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Time: 

Present day. 8:05PM 
 

Rob (excited): You guys hear the latest off the Net. 

Gene (bored): No, but you'll tell us anyway. 

Rob: There's proof that aliens have been manipulating the news media. 

Gene: Yeah, which: the brown ones or the green ones? 

Rob: The ones that use worm-holes to sail past the galaxies and plot the demise of Earth. 
 

II 

Cy (cynnical): Aliens manipulating the new media. How human of them! Now they can join Wall Street, Big Labor, the Church, and the Military. When are you gonna stop listening to that crap? 

Rob: About the same time you abandon your brilliant theories about the CIA helping the Mafia to whack JFK. 

Cy: There's more evidence about JFK than midget-weirdos flying through the skies in super-saucers. (making ghostly sounds) 

Gene: Guys lay off. I just sell this shit. I don't buy it. 

Cy: Save it for the Mr. Destructo over here. 

Rob: When they come and stick a red probe up your ass, you won't be laughing then. 

Cy: No, but I'll know exactly what you feel like when your boyfriend comes to town. 

Rob (throws a magazine at Cy): The ignorant always die first. 

Cy (pointing his finger at Rob): You want a close encounter with my fist. I guarantee you won't live long and prosper. 

Gene: Settle down boys. I'm trying to keep this place clean. Besides there's always a measure of truth to rumours. If you think about it, that's how I make my living. 

Cy: Excuse me for saying this--but you'll don't have to get on your knees to make peace. As far as I'm concerned you make your living selling geeky comics written by geeky cartoonists to geeky kids lacking parental attention. 

Gene: Is that your clumsy version of family values? 

Rob: Sounds like high-flooting horseshit to me. 

Cy: Whatta you know? Your one of those geeky kids with a million comics, a thousand fantasies and barely any friends. 

Gene: Aren't you one to talk! You're a man of strange contradictions. 

Rob: Yeah, five dollar words and ten dollar whores. 

Cy: Real cute, Rob. At least I ain't tossing off to a 1st edition of Wonder Woman. 
 

III

Gene (winking at Cy): He did. Now it's not worth as much. 
 (Gene and Cy start laughing) 

Cy: This is a gang-bang of cruelty. 

(Gene and Cy are singing "Wonder Woman" repeatedly.) 
(Cy begins to laugh with them.) 

Gene: Cy, face facts. Your wild political conspiracy theories are no more mainstream than Rob's paranormal stuff. So stop trying to pull out the toothpick in his eye until you take out the 2 X 4 in your own. 

Cy: All hail Gene (lowering his arms in faint praise) fountain of saintly wisdom. 

Rob: Made sense to me. 

Cy: That's not saying much coming from a man who thinks Big Foot is actually a curse put on the White Man by an Indian Medicine Man named Yellow Crow. How can you compare that magic-mushroom madness with thinking that members of our own government plotted to kill JFK because he was going to pull out of Vietnam thus threatening their profits in big military arms contracts. 

Gene: O ye of little pubic hair. Your JFK story sounds as nutty as Big Foot in White Man's Ass. These political types can't even get an extra blowjob without getting busted by Oprah Winfrey. But somehow hundreds of them can form a incredibly complex secret pact of presidential assassination? (grabbing his crotch) Yank my Yankee Doodle. 

Rob: Cy's theory is plausible. 

Gene: You're a fair man Charlie Brown. Too bad Cy thinks the Medicine Man is in desperate need of Prozac. 

Cy: In the dark recesses are puppermasters who pull the strings of society. They need rational men like Gene. Men who have written off plots, promises and fixed pony races as delusions of insecure minds. But there's nothing, I mean nothing, more deluded than a puppet who thinks he's free. Walk far enough and you'll feel the string my friend. 

Gene (pointing to himself): Me? (pause) The only difference between you and a puppet is you have a bigger wooden head. The people peddling that crap are more dangerous than the militia nuts. They control screwballs by making them believe they're so 
 

IV

Rob: Jesus I thought we were cynnical. But you take the cake. 

Gene: Yeah, well, I'll take my cake and eat it too, five minutes before the taxman comes knocking at my door. 

Cy: I guess everything's honky-dorey. Our leaders act in our interests. Corporations obey envirnomental regulations. Police only arrest the guilty. The Church is really interested in saving souls. Glad you explained it all to me. For a moment I figured this was America, but you convinced me it's actually Nirvana. 

Rob: Those guys rule. Kurt was the John Lennon of my generation. 

Cy: Rob, shut up! Kurt was a pussy-whipped punk. The only art he ever created decorated the living room after he pulled the trigger. 

