A Pirates Tale

by | Jun 21, 2021 | Fiction | 150 comments

Tales from the Belt

Chinee will buy from anyone

Dis Cat has always escaped us, but not this time, we got good intel from CCP, so we’s tracked ‘im slow and far back, so as not to leave a bloody wake. It took 6 months! Why so slow?, let’s on wi it. 

Da Peoples call us outlaws and pirates, but we don hurt no ones, just take stuff, come from a long line, we were drifted by the Amazon some centuries ago, and have drifted every since. There’s no mercy or pity for we pirates, we are called the rats of the Belt, vermin ta be slaughtered, so we try not to get caught, inna pretty ta come under da gaze of de MS ya know.

We have na world to call are own so we carve out the various rocks that we find, air them up, and make nice birthing places for our Women. We take a spell for the wee ones to get their spacelegs, then we are off! Searching for a bounty, and all the riches of Araby.

We raided some 1.2m ships over the centuries, mostly Amazon exiles and fresh Indies, but then they founded the Guild, and twas gameon! Now we was outgunned and outnumbered, we needed a friend. So we looked aboot and decided to work with CCP, da big bois! Intel, firepower and money, dey give it to us, den dey buy all our booty at market price, a win for us, so we thought…

 Now it’s time to accelerate, swing out and past da Cat, come in hot and bag his catch before he sees us. We ha a Tirty six ‘our window to grab an bolt, we can run high G pretty good, as long as the bag holds, otherwise we splatter a couple o billion tons all over the belt, then the CCP will have questions…

 Spotted? Say not, now we need to run at high g and lose da scent or this is a wasted year, canna ha that, so we run, make a high speed parabol, grab what we can, 12 ‘ours tops, we is hopin’

About The Author

Yusef drives a Kia

Yusef drives a Kia

Punctually illiterate But never late

150 Comments

  1. westernsloper

    So we looked aboot ……..

    Ok, a clue has been dropped. This space story is about space Canadians.

    • blackjack

      They do seem like mostly polite pirates…

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Scottish JamaiCanadians….

    • rhywun

      That’s all the universe needs, is Space Trudeau lecturing everybody.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        don’t worry, it’s a very Diverse story as it’s turning out,

      • rhywun

        Homeboys in Outer Space?

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Prescient, very, esay…

      • Fourscore

        OMG, Yusef has been captured by the Yoopers, he’s gonna need some serious de-programming

  2. Brochettaward

    I have to go back in time to First. It’s the only hope.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      There is no hope, give in to the Dark side, we have better beer,

    • kinnath

      Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation’s most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate.

      Gimme a C

      Gimme an H

      Gimme a U

      Gimme an M

      Gimme a P

      What does that spell?

      CHUMP!

      • Chipping Pioneer

        California Housing Unpaid Makeup Program

      • blackjack

        Fucking bastards! I’ve paid about 45k in rent through the “pandemic.” No wonder my landlord keeps thanking me. He better never make a move to raise my rent again.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        This reminds me to get 2023 locked in before inflation gets too crazy.

      • blackjack

        I have the chump effect, real bad.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Nah you paid…you will be rewarded with the increased rent since you have shown to be reliable and pay and that is cash in their bank for their property that isn’t dependant on whenever Cali gets around to cutting those ‘free’ rent payments.

    • Suthenboy

      Is there also a moratorium on property taxes?

      • Chipping Pioneer

        Ahhaahhhhaaaaahhhhhaaaaaahhhhaaa…

        *gasp*
        .

        Ahhaahhhhaaaaahhhhhaaaaaahhhhaaa

      • hayeksplosives

        Dude, rich fat cat homeowners like you have to pay their fair share.

      • hayeksplosives

        Brown privilege?

      • Mojeaux

        A judicious application of gasoline and a stray cigarette butt would take care of it.

  3. Chipping Pioneer

    Yusef go peepee in your Coke.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      I don’t drink Coke, Wut?

      • Chipping Pioneer

        I wouldn’t either if I had gone peepee in it.

  4. rhywun

    LOL I just saw a commercial (for the 2nd time tonight) about a new credit card for trannies. Because it’s illegal to change your legal name or something.

    • Chipping Pioneer

      Can we even say MasterCard now?

      • rhywun

        Apparently yes, because tranny card is indeed a MasterCard. ?

