"Remind me why we're at the bowling alley again?"
"Disco Stu is bored," came Otto's cool response from the afroed hippie himself. "So, I brought you here."
"Let's have some real fun!" the floppy-haired bus driver cried, excited, letting his black bowling ball fly loose from one yellow hand before he ducked past an acne-spotted teenager. He scampered over to the doorway. "Let's crash at my pad and watch TV!"
"Disco Stu knows what to do." The sun-glassed man adjusted these purple shades as he placed one thickly-ringed hand on his compatriot's shoulder. "The TVs are in blackout."
"Right," Otto noted dejectedly as Disco Stu steered him back to the fourth alley. "No TVs. No crashing out at my pad. Right. In that case, we should find something."
"What about bowling?" Disco Stu suggested with a vague wave of the hand as he danced over to where a few bowls were absently waiting in the holder. "Disco Stu is at Barney's Bowlarama, after all."
"Yeah," agreed Otto with a sigh as he followed his partner in crime over to the balls. "Yeah, but I wish we still had some pot – uh, TV."
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"This blows."
Bart Simpson stood angrily in the middle of the Springfield Elementary playground, arms crossed, one foot posed on the small hump of grassy hill that was the baseball diamond pitcher's mound. "We've got to do something, people!" the ten-year old cried angrily, smacking one fist into his palm. "We've got to bring TV back!"
"It won't work, Bart." Milhouse van Houten, Bart's geeky blue-haired friend () came running up, red shoes flattening the grass. "Look at what's happened!" His announcement/answer proclaimed, the fourth-grader fell to the ground at began pulling at his short, vivid hair in desperation. "Nooo!"
Abandoning the pitcher's mound, Bart traversed to the middle of the playground. Milhouse was right – it was a listless world without TV, almost as if sugar had completely gone from the domiciles of Springfield.
The kids were lolling, tongues hanging droopily from their mouths, beside the jungle gym. They looked parched under the gentle May sunlight – Nelson Muntz, Jimbo Jones, Kearney and Dolph were too weak to do more than punch nerds feebly beside the monkey bars. Ralph Wiggum, child of the local police chief and considerably on the idiot smart side, was lying under the swings – every time one of the restless swingers' feet would touch the sand under his back, his nose pulled up painfully. "My nose is leaking," he declared brightly as a swinger's feet dragged his nose upward once more and the red fluid of life came dripping from his snoot.
Even Martin was affected. He was currently crouched on the grass, his red shorts and white shirt muddy and soiled. "Must…watch…Discovery…Channel… Must…learn…new…things… Mind…growing…faint." He clawed limply at the grass, his breath growing shorter and more strained with each pant. "Can't…live…without…television… Books…not…enough."
"If no one's going to help me – then I'll do it myself!" His teeth gritted, his eyes bulging, Bart scurried all the way across the playground – frame by frame by frame on the TV scale – to a deserted brick wall where he, as town Bubble Boy, had once knocked a certain quartet of bullies down a peg.
"Well, Springfield… Here I come! TV! TV!"
The war cries for one of the Springfielders' favorite pastimes beat through the air as the devious demon prepared to do his worst.
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"Daddy, why is Mommy crying?"
Chief Clancy Wiggum of the Springfield Police Department patted young Ralph's stringy hair as the pajama-clad second-grader stared, entranced, at his weeping mother.
Sure enough, the purple-haired Sarah Wiggum was wiping her eye with a tissue as she stared at the blank TV screen. The normally pleasant-looking woman appeared to be mourning the loss of her soap operas – at least, every now and then she would glance downheartedly down at the magazine of that subject lying on her voluminous lap.
"Mommy is sad because… Because there's no TV." The blue-haired police chief patted his portly son once more on the head before taking him by the yellow hand on the way to his room. "It's time to get you into bed now, Ralphie."
"Then what have I been watching all this time?" queried Ralph with a gesture to a cardboard thing lying near the foot of his bed as he jumped into the covers and curled up under the cotton-soft pillow.
The said thing was a mere cereal box, painted white with a few red scribbles running over its papery surface. "I always thought it was my own TV set."
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() How in the world did he land himself with said master prankster, anyway?
