Darwin, Monkees, and a Dead Palm-Wine Tapster

What a Sunday. Deciding not to do anything the least bit productive and shunning all responsibilities, I watched several Monkees episodes on DVD, even double-watching the ones with commentary. Finally, I saw the infamous TV variety show they put out years ago: "In the beginning there was Darwin, then came the fish...." Starring the nasty, nasty Darwin ( aka Loon Extraordinaire) and his "evil-ution" [Hey! I didn't write this, folks!] "Only the fittest shall survive!" he snarls. "Buwhahahaha!" He controls the Monkees for half of the show before finally realizing that freedom is the only way to happiness. So he sets them free to think and do as they like, but it leads, sadly, only to chaos and destruction. I can't believe I lived 24 years without seeing this special!
Another story I must summarize for you, since no one out here in blogger-land will ever read it:
The Palm-Wine Drinkard.
Once upon a time in Yoruba-land, Nigeria, there was a palm-wine drinkard. All day and night he drank palm-wine that his very special tapster tapped for him. The drinkard had many friends who came to drink the palm-wine with him, but one day the tapster fell from a tree and died. There was no more palm-wine. The drinkard lost his drink and all of his friends as well. So he decided to set off to the town of the dead, where he had heard from the old people that people who had died went on "living."
The drinkard encountered many, many adventures: gained a wife, battled spirits and monsters of every sort over several years. Finally, he and his wife arrived at the town of the dead, but they were not let inside the walls since they were living. Instead they waited outside, and the tapster joined them there. The drinkard explained that he had come so far because he wanted the tapster to return with him to the home village and continue tapping for him. But the tapster explained that this cannot be. The dead cannot live with the living. As the drinkard looked around him, he saw that the dead were walking backwards and their habits were very different from his own. He knew suddenly that the tapster was right: he would have to return home without him.
But before the drinkard and his wife departed, the tapster gave them a very special present: an egg. "Put this egg in a bowl of water," the tapster said, "and you will get anything you want."
After another long journey, the drinkard and his wife returned home. But the village had changed. Famine had come, and people were dying of hunger everywhere. Immediately the drinkard remembered the egg. He put it in a bowl of water and wished for food. At once food surrounded him, and he fed the entire village and then people who came from miles around. He saved his land from famine, all because of an egg given to him by his long-dead palm-wine tapster.
And that is the tale of the palm-wine drinkard and his palm-wine tapster who died falling from a palm tree while tapping.