Austrich Bird Lescuer / Nice-Monkey / Corinthia Crocodile

Puppet Show No. 1

Austrich: Good evening to you, Nice-Monkey and Corinthia Crocodile!

Nice-Monkey: And a good evening to you, Austrich and Corinthia Crocodile!

Corinthia: And a very most good evening to you, Austrich Bird Lescuer and Nice-Monkey!

Austrich: Let's cut the crap. Do you two realize what is happening Happening in the world? The world at large? The world outside? Outside the doors? The doors of perception? (Takes deep breath) Do you realize what is happening out through the fire exits?

Nice-Monkey: Why don't you tell us, since you're so goddam smart?

Corinthia: Shut your ever-yapping mouth. I, for one, would like to hear what Austrich has to say!

Austrich: You're going to hear me whether you want to or not, so it's a good thing you want to for your own perverted oddball sake!

Corinthia: I will beat you and beat you! I'm going to cream your ass like a bagel gets creamed with cheese!

Austrich: Oh-ho, you will be the very one to get the special treatment whic I have kept in store for you all this time while you've been running off at the mouth! I shall make out a receipt for the teeth of yours which I am about to collect with my angry yet cooly competent fists!

(Austrich and Corinthia fight)

Nice-Monkey: (looks at watch) This fight is going on too long! Do you realize how many fights we have yet to go through? And do you realize what a cliche this whole fighting business is in puppet theatre? Besides, I want to hear what Austrich has to say, so stop now or I start hitting without regard to which of you receives the fruits of my red-hot temper!

Austrich and Corinthia stop fighting)

Austrich: Well, you can start whatever you want to start, because as far as I'm concerned, my lips are sealed with a kiss!

Nice-Monkey: For that, and for you being such a stinker, I will lay thee out villain, and with a vengeance!

(Austrich and Nice-Monkey fight)

Corinthia: Enough already! If we animals can't get along among ourselves, who's going to do it for us?

(fighting stops)

Austrich: What I was going to say is that there is bad news

Nice-Monkey: Bad news about this play? I mean, this play-ful encounter among us animals?

Corinthia: I can tell at a glance that it is.

Austrich: You are right. You see, the problem is that there is only one best part. And I am going to have it!

Nice-Monkey: No you aren't! I'm going to be the one making the fancy speec which happens to be coming up right now! Ahem! ``To all that is - ''

Corinthia: ``and is not human in you, my fellow creatures, lend me your ears and please append these appendages to yourselves in return: for they are like flippers used in snorkelling.''

Nice-Monkey: Hey! You took my speech! And it was as if I simply let you! What strange powers do you have? Doesn't matter; you are marked for a come-uppance!

Austrich: (To audience) They will fight for sure!

(Corinthia and Nice-Monkey fight)

Austrich: And while they are fighting, I will smile secretly, for now I get to have the most self-referrential speech all to myself. Ahem: ``I get to say that this that I am saying right now is my part. I am saying m part!''

(fighting stops)

Nice-Monkey: Big deal! I say my part too, and without all the trumpeting which is so wearisome to the tender ears of my head. And besides, now I get to sa the poem!

Corinthia: That shows what you know! You don't just ``say'' a poem!

Austrich: That is correct! First you must live it, as I do

Nice-Monkey: Nonetheless, the poem be said by me! And not by either of you! Ho are those particular apples to your two tastes

Corinthia: If you must read it, do be quick about it!

Austrich: Don't mull it all over and drag out the words like an ignorant jerk!

Corinthia: Don't add anything to it that's not there! Just read the goddam thing and let's get it over with!

Austrich: I have the feeling that it must be a very bad poem: why would it be otherwise? I haven't even heard it, and I already hate this poem!

Corinthia: Oh yeah? Well, I hate you! And now there shall be reprisals for you excessive wickedness!

(Corinthia and Austrich fight)

Nice-Monkey: Ahem! I'm reading now! ``Consequences of a Marsupial in Heat.'' By William Oliver Williams.

