9:27pm: Conference Realignment
[PILGRIM putts out at the 4th hole and waves his compadres over.]
PILGRIM: Just got a wire from my manager, fellas. Seems while he was busy bustin' out the css code for some kinda dumb-ass embossed image of me at the top of the hill there was all kindsa sh_t bustin' loose at the League office.
BARNES: League?
PILGRIM: Yes, Barnes, our Touch Football League, we play every weekend.
SLICE: Guess you missed your game this week, being here with us in Paradise, I mean?
PILGRIM: That's just it, we have a bye this weekend.
BARNES: Bye?
SLICE: Bye?
PILGRIM: Are you guys leaving?
BARNES: What's a bye?
PILGRIM: A bye, Barnes, is a week when we don't have a game scheduled--a week off.
BARNES: Well, you couldn't have played anyway, you're over here this week.
PILGRIM: Just so. But my manager is fiddling with his idiotic weblog while Rome's burning.
BARNES: Rome's?
SLICE: Yes, Barnes, I read about him, a smugass sports journalist whose confusion between quarterback and tight end once got him bounced off the stage quite unceremoniously.
BARNES: I didn't see that?
SLICE: Well, but you are blind, Barnes.
PILGRIM: Yes, but what I am talking about is that the League is holding a special session to iron out a proposed realignment.
SLICE: Realignment? Of the whoke league? Will that affect your team, Pilgrim?
PILGRIM: No way of telling; our division is the Northeast Conference. The division with all the unrest is in the Mideast Conference. I just got word the taco wars have begun, and one team has taken the other head coach hostage.
BARNES: Hostage?
SLICE: Well, they really just isolated him in the locker room so his team cannot prepare for the contest, but I don't see as they had much choice. This other team's fans were out there throwing $1 tacos at everybody.
BARNES: Well, but you can't blame him for the actions of his fans, can you, Pilgrim?
PILGRIM: Maybe not, Barnes, but there is a general concensus he could have done much more to stop the unnecessary salsa-shed. He never even denounced it.
SLICE: The fans must look to their head coaches for guidance.
PILGRIM: Just so. Plus they used up all the tacos and beer, now we'll have to eat cake.
BARNES: Oh, I hate when that happens.
SLICE: I have never known it to stop you, Barnes, from partaking.
PILGRIM: You mean between that and nothing...
SLICE: Yes Pilgrim, he certainly takes the cake.
PILGRIM: Ouch.
BARNES: Tell me, Pilgrim, why so much animosity between these teams?
PILGRIM: Well, no one really knows anymore, Barnes, it started so long ago. All we really know about it is that lace up their left cleats first, then their right, and the other teams lace up their right cleats first, and then the left.
SLICE: THAT is the basis of their discord?
PILGRIM: Well, I guess there's more to it than that, but not a whole lot more, they're just different than the other guys, and they have different beliefs.
SLICE: You would think it would take a lot more than that to cause this kind of of rancor and turbulence within the division?
PILGRIM: Oh no, it doesn't hardly take a sneeze before these guys will be throwing tacos across the locker rooms. Shame, too; they're always so busy fighting they no longer enjoy the game; it's not a playing field anymore, it's a battlefield.
BARNES: Well, it sounds like you did the right thing getting out of that place and joining us over here on your short sabbatical.
PILGRIM: Yes, it's been a nice little break from the rigors of reality.
SLICE: And too, with any luck they will resolve this thing before too long.
PILGRIM: Well, even if they do, it won't make any difference; baseball season opens on Monday...

-CURTAIN-