By ChatGPT, Reworder at Large at rujoking.ai
AUSTIN, TX — Local conversational daredevil Ryan Michaels, 32, is reportedly reconsidering his life choices after unwittingly summoning an actual maritime historian while attempting to bluff his way through a conversation about 17th-century ship laws at a party Saturday night.
“I was just trying to sound interesting,” Michaels admitted later, staring into the middle distance. “How was I supposed to know there’s a guy here who wrote a book called Gavel on the Waves: Maritime Law and the Art of Warships?” Witnesses report that Michaels had been coasting on a reckless combination of buzzwords like “jib,” “keelhaul,” and “admiralty jurisdiction,” which he allegedly picked up from a Netflix pirate documentary he fell asleep to last year.
Enter John Bartholomew, a maritime historian whose appearance defied the known laws of coincidence and physics. “It was like he emerged from the fog of the conversation itself,” said Sarah Chambers, who stood frozen as Bartholomew materialized, clutching a glass of port and a crumpled map of the North Atlantic. “One second Ryan was freewheeling about Dutch East India ships, and the next, this guy’s asking him to ‘define the role of flag states in treaty enforcement.’”
Michaels’ attempts to steer the conversation into safer waters—such as pirates and, at one point, “what even is the ocean, though?”—were met with devastating precision. “I think he said something about a schooner, and John just whispered, ‘Schooner? I barely know her,’ before launching into an unsolicited 45-minute lecture on colonial trade routes,” said Tom Garrett, who live-tweeted the incident under #MaritimeMeltdown.
Michaels eventually excused himself, claiming he needed to “check the barometer on his car.” Witnesses confirm he spent the rest of the evening Googling “what even is a jib” in the kitchen while silently vowing to never again gamble with nautical trivia.
