Last month, the devilish geniuses behind the Comedy Central animated series "South Park" devoted a half-hour episode to Somali pirates. I'm not the first to point this out, but it took me a couple of weeks to procure a bootleg copy. The full episode, "Fatbeard," will be available on the show's website later this week, and it's worth watching. There's more levelheaded analysis of the situation in Somalia in these 22 ridiculous, expletive-laden cartoon minutes than you'll find on any cable news program.

Cartman (above, with eye patch) decides to go off to Somalia with a "pirate club" in search of headline-inspired riches. They unwittingly get turned into ransom bait, but use that to hijack (what else?) a French ship and their stereotypically French crew. The kids come back expecting a pirate heroes' welcome, grog and all, but their ragtag comrades are too bored and addled-looking to care. The kids try to whip the pirates into shape with the help of, naturally, a rousing musical number.

The writers did their homework. The cartoon pirates speak flawless Somali, so the producers must have hired expats to voice them. Mogadishu looks right, an urban junkyard of crisscrossing telephone wire and sad-looking palm trees. All the tools of the pirate trade are accounted for: AK-47s, ammunition belts, an aging fishing boat strapped to a "Yamoha" motor. (Others have pointed out minor errata -- the show bases the pirates in Mogadishu, not Puntland as they really are, and the 5,000-euro ransom for the kids probably lowballs real-life pirates by a couple of decimal places.)

Best of all, the episode captures dead-on the desperation of the pirates. These aren't a romantic bunch. The lawlessness of Somalia isn't something to aspire to. The military might used to wipe out pirates seems almost grotesquely overblown.

In this scene, a pirate named Guleed spells it out for the kids:

It all harks back to another classic sitcom -- and it's starting to feel weird that such good insight on Somalia is coming from TV -- but in the immortal words of Jerry Seinfeld, "I don't wanna be a pirate!"

So now that the dramatic pirate story has been resolved -- except for who plays Richard Phillips in the movie -- what happens to Somalia?

Last week was extraordinary on a few levels. There was the heroism of the Alabama crew. There was the nail-biting Navy assault that saved Phillips, the first U.S. military action against pirates on the high seas in two centuries. There was the spectacle of dozens of reporters converging on the same story (at the height of the frenzy one news organization hired a helicopter and motorboat, the kind of spending move that reminds you why the news industry is in crisis). And there was the more surprising spectacle of seeing Somalia at the top of the news agenda around the world, if just for a moment.

It remains to be seen whether all this attention on the Alabama translates into serious, long-term attention to solving the fundamental problems of Somalia. My guess is: unlikely.

Americans love a good hero story. It doesn't get any better than pirates on the high seas and troops swooping in to rescue a hard-bitten seafarer with a heart of gold. What no one likes -- or likes to read about -- is a complicated story with virtually no good guys, lots of pretty bad guys and probably an equal number of guys who you don't know all that well but really hope aren't bad because you've just sunk a lot of money into them. That, in a nutshell, is what the world has with Somalia today.

Somalia's current stab at a government says it wants to end the political failures that breed anarchic activities like piracy. For a start, they're asking for more money to develop their military. This is not a promising opening move. Their current army isn't really an army, in the sense that they don't have guns or uniforms or regular salaries or -- absent the African Union peacekeeping force -- any real territory to control. In Puntland, the semiautonomous and increasingly estranged where the pirates are based, the Somali military is as foreign a force as the U.S. Navy, and a lot less well equipped.

For now, the military scare tactics will continue to be the job, for good and ill, of foreign forces offshore. This is not a long-term solution but it's not a totally bad thing either. For one, it should remind other nations that they have a stake in what happens on the ground in Somalia. Now is the time to support the transitional government of the untested but decent Sheik Sharif Ahmed, the most promising president in years, rather than renege on funding pledges or, in the case of African Union nations, peacekeeping commitments.

There's an important non-military component to this: countries should also help Somalia go after the networks that fund the pirates, who are being bankrolled by Somalis living in Europe, North America and the Middle East, and whose funds are sloshing around the hawallah system worldwide. Somalia says it has intel on some of these groups. If they're willing to share that with friendly governments it would be a show of seriousness.

Sure, there's a lot of spectacle and silliness when you think of pirates. I did more public radio interviews last week than I've ever done on one story, and on two occasions my segment opened with the rousing chorus: "Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life for me!" I suppose it's a waste of time trying to fight the popular perception. But more people know where Somalia is than they did last week, and that's a start.

As for casting "Alabama Down" (the Nairobi press corps' consensus working title for the movie) I would go with Russell Crowe as the tough, uncompromising Phillips -- or, if the studio insists on an American, George Clooney in the "Syriana" beard.

There's nothing funny about the hostage situation off the coast of Somalia, where the captain of the U.S. cargo ship that was hijacked yesterday is still being held by four pirates. But this time you have to believe the pirates had no idea what they were getting into. Could the first known case of a hijacked crew fighting back finally scare these crazy buccaneers into reining in their operations?

