George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Every night at 8 bells, the ship’s doctor opened his window in the forecastle and yelled MEDICATION!
Pirates lined up at the window to get two cups… one with their pills, and another with water.
The pirates tossed the pills in their mouths and washed them down.
“They’re just salt pills,” said the doctor. “And I’m not a real doctor.”
Which explained why so many pirates chose to go out of network to use doctors on other ships.
Oh, and those doctors handed out yummy sugar pills.
George and the layoffs
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When the captain reviewed the ship’s budget, he determined that there was an opportunity to reduce spending on personnel, and he announced layoffs. Everyone assumed that George, being not very good, would be laid off.
But instead, Stinky Pete, Cannons McGee, and Ochrebeard were sent ashore with severance checks.
“Why did you keep me,” said George.
“Because you’re cheap,” said the captain. “And there’s no risk of you mutinying against me.”
George asked the captain for a raise.
The captain said no way.
“Mutiny,” yelled George.
The captain sighed.
George does shifts
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So it was hard finding things for him to do that didn’t put the ship in danger.
Swabbing the deck, working in the galley and acting as the spotter in the crow’s nest were his usual jobs.
He worked the night watch a lot, and he heard that pirates who worked the night got a bonus.
“That’s not true,” said the captain. “Everybody gets paid the same.”
“That’s also not true,” said George’s shipmate, Ralph. “I get a shilling a night.”
George ended up sleeping both day and night.
George through the universe
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
In George’s body, though his veins and arteries, chemicals and elements flowed that had flowed through so many other living things over the eons.
Before that, the oceans… the fields… the sky… through space.
Blasted into the universe by dying stars, each atom made more complex and dense.
Generations of supernovas building carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, and gold.
George opened his wooden treasure box, and ran his fingers through the gold.
The stars also made arsenic.
But George was wearing gloves, unlike the pirate who tried to rob him.
George the wrestler
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When George wasn’t out on the high seas, he was in the wrestling ring under the name of The Almighty George.
George was as good a wrestler as he was a pirate, so he lost a lot of matches and collected many cuts and bruises.
So George became a heel and patsy, making hero wrestlers look good by beating him.
Doormat George was dragged around so many rings, thrown against every turnbuckle and rope, and pinned to every mat.
George returned to the ship and hung up his mask.
George’s rescue
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He wrecked the ship for the umpteenth time, finding himself stranded on an island with no food and no fresh water.
He sorted through the wreckage washing ashore, salvaging what he could.
There was some rum, some hardtack.
It kept him going as he assembled the wood and rope into a crude raft.
By the time he finished the raft, another pirate ship was sailing by the island.
George lit the raft on fire and shouted to signal them.
But it was too late. The ship kept sailing on.
Weekly Challenge #874 – Diet
The next weekly challenge topic is: Point, Heat, Carrots, Rust, Wafer-thin, Creep
SCRIBBLING WREN
Mr Tibbles Special Diet
Paula had him from a kitten. His once luxurious coat was matted and shed hair as he limped by. He’d lost the leg while he was sat in the road washing.
Because of a kidney problem he could only eat expensive food from the vets. It was measured out twice daily. After his second 25g meal he sat meowing by the window until Paula opened it to let him out.
Outside he ate the remains of a KFC Bargain Bucket from the bin, drank from a brackish puddle while Paula watched, thinking it was probably time for a new cat.
LIZZIE
Diet is such a wonderful word, he thought. The thought of restraining yourself from eating what you want is delightful. Saying “no, thank you, I am full” when you’ve been eyeing that food for the past half hour is enchanting. And the taunting sneers… They think those “no, thank yous” are as fake as their boobs and their mustaches tinted black. And when, in a moment of sheer restraint, you stab just one of them in the eye, then all is well. You don’t have to worry anymore. You’ll eat what’s given to you. Diet is such a wonderful word.
