George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He spent a lot of time swabbing the deck.
Every now and then, he’d pause and look at his reflection in the mop bucket.
Sometimes, he’d talk to himself.
The other pirates found this disturbing, and they asked the captain to do something.
“Maybe if you stopped shunning him and actually treated him nicely, he wouldn’t have to talk to himself in a bucket?” said the captain.
The crew pondered this, and then dumped the bucket on George’s head and pushed him overboard.
“That works too,” said the captain.
George and Wowbagger
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He was a worthless navigator, awful swordsman, and a completely unreliable deckhand.
As he leaned on the starboard rail, a silver spaceship hovered by the port rail.
A ramp extended from the ship and a grey-green alien walked out.
“George?” it asked, reading from a clipboard. “George the Pirate?”
George turned around. “Yes?”
“You’re not very good,” it said. “I thought I’d let you know that.”
The alien turned around, returned to its ship, and the spaceship flew away.
George shrugged and went back to leaning on the rail.
Weekly Challenge #918 PICK TWO Brand awareness, Lot, Random, Envision, Dozen, Secretary
The next topic is Contact lens
TOM
Small Pleasures
Jimmy’s dad was a working-class man. A time where the color of your shirt outline the vocation that selected you. Despite limited funds in their home, Jimmy’s day faithfully every Saturday morning wake him up for a trip to the Bakery. It was Jimmy’s job to choose a random dozen donuts for breakfast. He knew his mother favorite and each sister’s. His younger brother would eat anything within 14 inches of his mouth. Choosing for Dad was always a challenge. He didn’t have a sweet tooth like the rest of the family. So, Jimmy chose one stuffed with olives
LISA
November 23rd
Christmas had crept into the incident room a week ago with random cards on filing cabinets and some very incongruous tinsel. I’m only there today as a picture on the wall.
So, the police now know who’s doing this. Except they don’t. Only I do and I’m locked in a basement with a dozen faces that are all more familiar than I’d like them to be.
I’ve told the girls I’m police. I try being upbeat; a lot have been here for months. I try not to think of the faces on that board that aren’t down here with us.
NORVAL JOE
A dozen teenagers gathered in the empty lot across the street from where Billbert sat on the curb.
Buhmilda shoved some bread into his mouth and said, “Swallow quick. Those people over there aren’t some random crowd of onlookers.”
When Billbert’s vision cleared, he saw the burly crowd of yellow-toothed Black Knights, and jumped to his feet.
Buhmilda looked to Mr. Withybottom. “Well, Cuz? Should we take the kids to your place, or mine?”
Linoliumanda’s father looked aghast. “Why do we have to take them anywhere?”
Buhmilda shook her head sadly. “Climb in kids.” And motioned them to her car.
RICHARD
Sold!
I’d never been to an auction before, but I was having fun.
I placed a few practice bids on random items, just to get a feel for things, in readiness for the lot I’d had my eye on right from the start.
Just a suitcase, one of a number of lost luggage lots, and despite the stories of people finding all sorts of expensive surprises in them, I’d a sneaky suspicion the auction house went through them beforehand.
I just wanted the suitcase: perfect for my next holiday.
I won!
The suitcase, and the twenty kilos of cocaine it contained!
LIZZIE
The secretary was rushing back and forth, folders everywhere. She was so upset that a pile of papers started to spin around all the way to the ceiling. “What’s happening?” She threw her hands in the air. “Brand awareness report. I have 10 minutes. 10 minutes?!” He offered to help, but at that point everything was beyond any help. “I quit, there.” And she stormed out of the office, a trail of paperwork swirling behind her. He just stood in the corridor, wondering how she had managed to get the papers to do that, a shiver going down his spine.
SERENDIPIDY
As an apprentice, I’d had it drummed into me: Brand awareness. Nail that, and everything else falls into place.
Your clients should be able to make that instant association, must be able to envision what the future will look like; how it will feel; how you will change their lives.
It all comes down to brand awareness.
It’s something I’ve never forgotten, and I’ve always striven to put it first and foremost into every interaction, with every client.
Like right now.
“It’s red hot” I say to them, turning the brand in the flames.
“This is really going to hurt!”
PLANET Z
I won’t be going to the local donut shop anymore.
All the register girl has to do is put on a plastic disposable glove, pick out donuts, put them in bags or boxes, and push a few buttons on the register.
It’s not like she has to make change. The credit card reader does all that.
And yet, the last screen on the credit card reader asks how much I want to tip them.
I press NO TIP, grab the bags, and head to the car.
It’s not like they can spit on my food, because I saw it all.
George visits Abortion Island
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
His ship ran aground on a small island off of the coast of South Carolina.
“Welcome to Abortion Island,” said a grizzled docksman. “Sorry about the lighthouse, been out for three days.”
He led George to the clinic, a small medical facility and dormitory.
“The ferryboat brings patients, the doctor performs the procedure, and when they’re ready, they return to the mainland.”
George stood and stared.
It took George seven days to repair his ship.
He kept to himself, sleeping in his bunk.
And he left without saying goodbye.
Call me George
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
“Maybe you should give pirating a rest?” said the captain, tallying up the damage from George’s latest mishap. “Whaling is big these days. My brother has a ship.”
George packed his bags, disembarked, and walked down the docks to his new home.
“Your first time whaling?” said a lanky greenhorn, extending his hand. “Call me Ishmael.”
“Call me George,” said George, smiling.
A year later, they found themselves bloodied and battered, adrift on the Pacific in a coffin.
“That ended badly,” said Ishmael. “So, tell me more about piracy.”
