George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Where other pirates would yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, George preferred a glass of dry white wine.
George made sure to bring his own, because most pirate dives don’t carry much more than rum and grog.
However, he wasn’t good about bringing a corkscrew.
His dagger was to big to dig out the cork, and his cutlass was bigger than his dagger.
“Have you got a corkscrew?” he’d ask his shipmates.
He’d always have to resort to borrowing Lefty McGinty’s hook-hand.
Lefty bought George a corkscrew.
Author: R.
George’s dreams
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He had bad dreams, of towns on fire… women and children screaming and running from the flames.
George woke up in a cold sweat, shaking and trembling.
When they were about to raid a town, George would feel queasy and he’d throw up.
His hands would sweat, he’d lose his grip on his cutlass.
He studied medicine, hoping to become the ship’s surgeon, but the sight of blood made him sick.
“Avast, quiet ye scurvy dogs!” the captain hissed. “Ready the cannon for a broadsides!”
George felt sick again.
George sleeps
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He had a hard time sleeping.
His doctor checked him for sleep apnea, but George kept himself fit and lean.
He was fine during the sleep study, too.
So, the doctor recommended a relaxing herbal tea, and that George get an ambient noise generator.
The herbal tea was soothing, and the noise generator produced the sound of the ocean waves.
Which is silly, when you think of it.
George, laying there in his bunk, right under a porthole, and using a noise generator instead of just opening the porthole.
Weekly Challenge #984 – Caught in time
- Thomas
- Richard
- Serendipidy
- Norval Joe
- Tom
- Planet Z
THOMAS
Caught In Time
Every Tuesday, Miriam brought my Walmart groceries, her bonnet crisp, her voice soft. This week, she sneezed twice as she handed me my bags. I nodded, uneasy. By Thursday, my throat burned. By Friday, fever.
I lay in bed, certain I’d caught something from her—something plain, Mennonite, unvaccinated. The irony struck me: I, a man of modern medicine, felled by a woman still baking bread in a wood stove.
I’d called Walmart to report it. Then came regret. Had I damned her? Had I let fear twist my judgment? Caught in time, but too late to take back. Damn!
RICHARD
— Flashback —
It was unexpected.
I almost missed it amongst the paperwork during the clearout.
The photograph fluttered to the ground, freed from the pile of old newspapers and random leaflets that had accumulated over who knows how many years.
I retrieved it and flipped it over, and suddenly realised what I was holding.
A precious moment, from so long ago, caught in time by the camera’s lens and kept for posterity. Not just a picture, but a cherished memory.
So long forgotten, and I’d almost thrown it away.
Now it sits in pride of place, in a frame on my desk.
SERENDIPIDY
The question is not so much what did I do, but whether it was caught in time?
You know I developed the virus.
You are well aware by now that I released it into the wild.
And you certainly understand the consequences of what I’ve done.
But it’s going to take time to develop an antidote.
Research and development are costly, complex, and are unable to come up with a solution overnight.
But, overnight may well be the only time you have.
And even then, it may be too late.
I know the answer, of course.
But, I’m not telling!
TOM
984
TimeY WyMe
Not easy being a Time Lord. Hard enough to catch a falling anvil. Try catching the most important moment in a person’s life. Knowing the exact place to be and just the right level of interaction. Not easy my friend, sometime it goes way-way south and you spend eons backtracking in the Time Loop to set things right. Take this here butterfly, looks like a normal butterfly, yes. Well, no this butterfly is actually every butterfly or more to the point “butterfly is an illusion.” A single soul caught in time. Trend lightly in her presence less the unraveling begins.
861
Remote
In the olden day there were only seven channels available on the Tv set. To watch these Tv stations one had to arrange a set of “Rabbit Ears” into a reasonable representation of modern art a top your set next to the ceramic Leppard. Wish to bring joy to your grandparents? Use “Rabbit Ears” in a complete sentence. Proper verb optional. To change stations, one had to turn a dial, but at some point, the remote control was created, but the signal was sent by banging two pieces of metal together. Think a single note wind chime in your hand.
