SWEATING LIKE AN OCTOPUS - REDUX

BIRD: It's so fookin' hot here, Buff. I'm sweating like an octopus on his favourite bagpipes.

BUFFALO: Things are hotting all over the planet - in Moorish ways than one.

BIRD: You mean global warming, like?

BUFFALO: That's just the tip of the iceberg, Birdy.

BIRD: And we're on the "Titanic", like, with the iceberg lurking out there in the darkness?

BUFFALO: Aye, the darkness of ignorance, which rewinds me of what Meryl Streep sang last night: "All the world is sad and dreary, everywhere I go."

BIRD: You heard that minxy Meryl singing? Where?

BUFFALO: At the Cinema, lad, or as the Christian Right would say, the "Sin-ema".

BIRD: Hey, why do they call themselves the Christian Right?

BUFFALO: Because they think they're always right, dude.

BIRD: That would explain a lot, wooden it?

BUFFALO: Jawohl, mein Herring.

BIRD: An allusion to fish, Buff?

BUFFALO: You see a lot of fish over here, on bumper stickers.

BIRD: The Messiah?

BUFFALO: Correctomundo, my old avian chum. The fish on the bumper means the driver follows the teachings of Christ, and believes in Intelligent Design".

BIRD: Intelli-gent wot?

BUFFALO: Intelligent Design - of the planet, and all of God's creatures who walk about on it with their heads jammed up their tail pipes. We're all made out of whole cloth - according to the hard-core doxologists who eschew Darwinism but, ironically, embrace Social Darwinism...

BIRD: That creation thingie's debatable, innit?

BUFFALO: Not if you're Right all the time, Birdy.

BIRD: Ah, now there's the paradox.

BUFFALO: Pair of ducks.

BIRD: Ducks?

BUFFALO: Marx my words: a pair of ducks, a pair of geese, a pair of elephants, a pair of giraffes, a pair of Tsetse flies, a pair of dice, etc.

BIRD: Getting Biblical on me now, eh?

BUFFALO: Just doing my homework, dude, in case the Fundamentalists have their way with us.

BIRD: Have their way? Good Lord, man, will you have to bend over backwards and grab your ankles?

BUFFALO: Let me riddle you, Birdy. How do you separate the Church from the State in America?

BIRD: Dunno.

BUFFALO: With a crowbar.

BIRD: Yikes! Sounds a bit Sodomish and Gomorrish, like!

BUFFALO: Yup, and Armageddon tired of it.

BIRD: (gulps) Armageddon?

BUFFALO: Godzilla is warming up in the bull pen, getting ready to pitch World War Three in the World Cup of Hemlock. Every show's your last, Birdy - that's MY philosophy.

BIRD: Cheers, Plato!

BUFFALO: Socrates, Birdy... as in "Socrates Sucks Hemlock!" Another popular bumper sticker over here.

BIRD: I stand corrected, you pedantic arsehole - which rewinds me - you Yanks aren't planning to repeat the Hiroshima experiment, are you?

BUFFALO: Of course not. Japan is our ally now, you woonker.

BIRD: Language, please. Me mum might be reading this.

BUFFALO: It wrankles my tits that Hiroshima gets all the press and no one ever mentions Nagasaki anymore.

BIRD: You mean as in "Back in Nagasaki where the fellers chew tobaccy, and the women do the Wacky-Woo?"

BUFFALO: Precisely. We didn't nuke Nippon just the once, we gave 'em the encore, like.

BIRD: Er, Buff, not to tickle the dragon's tail, but don't you think Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a bit precipitous, like?

BUFFALO: Dude, when Americans get a new toy, like a snowmobile, or a Hummer, or an atomic bomb, they like to take it out of the box and give it a spin. Think about it. We've got a shitload of nukes over here gathering dust, if you get my Continental drift, lad.

BIRD: Sphincter time, here, Buff.

BUFFALO: And with good reason. When it comes to full-blown bat shit crazy, we hold most of the patents. When those glorious sons of Nippon perverted the Samurai Code and decided to use Oahu for target practice, we got our shit together taco pronto, dude. A mere three and a half years later, when the Uranium 238 was flowing over here like glow-in-the-dark maple syrup, we nuked their sushi and rice, not once, but twice. In other words, we Texas-sized 'em, podner.

BIRD: Oh, dear, and now there's a cowboy in the White House.

BUFFALO: Hmph. As John Wayne would say, this cowboy is "all hat and no cattle."

BIRD: But that's good news, innit? I mean, surely he's a man of compassion?

BUFFALO: Birdy, the guy flushed one of our OWN cities down the toilet!

BIRD: New Orleans, you mean?

BUFFALO: Si. What Katrina started, The Grayed Decider finished. And it was the morally expedient thing to do, according to the Christian Right. See, they righteously maintain that Nawlins was the modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, so it stands to reason that God sent that hurricane to smite those dirty chocolate sinners. Q.E.D.

BIRD: So what's that got to do with the price of plutonium in Pyongyang?

BUFFALO: Everything, Birdy. There's a lot of yahoos running around loose right now, howling at Moonpies, blowing up everything they can get their porky little hands on. But, dude, trust me, when it comes to all-out-balls-to-the-wall crazy, we come home with the gold every time.

BIRD: Holy Buffalo shit, Batman. Is there no way out?

BUFFALO: Well, ironically, the survivors of New Orleans have the final solution. A lyrical if somewhat outmoded form of transportation - a streetcar named Desire.

BIRD: Sor-ee, you've lost me past the chemist's, dude.

BUFFALO: "The Last Car to Elysian Fields".

BIRD: You've giving me the willywonkas, Buff.

BUFFALO: Don't fret about it, lad. My Guru, Boydsan, assures me that all this whoopin' and hollerin' is nothing more than a bad dream God is having. Sooner or later She'll wake up, have a scrub and make things as right as acid rain.

BIRD: Hold the Maya!

BUFFALO: Film at eleven, Arf, arf!