``Oh, the opossum is pregnant now.
And soon tiny opossums.
Shall cling.
Inevitably.
To their un-wed mother.
Who shall have to feed them.
From the garbage can.
Of the table I keep.
Which is Highly Opulent.
And in keeping with my stature as a highly-developed and most fragrant fellow.
I am a good poet
And I have so much good food
That I would invite you over for if you didn't eat so very much.
For you see.
There must be leftovers.
Not just for one opossum
But for an entire family. 
Of them.
But you are too intrusive and too convolusive to appreciate.
What I am telling you.
So I'll fight any number of you, and I will land dirty blows.''

(Austrich and Corinthia stop fighting)

Austrich: I will be the one to scuffle with you now, Nice-Monkey, you ignoran savage! You primitive! You know that that is not how the poem goes Granted, we never really grew up; we remained immature, but still, you are so obviously in need of punishment that I must volunteer to administer it forthwith!

Nice-Monkey: Oh yeah? Then you shall be the first to feel the thirst of my need fists!

Austrich: Oh, I am aching to land a solid punch to your needlessly offensiv snatch!

(Austrich and Nice-Monkey fight)

Corinthia: I shall, by default, be the one elected to read further from this fabulous wealth of poetry with which we have been gifted by those most excellent creatures: the poets. This little number comes to us by one Mrs. Jeffersdaughter O. She has written any number of mystical poems, which purport to transport any number of diminutive critters to direct union with the divine blah blah blah. Here is a truly excellent bit of poetic craft, which is called. ``Ode to a Dried-Up Xmas Tree.'' It goes down sweetly, you will have to admit. Ahem!

``The Xmas tree was dry
and sad was it too
For it had passed from being
Into not being, and it's soul did wander
And just as He to whom the holy 
Holiday doth comemorate of birth be his in a stable
And did in fact die on a cross
Or so  they do say in their mystic delirium of course so who knows,
But anyway, but short short short short short while can a
Tree live
Once brought inside
Having been cut down
And removed from  the influence of the sun and stars
And having been hung with many ornaments
It is but with a certain queasy feeling
That I snap yon tree in twain
And toss each part by the curb
I think someone's s'posed to 
Pick it up and take it somewhere
Let us pray they get neither lost nor distracted
En route from my house to the
Dump
For if they do
They may need to go to the bathroom
And if so, dear gods,
Let there be a gas station with clean facilities nearby.
And let's just us get entirely drunk on cheap wine.
For such thoughts as these are most melancholy.''

(Austrich and Nice-Monkey stop fighting)

Austrich: Having never having heard such an unmelifluous reading of a poem of such exquisite caliber, I must surely dispatch Nice-Monkey here to beat the living bejeezus from your body.

Corinthia: Whoa! That would be a holy sort of administration of a drubbing (were I but prepared to accept it), being as I was just now reading a poem about the ``living bejeezus!''

Nice-Monkey: Negation proves the rule, inasmuch as, no you were not! That poem was all about the failure of Christianity to do squat about squat, and found it to be moving, especially inasmuch as, well, today is Groundhog Day! Groundhog Day: the holiday for animals and by animal

Austrich: It is animal-oriented.

Corinthia: Well, then we really must commence fighting, because I have no confidence in your interpretation of poetry, as I have noticed that you are odious, and also due to the euphonious shrieks of pain which you shall surely emit at the unpleasant and frequent slaps of you by me. You are in the wrong, and corrective fluids shall flow!

Nice-Monkey: I am only in the wrong insofar as I have not hitherto engaged in the sort of beating of you by me which is real versus the beating of me by you which can only exist in dreams of yours. I shall endeavor to make up for the time lost due to my hesitancy with regards to rendering you pulp-ish.

Corinthia: Indeed, let us delay no longer, but instead, fall upon one another, raining seriously telling blows.

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia fight)

Austrich: And now in my blissful solitude, I shall read a poem which I have chosen to share. And only because I do care. The poem is called, ``Of Winter's Eve,'' and it is by A. A. Chicken Doofus. Ahem!

``Garbanzo beans do shower me
Said A. A. Chicken Doofus.
And clocks appeal a hearty meal
I don't know where the roof is!
And that's just the part
That breaks my heart
Of the poetry that rhymes.
The rest is best read
From the chest
In the nest
That is, lying in bed
In pajamas, with more chickens than ever before:
Chickens, totally galore!''

