And now, if we may have a few moments of serious reflection, I give you… a lament for Hezbollah.
They’ve had a great run, those Hez-ballers. Yeah, while everyone else is sliding around third base into the Year of our Lord 2025, these fine young men of the Book Qu’RAN into a little trouble while trying to climb up out of the 90s. Popular Science is rating them “Most Likely to Get Retroactively Killed by Y2K”.
Pagers and walkie-talkies? Sure, Abdul, we got pagers and walkie-talkies!
And what a brilliant strategy it was, using these things against the Israelis so they couldn’t be tracked. But just like with every trick they’ve had up their sleeve or clipped to the belt around their dresses… this one blew up in their faces. Or other areas.
You’d think they’d have learned their lesson after it turned out Mossad was listening in on them through their Sony Walkmen, flash-blinding them with the fax machine, dipping their AOL dial-up CDs in anthrax, Rick-rolling their Netscape Navigator comment boards, and delivering neurotoxins directly into their veins through their slap bracelets. How, after all that, could they not see coming that the next Defender of Israel Award will likely go to Motorola?
Somewhere out there, in a lonely corridor of a cobweb-filled shopping mall, there’s a man standing at a dusty kiosk, sighing woefully like he’s the Maytag Repairman – yeah, that’s right kids, we’re cutting deep here. Do you know why he’s sighing? Because up until yesterday, that man had hope. What does he sell at this kiosk, you ask? Pagers. That’s what. And a few weeks ago, he had the largest order he’s had in years! He went home that night, hugged his wife and children, and said, “We’re gonna make it! Pagers are coming back, baby! And I’m going to be on top of the world!”
And then he wakes up yesterday to read the news story…and he knows his goose is cooked. And not just because he lives in Springfield, Ohio, and had a pet goose until recently.
Alas, for that man. And alas, for the large group of people who now, through the modern miracle of overheated and explosive-laced 90s technology, shall forever be known as Hez-balless. These men who give new meaning to terms like “hot pockets”. If there is justice in the hereafter, perhaps those who become unintentional junk bombers will receive twice as many virgins upon entry into Paradise!
And for those nine brave young men who died in the most Wiley E. Coyote way I’ve ever heard of… to you from whom life just took a giant bite of your Allahu-Ack Bar, let me just say this: I hope that the last thing you saw as you raised that pager to your eyes was a message from Mossad – the same message every young boy in the nineties would have sent on a pager. Numerical brevity being also the soul of wit, I hope, appropriately, the message simply read: 80085.
Boobs.