Topic #1
Sometimes when it’s quiet I can still hear the monkeys. They’re calling to me… uh-uh-oooog! Uh-uh-oooog! Of course, they seem to think my name’s Hearty Beef and Potato Goodsoup and they’re telling me I owe them five pieces of eight from the poker game last May, but that’s not the point.
I washed up on the beach of Mêlée Island about three years ago, with not a thing to my name ‘cept the shirt on my back, rather expansive pants-pockets and the knowledge that one day, one day soon, I’d be a mighty pirate. I’ve swashed and I’ve buckled, I’ve turned my fiancée to gold, kidnapped a piano-playing monkey, hocked an award-winning loogie… And here I am, three years later, a Mighty Pirate!
It’s a long way from where I started out, let me tell you. I was supposed to be a lawyer or a cheese-merchant or an ostrich farmer… okay, maybe not an ostrich farmer, but y’know, I knew what I wanted to do with my life and I didn’t care what anyone thought. I chased the dream and now look at me! Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate, fearsome buccaneer, terrifying corsair and henpecked househusband of the Caribbean! I’ve thwarted the dreaded Demon Pirate Lechuck on four separate occasions, discovered the Secret of Monkey Island tm and lived to tell the tale! repeatedly.
Okay, so I’m currently sans boat and crew since my crew mutinied and stranded me on an island inhabited by vegetarian ex-cannibals… what do you expect of a crew made up of three quarters of a barbershop quartet?, but I’m sure you haven’t heard the last of Guybrush Threepwood, scourge of the Seven Seas!
Anyway, life’s what you make it. What does predetermination matter in the face of a cutlass and a good mug o’grog?