George and the pirate code

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He never learned The Pirate Code.
So, the time when he ended up in prison, he was woken up by the strange tapping on the stone wall.
He’d summon the guards to complain, and the guards would nod and open the cell next to him.
“I was trying to tell you that we’re breaking out tonight, you idiot!” shouted the prisoner being dragged off.
“Oh, okay!” shouted George back. “Thank you!”
George slept peacefully… until he heard the chiseling in the wall.
He summoned the guards to complain again.

George and the little kids rock

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Every time he took his ship into the harbor, he’d end up smashing it into Little Kids Rock, and he’d have to be rescued.
How did the rock get the name “Little Kids Rock?”
Well, not so long ago, a little boy gathered up wood scraps, glued and nailed and lashed them together, and made himself a raft.
He put it in the water, got on board, raised his ragged sail, and drifted out of the harbor.
George’s ship smashed into it.
And then he smashed into the rock.

Weekly Challenge #990 – Place

The next topic is Budget airline

LISA

A Glimpse of my Future
She’d placed three cards on the table. Face down. Nodding after each was revealed.
“The first I see a man. In uniform he’s tall. I foretell a pursuit.” She turned the final card, and sighed saying “Yes. The chase will be relentless.”
She gathered the cards and returned them to the deck then placed them in her basket. We both moved away from the table together. It was an odd thing to happen, right?
We went through the door together too. An alarm went off and the security guard ran after us. I may never go back to John Lewis.

TOM

990

Somebody bet on da bay.

I had a friend who loved to bet on the ponies. He saw himself as a bit of a handicappers. Loved to play the Trifacta. For you-z whos mother school their children never to lay down a Jefferson on a hag, may not be aware be this gambling term, it means to play a wager on the horse to crossing the finish line in the order 1st 2nd and 3rd. Win Place and Show. Win Place. While my friend poured over each horse’s history in the handicapper’s rags. I just chose my picks on how much I likes the horse’s name.

989

Rabbit Holes

The path of the geek is long and deep. Being in Silicon Valley in the late 70s if you had a cursor interest in Networks you were easily swept up in the techno-Gyr. Spent major time working with Sun, then Red Hat then SUSE. I had a 1200 baud Hayse before it was released to the public. Built a mess of servers. Ran Sendmail. Ran IRC. Ran Apanche. Try my hand at Microsoft’s servers, but frankly, their stuff sucked. Taught Unix class, now I’m just happy to wander around Discord. If your now current everything is above your pay grade.

869

Speed

I think I may be repeating myself. Cus’ the topic seems vaguely familiar. Of courses you would need to be pretty rain-many to remember just shy of 1000 topics. A dim reference to the coolest kid in my high school. Rose Converse. Girl would give James Dean a run for his money. And she did in a shocking blue VW. Spent many night cruzing Spent many nights on the interstate going nowhere fast. Rose had a mayonnaise jar full of white crosses. Pop Em like malted milk balls. It was speed on speed waiting the morning to crash. I smile at the memory.

RICHARD

— A time and a place —
Apparently, I suffer from lack of social awareness. No matter what I happen to be doing, someone will give me a dirty look and mutter, “There’s a time and a place for that!”
Well, that may well be the case, but I’ve yet to find that particular place, and even then, I certainly wouldn’t know the appropriate time.
It’s all so unnecessarily complicated. Who gets to decide what’s appropriate anyway? If I want to do something, then why can’t I decide the time and the place?
Anyway, I’ll have to stop typing now… Somebody else wants to use the toilet!

LIZZIE

Begin at the beginning and rush, rush, rush. In a hurry, in a hurry, always. Everything changes. Everything shifts. Everything ends. Then, you stop. And there’s still nothing. You hoped there would be something. But the tick tock ticked tocked away, faintly. Where to? Tell me, where to? And no one cared… Your place is no more. You stopped. Your loss. Now, there’s nothing you can do about it. And you’re left with that hole you already had, because there was nothing there before and there is nothing there now. Hope? What is hope? Nothing. Yes, the joke’s on you.

SERENDIPIDY

Your trouble is that you’re far too arrogant.
You think you know it all, and that you’re better than anyone else.
Well, don’t even think about trying it on with me, because I won’t think twice about putting you in your place.
And don’t think that just because you’re bigger and stronger than me that I won’t.
Size and strength impresses me as little as your attitude does.
And they’re going to be of little use against my nail gun, and a handful of six inch nails.
They’ll put you firmly in your place.
And they’ll keep you there too!

