Without a Paddle

We were all traveling in a boat. The same one, you might say. Cap'n Rick was holding forth against the River Authority. In no uncertain terms. The other passengers had elected Cap'n Rick cap'n because he was so good at no uncertain terms.

"I'm fed up with the River Authority!" declaimed Cap'n Rick. "Always stickin' their noses into our business!"

"Well, aren't they supposed to keep the rivers safe and clean?" suggested one naive passenger. A woman, of course. They often don't grasp the grosser points of logic.

"Safe and clean? Pah!" spat Cap'n Rick. "Those are jobs for the boats! We can do those jobs better and cheaper!"

"But, um, we don't, actually, do we?" she ploughed on recklessly.

"Course we do!" snapped Cap'n Rick, eyeing the miscreant as if she were a plank candidate, which she may have been. "But responsibly! Can't do any of that stuff if it costs a rich man a nickel. Stands to reason. But the RA, huh! Always takin' our money -- your money! -- with their fees! They need to cut spending, that's what they need to do!"

"Hear! Hear!" cried the majority of the passengers.

"Learn to live within their means, like the rest us!" said Cap'n Rick.

"But aren't those fees used for maintenance of the river?" blurted another intrepid soul.

"I already covered that," sneered Cap'n Rick. "We can do it better and cheaper."

"But don't," added the intrepid guy. "Those fees are also for assisting the people who travel the river."

"Hah!" scoffed Cap'n Rick. "I wouldn't take a dime from them! And I've turned down lots more, too! That's why I support all the spending cuts that guys like me have forced down their overreachin', spendthrift throats! And why I slashed our own paddle budget. You won't see no wasteful paddles on this boat, right?"

More "Hear! Hears!"

"Excuse me!" called a voice from the stern. "Or excuse us, I should say."

"Yeah, what?" asked Cap'n Rick politely.

"We are navigators," said the possessor of the voice, stepping forward. "We have noticed some disturbing signs. It seems that we are drifting in the direction of the infamous Shit's Creek."

"Seems?" scoffed Cap'n Rick.

"Well, I was trying to soften the statement a bit," replied the navigator. "We are most definitely heading for Shit's Creek. In fact, we are heading right into its mouth, I'm afraid. Notice how sluggishly we are now moving. Notice that the ... water, for want of a more polite word, is becoming thick, opaque, and, um, odoriferous. There are several of us navigators on board, and we can all vouch for this, although I think your own senses will give you a pretty good idea. It is really quite urgent that we change course immediately."

"Oh, really?" sneered Cap'n Rick. "Well, an increasing number of navigators have begun to question your Shit's Creek ... shit."

"Um, not really," said the navigator. "Anyway, it's too late."

Indeed, the boat had come to a complete stand-still. The engine had died. There were no paddles on board.

"What shall we do, Cap'n Rick?" cried the passengers. "Oh, what shall we do?"

"This is all the RA's fault," said Cap'n Rick. "It's their responsibility to supply us with paddles in an emergency. You can never get any help from those people."