Pirates and Priming

I recently read an article about the mind and priming which stated that the human mind is extremely susceptible to subconscious influence. I had heard this before but had never actually experienced it until yesterday. As I was re-writing my 2006 NaNoWriMo novel (well, half-novel) I noticed a strange motif. Along with my plot lines that went nowhere and my overuse of pseudo-French names, I mentioned pirates in three unrelated scenes. And it wasn’t even like my half-novel had anything to do with pirates, instead, I remember writing the last reference and thinking to myself, “I have a genius idea, I’ll mention pirates for some texture!” Why I forgot my prior mentions eludes me to this day, but I did think (aside from worrying about my obvious obsession with naval marauders) that perhaps the power-hungry child hypnotists down at Disney had finally done it—they had brainwashed me with swashbuckling and witty pirates. Something about drunks who steal for a living and rarely bathe had become sexy and interesting. But this wasn’t the first movie (well it was the first trilogy) to exploit the mystère of pirates, so I started thinking that it wasn’t Disney, but some other, more devious (is it possible?) source who began to turn the negative connotations of stealing and ravaging into sizzling Johnny Depp. Was it, in fact, the human mind, in its never-ending quest to understand the unknown, that turned danger into something else. Was my mind trying to tell me something? Was my life (or my half-novel) so boring that I needed to inject it with cliché allusions to danger? Whatever the reason, I’ll be pay more attention to my mind's dirty little secrets when I try to write in the future.