George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The captain always held an end-of-the-year party for the crew.
George didn’t like crowds, so he volunteered to the skeleton crew that would watch the ship while the rest of the crew went to the party.
The captain would leave a list of chores for the skeleton crew to do.
Scrape barnacles. Swab the deck. Clean out the cannon.
George crumbled up the list, threw it over the rail, and climbed up to the crow’s nest.
He watched the sunset over the harbor and enjoyed the peace and quiet.
Dread Pirate George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He managed to get taken captive by The Dread Pirate Roberts.
“My real name’s Westley, and I’m in a bit rushed,” said Roberts. “I need to get back to Florin to rescue my true love from kidnappers. Mind taking over things for a while?”
George agreed, and Westley trained him as quickly he could.
“Good luck,” said Westley, handing off the mask, and rowing away in a lifeboat.
George waved, put on the mask, and took command of the ship.
Which smashed into The Cliffs of Insanity and sank.
Weekly Challenge #889 – Satisfied
The next weekly challenge topic is: Collection
SCRIBBLING WREN / LISA
The sun woke an hour ago and has been nudging me ever since. I’m not ready yet to raise my concrete heavy eyelids, I’m still desperately clasping onto my evanescent evening.
Honestly? I’m face down in a pillow and can’t lift my head. It’s a struggle keeping the spit in my mouth. I need to go to work, but I probably need to go home first. I sense him next to me.
I’m not sure if it’s my age, or the head fug of satisfaction but I can’t remember his name. I’m far too sated to feel any embarrassment though.
RICHARD
Un-satisfied
According to the song, you can’t always get what you want; but, if you try sometime, you might get what you need.
But, what if, whatever it is that you need also happens to be what you want? Do they cancel themselves out, and you get something else entirely?
And, how about if you don’t try sometime, but all of the time? Do you get more than you need?
What about if you don’t try, at all… Do you get everything you want, all of the time?
It’s all too confusing, perhaps that’s why Mick Jagger couldn’t get no satisfaction.
SERENDIPIDY
Mother always used to moan at us kids, whenever we were having fun.
“Stop pulling faces!” She’d say, “One day, the wind will change, and you’ll stay that way.”
We hated her, and the resentment grew, until we decided to put her in her place.
I don’t know where my brother found the acid, but it sealed our fate.
We were at the park, pulling faces as usual, and mother trotted out her usual line.
I grabbed the acid, and as I threw it, the wind changed, blowing it back in our faces.
I’m sure mother was more than satisfied.
LIZZIE
Let the music play.
And smile.
They tell you about her.
You don’t recognize her in their words. But you smile.
They talk about what they don’t know, veiled words of criticism oozing through.
Smile. Always smile.
Because letting them know what you really think would show ungratefulness.
And you’re not ungrateful.
Let the music play.
Words turn into this vague hum.
And you try to make sense of it all. But you don’t want to, because you know all about her.
They are satisfied. They have now established themselves as better than you.
It’s OK. It’s OK…
You smile.
TOM
Heaven can Wait
Story goes my grandmother Margherita went on the grand tour in 1919. While in Florence she visited the Church of Santa Margherita. Standing in the exact spot Dante last beheld Beatrice she was struck with an overwhelming sense of sadness. As she gathered her composure in a pew an old woman gave her a paper and pen. In broken English the woman explained “Plead in writing to Beatrice to ask her to fix your love live.” Grandma placed the note in basket at her shrine. From it she took a paper that said Satisfied. She gave this totem to me.
NORVAL JOE / PHILIP CARROLL
Fortunately, the water in the well was shallow and there was no real potential for drowning.
The old man leaned over the well and in a smug satisfied voice, he said, “You’re stuck now. You’re in a magical dead zone.”
Billbert bristled. “I have a super power–not magic.”
The knight laughed. “Call it what you want. You can’t use it down in the well.”
Suddenly, with a grunt and a scream, the old man toppled over the edge of the well and splashed into the shallow water. Billbert had only a moment to step out of the falling man’s way.
