Carnival of Comedy on the High Seas!

Yarr! Welcome to the 13th Carnival of Comedy! (They say that number is the devil's number, but we have met the devil and found he can't hold down his grog. An amateur.) We have found great treasures - and some filthy bilge rats - in our pillaging and plundering, much of it from IMAO - the land-loving scalawags were off making their podcast! All of them have been posted below for your entertainment – some authors deserve to walk the plank, others deserve their own vessel. So stow away your yardarms and set aside your sabers (for now), and take a look at this weeks haul.



First on our list is the real booty – truly worthy of the Pirate name. May their plunder be ever rich, their wenches ever feisty and their mead ever strong.

FEARSOME PIRATES

-Buckley "Free Rum" Williams - Ode to Ted Kennedy's Liver - If ever there was a stirring ode to drunken sloth, this is it. Why, I remember after the razing of Charleston harbor when we gathered 'round the ashes of the governor's mansion and sang a shanty very much like this one. The memory of the blood and black powder still brings a tender tear to my eye, and a twitch to my trigger finger!

-Ironman "The Cannonball" - Breaking the Employee Evaluation Code - They don't call him "The Cannonball" because of his brainpower, folks. I had to decipher the broken link and track it down. However, I was rewarded with a pretty amusing list. I have been called a "treacherous sluggard who makes up for it with a quick tongue and a quicker blade," but sadly, this was not on the list.

-Professor Stephen "Black Hole" Hawking - On the Passing of 'Scotty' - Hawking is always good for a laugh, with that endearing way he scoffs at the inferiority of the commoners. I have to admit that it would probably be even funnier I was a little more familiar with Star Trek. Alas, we just got DirectTV on my schooner last week...

-Harvey "Master of Mayhem" - Time to Get My Hippy On - A true man amongst pirates, Harvey is an ill-begotten son of a shark that I would be proud to raze a settlement alongside.

-Senator "Schmenator" Walters - You say you've got a Constitution... - If you don't know much about old Supreme Court decisions, you could do a lot worse than reading this tidy compendium. Of course, you could also do a lot lot lot lot lot lot lot better, but that's besides the point. It may not be accurate historically, but it's accurate comedically, and that's what's really important. Plus, it's the online incarnaton of a bathroom stall posting. It doesn't get much better than that, folks.

-a4g "the Enigma" - Al Qaeda's Remake of 7/7 a Bomb - Nothing makes me feel better than taking a swipe at coward terrorists and Hollywood execs in one fell swoop. Except perhaps sinking an entire convoy of merchant vessels for no good reason.

-Robert "Not the Dread Pirate, the Other One" - Greenpeace - giving YOU peace of mind, 24 hours a day - It's hard to discern what is fact and fiction in this post, but it was pretty good all together. Reminds me of the time we boarded a Greenpeace vessel. Talk about a waste. All they had on board was soy milk and tofu burgers. We clubbed a few seals in their view for that, just to teach them a lesson.


CAST YOUR VOTE FOR THE GREATEST PIRATE OF THEM ALL! (EXCLUDING PIRATE XENO AND PILLAGER GRIM, AS PER THE TENETS OF THE PIRATE CODE.)

Who is the greatest of these here Pirates?
	Buckley "Free Rum" Williams
	Ironman "The Cannonball
	Professor Stephen "Black Hole" Hawking
	Harvey "Master of Mayhem"
	Senator "Schmenator" Walters
	a4g "the Enigma"
	Robert "Not the Dread Pirate, the Other One"
Free polls from Pollhost.com

All hands on deck! These mates aren’t quite vicious and terrifying enough for their own ships, but they do have some fight in them. Perhaps in the future they can start a mutiny and take command for themselves. Until then they can start scrubbing the poop deck!

Able Deckhands

-Damian "the Guillotine" - I am feeling... How do you say? Ah, yes, ennui. - I remember once meeting a French buccaneer. Had the strangest Jolly Roger I ever saw - a white skull and crossbones on a white background.

-Toxic Avenger "the Dark Capitalist" - A little too early to be thinking about AdSense... - An amusing idea that could be improved a hundredfold when the ads actually subtract money from your bank account. Pillage and plunder! Still, the fundamental genius within... Wait a second! Pirates don't say things like "fundamental" and "within"! Yo ho, me hearties, yo ho!

-Mr. Right (First Mate) - Top Secret Democrat Party Strategy Meeting - Exposed! - Nothing captures the pirate spirit more than taking a few potshots at helpless (and deserving) targets, except, perhaps, for drunken carousing. This is a quick read that tosses off some potshots at our favorite targets, and gets you in the mood for carousing.

-Michael Fitch "The Interrogator" - Can He Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time? - Busts out 20 Questions for the new SCOTUS nominee. Which, ironically, was the name of a saucy French lass I romanced in my younger, more foolish days.

-SeanS "The Ambiguous Plural" - NASA Prepares for 'Return to Flight' - I enjoy poking fun at Michael Moore's weight as much as the next guy (from a safe distance, and with a nice long rapier), but I couldn't get over one question: If we sent Michael Moore into orbit, what ramifications would the sudden loss of mass on earth's surface have for our own orbit? Troubling questions.

