George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Obviously not,” said the caseworker at the unemployment office. “Your file clearly shows that you have no aptitude for piracy.”
She sent him to a job training facility, where George learned how to use computers.
After a while, George learned how to use spreadsheets, documents, and presentation software.
“I think you have a knack for this, George,” said the trainer.
That night, George loaded all the computers on a cart, and took them back to the ship.
“Think we can sell these?” asked George.
“Welcome back,” said the captain.
Author: R.
Georgelantis
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He collected empty bottles, stuffed them with paper, and would seal them into the bottles with corks.
Then, he’d toss them into the sea and let the tides spread them throughout the world.
Scientists collected the papers, and after careful analysis, they determined that there was an unknown continent in the middle of the Atlantic ocean.
But dozens of expeditions later, they never found the continent of Georgelantis.
Meanwhile, George wiped his ass, stuffed the dirty toilet paper in the bottle, sealed it, and tossed it into the ocean.
George the accountant
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Dress for success!” said the consultant, and he took George to a Saville Row tailor.
George emerged two hours later in a three-piece suit, bowler hat, and carrying an umbrella and a briefcase.
“The perfect gentleman,” said the consultant. He turned George to face the crew. “Don’t you agree?”
They laughed at George.
They stopped laughing when George started his job at a large accounting firm, worked his way through the ranks, and became wealthy and powerful.
“Okay, I admit, the hat does look a bit silly,” said George.
George’s billboard
“George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.”
The billboards with those eleven words appeared across Southern California.
A few appeared in Portland, Oregon. And others in Seattle and Austin, Texas.
Nobody knew what it meant, or who had paid for them.
People asked George, but he had no idea either.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.
Some people guessed that he was running for President.
Others thought it was an alien conspiracy.
“Okay, maybe your guesses aren’t as good as mine.”
The billboards vanished the next day, and soon after, were completely forgotten.
George goes flying
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was nervous about flying, and he took dramamine pills to prevent air sickness.
Then, he’d have a few shots of courage at the airport bar, followed by little bottles of Jack Daniels while on the plane.
“It’s hard to build a ship in a bottle,” George told the flight attendant, “but tiny bottles? Crazy!”
The captain turned the seat belt signs back on, and George rose up and demanded a mutiny.
The air marshal tased George, and he spent the rest of the flight handcuffed to the toilet.
George takes criticism well
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
How did he know this?
Well, the captain was always telling George that he wasn’t a very good pirate.
And his crewmates kept telling him that, too.
The constant criticism annoyed George, driving him completely mad.
One day, in the middle of a dressing-down, he tossed a lit match into the powder room.
It immediately went out.
“Oh, come on!” said a passing crewmate. “That’s now how you set off the powder room and blow up the ship. Here, let me show you…”
Mercifully, the captain stopped him mid-demonstration.
Weekly Challenge #897 – Old Videos
I blew up a bit in this one… leave a comment to let the writers know if you liked their stories.
The next topic is Riot Of Color
RICHARD
Old Videos
Tucked away at the back of the wardrobe, I’ve several boxes, stuffed full of old videos.
I’ve had them boxed up for around twenty years now, and they’ve followed me through at least three house moves, carefully packed up, transported, and put away in their new home.
Why have I kept them?
Through some vague sense, of ‘I might want to watch them, one day’? Not that I’ve anything to play them on anyway.
And the fact is, I’ve not watched any of them in the last twenty years, and probably never will.
But I keep them.
Just in case.
TURA
Old Videos
———
I have a stack of VHS tapes I’ve never got around to watching. I still have a VCR, but I never have the time. I could convert them to digital files, but my video to USB converter is so old it’s not compatible with my current OS. I could replace it, but when will I find time to do the conversion? Will I ever watch them anyway?
If I put this off too long, the tapes will degrade and won’t be playable at all. Then at last I’ll be able to dump them.
Maybe I should just dump them now.
