Category: My stories

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.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
So, the captain optioned George to the minor leagues.
The humiliated George complained bitterly.
A professional pirate, forced to sail with rookies who wore life preserves and carried rubber swords.
Every day, the instructors put George through basic drills, and they had a weekly scrimmage battle with other minor league pirates.
And then, George got the call to come back.
“Was it my hard work and effort?” asked George.
“Nah,” said the captain. “A cannon blew up and killed Lefty.”
George had maintained that cannon…
So he kept quiet.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
You know those stickers that soccer moms put in the back windows of their minivans?
The ones with stick figure families, with stick figure kids and stick figure cats and dogs?
Sometimes, you’ll see stick figure zombies and stick figure dinosaurs eating the families.
Well, George had a stick figure on the back window of his ship.
It was a stick figure pirate.
But it wasn’t a very good stick figure pirate.
He’d peeled the decal off wrong, and it was kinda scrunched up.
George eventually scraped it off.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
In desperation, he sought out a psychic to remove any curses that might be on him.
“I can determine if you’re cursed,” said the psychic,”but I’d have to refer you to a witch doctor or a witch to remove it. Or, if it’s demonic in nature, a priest.”
George was passed from charlatan to charlatan, until he had finally run out of money.
“Oh well,” said George.
He went back out to sea and hunted more treasure so he could continue his quest to resolve his frustrating curses.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He thought that yoga might somehow help him be a better pirate.
So, George bought a few books on yoga and a few audio tapes, but he had a hard time remembering the positions.
His crewmates had to untangle the knots he’d tied himself into.
Then, he went to classes, but the yoga teachers and students thought he was going to pillage and loot the classroom and they attacked him.
His crewmates had to untangle the knots they’d tied him into.
George insisted on keeping the skintight pastel leotard.

George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Still, he did what he could, and at the beginning of the day he’d stand in front of the mirror and give himself two thumbs up.
The mirror-George would give him two-thumbs up back.
George then mounted a mirror on the opposite wall so there’d be an infinite number of him giving himself an infinite number of thumbs up.
Curious about the nature of infinity, he pulled books by Cantor and Dedekind from his bookshelf while his crewmates yelled for George to bring up more ammo, God damn it.