NORVAL JOE

After school Billbert found his mother working from home.

She looked up from her place at the computer. “What’s wrong, Son? You look worried.”

Billbert shrugged. “It’s been three days since I’ve seen Sabrina or Mandi at school. I wish I could talk to Sabrina.”

His mother dug a business card from her purse. “Here’s Ms. Calabassa’s card. Call her. It’s three-thirty. The office should still be open.”

Billbert punched in the number. When a woman answered, Billbert said, “Hi. I need to talk to Ms. Calabassa.”

“I’m sorry. There is no one here by that name,” the woman replied.

PLANET Z

There are two Italian restaurants in the strip mall across the main road.
One is decent, the other isn’t.
But the decent one doesn’t do garlic bread.
The other does.
So, I order a loaf of garlic bread to take out, and I carry it over to the other restaurant.
I bring it in a bag, and put it on the table in the middle of the meal.
The waitresses don’t say anything about it.
And they know I tip well.
If they have a problem, I’ll just order everything to go from both places.
And not tip at all.

George vs Cthulhu

In dread R’lyeh, Cthulhu lies dreaming.
Well, that is, until the crash of a shipwreck woke him up.
“What the hell was that?” growled the massive tentacled alien beast.
A pirate walked up to him.
“Hi, I’m George,” said George. “I’m lost.”
Cthulhu looked at George with bewilderment.
Nobody has ever looked upon him without going completely mad.
“Don’t you feel the urge to drool and gibber incoherently?”
“Not really.”
Cthulhu gave George directions.
“Thanks,” said George, and he left.
A day later, he returned.
“Was that a left or a right?” he asked.
Cthulhu sighed, and drew a map.

George’s parking space

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
His priorities were completely out of whack.
“No, George, you can’t have your own parking space,” said the captain. “We’re pirates. We’re always out at sea, plundering. You’ll never need a parking space.”
During the next raid, George somehow managed to plunder a Buick dealership.
“Oh, great,” grumbled George. “Now where will I park this car?”
He tried to park in the captain’s space, but the captain had George’s car towed.
George gave the Buick back to the dealership.
He filled the tank, but he didn’t have it washed.

George and his pony

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
After he heard Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had A Boat” he bought himself a pony.
Together, they sailed out on the ocean, and George rode the pony on his boat.
It’s not easy riding a pony on a boat.
I could understand doing it on a big cruise ship.
When George ran into rough seas, and he and the pony fell overboard.
He had to let the pony sink to save himself.
For the rest of the voyage, George missed the pony.
He could have used the horse meat.

George the privateer

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
During the American Revolutionary War, he obtained letters of marque from both the colonists and the British Empire, and he stole from pretty much everyone.
When he raided ships leaving England for the Americas, they had a lot of soldiers, weapons, and ammunition.
Those raids didn’t end well.
So, he preferred to raid ships leaving the Americas for England. The soldiers tended to be tired or wounded, and easier to defeat.
Their cargo was worthless: barrels with the preserved bodies of the dead, heading home for a proper burial.

George vs Procedure

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He wasn’t very good at following procedures.
He’d be stacking cannonballs or swabbing the deck, and he’d be told “You’re doing it wrong, stupid. The captain announced a change last week, don’t you remember?”
It happened a lot, and one day. George snapped, screaming “Why doesn’t anybody write this shit down?”
“Because half of the crew can’t read,” growled the captain. “Besides, I’m busy doing other things than meaningless paperwork. You should write them down.”
So, George did. With a permanent marker on the captain’s face while he slept.

George and the piper

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The people of Hamlin were desperate, so they called on George to rescue their children from The Pied Piper.
George came back the next day with crates full of rats, and he released them.
“No, you idiot,” said the mayor. “The Pied Piper led those away first. When we refused to pay, he led away our children.”
“Ah, ok,” said George. “Sorry.”
The next day, George came back with The Pied Piper.
“My rate has doubled,” said The Piper. “Oh, and I prefer Bitcoin.”
George took a 10% commission.

Weekly Challenge #989 – Server

The next topic is Place

LISA

The Server
Pete, a medical student, was working part time as a waiter. It’d been a difficult shift a packed restaurant with one particularly rude customer mostly insulting him and questioning his intelligence. He didn’t contradict her.
It was a placement week and the same awful customer had been in a nasty car crash. Her shoulder had come out of its socket; He quickly and efficiently popped it back in. As he left the cubicle she asked if she knew him.
“I was your thicko waiter, the other night.” Pete smiled, “I’ll be back to stitch your facial injuries in a moment.”