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia stop fighting)

Nice-Monkey: Is it over?

Austrich: No, it's an epic. That was just the intro.

Corinthia: I could not believe it when you spoke just now, Nice-Monkey. It made me incredulous that I had not stopped up your mouth with my two brawny and capable fists!

Nice-Monkey: I shall put you under the water of consciousness with a clout that will make a clangorous ringing in your head, mixed with the tweeting of three or four tiny birds.

Corinthia: I'm mad that you're talking!

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia fight)

Austrich: Ahem! Part One, Part the First, Part the One that Follows the Intro which is Zero. Goes like this. Ahem!

``For 'twas Groundhog Day
All over. And the  sun
Shone so bright that there
Could be no shadow. And
Winter was cursed thereby.
And had to end soon. 
But for all the little animals,
Extinction was right around the corner -
Except of course for dogs -
Who laughed.
And cats -
Who did not laugh, but neither did they weep.
So the Earth became barren of all animals.
And soon all of life was pretty hastily concluded.''

	
``After sweeping up the remains,
Christopher Robin surveyed his surroundings.
They were good and bleak,
And Christopher Robin was glad.
Standing in for Christ,
He also got given the powers of Superman.
So he went into space for a long time.
When he came back, he heard himself singing.
In Part Three, I shall reveal what he sang;
Thank you very much in advance.''

	
Christopher Robin looked about himself and 
Saw two creatures who needed a
Good stiff thrashing, so he
Set aside his singing and his poetry career
That he might
Deal with the situation, and he spoke thus:
`I am going to kick you 
Upside Down so as you will
Never intrude 
Upon my solitude 
again!' ''

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia stop fighting)

Nice-Monkey: Hey! Are you talking to me?

Corinthia: Or to me?

Nice-Monkey: Or is this an attempt to confuse us?

Corinthia: I suppose you might think it possible to confuse us, but at least in my case, you have erred grievouly, for I shall emuslify you.

Nice-Monkey: And you shall bear the great grunt and brunt of my weight upon you.

Corinthia: And I shall call a taxidermist and set up an appointment to have you stuffed!

Nice-Monkey: And I shall call my mother to tell her the bad news about how I can't come home for dinner because I'm pulverising you instead.

Austrich: None of this is so, because I could make you both pay me for your insolences. You will pay me in cash, and I shall accept, and I shall thank you kindly.

Nice-Monkey: Again, I know not whether you are addressing me, but if so, then I warn you that your destruction into a heap of dazed atoms is at hand.

Corinthia: And if you address me thus, then I do declare that I will bury you idle threats beneath the rigorous application of my fisticuffs.

Nice-Monkey: And I will grind your asinine visage up in a grinder which I bought yesterday when I found out that I would see you today.

Corinthia: And I shall exterminate your smirking face from off the front of your resolutely empty head. I know that it must be vacant, for if there were anything there, it could not be brain, so, ergo, it can only be small lumps of coal.

Austrich: Your threats mean nothing to me, for the wallop I pack against you is so mighty that you may not withstand, especially since you're an infidel.

Nice-Monkey: Now she is talking to you, because you are a pathetic infidel right? I mean to say that you are so unimportant in the grand scheme of things that I too am seeing the point of your disposal being necessary for cleanliness.

Corinthia: Oh, is that why you are about to meet my furious rush upon you by falling back into a tangled heap of twisted broken limbs?

Austrich: Neither of you shall survive the fierce battering entailed in my prowess by appointment upon you.

Nice-Monkey: We shall settle our differences in a tremendous tussle, of the kind that leaves me laughing and you writhing!

(All fight for a while. Then Austrich stops.)

Austrich: Enough! Didn't I tell you the news I bring?

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia stop fighting.)

Nice-Monkey: If it has to do with the appearence of Satan on Earth, you needn't bother; I saw it on TV last night.

Corinthia: They say that Satan will destroy our souls; not just take them away.

Austrich: Well, you're on the right track. Here's what's happened. I actually met with Satan, and so now I'm infected with a might desire I cannot quench.