PLANET Z
Thanks to the Happy Chip, everyone is satisfied with everything.
The manufacturer’s slogan is, after all, YOU WILL BE HAPPY.
Is that a statement of fact, or is it a command.
It certainly isn’t a threat… is it?
Sure, the law mandates that everyone living here has a Happy Chip installed.
There are no penalties or fines involved.
Anyone with a disabled, malfunctioning, or missing Happy Chip gets one installed.
For free. Not a single penny in co-pays or processing fees.
After the surgery, just walk through the scanner and… there’s the green light.
You’re good to go.
Satisfaction, guaranteed.
George’s fish tank
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
The captain ordered him to clean his fishtank.
George enjoyed his new responsibility, and he decorated it with all kinds of pretty rocks and fish.
As George learned more, he constructed bigger, more complex fishtanks.
At one point, most of the ship’s hold was taken up by George’s fishtank.
“ENOUGH!” shouted the captain. “It’s beautiful, but we need room to store provisions, cannonballs, and powder kegs!”
The next morning, the fishtank was gone.
The captain smiled, until he realized that the ship was stuck inside an even bigger fishtank.
A note for George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was always writing things down, but he never bothered to read any of his notes.
So, he ended up writing even more things down.
Which he also never read.
Pretty soon, George was up to his neck in notes.
“Stop writing so many notes,” George wrote on a note, and he added it to the pile.
Pretty soon, the entire ship was full of tons of useless notes. So full, it capsized and sank.
George went down with the ship, having failed to read his “Replace lifeboat” note.
George and the art museum
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
While the other pirates raided towns, George would go see the local art museum.
Not to loot it, mind you. He’d go there to see the art.
He usually had to wake up early, before the other pirates, so he could see the art before they looted it.
“Can you give me ten more minutes?” he told his fellow pirates. “There’s a church across the street. Go loot it.”
George always felt guilty about the looting, and left a donation to the art museum.
Which his fellow pirates looted.
George’s green beard
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Instead of being concerned about the condition of his boat, he was more worried about the condition of his skin.
The salt air of the sea and the tropical sun totally ruined his complexion.
One night, George drank too much, and he passed out in a plate of guacamole.
The next day, he woke up, face covered with the green goop.
It was the perfect mask. For once, his skin felt great.
Even if the other pirates thought “Gloppy Greenbeard the Pirate” weird for wearing it all the time.
George gets coached
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He held his cutlass wrong, and tended to strike people with the dull side of the blade.
“NO!” shouted the cutlass coach. “Use the sharp end!”
“Oh,” said George, adjusting his grip. “How’s this?”
“That’s even worse!” growled the coach. “If you strike with the flat of the blade, you’ll shatter it.”
He took the cutlass out of George’s hand, slapped him with it, and put it in George’s hand properly.
“Try that,” said the coach.
George stabbed the coach.
“Much better,” said George. “Thank you.”
He didn’t respond.
George the maroon
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
You know the term maroon?
To be stranded on an deserted island.
But also, a stupid person.
Well, pirates tended to strand stupid people on deserted islands.
And for all of his screwups, George got marooned by frustrated crewmates and captains a lot.
Other pirate ships would sail by the islands and ask what George was doing there.
He’d pull out a map and a shovel and start digging. “The treasure’s here!”
The other pirates would dig, and George would sneak on to their ship to escape the island.
Weekly Challenge #888 – PICK TWO Forward, Oblique, Exterior, Black hole, Videotape, Stakes
The next weekly challenge topic is: Satisfied
RICHARD
Strong, and black
The coffee shop can be found on the exterior rim of black hole M87. It orbits there, impossibly, ignoring the laws of physics, and doing a roaring trade in espressos and hot paninis.
I particularly recommend their chocolate muffins, which are to die for.
And, truth be told, die is what you most certainly will do.
Because, although the coffee shop, itself, seems immune to the laws of time and space, its customers most certainly are not.
