Hello. Everybody. Honoured guests - Mr. President - Mr. Treasurer - Welcome to the 50th Anniversary Dinner of IIPHHTRUP, the Institute of Imaginary Punishments, Half-Hearted Threats and Retractions of Unfulfillable Promises. May I have your attention please? I'm pleased - hello? Can I have your attention? Please? Be seated. Please be seated. Don't make me come down there. I will. I'll do it. I'll - you know? I'll - I can just pack this whole thing up and go home right now, you know. I'll go home and then the night is over, and you won't get the cocktails, and you won't get the dessert. Which is Baked Alaska. We were going to dim the lights, fire up some sparklers and bring in the Baked Alaska. It's one of those little things we like to do here, one of those special touches that makes an experience at IIPHHTRUP so memorable. So neat. so... different. But if you keep milling around, there won't be any Baked Alaska. There won't be anything memorable except for the shame of being naughty, disappointing guests. Stuff your faces with that thought. Put that one in your eye socket and look with it.

Okay. We're all seated now. I can tell you were listening. Ladies, Gentleman, distinguished guests. Shush now. Fifty years is a long time, and I'd like to think that we've come a long way since then. But the truth is, no matter how far we've gone, we can turn around right now and go back the way we came, if that's you want. Because if you keep squirming like that and carrying on, I can just turn around and go right back. I mean, you don't seem too happy going forward, do you? Anyone would think that you didn't like the direction we were heading in. Well, you signed up for membership, didn't you? And some of you actually flew all the way to Wisconsin to be at our 50th anniversary celebrations, right? If someone poked their head in through the door right now, they'd think that you never wanted to come here in the first place, the way you're acting. What am I going to tell that person? That you're all a bunch of little babies, and that I'm breaking the world's babysitting record? Because you're babies? I'll tell them that, and they'll tell me what a good job I'm doing, and how patient I am, and how bad my babies are. Then I'll have made a new friend, and he won't associate with babies like yourselves. Remember the 49th annual dinner, when I promised you all lasting new friendships? Well, I think you can all forget it. If there's going to be friends around here, they're mine.

In truth, though, it is not really the time to turn around, but to surge forward in our mission. And if any of us have lost our sense of mission, it is time for us to pick it up where we left off. But do not forget that if you decide to pick it up, don't wave it around or rattle it on the table, or it will be taken away from you and you won't get any punch. And it will be time to go back up to your hotel room and think about why you did what you did, and how your bad behaviour gave us no choice but to keep all the punch for the good people here, the nice ones, the ones who picked up their sense of mission and held it quietly in their laps. You'll stay there until you figure out what you did wrong.

I'm sure you've noticed by now that our programme contains a number of exciting guest speakers. If you haven't looked at the programme yet, I must advise you that there has been a last-minute addition. Sri David Hasselhoff will not be attending this year, so instead we've got our General Secretary, who will be explaining how there weren't any ponies left at the farm this Christmas, but the farmer promised that he'd make sure to keep one around for you the next time the mommy ponies have their babies, and if you're good you can come out and see your pony and feed him carrots and oats and nutritionally balanced pony pellet diet, if you behave. And after that will be our guest speaker, Vaughn Eberhamn from the Institute for Self-Fulfilling Prophecies. He's a great guy, and he only gets mad when you start acting all defensive.

parode - exode