George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He heard stories of Blackbeard, who put candles and cannon fuses in his beard, giving off a thick black cloud that made him look like a demonic figure.
So, before the next battle, George covered himself with candles and cannon fuses, and lit them.
George was quickly engulfed in flames, and he ran around screaming.
The men on the other ship thought George was a demonic figure and quickly surrendered.
George’s shipmates knocked him overboard, dowsing the painful flames.
“He’s an idiot,” said the captain. “But a useful idiot.”
George forgets
George was a pirate…
Well, more like he used to be a pirate.
George was always forgetting things.
But it became much worse over the years.
He’d just stand there, confused.
Right there in the middle of battle, in his underwear.
“Oh, right,” he’d say. “Yes.” And just stand there.
“Early onset dementia” is what the doctors said.
His shipmates came to visit him in the home.
“I’m Rummy Bill, remember?” said Rummy Bill, offering a swig from his jug of rum.
He didn’t remember.
Now, they say George was a great pirate.
Love makes people forget the bad times.
Quiet George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He had a lot of knowledge about piracy, but it was book knowledge, not experience.
For some things, you need that practical hands-on knowledge and years of experience.
Piracy is one of those. Heck, George even read that in a book.
So, George put the book down, and started to pillage and loot the library.
“SSSSSSHHHHHH!” hissed the librarian.
George apologized, and tried to pillage and loot quietly.
After a while, George became an expert at pillaging and looting quietly.
“Yar,” he’d whisper, and tiptoe softly as he plundered.
George on wings of glory
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
While good pirates swing from ropes to board a vessel, George was obsessed with doing this with a hang glider.
Usually, he’d get stuck in the rigging.
Other times, he’d jump too soon, and end up crashing into the ocean.
Or a gust of wind would carry him miles away, and then he’d crash into the ocean.
“Why can’t you swing from a rope like everybody else, George?” asked the captain.
So, George got a rope. And tied it to his hang glider.
He crashed into the ocean again.
George’s corkscrew
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.
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.”