George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Pirate ships don’t get regular mail service, but somehow George got a letter.
“Jury duty,” George growled.
Three weeks later, George was taking off his boots and hat, and setting his swords into a plastic tub.
“Are these real?” said the security guard.
“The letter said business casual,” said George, smiling. “Otherwise I’d have brought all my daggers and flintlocks.”
The guard looked at George’s letter, entered a code in his terminal, and said “Not of sound mind, exempted.”
George gathered his stuff and went back to the ship.
Category: Talk Like A Pirate Day
Fearsome George
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.
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!”
George builds a fence
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He didn’t get along with the ship’s crew.
He thought them to be violent and uncultured, while they considered him a worthless bookworm.
George admitted that he liked books, but he didn’t think he was worthless.
After all, he’d learned a lot from all the books he’d read.
For instance, he learned that good fences make good neighbors from Robert Frost’s poetry.
So, he build a fence around his bunk.
Unfortunately, the only building material was the wood from the ship.
“George, why are we sinking?” asked the captain.
George jury duty
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d escaped from so many hopeless situations, but there was one he couldn’t get out of.
“Jury duty?” said George, reading the court summons.
George was pretty sure that he could get out of it, considering that piracy was felony enough to strip him of his voting rights.
So, George went down to the courthouse, read a magazine while waiting for the selection process, and stated clearly for the record that he was a pirate.
The prosecution, defense, and judge laughed.
George sighed, and wished he’d brought more magazines.
George the Brad
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, he changed his name to Brad.
“I’m Brad now,” said George… I mean Brad.
Brad was a pirate, but…
Well, does everything George did as George apply to Brad?
Can you wipe the slate and start again?
The captain decided to put this to the test.
“Brad, swab the deck,” he said.
Brad just stood there.
“SWAB THE DECK, BRAD!” shouted the captain. “BRAD! BRAD!”
“Why are you shouting at me?” asked Brad. “Oh. Wait. Right.”
George changed his name back to George, and he swabbed the deck.
George’s laser
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
After watching a movie where the hero had a laser on his gun to help him aim, George mounted a laser to his cutlass.
“It will help me aim,” said George.
“Why not mount it on your flintlock pistol?” asked the captain.
“I can fire it once, and then I have to reload,” said George. “In the time it takes me to reload, I can use my cutlass five or six times.”
George then wiggled the laser’s red dot on the deck, and the ship’s cat chased it around.
George goes to the dogs
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d shot sailors. He’s shot women and children.
He’d shot fellow pirates in the back.
(Although, if you shoot someone in the back, it’s kinda hard to call them “fellow.”)
But he could never shoot a dog.
He’d get this strange, faraway look on his face, almost sad, and he’d lower his gun arm.
Or he’d drop to a knee, pull some dog biscuits out of his pocket, and offer them to the dog.
The first mate thought this was peculiar, and he asked George why.
George shot him.