      • zwak

        Huh, I would have thought it was a Discovery?

      • BakedPenguin

        Good point (or not)

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      I’m laughing at the Lilly (not Eli Lilly anymore because God forbid you’re named after a decidedly not woke white guy) running commercials talking about “the body you’re randomly assigned at birth ” while showing a chick with mastectomy scars.

      • rhywun

        I haven’t seen that one.

        I noted the other day how every other commercial is some woke BS.

        I think it’s already up to two out of every three commercials now. I’m looking at you, Lexus.

      • rhywun

        Sorry, I tapped out after five seconds.

        So. Fucking. Tiresome.

      • Fourscore

        Every commercial has a bi-racial couple, little did I know I was woke many, many years ago.

      • hayeksplosives

        Nuh-uh. You weren’t woke because you thought race didn’t matter.

        The Wokesters are here to tell you that is a decidedly racist point of view.

    • hayeksplosives

      I get why Marxists in this country want to destroy this country’s culture and the underpinnings of our society, but why are so many business leaders, who depend on a functioning civilization in order to earn their living, going along with it, or even helping accelerate its destruction?

      • Gustave Lytton

        Because most of them are fucking idiots who are middle managers that got promoted. Few actually build a business, started at the ground floor sweeping up, or even give a shit about the business they’re in or the company itself except mouthing the empty platitudes. They could be selling widgets to eskimos and it would matter as much as manufacturing farm equipment or operating an insurance business.

      • Gustave Lytton

        And they’re either being advised by woketarians, they’ve been indoctrinated culturally and educationally by them, or they are kool aid drinkers themselves. And whether it’s from true belief or being told that’s what they need to do to sell widgets today, or not get destroyed, the result is the same. How did children take over the country during the Cultural Revolution?

      • grrizzly

        Mao was sidelined by the Politburo (Deng Xiaoping and co.) after the failure of his most recent campaign (the Great Leap Forward). He had to go around to regain his power.

      • Ownbestenemy

        Those business leaders believe they will be spared last

  5. DEG

    Working for the CCP? I don’t know.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      You will, oh yes,

    • C. Anacreon

      Want you to sign your contract
      Want you to sign today
      Gonna give you lots of money
      Workin’ For CCP!

      /Lynyrd Skynyrd

    • trshmnstr the terrible

      20b?

      Without looking, I’d say that short by at least half.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        NASA’s inspector general said Wednesday that it estimates the Artemis program — as laid out by the Trump administration — will cost nearly $86 billion from fiscal year 2012 through fiscal year 2025. The inspector general’s office said about $35 billion of that cost has already been spent over the last eight years, but the bulk of the funding required for the program — more than $50 billion — will need to be budgeted over the next five years.

        Oops, I was short by half

      • rhywun

        Fuck. Imagine how much free rent you could fund with that kind of scratch.

      • trshmnstr the terrible

        Every man, woman, and child in this country will pay* $250 to build these things.

        * not really, about 1/4 of the people will pay over a grand each on average, and the other 3/4 will get to watch fedgov burn their neighbors’ cash in spectacular fashion.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Think about how many launches Elon could do for the Gov for that kind of money

      • hayeksplosives

        My thoughts exactly, Yu.

        And the SpaceX ones will work.

  6. Sensei

    Thanks Yusef.

    I’ll drop this here from my random YouTube feed. I haven’t seen this in something like 30 years.

    What’s amazing is that it was upsampled from 480p to 4K and somebody did quite the audio remaster as well. Not sure where the audio came from. Notes at the end just mention the remastering.

    https://youtu.be/Y0pYGmfhaGc

    I seem to recall this music video being the most expensive thing of its type by an order of magnitude at the time.

      • Sensei

        Love that one too. Don’t think I’ve ever seen the music video. It’s a good homage.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        Love those guys, good call thanks!

    • kinnath

      Michael Jackson got a patent for the invention that lets them do that “lean” in the middle of the video.

      There is a peg in the floor that fits into a slot on the heel of one of the shoes. The dancer click the peg into the slot, and then the dancer can lean way over without any wires.

      to the best of my recollection.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Speaking of random YouTube, it has now served up commercials in Japanese. Granted it’s US HHS’ covid ones but I’m getting the algorithm trained!

      • Sensei

        I run an ad blocker. But part of the reason I sign into YouTube is for it to find me Japanese stuff.

