Scandals…
Don’t forget to check some of my favorite blogs:
http://priceofliberty.net - The Price of Liberty is Vigilance
http://evenlittlesparrows.blogspot.com/ - Sparrow Chat
http://www.crooksandliars.com/ - Crooks and Liars
http://www.thinkprogress.org/ - Think Progess
http://www.nocapital.blogspot.com/ - No Capital
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/ - NewsHog
http://www.cursor.org - Cursor
http://www.mockpaperscissors.com/ - Mock, Paper, Scissors
http://tumblingvice.blogspot.com/ - Tumbling Vice
http://bobgeiger.blogspot.com/ - BobGeiger (formerly Yellow Dog)
http://left-over.blogspot.com/ - Left-Over
Glossary for newcomers:
Chief of the Counterfeit Compassionate Conservative And Oh Yeah By The Way Conspicuously Caucasian Caucus = George W. Bush
Dither of Dolts = The Bush Administration and heads of agencies
Lint Twins = The Bush twins, who, like lint, are neither useful nor decorative
Shithead = Karl Rove. To save typographer's labor and print space, this combines the two soubriquets frequently applied to Mr. Rove: Bush's Brain + Turd Blossom = Shithead
XianXrazies = Any group professing to be Christian which believes the faith excludes any of humanity from the hope it presumably offers since Christ's sacrifice or which believes it has successfully learned to read God's mind or which believes God wants followers who are drafted or gathered by impressment or which believes God hates or wants anyone else to hate those who do not believe in Him.
Ambulatory Emetic = Condi Rice, Secretary of State, aka the cacophagous, fawning bitch cur that slithers and crawls behind her master. A gourmand of whatever shit he deposits, she mixes it with her venomous digestive juices, then vomits it forth before the leaders of the world
War = . The indefeasible demonstration in support of the premise that we aren't good enough to qualify as fallen angels and aren't smart enough to qualify as risen apes.
---o0o---
Scandals…
The papers and newscasts are filled with the current ones.
1. According to the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, PlayStation 3 greeted by shooting, robberies, mobs. There is something disquieting in being obliged to recognize that Americans value their toys so highly -- particularly toys that enable them to simulate the death and destruction of human life and property from the comfort of their living rooms. Can we really wonder that the full horror of Iraq and its effect on the lives of our troops and the Iraqis scarcely seem to penetrate our consciousness? That we don't seem able to piece together that spending everything we have on war prevents our doing other things, like feeding the hungry, treating the ill, educating children?
2. Old murders and new weddings -- both involving people most of us will never see "in the flesh", let alone come to know sufficiently to care about them.
The old murder, of course, is the infamous O. J. Simpson case, about which there apparently will be a Fox program already giving rise to great controversy. Personally, I am opposed to censorship beyond that offered by the ability to change channels or turn off the TV. I can escape the program with ease. What distresses me is that someone somewhere decided, apparently quite rightly, that some Americans will be interested to see it. If Mr. Simpson was guilty of murder and nonetheless acquitted, that is, indeed, an awful thing -- though less awful than he if was innocent and found guilty. In the first instance, even if he were to confess on national television, what would be accomplished except to demonstrate one more time that our system of justice is seriously flawed? At the time the trial was occurring, I declined to discuss it with even friends -- being, as I am, a believer that unless we change our system of justice, we are bound to abide by it. I was not asked to be on the jury. My opinion therefore could not matter.
The new wedding is that of Mr. Cruise and the latest missus, on which a reported $3million was spent. I know who Mr. Cruise is (I saw him opposite Dustin Hoffman in Rain Main, and considered it evidence of his acting skill that anyone even noticed him while Mr. Hoffman was on screen). What he spends on his wedding, whether his first or ninety-first, is none of my business. However, I like to think if I had three million otherwise uncommitted dollars lying around, a lavish wedding would not be the first place it would occur to me to spend it. Darfur springs to mind. Appalachia springs to mind. Inner cities spring to mind. Homeless people spring to mind. Again, however, I concede that the money is his; spend it where he will, 'tis no business of mine. But neither is his wedding my business or the business of that uninvited portion of the world which apparently exercised much ingenuity and expended not a little cash trying to find their way into it. Why? Does anyone outside family and friends really care? And if they do, I repeat, why?
Well, obviously recent revelations about members of Congress and the clergy have also offered lots of scandals. You already know all about those, I'm sure.
