Dud Sea Scrawls The Writing, clearly, is not on the wall!

“This is too spicy”, complained the fourth umpire.

“Well this is the land of the spices”, retorted Sissy.

“Still, there is limit to which foods you can spice up. Who does your cook thinks she is? Idiot is what I’ll bet my money on”

“You just lost a lot of money”, said the Crusader.

“I was speaking figuratively, bozo”, retorted the fourth umpire, who we believe misjudged the bounce completely. That’s why, we believe use of technology should be restricted in the games people play. But then no one listens to us.

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On prime-time TV, in the common room, the scandal was announced first, and dooba hua got all charged up, accusing the fourth umpire of using too many artificial food colors (or too less – one actually – actual colors, whichever way you want to look at it). In the meanwhile the crusader and the fourth umpire were shown on camera fighting over questions such as:

“Whether it is okay to call a cook idiot, just because she spiced up age old recipes and how different it is from calling the fourth umpire blind because he gave a wrong LBW decision”

Lot of onlookers decided that onlooking is not such an exciting thing after all, and decided to enter the wrestling area. The crusader has smartly closed his garden gate and so the whole wrestling happened in the fourth-umpire’s garden, which now looks like a public toilet with taps running dry. But then just because you have eyes like a hawk doesn’t mean you’ll not close them!

McMurphy tried to go over the debate, but then realized that soon it will move over to “We the People”, and then it will be as interesting as a WWF contest. He decided to wait. However silence is something McMurphy is not good at. For killing time, he decided to taste the recipe, which everyone except the fourth umpire were going gaga about.

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A nameless inmate allegedly had this conversation with McMurphy, although we suspect that this is just a figment of McMurphy’s imagination. The guy, we seem to agree with the majority, needs therapy.

“This is not spicy! This is just amateur cooking”, said McMurphy, “what’s all this hulla about?”

“The point is, whether it is in bad taste, or whether the taste is bad”

“The latter, of course”, insisted McMurphy

“You’re only saying that because you think you’re a great cook”

“Non-sense. I’ve been accused of cooking bad stuff before. The asylum had a tradition of being taste conscious”

“That’s different”

“You mean you cannot throw spices at people but recipes are a fair game? Surely there are people for whom recipes are very close to their heart, no?”

“Stop playing devil’s advocate, will you?”

“Ha! I thought the Devil was driven out of the asylum?”

“Oh boy, you insist on resurrecting the dead”

“I like the metaphor. I thought you were going to say, I’m trying to pick a bone”

“Jesus! You’re one psycho”

[Ed. The nameless inmate is NOT calling Jesus a psycho, and is NOT influenced by fourth umpire’s call for spicing up all recipes. It’s just an accidental arrangement of words]

“Too bad they don’t have a category for that!”, murmured McMurphy as he walked away.