Publisher: 100 Word Stories
Weekly Challenge: 178
Topic: Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Submitted: September 14, 2009
Published: September 19, 2009
Participants: 14 total
Recommended Topic: I ate what?
A ship over the helm bin spyed flying the queens flag.
The cap’n bin orderin I an’ me harties to board the ship.
I bin plunderin the seven seas all me life.
Never did I see a dog be small fer the number o sharp-tongued wenches aboard.
A boxom wench twice shivered me timbers before days end.
Harr, the treasures bin good to me and me mates. Me harties bin looting the cargo of sugar and spices.
Jim Lad pried one open. “Arrr.” A large chest with no booty.
Tis no one wanted fer tem selves but the capn’s squire.
About the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge
About the 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge
100 Word Stories
…And, as always, keep it brief!
The 100 Word Stories Weekly Challenge was (and still is) hosted by Laurence Simon—better known in Second Life as Crap Mariner—who built a wonderfully strange, tight-knit community around storytelling discipline.
Originally, he started a daily random theme on ScriberOptics via 100words on May 13, 2005, based on a photo, using a combination of everyone’s submitted words rather than posting a single topic. He would write short 100-word stories featuring recurring characters, such as Abraham Lincoln and the Mustard Man.
In June 2005, he then spun the stories into their own subdomain from his personal blog at podcasting.isfullofcrap.com, featuring multiple authors and guest entries. Rather than daily challenges, he settled for weekly challenges, which were due on April 21, 2006, for the topic “Bunnies!” It was published on April 22, 2006. He continued each week posting a topic and invited people to write a story of 100 or [sic]Less Nessman 2.0 words long. Most participants went for exactly 100. It was a form of microfiction—a subset of flash fiction—where the limitation wasn’t restrictive but creatively freeing. Within those 100 words, stories could be funny, heartfelt, surreal, absurd, reflective, or unexpectedly powerful.
Laurence encouraged contributors not just to write but to perform. He always invited people to record themselves reading their stories and send in the audio so their voices could be part of the experience. If someone didn’t—or couldn’t—he gladly read their story for them. Sometimes he even used software to alter his voice, adding character variety, humor, or dramatic flair, so every episode felt like a small production rather than just a reading.
The project chose to respond to the creative emptiness of podcasts at the time not with cynicism, but with creativity. Laurence filled the internet with humor, storytelling, discipline, and imagination. Eventually, the project continued under his broader creative umbrella, “One A Day Until I Die,” where he continues to celebrate the joy of storytelling in all its weird and wonderful forms.
Episodes usually feature everyone’s submissions together in one podcast, and listeners vote on their favorites. The weekly winner not only gets bragging rights but also the honor of choosing the next topic—meaning the community itself shaped what came next. Many participants came from overlapping creative spaces: writers, musicians, podcasters, and especially people in Second Life, where the challenge became something of a shared cultural experience. It wasn’t just a writing exercise; it was friendship, collaboration, creative play, and a small but meaningful part of internet history.
I even had the chance to meet Laurence once at the Second Life Community Convention, where he was handing out refrigerator magnets promoting the podcast — including one I still have today on my fridge. It’s a little artifact from a wonderfully weird, wonderfully human creative era.
This project mattered. It still does.
Paper/Wood Floor Theme from an old version of 100 Word Stories Circa 2009
This story came from Weekly Challenge #178: “Talk Like A Pirate Day!” Published on September 19, 2009, it was one of those challenges that didn’t just ask you to write—it practically dared you to perform. I submitted my entry a few days earlier, at 4:09 a.m. on September 14, already owning the chaos. I even warned in my email that the spelling and grammar were terrible… but honestly, that was part of the charm.
At the time, I had to do a bit of homework trying to learn how to talk like a pirate. I just finished playing through The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition on my Xbox 360. I hadn’t played it since the EGA version on my IBM PS/1 back in the early ’90s, and often daydreamed about playing the VGA version. I remembered the silly stump joke in the original game and wondered about the forest in the special edition, hunting for it. I gave up, and later found they had removed it from later versions of the game. I still remember calling tech support for those missing floppies in the catacombs. However, I did get disk 5 for the Roland MT-32 sound drivers. (I didn’t have a Roland MT-32)
in Second Life for
International
Talk Like A Pirate Day
For this challenge, I didn’t just write the story—I became the pirate. I believe I recorded the piece in Screaming Bee’s MorphVOX Pro to change my voice, leaning fully into the growling accent and the theatrical “Arrr!” energy. I ran it through Microsoft Songsmith to help set the mood, and finished it in Audacity. Once the performance felt right, I exported it to MP3 using LAME, back when encoding your own files felt like wizardry rather than a background feature.
Long Play
Stump Joke
Like many of Laurence’s challenges, this one reminded me how joyful constraints can be. Exactly 100 words. A ridiculous theme. A license to be theatrical. Instead of limiting creativity, it opened it up. Sometimes the most meaningful creative moments come from being willing to laugh, play, and lean into absurdity.
