George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When he took people hostage, he wasn’t very good at setting a reasonable ransom amount.
“Five dollars!” demanded George. “Not a penny less!”
“That won’t cover our expenses,” whispered the captain. “Try a hundred.”
“One hundred million dollars!” demanded George. “Not a penny more!”
The captain took George aside and gave him a quick lesson in basic math and economics.
“Ah, okay,” said George.
By the time George researched calculated a reasonable ransom, the hostage had escaped.
George apologized, pulled out his wallet. and handed the captain five dollars.
Author: R.
George gets Darwined
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of capturing the HMS Beagle and holding the ship for ransom, George joined their crew and learned all about Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection.
“Does this theory apply to pirates?” asked George. “Because I’m not a very good pirate, and you’d think that I’d have been weeded out of the population by now.”
Darwin pondered this for a while. “Good question,” he said.
Then, he clubbed George on the back of his head and tossed him overboard.
“Error correction,” said Darwin, as George’s body sank below the waves.
George buries treasure
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Whenever he buried treasure, he’d forget to draw a map to it.
So, he spent a lot of time stumbling around beaches and forests and fields, holding out a lamp and looking for anything familiar.
He never found it again.
“Damn it, George,” said the captain. “Either draw a map or bury the treasure somewhere easy to remember.”
So, the next time George had treasure to bury, he tried to bury it under his bunk.
His crewmates stopped him before he broke through the hull and sank the ship.
George releases the kraken
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of looting and pillaging, he liked to collect small animals.
His favorite was a baby kraken, which he’d kept in a jar by his bunk.
Then, a small tub.
And finally… well… there was no containing it now.
The kraken burst through the deck, grabbing pirates and rending the sails.
Then it hauled itself over the rail and plunged into the sea.
“Well, shit,” sighed the captain.
“Poor Bubbles!” said George.
The survivors stared at George.
“Bubbles was a freshwater kraken,” said George, “and we’re on the ocean.”
Weekly Challenge #1008 – It’s Going Down
- Richard
- Lizzie
- Tom
- Lisa
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Planet Z
LISA
There was a fish in the sky, the sun glinted on its iridescent undersides. Whipped by the breeze it coasted a while on the thermals. We stood in the garden, necks craned, watching it swim through the clouds.
“It’s going down” Sue shouted as we ran to the front of the house.
It sank fast and caught in a neighbour’s oak tree. It was actually a metallic balloon which promptly burst on a conker spine then crinkled in the breeze. A tag dangled from its tail with an address in France: a competition to see whose balloon travelled the furthest.
RICHARD
— Unwise —
“Invest in the stock market he said.”
“What do you have to lose? All you need is a good financial advisor, some spare cash and maybe just a little bit of luck, and by this time next year you could be a millionaire.”
So I took a punt.
After all, I had a little spare cash to invest, and I don’t consider myself particularly unlucky.
Unfortunately, what I didn’t have was a good financial advisor.
He selected the worst stock ever to invest in, and every time I asked him how the market was doing…
He’d say, “It’s going down.”
LIZZIE
“It’s going down…” whispered the radio. The coded message prompted them to grab their guns and take off. Then, they waited. An hour. Two hours. Nothing. Keep radio silence, but… what should they do? One of them decided to stand up and… A shot. Boom. Man down. The others were perplexed. They were the hunters, not the hunted. Another stood up to complain. Boom. Man down. “Wait a second, I didn’t pay a fortune for this. It’s over for me.” Boom. Man down. What they didn’t know was that other men had paid a lot more to hunt the hunters.
SERENDIPIDY
It’s going down to the wire.
The razor wire.
It’s my interpretation of the old fashioned death of a thousand cuts. Updated and improved.
It’s a simple idea: A deep, dark pit, stuffed full of copious strands of razor wire -military grade, of course.
And I’m going to throw you in.
You’ll be torn to shreds. And the more you struggle and writhe in pain, the worse it gets.
Until, slick from blood, screaming in pain, flesh flayed from your bones, you finally succumb to your wounds.