George ponders
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Some nights, he’d gaze up at the stars, wondering how he fit in to the world, or if there was some kind of hidden cosmic plan out there.
“Where are we?”
“Why am I here?”
“What is my purpose?”
“What does it all mean?”
Then he’d connect all the bright stars in his mind, making shapes and words and symbols.
One he named “George.” He was also holding a map and an astrolabe.
The captain tapped him on the shoulder, clearing his throat.
“I asked ‘Where are we, George?'”
George and the protestors
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Nobody would ever build a monument or statue to him.
No plaque, no bench.
He sat in the park and rested.
Masked protestors swarmed in, charging and screaming, armed with sledgehammers and a crane.
“Down with hate and slavery!’ they shouted. “We love!”
They pounded at the Confederate War Veterans statue, tugging and pulling it until it toppled and fell.
On top of George.
The protestors ran when they heard ambulance sirens, leaving him thrashing and struggling, shouting for help.
The medics tended to George, and carried him away.
George and the seven cities
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
George sought out El Dorado, the City of Gold.
But instead of a city literally made of Gold, it turned out to be a village ruled by some naked dude who rolled around in Gold dust every morning, and then washed it off in the lake.
George stripped naked, rolled around in Gold dust, and proclaimed himself king.
The natives bowed down to George. Except for the real king.
Over and over they did this.
After a week, El Dorado ran out of Gold dust.
And George left emptyhanded.
George passes out
George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
Some say he drinks too much to remember.
And others say he doesn’t drink enough to forget.
Bleary-eyed, climbing into his hammock, cabin spinning.
The rocking back and forth.
Is it the waves and the ship, or just how much he drank?
It doesn’t matter. He leans out of his hammock and throws up.
The hammock wobbles. He falls into the puddle of vomit.
Passing out.
He’ll do the same thing tomorrow. And the day after that.
“Another goddamned day of this shit,” he mumbles.
And passes out again.
Weekly Challenge #917 – Bread
The next topic is PICK TWO Brand awareness, Lot, Random, Envision, Dozen, Secretary
LIZZIE
“Bread crumbs, I need bread crumbs,” thought the restless crow. He wasn’t hungry. He just wanted bread crumbs. He read a story about dropping bread crumbs to leave a trail. He wanted to leave a trail! People would trickle out of the forest into the open field and marvel at his beauty! But he found no bread crumbs. He did consider resorting to his collection of glass eyes, but it was becoming more and more difficult to steal them from grumpy Old Maggie. So, he just sat on his scarecrow and waited. And he waited for a very long time!
RICHARD
All natural ingredients
Times have been tough since the Great War, but we survivors are tougher still.
We manage to get by on the bare essentials, and where even the bare essentials are lacking, we improvise.
Take our bread, for example: Flour is hard to come by, so we substitute sawdust instead. It makes for an interesting texture, but the flavour’s not too bad.
Mind you, if it wasn’t for the bread we’d starve.
That’s our diet: Bread and water.
Except the water is polluted, and the rain is far too acid to drink.
I won’t tell you what we substitute for water!
SERENDIPIDY
Smells can be so evocative.
Some may enthuse about the aroma of freshly baked bread, the fragrance of newly mown grass or the perfume of night scented stock on a warm spring evening.
Homely, comforting smells.
Not for me though. My tastes are very different.
In fact, those smells make me want to vomit.
Give me instead, the honest, ferrous tang of freshly spilled blood, the sweet smells of death and decay. Better than any bouquet of flowers or the most expensive of perfumes.
And above all, the dank, earthy aroma of the grave.
The smell of home, sweet home.
LISA
A Despondent Incident Room
Another day and another late afternoon briefing; there’s another three photos up on the board. It looks like our man’s working a lot harder than we are. He’s giving us nothing, and we’re working right round the clock.
I’ve not had a meal at home for weeks now. Mum’s doing me double sandwiches.
I used to eat at my desk but I can’t eat with them watching. It doesn’t feel right. They’re all around my age: I think all the women feel the same: it could be me up there. The bread from the uneaten sandwich hardens on my desk.
TOM
Pore more Sugar on It
Going Meta-Meta tonight. My personal rule for writing is: the first thing that lands in my head it the central theme of the story. It can produce some pretty weird stuff. Take tonight’s topic: bread. Before I could take a stroll down memory lane of my years working in a Bakery. I was the guy who choose how many loafs of vegetable herb we were delivering to San Fransisco. But No, what popped in my brain pan was Bread the band. And I use that term generously. If you took rock and roll and dipped in sugar Bread would come out.
NORVAL JOE
Linoliumanda continued to ignore her father’s requests to get into the car until he was clearly ready to blow his top. Red faced, he got out of the car and stomped his size fourteen wingtips toward her.
Just then, a rusty, late 50’s, Chevrolet Biscayne, huffed and rumbled to a stop next to them. A gray-haired woman in a bright orange mumu under a olive rain poncho climbed out, carrying a small brown loaf of bread.
Mr. Withybottom’s jaw dropped. “Buhmilda. What are you doing here?”
The woman smiled at Mr. Withybottom. “I could as you the same, Cousin Charlie.”
PLANET Z
Tonya went to school and opened a bakery.
Hired a few of her neighbors and friends, worked long hours.
Everybody got paid well and got great benefits.
She even covered child care, which for single mothers, is everything.
Then the riots came.
Her bakery was broken into and burned to the ground.
The security company kept the video off-site, so she watched as one of those friends used her keys to open the security grate to get inside.
And set the fire that consumed her business.
All her hard work. All she did for others.
Years of sacrifice.
For nothing.