George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Why? Because he had a lot of fear, and his therapist told him that he needed to face his fear.
Joseph Campbell said that “In the deepest caves, we find our darkest fear.”
So, George looked for the deepest caves, and he found his darkest fear.
He came across a massive underground auditorium.
And he was asked to give a public speech.
In only his underwear.
“Oh my God,” said George. “My darkest fear!”
Oh, and there were spiders. Lots of spiders.
Because George was afraid of spiders, too.
Author: R.
George and the painting
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
After looking at a Paul Gauguin painting of naked Tahiti women doing various things, George took the title to heart and asked himself…
“Where do we come from?” The ship. George came from the ship.
“What are we?” We are pirates. We loot and steal and stuff.
“Where are we going?” To a fence to sell this painting I’m about to steal.
George took the painting off of the wall, rolled it up, and ran for the exit.
The fence George found turned out to be an undercover cop.
George and the X
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He walked along the beach, listening to the waves roll in.
Where did he bury that treasure chest?
Of course he’d marked the spot with an X. Every good pirate knows that.
But every good pirate marks the spot with an X on a map.
George had marked the spot with an X in the sand.
Which, with the first high tide, the waves had washed away.
George sat down and sighed. “This really sucks.”
He thought about eating lunch, but he’d left his lunch in the treasure chest.
Scrum Master George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
At first, the other pirates thought it was George, but the overall performance of the crew was declining.
So the captain divided the crew up into Scrum-Agile teams.
“Break up your weekly duties into tasks,” said the captain. “Then determine the effort they will take to accomplish.”
Simple tasks were easy to score, but complex tasks were harder.
“I can’t throw more than a five because of my hook,” complained Lefty.
Scrummaster George divided the tasks into smaller sub-tasks.
“Forget it,” said Lefty, drawing his cutlass. “Back to Kanban!”
Weekly Challenge #958 – Unsafe
LIZZIE
It was dark. The swamp was weird. It bubbled, for some mysterious reason. And she had to step into it to prove herself, they said, to be part of the gang. The whole thing was pathetic, of course. But you’ll only be cool at school if the cool kids accept you. So, the swamp it was. Good thing she had a flashlight. She pointed at the others just to make sure they were still there. And it took exactly 0.4 seconds for the thing to snack on them. They were gone. Well, guess I’m the coolest kid now, she thought.It was dark. The swamp was weird. It bubbled, for some mysterious reason. And she had to step into it to prove herself, they said, to be part of the gang. The whole thing was pathetic, of course. But you’ll only be cool at school if the cool kids accept you. So, the swamp it was. Good thing she had a flashlight. She pointed at the others just to make sure they were still there. And it took exactly 0.4 seconds for the thing to snack on them. They were gone. Well, guess I’m the coolest kid now, she thought.
RICHARD
– NSFW –
The email was sent by a vague acquaintance, ‘Thought you might like to see these’ was the subject line.
I had my doubts. It was full of links to dubiously named websites, and the slightly ominous preface, ‘Warning: Not safe for work’.
Since he’d sent it to my work email, and there was no way I was going to forward it to my personal address, I reckoned I’d take a chance.
I waited for a quiet moment, then clicked a few – they all seemed broken.
Like work’s IT system.
Wrecked, by a virus, from stupidly clicking an email link.
TOM
Bottle Red Bottle White
Lenny took a sit at the back of the bar. As his saintly mother would say “with your back to the wall.” He had clear sight of the door as he ate his linguine. When the waiter moved on his right side he keep him in his peripheral vision. In the world Lenny lived being unsafe meant being un-alive. He kept sufficient fire power under his regular table. The one with hinged steel plate. He might have been a wise guy but as the bullets from the bathroom behind him hit in the back the linguine turned a bit redder.
SERENDIPIDY
My lawyer maintained my conviction was unsafe.
The villagers disagreed.
The evidence was crystal clear, they argued. I owned a black cat, I had a weird birthmark, and a third nipple… Probably.