Nice-Monkey: Is it a desire you try to quench but cannot, or one which you don't even bother because it's obviously so impossible?

Corinthia: Is it an itchy sort of desire like the one which you used to have before you met Satan? You know, the one you had last week that made you all squirmy?

Austrich: You're both entirely ignorant, because you haven't yet been beaten enough to have sense within you!

Nice-Monkey: Does that imply that you have been beaten lots more than us? Like that we've been beating you more than you've been beating us?

Corinthia: Because if so, we're very sorry for you.

Austrich: That's sweet of you to say so!

Nice-Monkey: Only because we think so well of you! You are very talented, you know!

Corinthia: We're sorry to hear about your many wisdom-inducing beatings!

Austrich: I just hope it was all worth it!

Nice-Monkey: Do you really think it may have been?

Austrich: Yes. And that is why I shall drum you with sticks if it occurs to me to do so!

Corinthia: Though you keep up a prickly exterior, we do know that you care for us deeply.

Nice-Monkey: You sweet little critter! You love us in a twisted fashion.

Austrich: I might as well admit that you have me pegged. In fact, that is all the doing of Satan. Satan got me to see that the violence in the world is just a form of love, but in an unhealthy and horrible guise.

Nice-Monkey: That I know already from experience.

Corinthia: I knew it was something like that from my experiences, which includes the time I was trampled by a herd of rampant goats.

Austrich: Satan says that the currency will be devalued, just when everybody is in the direst of straights.

Nice-Monkey: I hope I've saved enough for the hard times which are sure to follow.

Corinthia: We're talking about the complete and utter economic collapse of the country, right?

Austrich: That's what Satan says.

Nice-Monkey: And you know what? My therapist has been saying the same thing for years! She says that we'd better look for safety and security elsewhere than in our jobs, or in money, or even in relationships.

Corinthia: Like in our own heads?

Nice-Monkey: Not exactly. You see, just because things get bad does not mean yo are made to do anything.

Austrich: You mean like, you don't have to ``run away from it,'' or ``act like a baby?''

Nice-Monkey: That's right. You can learn to have your anger about what's happening.

Corinthia: But you can't do anything about it? About the destruction of species, and of our very souls? I don't like that idea!

Nice-Monkey: Well, maybe if I said it louder, and maybe from two inches from your ear whilst pummeling you, maybe then you'd like it better!

Corinthia: Oh yeah? Can you be sure?

Nice-Monkey: Yes, I can be!

Corinthia: I will so gladly now stoop to clobber your butt and best you in combat and put you out of whatever commission you have!

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia fight.)

Austrich: Anyway, what Satan has to say is very interesting, especially the part about how are souls aren't needed anymore. They've already got their space filled to capacity. Let's see if I can recollect his exact words... Ahem! ``Your dumb little souls are of rather inferior quality. That's for one. It's the result of watching too much TV, and of having such abysmally bad music for the past ten-twelve years. Two, I have way more souls than I need. Souls are even starting to get misplaced; they're just in piles on the floor; far too many to keep track of, let alone to torment properly. Third, the torment of being alive on Earth during this time period is bad enough that we don't need to take you all the way to Hell for it! It's been contracted out, privatized, you know how it works: souls are parcelled out to the individual states to be tortured according to the wants and needs of the state. This way, we even get to torment the so-called `good' souls; the ones who would have been going to heaven in earlier times.'' And satan burst into laughter, saying, ``Ha ha ha! I am laughing at your plight, and at the particular characteristics of the torment which you must undergo. It amuses me, and now I must use the bathroom. Is there a men's room around here?''' And so I got to escort Satan to the men's room. It was pretty weird.

(Nice-Monkey and Corinthia stop fighting)

Nice-Monkey: Are you laughing at us?

Corinthia: I think she is! I heard her say, ``Ha ha ha!'' She's just using some ridiculous story about Satan to get to laugh at us! Plus the fact that we're in a play. That's her other excuse!

Nice-Monkey: You mean that underneath it all is where she is laughing at us from?

Austrich: Look at how dumb you are! Look at yourselves! You have nothing to show for your time on the planet! Satan was right! There's no satisfaction left to be had!

Corinthia: All because of the Rolling Stones song, probably! That's my theory, anyway.