862
Rubegoldbergian
I love games as a child. Drove my parents crazy to get the next kid centric boardgame. Hands down the must kinetic game was Mouse Trap. Not much on plot, high on execution. One would think the limited number of moves would bring on a sense of boredom. Nope fun every time. Little did I figure out at the time this would prepare me for the endless twisted path the modern world cast in my path. I only wish that each of life’s machination was a brightly colored piece of plastic that could be neatly disassemble back in the box.
NORVAL JOE
On his way home from school, Billbert stopped by the hospital to see how Mr. Withybottom was doing. The nurse told him Linoliamanda and her mother had just left with their driver, but he might find them in the parking lot if he caught them in time. Unfortunately, they were already gone. Disappointed, Billbert continued home.
As he passed his fence, he heard Sabrina whisper from his back yard. “Billbert. Don’t look at me, so that if anyone asks, you can say you haven’t seen me. Just go unlock the back door so I can sneak up to my room.”
PLANET Z
Nobody remembers the actress Sapphire Frankel.
Her raspy Southern drawl ensured an end to her career in the talkies era.
All of her films were on nitrate stock, none were preserved.
The studio records building burned up in a warehouse fire in the fifties.
Promotional posters all lost to the dustbin, not a single one in the hands of a collector.
She had an aversion to merchandising, never wrote a memoir.
No children, no family.
No affairs with Hollywood legends, not even Tallulah Bankhead or Marlene Dietrich.
Not even a gravesite, her ashes scattered by a studio secretary long ago.
George and the flying elephant
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Things got so bad, he ran away and joined the circus.
For his first three months, George did nothing but shovel animal poop.
Then, when a baby elephant was born with huge ears, George got an idea.
“I will teach it to fly!” he said. “Then, I can stop shoveling animal poop and be famous!”
“For the last time, no,” said the ringmaster. “This is as dumb as your flying baby giraffe, flying baby bear, and flying baby lion ideas!”
George ran away and joined his old pirate ship.
Phantom George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, while attacking a merchant ship off the coast of Bangalla, he fell overboard.
Pygmies dragged him ashore and nursed him back to health.
“Do you swear an oath to vanquish piracy and slavery?” asked the pygmies.
“Sure,” said George. “Yeah, okay.”
They showed him a cave and gave him some purple pajamas and a black mask.
They didn’t fit so well, and when George tried to put on the mask, he clumsily fell out of the cave.
And that’s how George became “The Ghost Who Falls A Lot.”
George learns discipline
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The captain thought that George’s problem was a matter of procedure and discipline.
He made George clock in and clock out for his shift and write detailed reports about what he did while on the clock.
George wasn’t good at reading and writing, so the reports were incomprehensible.
George ended up having to explain what he tried to write, which took even longer.
Giving George no time to do his actual pirate job.
“It’s all in the metrics,” said George, scribbling up another meaningless, illegible report for the day.
George keeps his job
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
In spite of George’s lack of expertise in piracy, piracy is a rare skill in the labor market.
So, even a pirate that’s not very good can command a decent living doing it.
In an era of full employment, George’s prospects became even brighter.
When the captain complained about George’s mistakes or incompetence, he had to consider how hard it would be to replace George.
So, he shrugs and fishes George back out of the water.
“Try not to fall overboard again, please,” says the captain.
“Aye aye, sir.”
George and the poodles
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He spent too much time lying on the deck while poodles romped all around him.
The captain of the ship thought that this was a waste of time, but the captain’s mother was the ship’s chef, and she liked to adopt and raise poodles.
Any time he’d get mad about it with George, his mother would show up and say how much the poodles loved the attention.
When provisions got down to hardtack and water, the poodles vanished.
While the captain’s mother wept, George begrudgingly went back to work.
George gets rain delayed
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When it started to rain during a sea battle, he threw up his hands and shouted “TIME OUT!”
Men on both sides of the conflict lowered their swords, and George ordered the decks to be covered with a tarp.
For three hours, the men sat around, sipped their tea, and a few did belly-slides on the wet tarp.
“Do you think we’ll need to postpone?” said George to the other captain.
Five minutes later, the sun came out, and they rolled back the tarp to begin fighting once more.