RICHARD

— 404 —
It was me.
I was the one who opened the email that brought my laptop down.
And it was my laptop that went on to crash the network and bring the server down.
The same server that went on to trash the data centre, which screwed the web and brought down the internet completely.
Yes, you can blame me for it all.
I’m the one who single-handedly broke the information super highway.
And apparently, it’s not going to be fixed any time soon, so they tell me.
But why not look on the bright side?
No more dodgy emails!

LIZZIE

“Arsenic? We apologize. The server is offline.”
The questions continued until the server was back online.
Everyone resumed clicking their buttons frantically.
Some even chanted “the server is online, the server is online”.
What were the little tables for?
“Roleplay,” was the answer.
She didn’t know where the menu was, but the waiter whispered “no worries”. He’d explain everything.
The needle. What? No.
But but… “the server is back online”.
Now she understood the little joke. “Here, Happy Birthday, have fun”.
She was a widow, a black widow. Go to the RP café and have some arsenic on our tab.

THOMAS

Server

Mr. Liu moved like a shadow through Jade Lantern, his age hidden beneath a crisp blue jacket and knowing smile. He delivered plates of thousand-year eggs and drunken shrimp with eerie precision, never writing orders down, never making a mistake.

One night, a new customer hesitated over a plate of braised eel. Mr. Liu leaned in. “Eat,” he whispered. “It’s watching.”

The man laughed nervously, but Mr. Liu did not. He simply walked away, humming an old tune.

Later, when the plate was empty, the man swore he saw Liu give the eel’s discarded bones a small, approving nod.

IAN

The Server

“Soup’s cold!”

“Well, I didn’t make it!” thinks Larry, apologizing.

“The guy on table 5 says this soup’s cold,” Larry tells the chef.

“Christ, don’t shoot the messenger,” Larry thinks seeing Fat Steve’s violent glare.

Swearing, Fat Steve vindictively overheats it, and Larry takes it back.

“I’m never coming here again!” says the table five guy.

“Good, fuck off!” thinks Larry, heroically maintaining his composure, squeezed in the vice of customer and chef.

Later he reads the feedback on the restaurant app.

Terrible food, worse service.

In bed, he receives his manager’s text message.

See me before your shift tomorrow.

SERENDIPIDY

Whether you’ve enjoyed your meal, or not, please don’t forget to tip the server.
Make it a decent tip too, none of your measly ten or twenty percent. Better still, go the whole hog, the food is cheap enough for you to double-up, a hundred percent seems a reasonable ask to me.
Your server works hard, particularly with what they have to deal with behind the scenes in the kitchen.
So, please consider being generous.
If not, don’t blame me when they wait outside for you with a cleaver.
And you’ll end up as tomorrow’s dish of the day!

TOM

Rabbit Holes

The path of the geek is long and deep. Being in Silicon Valley in the late 70s if you had a cursor interest in Networks you were easily swept up in the techno-Gyr. Spent major time working with Sun, then Red Hat then SUSE. I had a 1200 baud Hayse before it was released to the public. Built a mess of servers. Ran Sendmail. Ran IRC. Ran Apanche. Try my hand at Microsoft’s servers, but frankly, there stuff sucked. Taught Unix class, now I’m just happy to wander around Discord. If your now current everything is above your pay grade.

NORVAL JOE

When Sabrina came back downstairs, she kept her eyes on the floor, not looking at anyone. “There are still a few things I couldn’t fit in my backpack.”

Billbert hugged her. “I’ll bring them to school.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she mumbled and followed Ms. Callabassa out.

Once the door was closed, Billbert asked, “Can’t you follow them, with a satellite through work, or something?”

His mother paused, then with determination, said, “Yes. I think we can.”

They sat at the computer and his mother entered her password to log into the office network.

A message appeared, “Unable to connect to server.”

PLANET Z

The asylum application process was simple.
Get a cell phone from a border agent, download an app, and apply for asylum.
A judge napped in an office while a room full of clerks rubber-stamped applications, and you could print out a certificate, or just show the certificate on your phone to any law enforcement bothering you.
And then the law changed.
The asylum app was shut down, the borders were closed, and the servers were handed over to a new team of clerks.
They gathered up the names and addresses, handed them over to immigration officers, and the raids began.