Nice-Monkey: Well, certainly it's true that the world is now in a state of anti-grace hellishness! Yet I pre-construe your remarks to be in alpha-test state.

Austrich: I have a low-paying job that might as well be draining out my blood literally as well as metaphorically.

Nice-Monkey: I have an unreal set of relationships with some very unbalanced individuals. I don't feel at all connected to them. I'm all alone.

Corinthia: I've not been able to really do my art as I know it could be done I get glimpses of it, but I can't get to the guts. I don't want to be thought of as a hack, like Isaac Asimov.

Austrich: Suicide would only take one deeper into the entanglements, I suspect.

Nice-Monkey: Probably. After all, life can't be less meaningful than death, s death must be really dull and stultifying

Corinthia: I wish I could live to be 90, have great-grandchildren and all that, but what's going to happen is that a barbarism will set in, there will be droughts, and I'll die of starvation, radiation sickness, or I'll be killed; it will be painful, and during the process I will be made to renounce all whom I love.

Austrich: Yes, that's pretty much the way Satan said it would go.

Nice-Monkey: I'm pretty upset about it, but I'm powerless. What can one person do? I can't do anything; I feel helpless and hopeless most of the day.

Corinthia: Me too, but at least I'm not as boring about it as you two are! My moping has an element of style and class that sets me just a step ahead!

Austrich: What do you mean, I'm boring?

Nice-Monkey: It's true that you're more boring than me! Actually, both of you ar more boring than me!

Corinthia: Come over here and say that, where I'm standing I want to hear your spiel, and then I'll hear it better, and know what to think!

Austrich: I don't know which one of the two of you is more boring, but you're both way worsein every respect - not just in being more boring - than I am.

Nice-Monkey: You will find yourself retracting those remarks when my foot wedges itself up your butt when I screw it into your but with my pile-driving fists.

Corinthia: I'll nail you so many times - and I am referring to both of you - that the very elements that comprise your bodies will be transformed into baser elements.

Austrich: This alchemical transformation you propose shall only be inflicted upon you yourself by my capable and modest hammer-wielding hands.

Nice-Monkey: Perhaps, but not while I am reaching down your gullet with eager, grasping, snakey fingers, with which I shall rip you open to expose the internal rot which is obvious to me already, but will be more obvious when made explicit by my avenging digits of doom!

Corinthia: Such silly alliterative finger references as those will fade from your consciousness into a haze of red. And then you will be be very sorry!

Austrich: Then maybe we ought to have a Pity Party and invite you to be the guest of honor!

Nice-Monkey: And I will be the keynote speaker!

Corinthia: And I can have it at my house, because it's centrally located!

Austrich: Yes, but not as centrally located as your head will be when I insert it up your rectum!

Nice-Monkey: No, wait; let's really do it! Let's have a party!

Corinthia: What is a Pity Party anyway?

Austrich: It's when I give notice of my tangible displeasure with your odoriferousness by enforcing an ``herbal cure'' consisting of some very sharp sticks stuck deep into you so that you resemble a porcupine!

Nice-Monkey: No, come on, cut it out, and let's have a party! Maybe for Groundhog's Day!

Corinthia: I'll have one right now - in the pit of your stomach, which I shall hollow out with a heated ice cream scoop. I'll have a party among the links of your intestines, whose sanctity I shall disturb through a foot-first assault upon your anus!

Nice-Monkey: I am so tired of both of you and your incessant repetitive threats o violence.

Austrich: Then I will bite you! At least that is what I propose!

Nice-Monkey: I'm going to break this horrible cycle of puppet-violence! Someone has to make the change! I will inspire future generations.

Corinthia: Oh look! Baby's going to cry!

Nice-Monkey: I'm not listening!

Austrich: I knew I would have to stomp and trample you into the thick rich mud that is oh-so brown and wild!

Nice-Monkey: Nope, it's all over. I'm not getting riled.

Corinthia: Oh, you idiot!

Nice-Monkey: No, nothing will rile me. Your taunts fall flat, asshole!

Austrich: I guess if that's how you truly feel, then we should stop, so, uh, that's it! Okay! The END!

END