LISA
Something Nasty in the Woodshed
Me and Simon had only gone round to help Fay next door clear the attic. Her husband had died a month ago, him and Dad had been as thick as thieves. She was moving somewhere smaller.
There were boxes of old video tapes up there with dates and girls names on. We’d seen the documentaries so joked about our serial killer neighbour.
After unearthing an old player we stopped for lunch and watched a video. It was much worse than we suspected. And it looked like he buried them in their garden.
“Fuck!” said Simon “is that your Dad digging?”
SERENDIPIDY
There are old videos of life in the village: Life before the calamity.
Grainy, blurred videos in washed out colour of picnics on the village green, laughing toddlers at the playground, couples, friends, families happy and relaxed, without a care in the world.
There’s even the odd wedding video.
Good times. Nobody could ever have imagined the horror that was to come.
It was a fine spring day, late in June. The sun was shining, and people were going about their business, blissfully unaware of what was coming their way.
For that was the day I arrived at the village.
LIZZIE
“Come on. It’s starting,” I said. Old videos and popcorn!
But… I had forgotten. Our old videos don’t go with popcorn. They go with sorrow.
“Say cheese for the camera,” they would say cheerfully.
We never did, no.
“Don’t be so grumpy all the time, you two.”
We were kids. We weren’t grumpy. We weren’t stupid. We weren’t shitheads. We were just kids.
Memory is such a trickster, isn’t it? It erases everything.
And here I was, in front of the TV, a bowl full of popcorn on my lap.
I wanted to cry, but I had no tears left.
NORVAL JOE
The woman seemed surprised by Billbert’s request for a back exit. Then she smiled and led them past a rack of dusty VHS movies for rent, through a door and into what appeared to be the woman’s home. A chunky man in a sleeveless t-shirt and gray slacks, sitting at a dining table didn’t look up from his newspaper as they traipsed past.
A back door led them to a wooden porch, forty feet above the placid Matole river.
The woman nodded to some stairs. “These will take you to a trail along the river, if that’s what you want.”
PLANET Z
Old Man Pinella sits in his home theatre, watching videos of the band.
Jason on guitar, Billy on bass, Joe on keyboards, and Wally on drums.
And then there was Vicky… oh, how she could sing.
The crowd was spellbound… after every song, silence.
And then the loudest applause and cheering and shouting.
The last video ends, and Pinella sits in the dark.
Remembering the band coming backstage, roadies packing up the equipment, and Pinella handing out plane tickets.
“I’ll see you in Chicago,” Pinella said to the dark screen.
He sips his coffee, and walks out of the theatre.
George buries at sea
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
After every battle, George would gather up the dead, wrap their bodies in sheets, and plan for their burial at sea.
He did his best to write eloquent eulogies for every one of them.
Devoted sons who sent back a share of their loot to their mothers…
Good husbands, good providers…
Despite the many carnal temptations, always faithful…
“So, how do you know so much about everyone,” asked the captain.
“Oh, I just make shit up,” said George, and he shoved the wrapped bodies into the sea. “Anybody else?”
George’s entourage
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He hired Sven, a professional life coach, to help him with his problems.
Sven wasn’t a very good life coach, so he gave George bad advice, which caused even more problems.
So, George hired a personal trainer. And a business consultant. And a change management expert.
An entourage surrounded George, shouting a cacophony of conflicting advice at him.
George covered his ears and shouted “STOP!”
His shipmates took the coaches, consultants, and trainers hostage.
The total ransom paid was a fortune.
George retired. Until his accountant robbed him blind.
George’s shadow
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
They say that he was completely scared of his own shadow.
Which is okay if you’re facing the sun or a light source, because your shadow is behind you, but not so good if the light source is behind you.
“AAAAAAAAAAAH!” George would scream. And he’d run as fast as he could.
But no matter how fast he ran, he never could manage to outrun his own shadow.
George never did manage to get over his childish fear, but he did set a few world records for long-distance running.