It was the maiden voyage of the USS Cinatit and some of the passengers were just sitting down for tea when a shout range out from the starboard side that there were large ice flows in the water.

With the ship traveling at flank speed a number of starboard side people demanded the ship slow down. Their numbers grew despite the efforts of the crew to silenced them by forcing them into an isolated starboard room and calling them fearmongers and extremists. Soon their number overflowed the room and the crew summoned the captain for fear they might alarm the rest of the passengers.

The captain tried to argue with them that slowing down the ship would have disasterous consequences to the other passengers who expected to arrive in port on schedule. But alas it was to no avail. Frustrated the captain then went on the shipboard PA to calm the other passengers by telling them they should ignore the bunch of wingnuts warning about ice and the need to slow the ship.

In fact, they needn’t worry since they were fortunate to have a group of oceanographers from the Keynesian Institute meeting on the port side of the ship for a government paid symposium who had fortunately brought their fishbowls along with them for modeling.

By pulling down the shades on the port side they were better able to see the action of the water in their fishbowls and state with confidence that there was no ice in any of their fishbowls. In fact many of these experts proclaimed that increasing the speed of the ship would get them more quickly from one side of the fishbowl to the other, thereby lessening the chance of any ice developing.

However, the radical starboard tea drinkers were not to be deterred and threatened to stuff up all the toilets on the ship if something wasn’t done. Despite the wrath of the other passengers, inflamed by the urging of captain and crew, the tea drinking anarchists stuck to their guns.

Finally Capt. Amabo was forced to compromise to silence these starboard wing tea partiers and in the spirit of shared sacrifice agreed that on future cruises: DRINKS WILL NO LONGER BE SERVED WITH ICE CUBES!

While some of the far port side passengers were aghast and nearly mutinied at the possibility of no ice in their drinks on future voyages, most passengers in the middle and even many who had seen the ice floes passing by on the starboard side, agreed it was a necessary compromise and the far starboard tea partiers should be happy with their big victory and move on.

After all the tea partiers had managed to change the whole discussion from whether to increase the speed of the ship to a discussion about ICE!

Then suddenly the whole ship shuddered with the sound of shredding steel…