The Oppenheimer Report - 11/6/17

Bad news out of  Southerland Springs, Texas, where another mass shooting has dominated the headlines stateside. Same old song and dance in a video tape loop: how did we not see this coming, how could this man have procured an automatic weapon when he had a history of violence; how did authorities not see the red flags? I'm not worried about Islamic terrorism; religious fanaticism is nothing new, and it spans all denominations by the way (anybody remember the Crusades?). I'm much more worried about the mentally ill ticking time bombs living among us who were born and raised here. Guns are certainly a disturbing symptom, but when you take away the guns, you still have the disease. How do we treat the disease? That's it for today's rant.

To follow is an early attempt at humour.  It's one of several soap opera spoofs I wrote back in the nineties as a writing exercise. Kinda silly, but maybe that is what is needed on this grey Monday full of bad news...

THE BALD AND THE BULIMIC ...

When Tricia finds Marissa’s monogrammed lighter in the pocket of Egbert’s bathrobe, she feels her worst fears are verified. In a jealous rage, she attacks him with an electric nail gun, pinning his genitalia to the frame of their bed, before he is able to explain that he had only borrowed the lighter from Sergei, who picked it up when he was seduced by Marissa at a “Save The Whales For Last” fundraising event several days earlier. Tricia’s unwarranted jealousy will cost her the child she always dreamed of having with Egbert. Egbert is left with one testicle and a falsetto voice.

Suzanne plots to murder Franca, whom she mistakenly believes caused her sister’s miscarriage when she served her sister bad tuna, by persuading Tony, the stuttering garage mechanic (who has a crush on her), to tamper with the brakes on Franca’s car. But, when Tony accidentally tampers with the wrong brakes, it is Judge Wilson whose car spins out of control, killing him instantly. Since it was Judge Wilson who was expected to rule favorably in Suzanne’s bitter custody battle for her little girl Trixie, fate deals Suzanne a cruel blow. The Judge who replaces Wilson is Jose Carlotta, the brother of Juanita, the abused and underpaid domestic of Suzanne’s evil mother Zelda. Judge Carlotta hates Suzanne’s family and might rule unfavorably because of this.

Meanwhile, little Tommy, the homeless urchin, who was taken in by the benevolent, rich, and powerful Thompson McCRea, after he was caught trying to hotwire McCrea’s Rolls Royce, accidentally electrocutes McCrea’s price race horse by dropping an electric mane trimmer into the horse’s watering trough while the horse is drinking. Fearing McCrea will finally disown him if he finds out, Tommy and his friend Lester, the cretin stable groom, attempt to dismember and incinerate the horse. This proves more difficult than he’d anticipated, and the boys leave behind several incriminating clues. Will McCrea discover the horseshoe encrusted with the remains of a charred hoof?

Finally, when Pansy is killed suddenly in a furnace explosion at her beauty parlor, she is revealed to be a designated organ donor, and her heart, still intact, proves to be a perfect match for the needs of Wanda, the church organist, who is on her deathbed suffering from congestive heart disease. But Wanda, too weak until now to prove that it was Desmond, not Phillip, who bilked the church out of a fortune in Bingo profits, could be in a position to ruin Desmond’s life, if she is healthy enough to testify. Desmond happens to be the paramedic charged with delivering the donor heart to Our Lady Of Perpetual Motion  Hospital, where the transplant is to take place. Does he know what she knows? Will he heed the warnings given to him by that gypsy woman who read his palms at the state fair? Tune in tomorrow.