Stephan Zielinski: Dwa

I’m certain I’m not the first to think of this—so let’s just call this a restatement of conventional wisdom…

I think I’ve figured out the United States’ religious right. They started to read the Bible, but only got as far as Leviticus before they got bored. They skimmed the rest—managing to pick up that Jesus taught, died, and rose again—but totally missed all the wisdom of His ministry. Then, figuring that the last chapter would be a summation of the whole work, they paid real close attention to Revelation.

This would certainly explain why they seem fixated on a few specific Old Testament tales and verses, they have no clue what Christian virtue actually is, and they spend all their time looking forward to the Apocalypse. Their bluster is that of poor students who, not having learned the whole of their lessons, bluff that the bits they did learn are the only important ones—and perhaps the teacher will fail to notice the underlying ignorance.

MOE: Shaddap! Bring me that sort algorithm deck.

LARRY: Okay, okay. Whoop! [Trips over FORTRAN IV manual. Cards go flying.]

MOE: You nincompoop!

CURLY: It’s okay, Moe. I punched line numbers onto that one! So all we need is to go get the sorting deck, and use it to sort the algorithm deck!

MOE: Yeah, that cou—wait a minute…

GREPPO MARX: [Honk, honk.]

LARRY: What’s he even doing here?

CURLY: Backwards compatibility.

MOE: I’ll backwards compatible you! [Bonks Curly with slide rule.]

CURLY: Oh, yeah? [Eyepokes Moe with flowchart template.]

LARRY: [Gets tie wrapped around printer platen.]