        Glib links usually get opened incognito.

        That Aomoriben channel I sent earlier had one more dialect link. Conversation with her grandmother. Roughly the same info, but applied to an actual phone call.

        She translated it to standard Japanese, but not English. It was really cute. Grandma kept asking her about getting a boyfriend and get married. She’s adorable, mottainai!

      • Trigger Hippie

        ‘I’m getting the algorithm trained!’

        I’ve given up on training YT’s algorithm. I swear, a quarter of the videos I reject are sponsored content (No, I don’t give two flying fucks about Marvel’s Loki) and another quarter are subjects I’ve rejected hundreds of times over, to no avail. Anything and everything regarding current politics, religious debates, military tech, video game reviews, jerkoffs “reacting” to shit, ect, ect, I’ve said no thanks to but those asshats keep piling it on.

      • Sensei

        Any video with “reacting” in the title is an absolute no watch from me.

      • Trigger Hippie

        A few years ago I watched a few black dudes react to some Tool songs and YT has never let me forget that shit…

        Deleted my history, my left testicle.

    • Q Continuum

      21 has been in a few galleries and she never gets old.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      There are a few women in there, the rest are kids,

    • DEG

      #5 is GlibFit.

      #35 looks crazy.

      • Chafed

        18 is GlibFit

    • straffinrun

      Used to tend bar at The Pec and also at Lodo’s back when Coors Field opened. Before it opened, lower downtown was a dump and looks like it’s reverting back to what it was. Sad.

  7. Trigger Hippie

    So,..Subaru recently released a commercial featuring a three legged dog, a family, and a scene involving an animal shelter depicting row after row of domesticated pets in cages.

    *paging SF*

    …God help us all.

    • rhywun

      Eek.

      I’m still waiting for him to do the one with the pajama boy and “It’s a cat. His name is Whiskers.”

      • Trigger Hippie

        Is that the groomsman and maid of honor picking up a cat before a wedding commercial?

      • Suthenboy

        Feels is what makes a Subaru.

      • Trigger Hippie

        No, no. A Lovecraft loving librarian makes a Subaru.

        😉

      • rhywun

        Yes. The dialog is so hilariously bad I think it must be intentional.

      • Trigger Hippie

        To be honest, the volume on my TV is usually set pretty low. Background noise while I focus on other things, most often. I missed the dialogue on that one.

  8. Q Continuum

    $300 bucks for a S&W SD40VE.

    Worth it?

    • Fourscore

      ” A SD40VE pistol is currently worth an average price of $351.64 new and $303.87 used . The 12 month average price is $361.29 new and $318.09 used”.

    • Suthenboy

      I am torn. I don’t think I want a plastic 2×4…but…but….14 rounds of 9mm for 300 bucks? How reliable is this thing?

      • Sean

        Very, but the trigger sucks.

        Sold mine, a looong time ago.

    • blackjack

      I can’t tell you nothing. All of our prices are artificially high in Cali because of the “roster” bullshit. It probably goes for 500 here. Or more.

    • EvilSheldon

      They won’t win any prizes for style or trigger quality, but they run. $300 for a new one ain’t bad.

  9. straffinrun

    Space Pidgin?

    • hayeksplosives

      The pirate ship Whydah included a few free Black Jamaican pirates on her crew.

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • Q Continuum

      Shoulda jerked it before she came over.

    • Suthenboy

      When you have 10,000 acres of cypress that spends most of the year under 12- 24 inches underwater a wide, flat bottomed boat comes in handy. Those giggling idiots have no idea.

      • straffinrun

        They are laughing because “Get him a pirogue” sounds like “perverted hero” in Japanese.

      • Not Adahn

        I thought it was spelled “pierogi.”

  10. hayeksplosives

    Nice set-up, Yusef.

    Filling in the pieces, one by one…

  11. hayeksplosives

    Pardon me if this has been covered, but WTF?

    Biden’s free cash bonanza continues as president unveils 80% hike to child tax credits that will see parents on salaries of up to $112,500 a year given as much as $3,600 this year to help raise each of their kids

    For the love of Pete, why should people receive $300 per month for child at ANY income level?

    I am getting sick of things like this being called “Biden’s cash bonanza” or “Biden’s aid package.” The money isn’t coming from his pocket.