Gene: You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. 

Cy: Then I shouldn't talk about America. A place that lost its pulse decades ago. What's so great about us now? We got missiles that are smarter than the children. We got giant companies that lack the balls to call "downsizing" what it really is: layoffs. (waving arm around, raising voice) All you bastards are out of a job! If that's not a fucking conspiracy then I don't know what is. This shit goes on and on, and they call me "paranoid." Right now there are 15 million guys just like me, but they have kids, and each are wondering: when I am going to get audited, downsized, retrained, blah, blah, blah. 

Gene: I never said things were perfect, Cy. I'm just trying to make a point about getting so worked up about the state of things that you see mirages or hear things go bump in the night. It's that attitude that puts you at an disadvantage to find new opportunities. 

Rob: No--I won't agree with that. When we're not told the full story. When facts are changed and results twisted and all you hear is a chorus of people bashing you for critizing or speaking out, that's the moment you know you haven't 
 

V

Cy: Amen. (gives Rob a high-five) My man Rob comes through in the clutch. (long pause) We're conditioned in this society to be mindless consumers. Mouthwash will get us laid. Beer will make us men. Cornflakes bring health. We consume everything accept time. "I'm in a rush." "Can't spare the time." "Gotta make the deadline." We are being manipulated from taking the time to see things as they truly are. (pointing finger to head) Think hard--it's through time that we can find love, truth understanding. We are forced to be more efficient---but lose understanding. We are forced to collect facts--but miss the truth. We are forced to co-exist--but love exists in a state of freedom. Not force. 

Gene (unconvinced): Come off it! Clever rhetoric always fools the uninformed, the fearful and those with good intentions. Bunch of goddamned words that never pay the rent. But they usually kill the landlord. Because that is exactly what too many people today are searching for: a clever excuse to abandon responsibility. An over-hyped bullshit event to trash the town like "the Giants won the Superbowl now we can smash all the windows in the business district." Let someone try some shit here, the militias will look liberal after I'm done with them. 

Rob: You can afford the easy position, after all, you're practically the establishment. Pay your Chamber of Commerce dues. Pay your taxes. Rarely question the order of things.  

Gene (furious): Maybe I should kick your ass instead of Cy. Did I hear you right? I'm the frigging "Establishment" because I own a small business. I work just as hard and take as many chances as any small farmer out in the Heartland. Guess I'm supposed to be some kind of sellout because I attend Chamber of Commerce meetings on improving the neighborhood where my business is located. I'll have you know this business hasn' gone national, does not exploit workers, nor does it pollute the earth. Not one of those statements is true about the mega-computer company you work for Rob.  
  
Rob (defensive): The media has it out for us. 

Gene (disgusted): Oh how fucking convenient! People like you have a knack to twist and turn your conspiracies whenever it suits your self-interest. You're no super rebel--Mister Computer Geek. And don't you forget it. Your company has been in court so much it actually helps in making laws against its own behavior. How proud you must feel about our so-called evil government alledgedly hiding alien spacecraft on one hand 
 

VI

Cy (in deep voice): And God thus spoke, "let there be self-righteousness." 

Rob (annoyed): You ain't helping much, pal. 

Cy (checking pockets): Ain't got a shoehorn, to take the foot out of your mouth, Rob. 

Rob: Brenda's right, you're too dense to be a good friend. 

Cy (mimicing a plane crashing with sound effects): Crash Go the Chariots. Face it, spaceboy, nobody deep down really believes all that alien baloney. It's simply a psychological substitute for discredited religion. Plus, there's big profits in toys and T-shirts. Money will make a man spout nonsense. 
  
Gene (curious): Excuse me for changing the subject, but what was that crack about Brenda? 

Rob: Brenda told me Cy wasn't good boyfriend material because she senses a dark brooding streak in him. 

Cy (curt): Why would she tell you? 

Rob: Perhaps because I wouldn't bite off her head, sort of like what you're dying to do to me right now. 

Cy: No I'm not. Just curious. (pause with dark grin) It's probably because she knows Rob is a nice guy. And you know what they say 
 about nice guys: (stressing the statement slowly) girls wanna befriend them; not bed them. 

Gene (smiling): Cold man, real cold. 

Rob: Doesn't bother me. Brenda dissed you not I. 

Cy: Take it from a pro, women are an emotional cesspool. Shows you how much sense the girl makes (pause) when just two months ago she was dating and doing a punk-rocker named Stag. I'm probably not brooding enough until I pierce my left testicle with a silver cock ring. 

Rob: The guy's name was Stag?