The Ship With the Black Sails

Joe Frazier stared at the message in the bottle. And the inward battle began, just as it had ever since he had received his BS [Barely Stable] degree at BS [Baritone School]. At his graduation, the commencement speaker, the late lamented Molly Ivins, herself a baritone, had impressed one thing upon them: “As a baritone, you must never respond to messages in bottles. That is for tenors.”

He looked around for Chad. No tenor in sight. He knew he should just walk away, but… he was also a radical priest now, vicar in an Episcopal mission, not just a baritone in a trio. Radical priests never walk away from any message that calls for help, even if it is in a bottle.

And this was definitely a cry for help. After he had figured out all the “idk” and “wtf” and “lol” and “crs” references, it was clear that the Ms Hotdam, the ship of The Ancient Mariner Cruise Lines, on which the Periwinklians had been taking their joint vacation, had been hijacked by Somali pirates. Apparently Ms Hotdam was towed into Mogadishu and the Periwinklians were offloaded onto a pirate sailing ship.

“They should have read Coleridge before getting on a ship of The Ancient Mariner Lines,” Joe muttered. “The ancient mariner didn’t fare very well.”

The problem was that no one in The State Dept, nor in Periwinkle County’s home state of CO [not Colorado, with which it is often confused, because of the similar postal CO, but the state of COnfusion] was willing to ransom them. He knew if he could wait it out long enough, the pirates would be willing to pay to get rid of them, but in the meantime, all sorts of awful things could happen. Somali pirates were known to humiliate dogs, by dressing them up in funny costumes. Joe could not think of a worse fate for a dog, and he knew what his dog-daughter, [you may insert the joke about the dyslexic agnostic here], Clara Wembley, would do with Shingles once she leaned that tidbit of information.

Then he saw the ship with the black sails…