So I offer a different set of scandals. These are older…
First, for all the missionizing evangelicals whose presumption in appearing at my front door in greater than usual numbers lately has led to some rather acerbic and (on my part) not totally Christian exchanges, I offer something which may in part explain my reluctance to accept their luridly colored pamphlets and printed exhortations to be born again in Jesus Christ. Here's the story of a young woman who… well, with luck, it speaks for itself.
The Partial Palingenesis of Prudence MacPherson
[Warning: Content, language are irreverent]
When Prudence was born
the Great War, 1914-1919, surrounded her birth,
this they knew,
but by the time her age became a
matter of importance…
that is to say,
on which side of the age of consent
she was sitting when
the red-nosed, balding, maculate alderman
lured her, willing, away from her
giggling friends and
bought her a pair of bronze-toed shoes…
the hall where the records were kept
had been destroyed by an errant boy’s match
her grandmother, a venerable spinster,
looking like a faded, moth-holed tapestry,
perhaps a hunting scene with a frantic frothing fox,
kicked her mother, less venerable
though also a spinster, a very soft
and yielding, pink and fluffing one
onto the rivuleted, cobbled street one rainy night
and proclaimed with STENTORIAN virtue (reclaimed)
her own one lapse from
the state of grace
having been expunged
by convenient senility
and frequent change
of address
that no goddamnjesuschrist whore
would spend a night under her roof
ever again.
A self-fulfilling prophecy,
for the old lady’s ire rose
to an apoplexy
and she toppled over
thin and stony dead on her stoop
and lay there,
rouged in the rain,
until the Wednesday rag and bone man
found her
and loaded her on his wagon
atop the other rags and bones
and conveyed her grandly to the village square,
with an escort of five ragged boys
and a disinterested dog.
Prudence’s mother bought widow’s weeds
And wore her hair pulled
back tight to her egg-shell skull
which showed her pretty pink ears to advantage,
they being tiny and involuted
and so very shell-like
that one poetic uncle of Prudence
claimed he could hear the sea
rushing there
and moved to another village
where her double bereavement
mother and husband, mater et vir
won her the sympathy of
the Church Ladies’ League
and her shell-like ears
and other endowments
of nature and art
won her the
impermanent but sincere affection of
various gentlemen lodgers
whom she received in the
village-end cottage
she leased with the money
left her by her husband
when the news of incipient Prudence
brought him abruptly
to his grave…
which is to say,
Prudence’s mother
thought he might very well be dead,
for gone
he certainly was
which accepted her into the matronly bosom
carefully corseted
of the sewing circle and Missionary Support Guild.
When her softness had begun to sag
and the pleasant pink fluffiness to be merely puffy,
Prudence’s mother
she had named her daughter for her
favorite virtue
had put aside a nice nest egg and
was able to retire,
which she did with a twinge of regret.
Prudence had preferred the passing parade
of uncles, muscled and mustached,
dapper, striped and glinting,
each with a tooth of prominent gold,
but respected her mother’s red-rimmed eyes
and did not complain at the sudden cessation of
pig-a-back rides and sour lemon balls
and
other attentions.
Prudence grew in grace and beauty…
that is,
she developed somewhat prematurely
a well-nourished,
decidedly mammalian,
statuesque figure,
with a calendar-girl, unfocused face that
tended to speckle when she blushed.
After the alderman, an apologetic,
Essentially fatherly man,
Prudence encountered
a series of youths,
callow and otherwise,
whom she had the wit and
(prudence)
good sense to
keep a secret from her mama.
They met in the shed on the green where,
on fair Saturday mornings,
the old men bowled.
One winter, when Prudence was
more or less twenty,
or so she surmised; her mother was so indefinite
mama fell victim to a catarrh
and gently slipped from
the bosom of one of the Sewing Circle matrons
into the bosom of Abraham.
The new village curate came to call on
fair Prudence, bereft,
and felt himself sinking under
periwinkle eyes and a tremulous mouth,
wished vaguely for a High Church call
with a dangling crucifix,
and succumbed.
Afterwards he lit the four candles
marking the corners of the coffin
of Prudence’s mother
and spent the night on his knees in prayer,
and he didn’t call again for a month.
What her grandmother had
done once through weakness
once, to give her tally the
benefit of the doubt
what her mother had done for profit
and the pleasure of being admired
Prudence did for love of her craft.
And so, of course,
she was found out.
Being neither a secret, festering sinner
nor a shrewd profiteer,
she was insufficiently circumspect.
When the Church Ladies’ League
approached the young curate
and hemmed and harrumphed
their way to the rosebud center of the problem,
he blanched
which sudden alteration in facial hue was
immediately apprehended as
shock and disgust.
