September 19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day.
All across the world, people say things like “Yarrrrr!” and “Avast, ye scurvy dogs!” and “Me hearties!” and silly pirate-speak phrases like that.
Especially to pirates they meet on that day.
Pirates don’t find this amusing.
It’s like walking up to someone from Australia and saying “Throw another shrimp on the Barbie!”
So when a pirate draws his cutlass and shouts “I’ll have ye guts fer garters!” the proper response is not to applaud at their impressive diction, but to run like hell.
Although, to be honest, pirates rarely wear garters.
Category: Talk Like A Pirate Day
Anchor
Back when gaslamps lit the streets of New Orleans, sailors would go to sea and their loves would wait for their return.
Most came back to port on schedule, or close to it.
Others were delayed by storms, pirates… so many dangers.
When a ship was due, their loves came to the docks and met them as they arrived, walking down the gangplank, that moment.
Or, if they didn’t arrive, waiting.
Late one day… two… a week… a month.
Sometimes, the harbormaster wrote that worst of all fates: “LOST.”
And their hearts would sink, down… sink below the waves forever.
Limber Me Timbers
When Jill finished her Phys Ed and Business degrees, she opened up a yoga studio.
Business was good, plenty of young mothers and forty-somethings needing to lose a few pounds, or keep pounds away.
Then, Wii Fit and other cheaper options came out, followed by the recession.
She tried pilates classes, but those didn’t draw.
“Try a GroupOn,” said a friend.
Half-off coupons brought in a wave of signups to her studio.
Then… disaster.
First day, the room was filled with buccaneers.
One waved a printout in his good hand.
“Yarrr, I signed up fer Pirates classes!”
Damn you, Autocorrect!
Stretching It
The day before a pirate raid, you can go down to the beach and watch the men doing their pre-raid warm-up exercises and stretching.
It’s very important to limber up before shivering any timbers, keel-hauling, or walking the plank.
Nobody wants to be in the middle of a raid and then suddenly get a sprain or a charley-horse, dropping their cutlass from a twisted wrist.
And then there’s the basics: port, starboard, bow, stern.
No landlubber mistakes here, mateys.
Is that a stuffed parrot?
Argh. Go requisition a real one.
Either straighten up, boy, or we’re all in deep poopdeck.
The Navigator
Robert The Navigator looked over Captain Blood’s map.
“You’re shitting me, right?” he said.
Captain Blood raised an eyebrow.
Robert pointed at a sea serpent in the corner. “Ever seen one of these?”
“No.”
“How about this?” Robert pointed to a fat-cheeked blowing cloud.
“Well, it’s not to be taken too literally.”
“And am I to believe that this land here actually exists?”
“Um, that’s Italy.”
“Shaped like a boot? No, really… what child drew this?”
“Serpent ahoy!” shouted the first mate.
Captain Blood watched as Robert was thrown overboard.
“Good show, Blood,” said a nearby cloud. “Need a gust?”
The Scar
I take it you’ve seen the scar on Captain Blood’s neck.
He claims he got it from a duel.
In a way, I suppose that’s the truth, but it wasn’t a fair duel.
His strategy is to draw his sword, then pull a pistol and shoot his opponent in the chest.
Once, he had a misfire, and was forced to reach for his other pistol.
That gun fired true and killed his opponent.
So how was he cut?
He slashed his own neck, reaching for the other pistol.
Don’t tell him that, though.
Or he’ll challenge you to a duel.
Weekly Challenge #230 – Drabble Like A Pirate Day
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Welcome to the Weekly Challenge Number Two Hundred and Twenty-Thirty, where I post a topic and then challenge you to come up with a 100 word story based on that topic.
The topic this week was… was…. um…
It’s DRABBLE LIKE A PIRATE DAY!
VOTING
Go ahead and listen to them and then vote for your favorites (multiple selections are allowed):
TJ
My investigation into the financial disaster of 2008 had turned up a lot
of dead ends. Wreckage doesn’t begin to describe it. Forensic
accounting is just words when entire trading floors lie smoldering in
ruins. Hostile takeovers left smaller investors at sea, desperate to
stay afloat. I caught a lead in a darkened boardroom, where the
hollow-eyed shell of a CFO cowered under a table. “Hats,” he
breathed. “We’re not wearing enough hats.” That and an unexploded
portfolio, I knew my quarry. Such is the reign of terror left in the
wake of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. Yo. Ho. Ho.
Freereed
CaptainSqueakSears was missing half his right-middle-finger. He’d sneak behind a sailor, jab the stump hard-between-their-ribs and growl, “Arrggg, there’s no swimmin back!”
Every six months TheOnyx would put-sail-to-home. From deck Squeak could see his four-storey-clapboard-monstrosity looming over NewBedfordHarbor.
He’d stomp into the sitting-room shouting “Abigail@!Abby@” And out would run the FulsomeAbby and her ScrawnySisterFern.
After supping-drinking-smoking-slobbering-snoring-swearing, he’d steer to the vast-billowy-ocean of their marriage-bed and plough-through-the-waves of his plump wife’s flesh.
