byron's stuff: prince bob

Once upon a time in a land far far away there lived a lonely prince called Bob. Prince Bob had a secret desire. For as long as he could remember he'd had a fetish for hamsters and he wanted to leave his princely reign and become a hamster farmer, but his evil father King Harold would not hear of it.

So Prince Bob spent his days wandering around the castle looking for a small furry friend that he could spend the night with. At this point, the author (me) decides that the story is becoming a tad too disgusting, so he changes Bob's hamster fetish to a secret desire to play baseball for the New York Yankees.

Once upon a time in a land far far away there lived a lonely prince called Bob. Prince Bob had a secret desire. For as long as he could remember he'd had a secret desire to play baseball for the New York Yankees. This was a rather difficult desire to achieve due to that fact that baseball was yet to be invented, America was yet to be discovered, and the New York Yankees were nowhere on the near time horizon.

Of course none of this occurred to Prince Bob as he developed his baseball skills in hope that when baseball was invented that he'd be a number one player and immediately be snatched up by the New York Yankees.

One day, as Prince Bob (or "Bob" as he preferred to be called) was practicing his pitching skills, in an attempt to be the first to throw an unhittable fastball, a time-traveller appeared next to Bob (in a rather fetching time machine). Bob, who was not into reading science fiction at all, had no idea who this visitor was, and assumed him to be a used nostril salesman.

"I'm sorry but I've already got two" said Bob.

"Eh?" replied Harold (for that was the time-traveller's name).

"Have you got a moose?" asked Prince Bob of Harold.

"Sorry but I'm trying to give them up."

While all this was happening, the Pope was casually watching both Bob and Harold making fools of themselves from the relative comfort of a nearby bush. Of course since this is just a story, this was no ordinary Pope. No, the Pope in those bushes was commonly known as "Super Pope", and he had the stupid logo woven into his chest hair to prove it.

Super Pope, mainly because he was a brainless git, stepped out from the bushes to comfort Bob and Harold.

Harold, mainly because his mother was a Christian, had a phobia of Popes in general (and particularly those with stupid things woven on their chest) was shocked, stunned, frightened and angered by Super Pope's appearance (although not necessarily in that order). Reaching deep into the pockets of his baggy jeans he pulled out his trusty "Anti-Pope Hair Wax" and thoroughly massaged it into the scalp of the recently appeared Pope.

Your good friend and mine, Prince Bob, had taken a liking to his newly formed hobby of spleen removal and proceeded to apply his vast knowledge on the subject (none) on Super Pope.

Super Pope was stunned by the attention he was getting. Unfortunately this was to be short lived, for at the exact same time his spleen was skilfully coaxed from its place in his innards, his head was shrunk at an extraordinarily rate to the size of a small turnip. Super Pope collapsed on the ground, and died with a shudder a slow but painless death.

While Harold was fixated with Super Pope's last moments in this world, Prince Bob took it upon himself to fulfil his fantasy of playing for the Yankees. He skilfully jumped into Harold's time machine with such finesse that even a Chinese acrobat would be impressed. Pausing only to acknowledge the applause from a non-existent crowd, Bob closed the machine's door and entered the contraption's innards.

Ignoring the large neon Coke machine humming in a darkened corner of the room, while skilfully blotting out the existence of Sir Cliff Richard who was basking in the warm red glow produced by the Coke machine, Bob studied the rest of the room for ideas as to how to control the beast.

The rest of the room was rather sparse as time machines go - in fact it was completely empty. The entire contents of the room consisted of Prince Bob, Sir Cliff Richard and a Coke machine. Foolishly assuming that Sir Cliff had something to do with the operation of the wonderful contraption, Prince Bob knelt down beside Sir Cliff and prepared himself for conversation.

Of course, as we all know, you simply can't control a time machine by having an in depth conversation with a Sir Cliff about the wonders of a Coke dispensing machine. Prince Bob, and I think I mentioned this before, was not gifted when it came to the brains department. In fact, some would say that he was not playing with a full deck of card - or others would say that he had a few bats in his attic. Other personages might comment upon Prince Bob's mental status with "he's nuts" or "his elevator doesn't go all the way to the top" or even "it's like his brain has been removed by aliens and replaced with a solar powered cow". Prince Bob has heard them all - "you're barmey", "duuuuh", "retard ", "Bob - oh he's mad - quite mad"...

Given that the mental picture drawn by Prince Bob's brain had huge gaping holes in it he couldn't fully comprehend why talking to Sir Cliff Richard was not suddenly producing enough energy to tear the space-time continuum causing a hole large enough for the machine to pass through. In fact Prince Bob's tiny brain couldn't even cope with the concept of time travel let alone the mathematics involved to achieve such a feat. All Prince Bob knew was that he wanted to go. Now. Please.

Sir Cliff Richard's entire body felt numb. That always happened after a long sleep. His eyes, still gummed together, throbbed like a mother fucker. Slowly, his right eye crept open, flooding his eyeball with intensive red light. Cliff groaned, and forced his other eye to open.

He sat before a ordinary looking Coke machine, its light flickering in a manner that only old Coke machines have been able to master. He attempted to look around. Every joint in his body ached and begged his brain not to move. Eventually he looked to his left and sighted a rather odd looking fellow.

"I wanna play for the Yankies", the odd fellow said.

Sir Cliff considered this for a moment. Most sections of his brain seemed to have a different idea as to what approach one should take when dealing with such obvious insanity. Eventually most parts of his brain came to the same conclusion, which was sent to the portion of his brain that dealt with communication. This portion then mulled the presentation over for a few nano-seconds, and a suitable response was sent to the portion in charge of voice. Eventually, after almost two whole seconds had passed, a reply was to be heard: