Story Time

[huisjen]

We haven't had one in a while, and we need to break in the new digs.

Once upon a time, in a small fishing town, there lived a man with a...

[TomF]

... limp. My cousin Joe and I called him Ahab, but it seemed to us that the man never actually set foot aboard a ship, though he gimped his way along the wharf every morning, swearing at the gulls.

[huisjen]

Ahab collected cans and bottles from the roadside, and would buy potted meat and sardines with the money. On special occasions, he'd...

[Joe Dupere]

fart, probably because of the sardines and potted meat. But that never
stopped him from going to the end of the pier and ..

[Norman Bernstein]

... taking a satisfying leak, right into the ocean. However, on this particular morning, he turned around as he heard a noise behind him, and.....

[TomF]

found himself eye to ... uhm, head with the biggest, orneriest gull he'd ever seen. More than a little anxious at the potential for providing an avian snack, he...

[Another One]

. . . quickly broke into a dramatic recitation of Homer's Odyssey, hoping to distract his audience from more personal attentions. As a crown gathered to enjoy this spectacle . . . .

[Joe Dupere]

a crowd gathered to enjoy the spectacle of a crown enjoying a spectacle. Taking advantage of the gathering crown/crowd, Ahab ducked behind a....

[TomF]

...rubbish-collecting bag, after finishing God's business. Hurling abuse and empty potted meat tins to disperse the crowd, Ahab's gaze was suddenly drawn to ...

(edited because of a cross posting ... which made my initial response more lewd than intended!)

[Another One]

a lovely sloop entering the harbour, carrying . . .

[Popeye]

.. a bunch of stuff , like boxes or whatever tied onto the deck ,

[huisjen]

And crewed by Ahab's long lost girlfriend, Jezebel.

[Popeye]

"Jezebel"! shouted Ahab.

As the sloop drew closer , Ahab's heart sank , Jezebel ,you see, was nothing more than a cardboard cutout of his girlfriend Jezebel , and with that a gust of wind buckled poor Jezzy over and off she floated over the gentle waves

[Another One]

towards the waiting crowd. The gulls, seeing a wonderfull opportunity, took wing towards the bobbing Jezzy-clone . . .

[TomF]

Ahab quietly reflected that even as a real woman, rather than a cardboard cutout, Jezebel had always seemed rather two dimensional.

[Popeye]

Ahab put his hands in his pockets and fumbled , trying to understand the moment ..

[huisjen]

...rather than stepping out of the way of the bowsprit.

[Popeye]

..he dropped his boys and lept out of the way..

[TomF]

... but was interrupted by a colossal crunch, as the sloop hit the pier. "That's how my leg got hurt the first time" muttered Ahab. "Damned sloop." For as the vessel turned in the breeze, the name on its trailboards came into view.

Pequod.

[Another One]

Meanwhile, the still-circling gulls noticed that when viewed from above, Ahab's male pattern baldness created a target pattern . . .

[TomF]

Plop. Then again ... plop. Seemingly pursued by both sloop and gulls, Ahab hobbled quickly along the pier, trying to reach the relative safety of ...

[TomF]

Plop. And plop again ... the aim was getting better. Ahab, pursued both by gulls and sloop, hobbled off towards the relative safety of ...

[huisjen]

...the public restroom at the head of the pier.

Just then, Cousin Joe showed up in his...

[Another One]

scummy green 1968 VW Beetle semi-automatic, named "Oscar." In it's normal state of slight mechanical distress, Oscar didn't quite stop in time, bumping into the wall of Ahab's chosen retreat . . .

[Meerkat]

which was liberally coated with beach vulture bombs.

[Hughman]

The building surrounding the toilet shifted a little as Oscar nuzzled playfully, jamming the door shut. Ahab, busy dousing his head in the washbasin....

[Popeye]

" Billions of billious barbecued blue blistering barnacles!" , Bellowed Ahab ,

"Bell-Bottomed Balderdash! Blunderbuss! Bodysnatcher! Bootlegger! Borgia! Bougainvillea! Brat! Breathalyser! Brigands! Brutes! Bucaneers! Bully! Butcher!"

He cursed from underneath the capsized commode.

"Carpetsellers!" , He continued.

[TomF]

"Carpetsellers!" , He continued. "Carpetsellers, castaways, cranky Caliphs and crotchety crapshooters."

"And Crap. Gallons and gallons of Crap. Cousin Joe, what'd you do that for?"

Joe smiled widely, as he watched Ahab try to clean himself up. "You missed a Tidbit" he said.

