Category: Talk Like A Pirate Day

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was dangerous with a cannon.
Not dangerous as in “Oh, no, pirates are attacking us!” dangerous but “Oh, crap! Who let George near the cannon?” dangerous.
He once blew a hole in the deck of the ship, and water poured in.
So, he reloaded the cannon and aimed it at the deck.
“The water will escape through the second hole,” George proudly said.
The captain ordered the men to plug the hole with George.
“No stabbing him,” the captain said. “Or we’ll have to plug those holes too.”

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
As a bartender, though, he absolutely rocked.
You know that move in Cocktail where the guys flip the bottle behind their backs?
George has that move beat.
You can shout twenty drink orders at him, and he’ll get every one of them done right and fast.
And done good. Only the finest for George and his customers.
“Grog,” says a pirate.
George sighs. All they ever order is grog, whiskey, and rum.
George fills a tankard with grog and hands it over.
The pirate gulps it down.
No tip.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He needed to do something about it, so he signed up for seminar.
There he was, standing up and screaming at self-help guru Tony Roberts about how he would be a better pirate.
A better pirate, a better person.
Tony Robbins, ten feet tall, grinning ten feet wide, screaming back at George, wanting more.
George’s swollen face, covered with tears, screaming louder and louder and louder.
“I WILL BE THE BEST PIRATE IN HISTORY!”
George came away from the seminar feeling good about himself.
He also stole Tony’s yacht.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He’d pretend that his cutlass was a lightsaber, and he’d make a lightsaber humming noise when he swung it around.
“Stop that,” said the captain. “It’s annoying. Concentrate on actually hitting someone with it.”
So George did.
“Ouch!” yelled the captain. “I meant hit someone fighting us.”
George dove into the battle, swinging his cutlass around and humming the lightsaber sound.
He didn’t hit anyone, but he did manage to cut a few important ropes and cables.
When the sail covered George, the others left him trapped under it.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Every time the captain would bring on a new recruit, he’d put that new recruit in George’s bunk.
George would complain, but the captain told him to stop whining and find another place to sleep.
After moving around the whole ship, George ended up in the crow’s nest.
It was quiet up there, but the ship swayed a lot, and George frequently vomited over the side and on to the pirates standing on deck.
“Serves them right for stealing my bunk,” George muttered, before heaving up his guts again.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He also wasn’t a very good investor. He stayed out of the stock market.
But he still watched the stock ticker, and would cheer when the market went up.
“When the market goes up, people make money,” said George. “And that means more stuff to loot.”
It also meant that people could afford better security guards, so George found himself getting arrested a lot.
When the market went down, people sold their stuff on eBay.
Which George would sell right back to them when the market went up again.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
When he was tapped to direct the ship’s fall stage production, he got so excited, he knocked over his coffee on to the pile of scripts.
Some pages were ruined, so George did his best and salvaged what he could.
The resulting mess was a chaotic, confusing combination of War of the Worlds and Dracula.
“Vampires from Mars?” asked the captain. “Shouldn’t that be Spiders from Mars?”
“No, you’re thinking of David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust,” said George.
“Let’s do that instead then,” said the captain.
George played… guitar.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was easily distracted by social media memes.
When the Ice Bucket Challenge made the rounds, George was constantly dumping buckets of ice over his head.
He had no idea why, but that didn’t stop him from doing it.
When the Tide Pod Challenge popped up, George dumped buckets of Tide pods over his head.
“I think you’re supposed to eat them,” said the captain.
“Eat them?” said George. “That makes no sense.”
And then he picked up another bucket of Tide pods and dumped them over his head.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Pirates usually name their ships something scary and dreadful, like The Black Cloud of Death or The Revenge.
But by the time George got his ship, all of the really cool ship names were taken.
“We can’t have two ships with the same name,” said the registrar.
“What about Reaver9012?” asked George. “You know, like an AOL account.”
“That’s far too confusing.”
“Maybe The Jolly Roger?”
“That’s the flag!”
George muttered something under his breath, and, after signing all the paperwork, he returned to the newly-christened “I Give Up!”

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Other pirates practiced sailing and swashbuckling and other pirate skills.
George always begged out of practice and training sessions, and he got a poor reputation for it.
The truth is, George was busy taking care of his elderly mother.
He had to rush home to feed and wash her, and he would read to her until she’d go to sleep.
And then, one day, he attended a sparring session.
“Gracing us with your presence, George?” asked the trainer.
George, through his tears, ran the trainer through with his sword.