But, whilst partaking of a decent coffee and chocolate muffin, at least you’ll be crushed to atoms with a smile on your face.
LIZZIE
Forward, and they stretched their arms forward.
Oblique, and they stretched their arms kind of sideways but not quite.
Black hole, and they were confused.
Stakes, and they were even more confused.
One of them mimicked a vampire being stabbed. Everyone thought that was a good idea and did the same.
“The point of this class is to open your mind. Express yourselves.”
That’s when he said “I think I’m about to relapse and start killing people again. That stakes part triggered me a bit.”
The class was canceled due to a stampede of students exiting and never coming back.
SERENDIPIDY
When you receive the videotape, you can skip the first hour or so: There’s nothing much to see, so you should fast forward to the good bit.
You’ll know you’re there, when the lights flicker on, and your family appears -a cosy scene, all huddled up on the sofa watching their favourite TV programme.
And it’s only then that you realise that your family are not the only ones watching.
I’m watching them, recording their activities, their conversations… Oh, and their rather disgusting indiscretions also.
And, unless you pay me generously.
The whole world will get to watch them too.
TOM
888
Vinny had a Plan. Make it in Guinness with the larger collection of videotapes. He had a head start with 40 years of hording. People were happy to wheel-barrow their collections to Vinny, free for the taking in. Vinny also had an ace in the whole. He had a least at Area 51, which had the largest structure in the world. When the last cassette was wedged into the ceiling the guy from Guiness got out his tape measure. When the tip touches edge the end of magnetic tape it created a monster electric field. A black hole formed, everything vanished.
As to the reason for my absence
Just like the last Beatles single my friend, God rest his soul, lived on a long and winding road. It starts at the edge of the Upper-Upper San Francisco Bay were the lower-lower Sacramento bangs into it. It ends in the high valley plain which is my Lake County. Each end isn’t much to look at, but what is in between is the largest concentration of wineries in the world. We live in the low rent district of this corridor of wine wealth. So, we got a low rent district hospital. Here lies the problem in the time of Covid
NORVAL JOE
Once Billbert was sure Sabrina was following him to the well, he flew forward over the treetops until he came to the outer edge of a circular well. Before he landed, he dropped the old man so that the jerk hit the ground with a grunt.
Sabrina ran up to Billbert as he reached the well and looked into the black hole of darkness below.
“Linoliamanda?” he called.
“Billbert? Is that you?” A familiar voice rose from the darkness.
Without hesitation, Billbert leapt over the stone wall and jumped feet first into the cold water and the evil knight’s trap.
TURA
Forward; Oblique
———
“Forward! Oblique! À l’extérieure! Bloquez, bloquez!” My fencing master soon reverts to French in our sessions. He says that it is the language of fencing, although the Spanish and German masters I have crossed swords with in the salle said the same of their own. And I think that all of them are right, for the art takes different forms in each place. German for the sabre, heavy and brutal. Spanish for the rapier and dagger, thrusting to kill at a reach. French for the épée, for exactness in the art of death. And of course, Klingon for the betleH.
JARED/JRADIMUS
Poker? I Barely Know Her
She didn’t expect to feel like this. For all her planning and practice, all the preparations she had made for this exact scenario, she didn’t think she would feel like she just met her ultimate crush mixed with feeling like she had finished off an entire sack of Halloween candy.
Her opponent was a black hole – any useful information about his hand didn’t make it to his face.
Hesitating slightly, Simone pushed her chips into the center of the table – “I call.”
“Flush,” her foe said as he slowly fanned his cards on the table.
“Reset the simulation,” Simone barked.
PLANET Z
For years, Teddy recorded video of all kinds of wacky things happening.
He kept a journal to make sure he never sent the same thing twice.
Every week, he’d mail them out to all the television shows with the funny things people doing or happening and all that, but his was never picked.
When YouTube was created, Teddy posted all of his rejected videos there.
So many people subscribed and commented.
His share of the ad revenue was pretty good.
People sent him links to their own videos.
And he’d click Like and leave encouraging comments on all of them.