[Popeye]

"Sorry about the little mishap" , Joe grinned broadly as he handed Ahab a monogrammed hankie , "I guess my camera phone had me distracted back there, that and my power buffer and trying to hold onto the steering wheel at the same time" .

Ahab smiled as he mopped the crap from his brow and offered Joe his hankie back.

"Uh , that's ok" , said Joe as he scurried around the wharf collecting up the last few cans of lemon pledge , "You can keep it".

[TomF]

Ahab and Cousin Joe (who wisely stood upwind) turned and contemplated the sloop Pequod, whose bowsprit was now amiably grinding through the hull of a fiberglass, roughly boat-shaped monstrosity. If Jezebel hadn't been at the helm, then who had been? Where had they gone?

And why had they left a life-sized, bikini-clad cardboard cutout to stand watch?

[Popeye]

the fiberglass monstrosity boatlike thing, once scuttled, slide off the bowsprit of the Pequod , tipped over, caught on fire , melted into a blob and sank , forever banished to the fortress deep , all that remained was an unceremonious .. 'bloop' .. sound and a thin slick of pina coloda party mix

suddenly , the putrid stench of a thousand foul sallee rovers filled the air , the hatch of the Pequod opened and the swarthy Cap'n and buxom crew emerged , all naked as jay birds ..

[Joe Dupere]

and holding nets full of Dolly Vardens. "Joe" the captain screamed, "take these damn things to a cold spring on the Hudson and drown them!!". With that he turned to his scantily clad buxom crew member and pulled on a loose bikini thread. "Wicked Weasel!!" he yelled, and turned....

[Popeye]

.. and grabbed his tiller ..

[Sailor]

only to realise that it was not nearly as long as he thought it was. The lack of torque made it difficult to steer and he was therefore unable to......

[huisjen]

...dodge the seagulls, who had wheeled around for another pass. This time, however, Ahab was ready for them. Taking Joe's hankie in hand, he...

[rbhawk]

...scooped up three big handfuls of screws, twisted the hankie closed around them and loaded it up in the swivel gun. Pointing to the center of the flock, he touched her off, and...

[Hughman]

simultaneously fornicated three dozen seagulls with stainless #10 Mcfeelys

[Peter Malcolm Jardine]

Suddenly, a sail appeared on the horizon...Ahab blanched as he quickly recognized the ship as belonging to...

[Popeye]

.. the Canard line of shipping, Ahab recalled how, in his lost youth of yesteryear how he used to work for Canard , but alas , in his Autumn years he did not work for Canard ..

[huisjen]

Why if it wasn't for that unfortunate incident with the hershey's syrup, the bungie cords, and the rowing machine, he might still work for Canard. No, not the Cunard cruise line, but Canard, the lame duck freight company, shipping Devil Duckies to the needy around the world.



Ah, but the hershey's syrup...

It was all Jezebels fault really. It had been her idea after all to...

[TomF]

... make that exercize video/S&M flick. Who'd have thought that there were so many, uhm, interested internet viewers for chocolate syrup and bungy sports?

I mean, as Jezebel writhed, Hershey-slicked and bungy-strapped to the rowing machine... could any reasonable person imagine that the company President would manage to glimpse the tiny little Canard logo tattood on Jezebel's ...

[TomF]

... uhm, kneecap. Yeah, that's where it was. A sweet little pirate duck, made ever sweeter by a dollop of chocolaty goodness. Then both their jobs had gone poof ... though with Jezebel's other talents, she'd managed to land on her ... (ahem)

But now that same lame pirate duck logo emblazoned the sail of the approaching ...

[Popeye]

.. boat ..

[huisjen]

..., closely followed by a...

[TomF]

'nother boat and ...

[Another One]

another, with twin 20" stainless replicas of one of "Capt. Aubrey's"
prized, bronze 9 pounders displayed prominently on either side of the duckie.

[huisjen]

...and crewmen preparing to demonstrate that these were more than mere ornaments. They touched the flame to the primers just as...

[TomF]

...cousin Joe prepared his camera-phone to preserve the moment. The flash of the muzzle blast was only ...

[Joe Dupere]

a millisecond before Ahab let loose with another one of his prodigious potted meat and sardine farts.
The resulting explosion when the flames of the nine pounder met Ahab's malodorous gaseous emissions seemed like mushroom clouds over the Potomac. The Department of Homeland Security immediately.....

[Another One]

arranged for someone to show up in a flight suit to lift moral, and issued a statement decrying Ahab's tactical errors . . .