George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The Pirate Party of Sweden called George and asked him if he was interested in running for parliament.
“But I’m not Swedish,” said George.
“Nobody is anymore,” said the Pirate Party representative. “Damned immigrants.”
George ran a sloppy campaign, but he more than made up for it at the debates.
He killed two of his opponents, and horribly maimed a third.
Running unopposed and under indictment for murder, George won the ballot easily.
“Now what?” said George, standing in Parliament, surrounded by people in suits babbling in incomprehensible Swedish.
George plays baseball
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When he wasn’t pirating, he was playing amateur baseball.
He’d been hoping to be discovered by a scout, but the scouts all knew he was just as bad a baseball player as he was a pirate.
The rare times he managed to get to first base, he’d try to steal second, and get caught.
So, after the game, he’d steal second, third, home, first, the pitcher’s rubber, and pretty much anything that wasn’t nailed down.
He never played professionally. Instead, he umpired.
The bribes he collected were quite generous.
George Titters
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Every time someone said “booty” he’d giggle.
“What’s so damn funny?” yelled the captain.
“He said booty,” said George, trying not to laugh.
“What are you, three?” said the captain. “Now go swab the poopdeck.”
George laughed out loud and earned a night in the brig.
George made an audio tape with those words, and he ran it in a loop while he slept.
But he listened to it way too loud, temporarily deafening him for a month.
At least he stopped laughing at the words booty and poopdeck.
Weekly Challenge #911 – Blue Sky
RICHARD
Con Air
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Saving money on flights leaving more to spend abroad was a no-brainer. So we flew with Blue Sky Airlines at a fraction of the cost of the other budget flyers, even after the extra baggage charges.
It was when we landed that the problems began.
They charged us to leave the plane, then another charge to deplane our luggage. There was a further fee for baggage retrieval.
Then a transfer fee for the coach to our hotel, twice the cost of the flight.
We flew back with a different airline.
TOM
When he down, let kick him.
Blue sky, or goodwill, is the excess purchase price over the market
value of the tangible assets recorded on the balance sheet. What is the
difference between goodwill and blue sky? A key point of note: goodwill
value can be proved through data and legally defended. On the other
hand, blue sky value is used to represent intangible value that
represents a premium someone will pay for a business is not based in any
defend able analysis. Question: if you have been screwing over people
all your business career and the court liquidates your assets; can you
have negative blue sky.
SERENDIPIDY
A cloudless blue sky.
It’s been three days, and every one of them a cloudless, blue sky. Sun, blazing relentlessly; no shade, no shelter, no solace.
The burning sand scalds your blistered feet; you stumble, fall, crawl, desperately seeking the faintest shadow, the slightest breeze to ease your pain.
Cracked, blackened lips, mumble for water. Dehydrated, desperate in their desire for moisture, but none is to be found.
Three days – a lifetime – and now, just short moments from death.
You stumble once more, clawing at the sand, then lie still.
High above, the sun blazes.
In a cloudless blue sky.
LIZZIE
“Maybe there’s a blue sky out there, a blue sky that makes you wonder, a blue sky filled with smiles and laughter. Maybe there’s a home out there filled with twinkling stars that make the sky bluer. Maybe, just maybe, there’s a blue smile that makes you dream.” He closed his eyes.
The keys played an eerie symphony as the mother locked them in their rooms for the night.
The mother didn’t believe in blue skies. The mother didn’t believe in smiles.
At least, no one could steal the blue sky in his mind. He smiled and went to sleep.
NORVAL JOE
The Withybottom mansion rose above the surrounding fir trees and seemed to touch the deep blue sky. The two girls still stood on the broad front porch with Linoliumanda’s father eyeing the road where the police officer had just passed.
Billbert climbed the steps up to the porch. “Mr. Withybottom. Could you drive me home? My parents are probably starting to get worried about me.”
He shrugged. “Okay.” Linoliumanda’s father turned to Sabrina. “How about you, young lady? Do you need a ride home?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure my grandmother hasn’t missed me. Just take me to Billbert’s.”
PLANET Z
It hasn’t rained for over a month. I water the plants twice a day. Most of them will recover once it rains again. The others, I’ve pulled out and mulched. No point in replacing them yet. Until it rains again. We don’t bother with a grass lawn. Nobody around here does. It’s called native or rustic or natural or something. call it lazy. But it doesn’t look bad at all once you get used to it. Just like the clear blue sky. And the little sun icons on the weather app. Tomorrow, the next day, and the day after that.
George raises a baby
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He once kidnapped a baby from a wealthy couple and held it for ransom.
While the parents negotiated with George, he had to change diapers, do midnight feedings, buy clothes, help with homework, and do everything else necessary in raising a child.
The negotiations took twenty-two years, ending when the kid graduated college.
“It was cheaper to let you raise him and then pay the ransom,” his parents said.
Their grown son, raised to be a pirate, made his parents walk the plank.
“That’s my boy!” said George proudly.
George knows Spanish
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Pirates need a variety of skills to survive on the seas, and George’s skillset could best be described as “fake it till you make it.”
“Sure, I know Spanish,” said George, crossing the gangplank to the galleon they’d just captured.
He looked over the manifest and pointed out what to take and what to dump.
“Keep pants on your head and watch turtles!” George shouted at the captured crew, as they watched crates of gold go overboard while George had barrels of preserved corpses hauled out of the hold.
George and the Medic
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was a decent medic, though, so even if he couldn’t fight well, it was after the fight that George shone.
He’d tear strips of cloth to use as bandages, heating the edge of a knife to burn wounds shut.
“We wouldn’t need a medic if we had you fighting alongside us,” said the captain.
Which George tried to take to heart, and he fought as well as he could.
Until the captain was wounded. “Medic!” shouted the captain.
George sheathed his sword and picked up a medical bag.
George and the Turing Test
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Just like the Turing test, where judges try to determine whether they are chatting with the human or computer, the Blackbeard test challenges judges to determine whether they are chatting with a human or a pirate.
Scientists stuffed George into a box, and he passed notes through a slot.
George did his best to be convincing, but at the end of the experiment, the judges thought that the box with the computer in it was a real pirate.
The captain hired the computer and left George in the box.
George is not a real pirate
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Whenever he was in Orlando, Florida, he would take a trip to Disney World and get hired as a cast member.
“The robot pirates break down a lot, so we put rubber masks on humans who pretend to be robots.”
The rubber masks were hot, and after six hours, George began to hallucinate.
He sang and waved his sword and then dropped his pants and took a dump in the ride’s waterway.
The video went viral on YouTube, and George went back to being a not very good pirate.
George and the devices
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He has a habit of buying all kinds of electronic devices.
The ones you see advertised on late-night cable television, or the backs of magazines.
They were cheap, flimsy, and broke easily.
George put the broken devices in a box, and he would wind the chords and tie them with rubber bands.
Not that he ever bothered to get them repaired.
Or remember which cord went which device.
He just bought another cheap and flimsy device to replace it.
Which would break, and he’d toss it in the box.