Schadenfreude Theatre Presents

Fear and Loathing in Lost Vagueness

Dilbert & Sullivan Productions

Dilbert & Sullivan

"It ain't over until it ain't over yet."
            --Yogi Bearly Just Begun

CopySchlepp 2005 Barsoom Tork Associates.
All Wrongs Reversed.

North Amurcan Bupkis, Reclusive Internet Dementors.

"At North Amurcan Bupkis, we never weary of torquing cyberjerques."

Hiya Barry!!

How goes it??

Were learning how to write Comic Opera now.

The Insouciant Kangaroo

Moultonic Reflections: To My Mind...

Now we are getting somewhere. Now we are examining why Rule-Based Regulation (aka "The Hammurabic Method of Social Regulation") is so dysfunctional and consumptive of time, energy, emotions, attention, and other scarce resources.

What are Rules, anyway? They are a vain attempt by Machiavellian Control Phreaks (thinly disguised as Motet Admin Agent Smith) to prevent the occurrence of carefully defined events which they dread. But you cannot outlaw Fear, because Fear, like all emotions, is a God-Given Feature of The Human Condition. If you manage to outlaw one dreadful event, another one will inevitably arise to take its place. The Amygdala will not be mocked. Its assigned job is to sift and sort through fears and dreads, threats and worries, anxieties and unpeace.

Face it, folks -- some people enjoy and delight in activities and processes which others frankly dread. For example, I dread alienation and scapegoating, and being falsely accused of a (supposedly criminal) act which I did not commit. And yet I can neither avoid that dreadful experience nor successfully outlaw (or punish) it. I have little choice but to suffer through it, every time it happens, without regard to what (or who) is at stake and about to be burned yet again.

By the way, I am amused that the phrase "These Motets" has gained prominence and currency, since I coined it. But I don't expect anyone to ask my permission to use it, or to acknowledge where it originated. The Internet is not a Just Place. It's just a cyberspace Theater of the Absurd.

Plot Outline - "Fear and Loathing in Lost Vagueness"

Some rough Knuckle-Dragging Beasts are slouching their way toward Bedlam when they encounter a North Amurcan Pie Man with Seven Lives.

The North Amurcan Pie Man is really The Big Bamboozler in disguise.

He tries to fool the Knuckle-Draggers.

Some Rough Knuckle-Dragging Beast
Slouching Toward Bedlam

"Are we there, Yeats?" asks one of the Knuckle Draggers.

There ensues a zany dialogue with the North Amurcan Pie Man (and a coupla other passers-by on the Road to Unmascus), culminating in a musical number, Slouching to the Darker Side.

Eventually the Knuckle-Draggers take their leave of the North Amurcan Pie Man, singing "Buh Bye, North Amurcan Pie."

A little further down the road, the Knuckle-Draggers come to a quaint little village called Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, where they meet a tomboy named Claude Dorsel who is dressed up to impersonate a Brazilian Generalissimo. There ensues a zany dialogue with the inhabitants of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois (who try to convince the Knuckle-Draggers that there is no such place and that they are really strolling down Philosopher's Walk enroute to Diana Sweets).

Eventually the Knuckle-Draggers make it to Diana Sweets and stop for dinner, where they sing "Clods in the Café."

It's a little bit like Sondheim's Into the Woods where our intrepid schleppers encounter one odd duck after another, with copious cross references and literary allusions.

In other words, it's a weird character-driven musical psychodrama.

Incidentally, the closing scene, reminiscent of the Balloon in the Wizard of Oz will employ the Four Quadrant Time Machine.

Our intrepid Knuckle-Dragging Hero-Goats trek on down the line, enroute to Bedlam along the low road to Unmascus.

They come to a small cliquish crowd discussing mental illness, such as Schizophrenia, Schizo-Affective Disorder, Mood Disorders, and General Pheelings of Phunkiness.

Amongst the crowd is a Ridiculous Rabbi, bearing an incredulous message of hope and salvation. The cranky clique are having none of it.

One of them, a masqued man named Reynaldolt, barges into the brouhaha and kiboshes the Ridiculous Rabbi.

At that point, Recyclops turns up, screaming, "Reynaldolt delenda zetz!

No one knows what the hell that means because the foreign language grammar police studiously ignore it.

Fade to flashback. The scene is a dull midwestern town in southern Indiana. The camera zooms in on a kid sucking down a Dr. Pepper as he thumbs the pages of his favorite comic book...

Once upon a time there was a prelaw student named Roger Bupkis.

