“Ignatius, put down that haddock!”

“Never! This is no longer about the casserole, Abner. It’s a matter of honor, and manly pride!”

“Well, then, would you at least get off the mule? I have an important engagement with the podiatrist! Thousands of lives are at stake!”

“Oh, Abner, you sad little man. Do you not recall what is written in the Book of Norman the Omniwitted?”

“No, Ignatius, but these things are unimportant! The gazelle, Ignatius, the gazelle!”

“For it is as Norman the Omniwitted observed in the fourteenth roll of the sacred Rolo, ‘Shalt thou be as a shoe unto the unmitigated? Behold and rub thou the final fringe, for a man with a noble spirit shall be enlarged always.'”

“Oh, very nice, Ignatius. But don’t you forget what Winnifred the Winged once wrote in the Fourteenth Epistle to the Manhattans!”

“Of course I won’t forget, but you’re hardly in a position to –“

“‘For it is written that the Ichthyologist of the Apocalypse shall season no cod while the haddock rises above the son of the horse and the donkey.'”

“You are no apocalyptic ichthyologist, Abner!”

“The principle is the same. Would you deny my birthright?”

“A pox upon you and your lily-livered second cousin twice removed! You know nothing of honor!”

“A pox? You dare!”

“I dare that, Abner, and much more, upon the name of the canine trio. But fear not, for I hold this, the sacred source of the kipper! Behold, as I wave it above my head in triumph!”

“The source of the kipper, you say? My sacred birthright?”

“It is as you claim, Abner! And none other but I wield this fiendish fish!”

“Ignatius, put down that haddock!”

“Never! This is no longer about the casserole, Abner. It’s a matter of honor, and manly pride!”

(And so on, should you choose to believe it.)

END