Mark**:

When you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. When you’ve spent a grueling three days working over The Magic Flute, well…

Papageno & Papagena: Oh, what happiness and joy

If the kindly gods will maybe

Bless our marriage with a baby,

A little girl or little boy.

Papageno: First send a little Papageno.

Papagena: Then send a little Papagena.

Papageno: We’ll have another Papageno.

Papagena: Then have another Papagena.

Papageno: Papageno, Papageno, Papageno, Papageno.

Papagena: Papagena, Papagena, Papagena, Papagena.

Both: It is the sweetest human pleasure

To have a dear young

Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-geno / Pa-Pa-Pa-Pa-gena

To comfort their old parents’ lives.

One gets the impression that the Prince and Princess, by contrast, will be practicing birth control—assuming they have any energy left for the generative act after pulling all-nighters at Sarastro’s law firm.

**Steyn, not Krikorian. With two Marks blogging, we need some way to differentiate them. How about Mark Mark I and Mark Mark II?