    It’s coming from people who’ve already raised their own kids or who didn’t have kids.

    What the fuck are they trying to accomplish with this move? Erections have consequences.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9710761/President-Biden-unveils-80-hike-child-tax-credits-parents-given-3600-year.html

    • slumbrew

      They figure they’ll buy votes with money they just print. They’re just willing MMT to be true and/or they figure someone else will be holding the bag when it comes crashing down.

      • Ozymandias

        This^^^^

      • Chafed

        So much this. Biden may run out of luck though. Even our dovish Federal Reserve is moving up the date they raise rates. I’m willing to bet they need to do it in 2022. This is just a guess but I have the sense they printed so much money, and are so unwilling to take it out of circulation, that rates are going up faster and higher than they expect.

    • Akira

      Erections have consequences.

      Just ask Jeffrey Toobin!

      • Chafed

        A long vacation followed by getting your cushy job back?

      • Akira

        Quite true.

        Hmm, I could use a break form work… Maybe I should jack off on my next Zoom call and see if I get so lucky.

      • Chafed

        Now you’re getting it.

    • Ownbestenemy

      Like Chafed’s speculation on Newsom spending ‘surplus’ so to skirt Cali law of refunding the people, it’s open season to get what you can get in the US treasury. I seriously am believing we are seeing the wholesale looting of American wealth at scales unseen before.

  12. grrizzly

    I should probably travel to Florida–again–instead of Greece this year. Indoor dining has been allowed for the last 12 months without interruption — in Massachusetts. Out of 30 Uber/Lyft rides in the last 12 months I was asked to put on a mask once (one time).

    Once we got into Greece, the situation on the ground was blessedly normal. No indoor dining, but plentiful outdoor seating. Masking was still required outdoors at tourist sites like the Acropolis and was expected at religious sites. Before boarding some ferries, we had to fill out additional health screening forms, though they didn’t ask for additional proof of vaccination (and they would have been easy to lie on). Police are apparently somewhat strict about enforcing mask wearing in cars with multiple passengers in them, so after dining and smoking and drinking with a new friend and his wife, in close proximity for many hours, we donned our masks in his car as he drove us back to the train station.

    • Chafed

      Newsom is looking for ways to spend our cash. I’m not kidding. We had a budget surplus instead of a deficit. Now the feds are throwing money at us for COVID relief. Under state law, Newsom has to give us a tax refund after the state’s rainy day fund gets a chunk of the revenue. Rampant speculation is, pretty boy is spending it rather than rebating it.

      • Gustave Lytton

        A mere rebate would go to everyone rather than picking winners and losers. Or buying a recall election.

      • Chafed

        You got it.

      • hayeksplosives

        Could he be petulant enough to punish the whole state for the 250,000 of us who signed his recall petition?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Rhetorically right? I can see him killing his own kids if it gave him a bump in his polls or an edge in the recall election.

  13. Gustave Lytton

    King Canute has nothing on the EPA

    https://www.epa.gov/farr/burn-bans-indian-reservations-id-or-and-wa#current-bans

    issued a ban on all outdoor open burning on the Warm Springs Reservation due to wildfire smoke

    But not to worry! You can’t roast marshmallows but ceremonial and religious fires are exempt. And the ban applies to the entire external boundaries of the rez, regardless of actual property ownership. So the feds use the semi federal status of the rez to enact control over non rez land. Fuck you, this is a free country. Maybe a few dozen EPA employees should be ceremonially burned at the stake to appease the smoke gods. Ancient Indian secret, huh?

    • Ownbestenemy

      I traditionally burn my fires every Thursday. EPA can go fuck itself.

  14. Yusef drives a Kia

    Morning Glibs, I hope my little stories bring a laugh or 2 to an otherwise fucked up world, until the shit house goes up, enjoy some,
    Covfefe!

    • Sean

      *waves*

    • TARDis

      *also waves*

      Covfefe to you too.

    • Gender Traitor

      Good morning, Yu, Sean, & TARDy!

    • rhywun

      Way to bury the lede. They’re cancelling more flights because they took billions of dollars in federal “aid” and pissed it away instead of keeping their pilots trained.

      Same is happening in NYC where they’re cancelling hundreds of scheduled trains a day.

      • db

        I know a few American pilots–who were originally US Airways (and its predecessors) pilots.

