Remember the time when you learned Disney movies have highly inappropriate innuendos and your heart melted a little? Remember how you felt like your entire childhood had betrayed you?

Well, that’s happened for me, again. I recently learned that pirates are real. And they aren’t friendly.

Really, they are real.

But before I tell you about all that, I have a joke: What’s the 18th letter of the pirate alphabet? “Arrrrrr!” Funny, right?

As of late, pirates have been made popular, cool and really sexy. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” Disney movies, starring the world’s so-called hottest actors Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom (and don’t forget Keira Knightley) certainly helped. Even Facebook offers an “English (Pirate)” language option.

But while we spend our money on fake eye patches, and shout “walk the plank” at pirate-themed parties, there are real pirates hijacking ships with real people, and at record numbers. It’s kind of scary.

CNN reports pirates — yes, pirates — have hijacked thirty three ships off the coast of Somalia this year alone. While various ships, usually carrying weapons, are out at sea, armed pirate ships attack and hijack them. Usually they get close with speedboats, throw up anchors and hooks, climb aboard and then hold the commandeer and crew at gunpoint.

Apparently, this pirating has been a problem for sometime. However, there has been a recent surge. According to an article on MSNBC’s Web site, Somali pirates have seized control of at least 17 ships, including a ship from Ukraine loaded with weapons and a tanker from Saudi Arabia carrying an estimated $100 million in crude oil (which it seems could potentially lead to an increase in gas prices). None of the crewmembers, vessels or weapons have been returned.

But the nations are being attacked and not just sitting back and taking it, instead, they are fighting back (the U.S. is not involved). The CNN article mentioned that several countries have banned together and taken to the air to thwart the pirate’s attempts. They report being successful, citing one instance where a ship was attacked five times, but was able to hold off the hijacking attempts.

They also report they have successfully created a guarded corridor to let ships get to the coast of Somalia.

But the attacks are moving across seas now. India’s naval forces sunk one pirate ship — suspected to be a “mother ship” of sorts — and chased two more away after a Thai ship and an Iranian cargo ship encountered attacks.

To counter the pirates, Russia, for one, is sending in more vessels to fight off future pirate attacks. Russian’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, has called for NATO, the European Union and other countries to set up security patrols to make sure this doesn’t keep happening.

Now, this pirating isn’t something new. In reality, it has been around longer than Jesus (really, there are reports from 13th century B.C.), but apparently no one in the thousands of years of its existence has really found a solution to it, other than making light of it in popular culture.

According to an AFP news article, U.S. Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said, “You could have all the navies in the world having all their ships out there, you know, it's not going to ever solve this problem.”

If that’s the case, like Johnny Depp asked, where’s the rum?

Ray Ceo, Jr. just found out there’s no rum. Send him some at raymond.ceo@asu.edu.