Who's Cooler...

Since the dawn of man, the debate has raged: just who, exactly, is cooler: pirates or ninjas? Recently the debate has shifted online. Aficionados of each side battle it out on websites and message boards. A Google search for "who's cooler pirates or ninjas" yields 95,400 results. Indeed, an employee here wearing a ninja vs. pirates shirt sparked the debate at MindComet recently. Now I will settle that debate with a completely unbiased analysis of the facts.

I started by asking people around the office which they thought was cooler. The total votes were 6 in favor of pirates, 4 in favor of ninjas, and 1 who said "I think i would rather BE a ninja, but id rather hang out with pirates." But here's something I noticed about the pro-pirate responses: most were not particularly well-reasoned and said things along the lines of "pirates are cooler, because Jonny Depp is hot!" Well, since I'm a heterosexual male, such arguments are meaningless to me. That makes the vote totals more equal. So let's examine some of the arguments from each side.

Pro-Pirate argument #1: "A ninja will kick your a**. A pirate will kick your a** and then take your booty. At least the pirates get something out of it." This is indeed the case. But ninjas are totally above such petty concerns as money and treasure. They exist only to accomplish their mission. And to look really cool.

Pro-Pirate argument #2: "Pirates ... would bring plenty of rum (to a party) and probably have some really great stories about raping and pillaging. The fun would end once they got too drunk and started impaling people with their swords." Well, OK, it's pretty hard to disagree with this argument. Pirates would be pretty fun to party with.

Pro-Pirate argument #3: "Johnny Depp is hot." Again, this argument carries no weight with me. Besides, I would wager that most pirates are not particularly attractive.

Pro-Pirate argment #4: "I prefer pirates because they wear feathers in their hats, dress in velvet and walk in high heeled boots." Um, yeah. You're not selling it to me with this argument.

Pro-Pirate argument #5: "The life of a pirate is cool, being the king of the sea." Yeah, um, you're on a ship for a really long time hanging out with a bunch of sweaty, smelly, ugly, scurvy-having dudes. Not cool. At all.

Pro-Pirate argument #6: "Pirates have parrots." Yeah, and they also have parrot poop stains on their shoulder. So not cool.

OK, now for the other side of the argument. Ninjas...

Pro-Ninja argument #1: "Ninjas train for a lifetime in the dark arts of assassination." Dude! That is COOL!

Pro-Ninja argument #2: "Ninjas could easily kill all the pirates, and take thier women, and booze." And disappear before anybody knew what happened. 'Nuff said.

Pro-Ninja argument #3: Ninjas have one of the greatest web sites in the history of the Internet: Real Ultimate Power. Way cool.

Pro-Ninja argument #4: Ninjas have much cooler weapons. Pirates have swords and muskets, but ninjas have cooler swords, throwing stars, sais, hand claws, manrikigusari, and many, many more cool weapons. Super cool.

Pro-Ninja argument #5: Ninjas can disappear. There's no denying the coolness of that.

So that's it. It should be painfully obvious to any reasonable person at this point that ninjas p0wn pirates. I mean, there's just no debate.

Still not convinced? Look, one icy cold stare from uber-ninja Sho Kosugi

would cause pretty-boy wannabe pirate Johnny Depp to poop his pantaloons and die seven times before he hit the ground. Let's face it, even ninja-cat could probably whoop Johnny Depp's butt.