He began his career as a Parole Officer working with incorrigible adolescent youth gangs in the roughest part of town where immigrants from foreign lands settled into squalid tenement apartments and grew up in abject poverty.

After a few years trying to shepherd the wayward juvenile delinquents, Officer Bupkis decided to go back to law school to advance his career and get out of the Fuquing Ghetto.

Eventually Bupkis landed a job as an assistant persecutor in the Miryam County District Atoners Office in a conservative midwestern town known for its lack of decent Irish pubs, incessant infantile whining, and gnoisy gnashing of teeth.

But I digress.

Life as a persecutor proved to be puerile, torporous, banal, and lamentably unredemptive.

And so the intrepid Roger Bupkis decided to go to Hereford Divinity School, studying an eclectic mix of applied theology and spiritual semiotics.

He wrote his dissertation on Buddhist Covenentry under Professor Zen Cohen and took additional courses in managing ecclesiastical assets from Professor Tao Jones over in the School of Religious Business Administration. He eventually received his Divinity Degree and landed a pulpit at a Unitarian/Rastafarian Diversalist Synagogue for Demagogues serving the terminally unholy.

Thus began the ministry of Rabbi Roger Bupkis.

Soon his congregation began to grow, thrive, and puke.

Most of his congregants were wastrels and aliens, as befitting a ministry serving the hopelessly unholy.

But when I say 'aliens', I don't just mean people from far away places with strange sounding names with funny diacritical marks over the vowels.

Among the flock were some aliens from another world, entirely. These were the peculiar Pod Children – so called because of their strange pod-like wombs hidden away in the dark and rock-strewn catecombs of the inner city.

Rabbi Roger took a special interest in the Pod Children, and he might have saved their mortal souls except for a dramatic reversal of his nascent career fortunes.

There turned up one day a rather nefarious character – a riotous and notorious bamboozler named Belarney Z. Bov – who never missed an opportunity to cause a little mischief, just for the chagrin-worthy Schadenfreude of it.

And so one fateful day, Belarney Z. Bov came forward and publicly accussed Rabbi Roger of Podophilia.

Well the scandalous allegation threatened to ruin Rabbi Roger's heretofore spotless reputation.

Now Bupkis obviously knew he was being Schmeared like an Einstein Bagel, but such blasphemies are notoriously hard to survive in the tumid and traumatic trials of such turgid tabloid toastings.

And the worst part of it was that no one knew diddly squat about who the accuser really was or whether he had a shred of evidence or credibility. To be sure, the Allegator went by the pompous moniker of 'Belarney Z. Bov' but no one really believed that was his real name. Probably he was an imposter child, but no one knew how to prove it – least of all Roger Bupkis, who had recently abandoned his career in Trial Law.

And so the mystery and the scandal came to be pondered, posted, and percolated far and wide.

Which brings me around to our main story, a Dilbert & Sullivan reprise of the Mikado, choreographed in the rock opera style of Web-Side Story, and aptly entitled, "Who Framed Roger Rabbi?"

Trids

Once upon a time, there was an international village up in the mountains. The odd characters who lived in this village were Torporous Refugees Interested in Drama, or TRID's. These people lived a marginally peaceful existence and had built up quite a town. They had a reasonably decent town hall, a custom-crafted social contract featuring no due process, and an expansive public area; they were plausibly happy with life. However, they had one slight problem.

There was a drippy one-eyed giant who lived further up the mountain. Every day at noon, the giant came down to the village, walked up to a random house and knocked on the door. Whoever answered would get kicked. Now, no one had ever been seriously injured – just sore for a few days. Except for this strange behavior, the one-eyed giant was fairly easy going. If someone wasn't home, then the drippy cyclops would try another house.

One day, the townspeople agreed that no one would answer their door between noon and one o'clock and maybe, the one-eyed giant would go away. The drippy giant came and after trying 15 or 20 houses realized what was up. In a rage, the cyclops absolutely destroyed the town hall before going back up the mountain. After that the villagers were careful to always answer the door and accept their kicks.

Many years later, a wandering, maundering Rabbi came to schmooze with the torporous international villagers. He decided that he had found the vibrant and relaxed community that he sought, to live out the remainder of his days. He was sitting down to lunch with a family, when there was a knock at the door. Having heard the story, the old man said, "Here, let me handle this."

He went to the door and the giant just stood looking at him. So, the old man said, "Well, aren't you going to boot me?" The drippy one-eyed giant replied:

Silly Rabbi, kicks are for TRIDs!