instance, but this movie bankrupt many a studio exec, and ruined the careers of most the people involved, it was that bad and that expensive.

The 90's were all about action, war, and epic disaster, and the turn of the century brought us the advent of the super hero movie. Even the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie wasn't expected to be a blockbuster. Nobody expected it to break 100 million dollars.

But here we are today, where a bet on a pirate film is a good bet indeed.

Sorry for the longwindedness of the post, I even forgot to mention the damage control master formula and omega 3 vitamins. Oh well, there's always next month.

I've read a good amount of pirate lit, in my land locked days. Here's some suggestions.

Under the Black Flag: This is a pirate's primer for all things nautically nasty. It doesn't dive too deep into any one tale, but it paints a colorful and mostly accurate picture of pirating life over 350 years. It explains the truth in the mythological. For instance, pirates actually did where bright colors. They often had limbs missing and pegged legs due to the scrim shot used in scirmishes. And many pirates had monkeys or parrots for pets. It was common for pirates to trade and sell exotic animals they had plundered from islands whenever they would arrive at a central port. The book talks about black beard and pirate booty a bit, but it is really just an overview. Great for the inexperienced to cut his teeth on.

Off the Edge of the World: This is the story of Magellan's circumnavigation. Not a true pirate tale, but it is full of raging sea storms, wars with natives, mutiny, scurvy, and wild sex. The time period is right, it is a true sea farring adventure, and something worthy of an epic movie starring Liam Neisan or Russel Crowe.

Pirate Hunter: The story of Captain Kidd. The first "American" pirate! Kidd was sometimes a pirate, sometimes a businessman. This book does a great job of showing the gray area between good and evil in the realm of sea-farring. Juicy, gritty, and audiciously written, this is a "can't miss."

The Damage Control Master Formula: This isn't a book about pirates, it's a multivitamin. But, so what?! Who's to tell me I can't peddle my wares no and then. If you want to buy vitamin, then go on ahead!