One energy consultancy thinks so. This is a tongue-in-cheek note that the firm sent out to clients today, passed on from a friend:

Somali pirate update – Downgrade from Accumulate to Sell.  Meaningfully lower estimates of 2009/2010 earnings and change in business model/execution prompts re-rating.  We loved oil tanker strategy (capture valuable cargo, demand ransom, get paid).  Recent four man effort to seize container ship is questionable (pirate manual says this is 6-10 man job).  Abandoning ship in lifeboat with ship captain as only booty/hostage seems downright foolish.  Avoid.

I had to take a quick break from helping to cover the war in Gaza to write about Somali pirates releasing one of their biggest captures from last year: the Saudi supertanker, the Sirius Star.

The ransom, which Kenyan experts place at between $3 million and $5 million, probably marks one of the biggest pirate paydays of recent months. The 25-member crew is reportedly safe after the ransom was delivered by parachute to the deck of the Sirius Star. AP even has a photo (right) courtesy of the U.S. Navy.

But a strange thing happened on the way to the bank. As they were ferrying some of the ransom back to shore, five pirates reportedly drowned Friday when their boat capsized in high winds.

The Kenya-based East Africa Seafarers Assistance Program has details on the incident, in which nine pirates were traveling in a small speedboat when they were tossed overboard in rough seas. Four survived, one body was recovered but four others are still missing. Based on what we know about how these ransoms are distributed, the pirates must have been traveling with tens, and perhaps hundreds, of thousands of dollars.

The seafarers group, made up of Mombasa-based experts who track the pirates better than anyone, has an interesting side note: "Unfortunately many of the Somalis involved in the pirate actions cannot swim, which explains the high death toll among the young pirates."

Really? The pirates can't swim? We know that huge numbers of Somali migrants who make the dangerous trek across the Gulf of Aden drown or are tossed overboard, but there have not been many reports of similar fates befalling pirates. The waters in the gulf are notoriously rough, but it's a reminder of how little we really know about the pirates and how ad hoc their operation is.

The Hollywood-style stories of big money and eager women have become legion. But at the end of the day the pirates are just kids, and I continue to be amazed by how they've terrorized international shipping and the world's most powerful navies can't seem to figure out how to stop them.

A quick note: Because I'm away from the Africa beat for the time being, I'm not blogging very frequently. But please read my colleague Dion Nissenbaum's blog, Checkpoint Jerusalem, for notes and observations about the war in Gaza.

Today was another banner day for the pirates who ply the lawless waters off of Somalia.

Unknown pirates hijacked a South Korean cargo ship with 21 crew members in the Gulf of Aden on Wednesday, according to the International Maritime Bureau. The Yonhap news agency of South Korea said that the crew included eight South Koreans and an undisclosed number of foreigners.

Also Wednesday, the maritime bureau said that pirates in speedboats (like the one pictured above) fired machine gun rounds at a Greek vessel. The vessel reported the incident and a multinational naval force in the region scrambled a warship that scared off the pirates, AP reported.

Figure those guys will be back at it. Wednesday's attacks brought to at least 49 the number of attacks on ships off the coast of Somalia this year. The total for all of 2007 was 34. As the situation in Somalia gets worse, piracy is more lucrative than ever. Andrew Mwangura, a watchdog who works out of Mombasa, Kenya, reports today that Somali pirates have demanded a $1.4 million ransom for a French couple whose 50-foot luxury yacht was hijacked on Sept. 3.

I don't know what the retired French couple -- identified as Jean-Yves and Bernardette Delanne -- wanted in the notoriously dangerous Gulf of Aden, but their trip has been cut dramatically short. African Safari pointed out that Mwangura's organization, the East African Seafarers Assistance Program, warned that pirates might use the yacht "as a decoy to approach other unsuspecting yachts or simulate and signal an engine failure or other emergency at sea, whereby it then would attack any ship coming closer in order to provide assistance."

Yikes. Just how dangerous is it out there? Mwangura's latest alert to captains and seafarers, issued today, makes for some pretty sobering reading, especially for us landlubbers. His glossary of Somali words that would be useful in a pirate attack is downright disturbing:

In case you don't stand any chance to escape or to surely repulse the attack:

1) Make your distress calls with clear ID, position and number of souls on board.

2) Use standard procedures to secure the lives of people on board and the safety of your ship and cargo.

3) Don't resist orders given to you by the hijackers! If humble, you stand a near 100% chance to survive!

4) Most important Somali words for such a situation:

• Nabad = Peace (also used as "welcome!")
• Haye? = How are you?
• Fian = Good, Fine
• Ma Fian = Not Good, Not OK
• A Posto = OK
• Wayahay = Yes, Sir = WILCO, alright, strong ok
• Dhib malle or Bas malle = No Problem
• Tartip-Tartip = slowly-slowly, careful
• Hagee Ku Sohotaa (written Socotaa)? = Where to?
• Gargaar = Help
• Fadlan = Please
• Fariiso = Sit
• Suk = Wait
• Ken = Bring
• Biyo = Water
• Chai = Tea
• Sokor = Sugar
• Ben = Lie
• Run = Truth
• Magaa (written Magacaa)? = What's your name? (be careful not to ask too many personal details!)
• Lag = Money
• Telfon = phone
• Buntuq = Gun
• Pastolod = Pistol
• Toreey = Knife