-Tommy "Broken Mizzenmast" - Monkey Rules - I once had a filthy, treacherous monkey of my own. Little scallywag kept pilfering pieces of eight when he thought I wasn't looking. So I nudged him overboard one day when he wasn't looking. Yarr! suspicious content

-Steve "the Pirate" the Pirate - The Jane Fonda Show - Almost as fun as ripping on Michael Moore is ripping on that wretched harpy, Jane Fonda. I don't know the music this song is set to, but it is missing some classic lines. ("Drink up me hearties, yo ho" fits in any song.)

-Dr. Phat Tony (Ship's Surgeon) - UT Helps Protect Against Ali - It's so crazy it just might work. Strapping a massive hog to your truck to ward off porkophobic would-be aggressors - after all, what could go wrong with such a straightforward plan? We did the same thing on my clipper once, only we used live Frenchmen instead of dead pigs. Minor Language

-PK - The BUBBA - I really see nothing wrong with this idea. It's practically fool-proof. Except for the part about "the influx of engineers and scientists to the North Alabama." The only way I would believe that less is if he said North Dakota.

-David "The Welsh Wretch" - PGHA: How will the Left attack Judge Roberts? - If they know what's good for them, they'll stick with the whoopie cushion. You can't beat a classic. I tried it on Blackbeard once, and you shoulda seen how red he turned. That was before the hail of profanity and bullets and bullet-like profanity.

-The "Post" Man - Top 10 Uses For the UN Building - Not bad, but could use a little salt.

-Mark "Jim" Rayner - Thag invents the sex toy (and flint knapper) - This is either a straight-faced BBC story, or the teaser for a trashy prehistoric romance novel. For real excitement, all the women need is for me to come sailing into port. They don't lock up their daughters and wives for no reason. Minor Language

-jimmyb (Ship's Accountant) - Hippy Poetry Corner - I'm a big fan of mindless violence, but someone needs to tell the Conservative UAW Guy to stay away from the stronger motor oils...and that somebody is us. Minor Language



I hate when I’m going through the booty I’ve just brought back from a good night of plundering and pillaging, and I discover that what appeared (with the aid of more than a fair bit of rum) to be a gold doubloon was actually a drowned bilge rat. Aye.

The Poop Deck

-Don "Scourge of the Kanawha" Surber - Dummies for Windows - This scurvy rogue gets points an extra point for infiltrating a newspaper. He gets another one for linking to that newspaper's competitors. He gets them taken away for not saturating this post in rum and savage mockery. Avast! Start scourging!

-Doc "Rampage" Rampage - Noober the Nice - We pirates aren't exactly known for our reading capabilities. That being said, the first paragraph had the phrases "corpulent frame" and "lead ballast" in it. I couldn't get much further without having flashbacks of the various times where I nearly drowned. In rum. So read at your own risk, especially if you have ever nearly drowned, whether in water, blood, or sweet sweet rum. It may be a real treasure, but it’s a bit more effort than we want to exert to be able to find out.

-James "Powdered Wig" Wigderson - A Few Less Nigerian Widows Smuggling Money Out - Nothing is funnier than email scams. Except everything. The last line in the post spares this scurvy dog from Davy Jones' Locker. But barely!

-The Refined Rogue, d'Elisson - The Don: A 100-Word Story - At first I thought this was a pick-up line. Which made me laugh and laugh. And then it hit me.

-Big Picture Guy - G-String - I'm no stranger to nightmares, after my years of marauding on the high seas. But this one will scar you.

-Bob "Pieces of Eight" Sterling - Deconstructing Doug Giles - A good bottle of Jamaican rum would help this guy lighten up. Two bottles would help us laugh! YARR!Plus, he says, "Oh, snap!" at one point, I swear, but I don't remember if it was before or after he took a shot at one of our heroes, Rush Limbaugh. Language

-bob "on the job" - Return for re-grooving - I'm not quite sure what "Re-grooving" means. It's either a nostalgic look at the 70s, or a painful new application of the Iron Maiden. Which, ironically, is also the name of a band from the 70s.

-"Long" John Hatch - Live 2 - Come on, what could be funnier than accumulating debt? Yarrrr.



And lastly, we have a couple of barnacle-suckers who may receive a scrap of paper with the Black Dot on it after these posts. Avast me ‘earties, there be ladies present!

Scurvy Dogs

-Mr. Satire (Ship's Cook) - Fugitive Filmmaker Roman Polanski's Film - "Vanity Affair" - Closed With A Disappointing $88,000 - I had to track down this story, too (much like I tracked down the infamous Bluebeard for 43 days after the Battle of Cape Verde). Unlike the looting of his fleet, however, I got nothing from this post. Probably because I was somewhat put-off by the fact that there are more naked women on this page than the entire haven of Tortuga. Nudity, not work safe

-Josh "the Vulgar Vandal" Cohen - 72 Virgins - I have been known to be an unfunny, ruthless master of the ship, and maybe that's why I think this guy has a few too many seamen on his poop deck, if you get my driftwood. Graphic sexual descriptions


So thar she blows, mates. After we ship out, we're turning over the Carnival to a couple of filthy landlubbers.
Week 14 - Aug. 4 - Right Wing Duck
Week 15 - Aug. 11 - Conservathink

Check the Carnival of Comedy site for more details!


Pillager Grim and Pirate Xeno were equal contributers to this post.