Nobody was willing to actually check that out.
Then there were the failing crops that had blighted the village since my arrival, and the fact that I never went to church.
Mostly circumstantial evidence, protested my lawyer, and he did his job well. My conviction was overturned, and I was free.
Unfortunately for him, the villagers were right. And they knew it.
Now he’s the one who’s unsafe!
NORVAL JOE
Billbert woke in the dark. He lay on his back and his arm hung off the side of the bed. His hand rested on something soft and warm that rose and fell in a slow steady rhythm. When he poked it with his finger, it was squishy.
“Sabrina!” Billbert shouted as he sat up. “What are you doing in here? Did you feel unsafe?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” She looked up at him. “I thought if I held your hand, I could relax. I guess I fell asleep.”
“I guess you did,” Billbert mumbled. “That wasn’t your hand I was holding.”
PLANET Z
Ikea says you should bolt the dresser to the wall to keep it from tipping over.
Otherwise, a kid could open the top drawers and have the thing crush them.
So, I did.
And the dresser has yet to tip over.
Even when a tornado struck the neighborhood and everything was destroyed, the dresser was still standing.
“It’s a miracle,” said my wife.
I took a photo of the thing and sent it to Ikea.
“Here, take one of me,” I said, handing my phone to my wife.
That’s when the damned thing tipped over and crushed me to death.
Someone may have run a background check on you
It amuses me when I get Spam that says someone may have run a background check on me.
Go ahead. Run a background check.
You’ll find the usual stuff: a decent education, a car note, and a good credit rating.
And a rap sheet as long as your arm.
Every line on it, a vicious assault on a spammer.
No jury would convict me, because everyone’s sick of spam.
It’s not hard to find the source of spam.
I track it down, run my own check, and get an address.
Then I get out my baseball bat and car keys.
Helter Skelter
I knew a girl named Helter Skelter.
I shit you not, it was her legal name.
And not a joke name, picked out as an adult.
And it certainly wasn’t a stage name, like actors pick out when their legal name is already registered with the union.
Or their birth name is something boring or strange, like John Wayne being Marion and Norma Jean becoming Marilyn Monroe.
Was it her birth name?
No. She was born Helter Smith.
When her parents died in a car wreck, she was adopted by the Skelter family.
And that’s when she became Helter Skelter.
The stones speak
Eighty years ago, the Germans exterminated my village.
Today, we dig up the streets and pull out the underpavement.
It is made from the gravestones of my ancestors.
The Germans had ordered the cemeteries to be destroyed.
But now, we are reclaiming the stones.
Buried under the streets.
Pavestones for paths through the farms.
Grinding stones for plows and knives.
They all have writing on them.
We wash the stones, and rub shaving cream on them.
The white foam makes it easier to read the letters.
Their names are slowly revealed, and we kneel, and we pray for their souls.
Scammers
Almost twenty years ago, I got a support job at a webhosting company.
We packed hundreds of online scammer accounts on cheap servers.
Load averages were astronomical.
The only true solution was to stop overloading the servers.
But instead, we’d tell the caller that we were resetting the queue. Which did nothing.
If they wanted to stay on the line, we’d thank them, put them on hold, and forget about them as we picked up the next call complaining about overloaded servers.
I spent my time in between calls learning how to run my own servers.
And my own scams.
Baptism bungles
Dear Loyal Customer,
We regret to inform you that the licensed mumbo-jumbo provider at your local eternal life exchange performed improper service maintenance for the past 20 years.
New equipment and training have been dispatched. Please make an appointment with your nearest jiffy-prayer center to have the correct voodoo performed on your child, self, or parent.
Sadly, should the recipient of incorrect service maintenance have expired, they’re now in eternal damnation. Fill out the attached Form RMA-666 to escalate this issue with our upper management.
Thank you, The Church.
PS: At least the dude didn’t molest the kids… we think.