Existential Stooges

If Woody Allen wrote a “novelization” of a Three Stooges film . . .

The dilapidated Ford pulled up before a deserted farmhouse, and three men emerged. Calmly and for no apparent reason the dark-haired man took the nose of the bald man in his right hand and slowly twisted it in a long, counterclockwise circle. A horrible grinding sound broke the silence of the Great Plains. “We suffer,” the dark-haired man said. “O woe to the random violence of human existence.”

Meanwhile Larry, the third man, had wandered into the house and had somehow managed to get his head caught inside an earthenware jar. Everything was suddenly terrifying and black as Larry groped blindly around the room. He wondered if there was a god or any purpose at all to life or any design behind the universe when suddenly the dark-haired man entered and, finding a large polo mallet, began to break the jar off his companion’s head. With pent-up fury that masked years of angst over the empty absurdity of man’s fate, the one named Moe smashed the crockery. “We are at least free to choose,” wept Curly, the bald one. “Condemned to death but free to choose.” And with that Moe poked his two fingers into Curly’s eyes. “Oooh, oooh, oooh,” Curly wailed, “the cosmos is so devoid of any justice.” He stuck an unpeeled banana in Moe’s mouth and shoved it all the way in.

– From Mere Anarchy, by Woody Allen