Midnight: Why Did The Chicken Cross The Lobster, Barnes?
YES, BARNES!
At the top of a hill on the 9th fairway, Pilgrim and Idiot are preparing to launch their second shots.
IDIOT: No birthdays today? No landmark dates? What gives?
PILGRIM: Nah, you know what, there's so many landmark anniversaries today it would be impossible to choose from among them. Besides, they all involve war or terrorism and bloodshed, very depressing stuff according to me.
IDIOT: True that, Pilgrim; true that. Er, which ones are they, just for the record you know?
PILGRIM: Well, for starters, there's the shot heard 'round the world.
IDIOT: Oh, yeah? Bobby Thompson hit that home run off Ralph Branca on this date?
PILGRIM: Not that shot, you Idiot, the original shot, the one in Lexington, Massachusetts that started the Revolutionary War.
IDIOT: Hmm, are those guys in the Hall of Fame, too?
PILGRIM: Not exactly, but neither are the other two. Anyway, there's also the first blood drawn in the Civil War, that happened on this date in 1861. And the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943. You want more?
IDIOT: Go ahead, I'm taking notes.
PILGRIM: Waco Texas, the Branch Davidian inferno in 1993, not to mention the sequel, the Oklahoma City Federal Building in '95, the date chosen because of the Waco debacle.
IDIOT: Jesus!
PILGRIM: Nope, Easter Sunday was March, but he didn't get any better treatment if you have to know. Let's just shoot.
IDIOT: Shoot! Wait a minute, I didn't join that cult?
PILGRIM: Poor choice of words, the frisbees, Barnes, the discs.
IDIOT: Oh, the discs! (I knew that.)
Slice and Barnes approach from the clubhouse, Slice with a telescope and Barnes carrying live lobsters in both hands.
SLICE: Pilgrim, Pilgrim, the planets are aligning, we must have a look?
BARNES: The clubhouse is eighty-six lobsters, but I got us some replacements.
PILGRIM: Wait a sec, you don't look so blind to me, here, Barnes.
BARNES: No, not when the planets are aligned. Which way to the kitchen, I need to get these bad boys into a pot.
IDIOT: They look a little green around the gills there, Barnes. Where'd you get those.
SLICE: He dug them up in the water hazard at the 17th hole. (Plus about a dozen runaway discs.)
PILGRIM: Didn't find a yellow Cobra in there, did you, Barnes?
IDIOT: What's all this about the planets being aligned?
SLICE: Oh, that, well every so often this happens; the five naked-eye planets are converging in one part of the sky, so we can see them all.
BARNES: Naked-eye planets? Should I be concerned with this?
IDIOT: If I were you I'd be more worried about the swamp-water you pulled those cockroaches with claws out of; your shots up to date there, partner?
BARNES: Nonsense, I turn a blind eye to all such idle speculation.
SLICE: Ouch!
PILGRIM: Step off, Barnes, I'm shooting here.
BARNES: All right, just point me toward a pot.
IDIOT: I haven't got a pot to piss in.
BARNES: That'll do just fine. Now, how many for everyone?
PILGRIM: (throwing his disc toward the pin) Fore!
BARNES: Okay, that's four for him. Yo, Slice, how many you want?
SLICE: Five of them, just think, all in a row.
BARNES: Jesus, that already makes nine.
PILGRIM: Wrong month, March.
BARNES: I'm going, I'm going, I gotta get more anyway. You Idiot, toss these into that pot of your, would you? I'll be back...
IDIOT: Jesus...
PILGRIM: Wrong month--
IDIOT: I know, I know, March.
BARNES: I said I'm going, what do you want from a blind sheep?
SLICE: Just another day in Paradise.
-CURTAIN-
AND IN A RELATED STORY...
Special to the AP(PP) [A Pilgrim in Paradise Press]:
PARADISE, Apr 19 - Pilgrim held a brief news conference today to announce that if the Chinese do not re-launch their Space Kettle, he will book passage home on Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki raft, now that Heyerdahl has moved on.
"Hey, I don't want to step on anyone's sandals," Pilgrim was quoted as saying, "but Thor's gone off to explore the great unknown and we might as well get some use out of this thing. If it still floats."
No word yet on whether Pilgrim's theory will hold water.
"And you can tell those 2 Idiots In A Boat," Pilgrim added, "that this is the way to do it."
No word yet from 2 Idiots In A Boat, who are reportedly seeking offshore diaper delivery services to accomodate Idiot #2's new avocation (see A NEW PILGRIM IN PARADISE). Idiot #1 agrees with Gillian that there are no offshore laundry services, and says he's "washing his hands" of the whole affair.
And from the Pot Calling The Kettle Black Department, Pilgrim's frisbee-golf partner Idiot was quoted as saying: "Those two are bigger idiots than I thought."
(Thor Heyerdahl died in Italy yesterday at the age of 87. The Norwegian anthropologist and adventurer whose imagination and vigor brought him acclaim navigating the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans to advance his controversial theories of ancient seafaring migrations, was 87. In 1947 he and five others crossed a broad stretch of the Pacific in the balsa-log raft Kon-Tiki, seeking to prove that the Polynesian islands could have been settled by prehistoric South American people.)
Posted by cronish at April 19, 2002 01:00 AM