i like things that are measured in dollops

Gather round children, and hear tell of the tale of Captain Ignatz the Rude, the fierce hot air balloon pirate who was the "scourge of the skies" in 19th century Europe.

the year was 1804, napolean was looking for alternate means of supply routes, and decided to test the feasability of the nascent technology of hot air balloons. with its success, soon everyone was lemming up and hot air balloons were as common as a fat drunk shirtless guy at a NASCAR event.

one man, known now only as Ignatz the Rude, operated outside of social norms. Some say he was french, some say he was portugeuse or that he came from bavaria, no one is completey sure. Ignatz grew up, not in a poor family with a hard life, as these stories seem to always go, but in a middle class family with pretty much an uninteresting life. His father worked at a button factory, making buttons, and his mother ran a small bakery where she sold her wonderful homeade jellybean pizzas (pepperoni pizza with red, pink and orange jellybeans, that, when baked, melt into little puddles of sweetness and mix with the spicy pepperoni grease for a taste sensation that is out of this world). Ignatz was intelligent, and bored, and we now know he turned to a life of crime on the high skies merely for something to do.

Ignatz became famous when he pulled off "the great hot air baloon robbery of 1805." to thawrt brigands and highway robbers, france was using hot air balloon trains to transport gold and money, and one sunny day during a routine gold run, ignatz and his pirate crew floated out of seemingly no where, boarded the hot air balloons filled with gold, and took every bar, floating away before the french bankers, mouths filled with brie and baguettes, could do anything about it. amazed at the ease of this crime, ignatz tried agan three days later, when, while floating over what is now lichtenstien, he boarded a dutch hot air balloon, conscripted those who were willing and dumped the rest out, and added another balloon and booty to his hot air balloon pirate fleet.

flush with his success, ignatz went on harrasing hot air balloon traffic, often mocking the pilots as he robbed them blind, earning the notorius moniker "ignatz the rude." although their were some who tried to capture ignatz to make the skies safe and capture the large reward put on his head, ignatz was too cunning, to quick, too much like the wind and never was caught, making him the most successful hot air balloon pirate. ever.

the life of a hot air balloonist is a lonely, harsh one. spending months and years in the sky with no soft touch, wet lips, warm embrace, or flowered smell of a woman, the lonliness of the sky takes it toll on a man, and not many men can bear that hardship for so long. also working against ignatz was time and man's nature itself. soon, modern technological advancments that were bound to happen sooner or later came into play. the age of the horseless carriage and the steam engine blew in like the east wind, and hot air balloons fell by the wayside.

and Captain Ignatz the Rude, the worlds most daring and celebrated hot air balloon pirate, floated off into obscurity, like the clouds he made his life amongst.