So, now you know your immediate future…
It’s going down, to the wire.
TOM
Fly to close to the sun.
When I was a kid I had a subscription to Youth National Geographic. In one issue was a picture of Alexander Bell’s tetrahedron kites. Big enough to lift a man into the sky. As kid I did not have the materials to build the man lifting kites, but I did build tetrahedron out of drinking straws. Lightest material I could find. Fast forward 60 years 3d printer spitting out nano-tube. Got the cat at about 1000 feet. Looking good, stable, success OH forgot about the load on the string . Too bad. Fluffy, its good down fast. Rethink: need nano-tube string.
NORVAL JOE
Bobbi snatched the phone from Mandi and punched in a text.
Patrick. What are you doing with Sabrina’s phone.
After a long pause, a reply came. Bobbi?
She continued. I came by your house on the way to school. No one was home. Where are you and where is Billbert?
Mind your own business, he sent back.
Bobbie grimaced. “Mom says you are my business. You’re not into more Black Knight crap, are you?”
Just watch, little sister. My crap is going to be powerful, and it’s going down soon.
Bobbie handed Mandi her phone. “The Black Knights have Billbert.”
PLANET Z
Mindy’s fever was finally coming down.
Icepacks and aspirin, and a week in bed.
Her vision was blurry, and she couldn’t read her books, so we read to her.
Or we turned on the radio.
Hauling the television upstairs wasn’t an option.
And she wanted to stay in her room.
We brought up soup and orange juice and ice water, took down the empty trays and bowls and cups.
Replacing her sheets and pillowcases twice a day, soaked with sweat.
She’d lost fifteen, maybe twenty pounds.
Her sister Sally was jealous.
Until the doctor said Mindy had irreversible brain damage.
George the artistic
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“I think I know what my problem is,” said George. “It’s a lack of opportunities to express my artistic side.”
He painted the cannonballs with interesting colors and swirls and lacquers.
He designed lush and beautiful sails with vibrant images that came to life in the wind.
He rigged wind chimes and other instruments so they’d play a melodic tune with the wind and the rolling of the seas.
They all looked and sounded nice as the ship took a broadsides from a British frigate and went down quickly.
George the black belt
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d practiced for years with his cutlass, but never got any better.
That’s when George saw an ad for Karate training.
He shrugged and signed up for classes.
After a few weeks, he got pretty good.
He tried Judo and Tae Kwon Do and other styles, too.
After a while, he’d earned black belts in all of them.
“Here, let me demonstrate,” said George happily, and he broke six boards with his fist.
As the ship slowly sank, the captain tied George to the mast with his black belts.
George and the temporary captain
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When the ship’s captain was away on vacation, he hired a temp to run things.
“The captain warned me about you, George,” said the temp captain. “I’ll keep my eye in you.”
So, after their first raid…
“Sorry about that stray shot,” said George. “But that’s a nice eyepatch you’ve got there.”
By the time George’s captain returned, the temp captain was sporting a new eyepatch, a pegleg, and a hook hand.
“Well that ended badly,” said the captain. “I am not looking forward to his review on Glassdoor.”
George tied in knots
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He wasn’t good at love, either.
Oh, he wasn’t bad-looking. And he was always courteous and polite with the ladies.
It was just that deeper connection he never made.
She’d want him to read poetry or go dancing, and he’d try to teach her how to tie knots or tell the weather from the sea air.
One time, he did find a girl who wanted to learn how to tie knots.
But she tied him to a bed and took his money.
And a note: “I love you anyway.”
George counts steps
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was always pacing the deck, back and forth.
“Why are you walking all the time?” the captain asked.
“I bought a step-counting smartwatch,” said George. “I have to get five thousand steps in each day to stay fit.”
The captain smirked. “You could always do that by raping, looting, and pillaging.”
“This is way easier,” said George. “And a lot less messy.”
George walked away, but the captain tripped him up.
George fell and broke his nose, bleeding all over the deck.
“What a mess,” said the captain.