RICHARD
Weighty matters
It was one of those loaded questions. You know the sort, the ones that come out of the blue from nowhere, leaving you no choice but to answer, and whatever answer you give, you’re damned!
“Should I go on a diet?”
I busied myself with my breakfast, hoping she’d let it pass, but knowing my fate was sealed.
“Well?” She gave me a steely look. “Am I overweight? Should I go on a diet?”
I sighed, and smiled at her.
“You don’t need to diet… You just need to buy bigger clothes!”
Well, it seems that was the wrong answer.
TOM
It’s All In The Deliver
The great theologian Rasmus of Tent had a flamboyant presentation style. When speaking of the great parting of the empire, he placed a larger glass bottle on the podium filled with an abundance of night-crawlers. He waited. The students look on in dark silence. Smiling he offered an eclectic hint. “Heylshof Garden.“ Silence. Then another: Charles V And yet another Frederick III. Walking to the front ring of chairs he whispered into the ear of his prized pupil. Beaming he announced: Diet of Worms. Ryely Rasmus stated “happily while Luther branded a hectic he wasn’t asked to dine on same.
SERENDIPIDY
I’m a very ordinary, average type of person: Not too short, nor too tall, fairly slim, not tending towards fat, and unremarkable when it comes to looks – I’m no supermodel, but then again, I’m not butt-ugly either.
If you happened to pass me in the street, you might spare me a second glance, but then again, you might simply pass me by, without even noticing.
They do say that a balanced diet is a good thing, and I can’t disagree.
Cannibalism needn’t be unhealthy, you just need to be choosy.
And, I’m living proof, you are what you eat!
NORVAL JOE
As if to prove her assertion that Billbert’s touch increased her magical powers, Sabrina reached out and put her hand on his. As she did her eyes went wide. “Oh no!” She gasped and looked at the door to the ice cream parlor.
Two hulking teenagers blocked the exit. With hair so greasy and their faces covered with pimples they must be living on a diet of potato chips and French fries, the girl of the two growled, “We are of the Dark Knights. We have your friend, Lanolin. If you want her to live, you must come with us.”
PLANET Z
It’s been a while since I last wrote a new story here.
I’ve been diagnosed with a lot of conditions, and they all overlap in their symptoms as well as their impact on each other.
An allergy to this, a sensitivity to that.
Medications for one aggravate the other.
Do this, change that, can’t eat anything on this list… or that list… but this list is… oh, wait… can’t eat that either.
Until it all becomes so much, my anxiety goes through the roof and into the stratosphere.
Here’s some pills for it.
Which cancel out all the other pills.
George takes the bus… or train.
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d been to a lot of cities all across the world, eating exotic foods and meeting strange and mysterious people, and every time he’d buy a fare card for the bus or the subway.
After a while, he had fare cards for dozens of cities, and he couldn’t remember which one was for which place.
So many colors and logos.
Oyster, Q Pass… who knew what these meant? Is this one for Boston? New York? Paris? Rome?
George made a few bucks selling the empty cards to unsuspecting tourists.
The news with George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
This didn’t matter to the producer of Eyewitness News at 11.
They put an eyepatch on George, but it made it hard for him to read the Teleprompter.
And the false hook they put on his hand made it hard for him to hold the scripts.
“Why do I have scripts if there’s a Teleprompter?” he asked.
George got bored reading scripts to a camera.
He wanted to report from battles and adventures.
So, the producer changed George’s title to field correspondent, but he never sent back any reports.
George Calendar
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a good pirate.
But compared to other pirates, he wasn’t half bad looking.
So the publisher of The Pirate Calendar gave George a call and asked if he wanted to be in the next year’s calendar.
George agreed, and got fifty bucks for a two hour photoshoot.
When the calendar finally came out, George was disappointed to see that he was Mister February.
And it wasn’t even a leap year.
Nobody ever recognized him or asked him to sign his photo in the calendar.
And the next year, the calendar publisher didn’t call.