        The way the merger was done, there is essentially a two tiered system where the American pilots union absolutely screwed over the US Air pilots. So pilots that came to the merger from American get primacy. There was some concession to US Air pilots where like 100 bids were “protected” for their most senior pilots to have a token group in the high realms of the seniority list, but as I understand it, all other USAir pilots rank lower than American pilots when applying for bids.

        Anyway, apparently, as part of the merger, this protected group was guaranteed through 12/31/2020. But when some USAir pilots got sweet bids awarded late last year, THEIR OWN UNION filed a grievance against American for awarding the bids to USAir pilots. It went to Federal arbitration and the arbitrator decided that August 2020 was as good as December 2020. So bids that went to former USair pilots between August and January were rescinded and reawarded to American legacy pilots.

      • TARDis

        It’s funny what happens when you pay people a lot to stay home. They stay home, and then don’t want to come back to work… ever.

        But wait until inflation catches up with you.

      • Sean

        I can’t even get anyone to apply for a job.

        *sad trombone*

        I really need to hire 3-4 people before the end of this month, but I don’t see that happening.

      • TARDis

        We need 12-15 so we can start a second shift and back fill the positions for all the people who bailed with their filthy lucre.

  15. l0b0t

    Good morning everyone. On my way home from work I passed one of the worst traffic accidents I’ve ever seen. A motorcycle on Shorefront Parkway left the road, entered the median and hit a rather large, concrete plinthed, streetlight pillar. Rider was travelling fast enough that the pillar was completely sheared from the ground. Engine block/rear third of bike were in the road way; 2/3rds of bike and rider were naught but a spread of pieces across the median. I guess it happened an hour or so before I went by as the cleanup was underway. Fuck! We already have a couple ghost bicycles (one of which is a child’s and was in place when we moved here in 2011; it gets replaced every couple years as it rusts) and a candle shrine at the basketball courts. SLOW DOWN!

    • Gender Traitor

      🙁

      Good morning anyway, l0. It HAS to get better, at least for you, right?

    • db

      Yikes! I’ve never figured out why these kids on crotch rockets have such a death wish. Driving to work at 85 and some rice burner comes flying along, whipping around cars like slalom cones standing still.

      The craziest I once saw was a dude doing a wheelie at about 90 mph for at least a mile in the left lane on a 6 lane highway.

    • Gender Traitor

      Good morning, U. How are you today?

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m pissed off. Desktop support broke my browser on my work machine.

        They claim to have ‘patched’ it or ‘upgraded’ it, but it’s now unusable.

      • Gender Traitor

        I’m sorry! Those bastards! Do you have the means/knowhow to get around it, or are you going to have to chew someone a new one?

      • UnCivilServant

        I haven’t got the time to waste on it this week. I can work around the problem since I’m remote.

        And there’s no point in yelling at anyone, it won’t accomplish anything.

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        You could yell at the clouds, at least get e meme out of it,
        Mornin U and all y’allins

    • Sean

      Morning y’all

    • Not Adahn

      Steel this weekend.

      • UnCivilServant

        I’m in Ohio this weekend.

      • Sean

        Suppressor Ready

        That’s NY legal?

      • Not Adahn

        Nope, but it’s not illegal until you attach it to a lower. So you can have it shipped to the door then futz the threads.

      • Sean

        *facepalm*

  16. Tres Cool

    suh’ fam ?

    whats goody

    • Gender Traitor

      It looks as if it’s downright cool outside this morning. I may get to wear the new jacket I hardly got to wear between my winter coat and going coatless in the heat!

      • Tres Cool

        Mother Nature is a fickle bitch, aint she? The past week of high 80s and high humidity, and now its a cool, dry 55º (americanheit) here at the Palatial 2X-Wide™.
        Tres Ver. 2.0 is still keen on turning wrenches, so I think we’ll change oil in my truck today.

      • Festus

        Mid-80’s moon shot all week long. I miss that huge cottonwood that the neighbors cut down on the south side of the house.

  17. Festus

    Mornin’ glibbies! I feel for you IoB0T. There’s a doubled-up bridge that I drive over back and forth to one of my sites that seems to draw the suicides like flies. I’ve witnessed the immediate aftermath of three of them but I’m sure there are plenty more. That stuff doesn’t get reported, much. Sorry you had to see that.