Then in the wee-hours, he’d sneak up the-old-stairway to enjoy the ScrawnySister. While teetering back down to his wife… “Damn@! That stair@!” and that’s how Squeak got his name.
Tom
Welcome to Pirate as a second language. I’m your instructor R L Stevenson. I known many of yee r new to Belize and hope immersing yourself in r colorful and reductive language will speed your assimilation into r hyper profiteering culture. Remember: Rome wasn’t sacked in day. Little pirate humor.
Let’s begin with pirate Epistemology
Y-I-R?
C-I-R.
B-I-R!
Y-U-R?
R-U-B?
We-B-R!
Now for a bit of rancorous, but common pirate exchange
I-C-T.
We-C-U-P.
Remember R can be used as a verb, possessive, and agreement
Zackmann
Welcome to our ship “The Wobegon.” Have some of that there hot dish and lefsa. We are here
to make the bug bucks, ya sure you bet ya. If ya live, becoming rich as a troll is pretty much a
dun deal then.
Say that captain doesn’t really talk like a pirate? He sounds more Keillor than Keelhaul.
Sure the captain comes from a long line of pirates who have been raiding these waters since Leaf
Erickson discover the new world. The captain and most of the crew are from Minnesota don’t
you know. That is except TJ
Steven
The first defendant wore a “home taping is killing the music industry”
shirt. “Plea?” I asked.
“Not guilty! Information wants to be free! ”
“Innocent by reason of insanity.” I said. “Ideological idiots. Next!”
The man had candles in his black beard. “Yarrr, me letter of mark
from the Queen here says – ”
“Dry him out in the drunk tank. He reeks of rum. Next!”
The third defendant wore a suit and tie. “I don’t understand. I just
ran the subprime CDO desk at an investment bank.”
I leapt up. “Hang him. Hang him by the neck until he’s dead, dead, dead!”
Abigail
When I first started playing tennis with him I wasn’t so bad. The trick they say is to get out of your head. I did. He had beautiful tan calves and his socks were pristine white. I plotted.
Later we played in earnest never actually keeping score but sometimes we’d paste a bullet, or body shot. I liked playing rough with him. But then he sliced. The back spin and warp on the ball pissed me off. I hit it.”Arg!” “Arg? Pirate Tennis?” he laughed slicing again. I tried to slice back, hard, The bruise lasted for weeks.
Love hurts.
Norval Joe
“Welcome to Mc Donalds, may I take yer order”
“Yes. I would like a ten peice, number ten, with a medium sprite.”
“Would ye like a Coke and barbeque sauce with those nuggets?”
“No. I would like a sprite and hot mustard sauce. Can I have three?”
“We only give two suaces with a ten peice. A third will cost ye two bits.”
“Fine.”
“Would ye like two hot apple pies for a dollar?”
“No, that’s all, thanks, and by the way, where’s the regular staff that works here?”
“Harr. They be sleepin in Davy Jones locker, the scurvy dogs.”
Planet Z
Susie brought her pet rabbit to Show And Tell.
Abdul brought a beautifully-painted flowerpot.
Billy brought a pirate.
Sure, it was just a homeless drunk in a pirate costume, but he growled and slurred and waved his plastic cutlass like a real pirate.
Later, the principal asked the teacher why she let the bum into the room in the first place.
She thought it was his grandfather or an actor he hired. and tried to laugh about it: “Taking off his eyepatch was somewhat educational about disabilities, right?”
“Yes, but taking off his pants and crapping in the flowerpot wasn’t.”
The Mermaid Feast
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Old Captain Jack was a friend to all creatures of the sea, so when he died, they took his boat out thirty miles from shore and cast him into the briny deep.
Six mermaids caught his shrouded body and escorted him over the horizon.
The crew set course for port, but winds blew them back out, and they came across the mermaids.
They were feasting on Jack’s corpse, hands drenched in gore and blood.
The crew wanted to fire their cannon to scatter the mermaids, but instead they just watched.
Watching half-naked cannibal women are better than nothing, I suppose.
High-Five
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Grampa only had one last bit of advice for me before he died: “Never high-five a pirate.”
Then, he died.
Grampa was always good for stupid, useless advice.
According to him, you should never cook sea urchins on a Thursday. As if I’d cook them on any day of the week? They’re disgusting!
He also said that Van Gogh was smart. Cutting off your ear to impress a chick is a lot smarter than cutting off his balls like Picasso did.
“But Picasso never castrated himself,” I said.
Grampa just lit his pipe, blew a cloud of smoke, and winked.
Clown Pirates
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Long ago, I sailed the seven seas, and the winds flew through my hair.
I wasn’t much of a sailor and neither was my crew. We became shipwrecked on The Island Of The Clown Pirates.
It would have been paradise if it hadn’t have been for the balloon animal parrots, big floppy peglegs, and a crazy rowboat that almost a hundred of them climbed out of, one by one.
They had no swords, but every one of them could hurl a wicked custard pie.
So, we decided to join them.
The winds now fly through my gigantic red fright wig.