He was a clergyman, he argued,
but a man nonetheless.
The Ladies’ visit should precede his own.
The Ladies agreed and
admired his modest sensitivity.
Prudence teetered on
the fingertips of fortune, unaware,
her vague, calendar-picture face marless.
When she saw the Ladies’ League approach,
she sucked on her tongue
and blushed from bashfulness.
When they explained their mission and tut-tutted,
Prudence slowly
Prudence never acted in haste,
preferring to give her mind a needed head-start
turned over in her mind a new idea,
that her chosen, hereditary profession was
not professable
and was about to be rendered unpractisable.
The idea of sin could not be conveyed to her.
Being unashamed as well as uncircumspect,
Prudence was patient, appeared to listen,
cocked her head beguilingly,
speckled brightly under their pricking stares
all which the noble-bosomed ladies
interpreted hopefully as a sign
that maidenly modesty
had not been fully extinguished
and with her tapered fingers
systematically pleated the gauzy skirt
of her dirndl.
The meeting ended with a prayer
after a minor preliminary dissension between
Mrs. McGurdy, who favored addressing the petition for
enlightment and forgiveness
to St. Ursula, and
Miss Mettie Hodd,
whose paring-knife face and steel-shavings hair
suggested the tin works at Griswold Hill,
who spoke warmly for her favorite St. Bridget,
and then grew embarrassed
and docile
and yielded
for Prudence, who went down on her knees,
arranging the dirndl in a becoming heap,
clasped her hands
to her undulating bosom,
and rolled her eyes to heaven
in a gesture which the Ladies
had they not been piously squinting in prayer
would have recognized
as an habitual one of the curate
when he was most fervently praying.
When Mrs. McGurdy’s voice had
careened along a virtual wail
and subsided on a breathy amen,
the Ladies all rose,
kissed Prudence’s rosy round cheek
in a self-congratulatory demonstration
of undefinable emotion
consisting in almost equal parts of
charity,
self-satisfaction,
and
spite
and departed, with the proffered comfort
that the curate would soon call
at which Prudence flushed
most prettily and nibbled,
not hungrily, at her lip,
remembering.
For the rest of the day,
Prudence
framed becomingly by the
lace curtains
sat blushingly serene at the window
and waited.
© XristiM 1998-2006
And for all those absolutely certain about how we came to be roughly 6,000 years ago (ahem!), an alternate scenario which pleases my fancy if no other. I confess myself a dedicated evolutionist and live with the continuous hope that the other primates don't insist on pruning us from their family tree as failing to meet their standards.
A New Creature in Eden
After a good night’s rest following the labors
of days of uninterrupted creation,
God looked around Eden, saw the lush growth
of plants, the proliferation of bees, birds,
of everything feathered or finned or furred or felled,
and realized the need for a caretaker.
He scooped up a goodly handful of dust,
moistened it from a nearby spring – or perhaps
spat upon it, if some sources can be believed –
and fashioned Adam,
our first grounds- and gamekeeper.
Substantive details are lacking.
Our first father might have come into being
a palm-sized homunculus who grew;
might have been a single cell crammed
with evolutionary potential, its progress
to naked ape accomplished during God’s leisurely blink.
Or perhaps God created Adam truly in His own image
(and Spinoza’s of Him),
ending with a man co-terminal with creation --
a stature unwieldy and unmanageable for everyday use –
and patted him down to size.
Whatever the case, at the end of the process,
Adam indisputably was.
God pointed to one tree a little apart from the others.
It was a middling growth with large glossy leaves
too heavy to be stirred by wafting breezes,
with boughs numerous and intricately latticed,
and hung with pomes that seemed to pulse,
whose luscious hue and odor shifted,
altered with every looking, every sniff,
each new guise more provocative and inviting.
That tree stood alone on a knoll
carpeted with velvety grass,
except about its base.
There, a circle of soil barren, unpopulated and unmossed,
not reached by shower or sun through the clustering foliage.
“Do not go near that tree,” God cautioned.
“Eat nothing that grows upon it or falls from it. Avoid it.”
The first Stay Off the Grass sign was thus orally posted –
and followed with as good success as those in parks today.
Adam agreed.
Plenty, the possibility for satiety and more, was everywhere.
One tree and its ever-changing,
always altering bauble-like fruit
would not be missed.
While Adam poked about the Garden,
discovering what it means to taste, to smell,
to read the world through fingertips and soles of feet
as well as eyes and ears and tongue,
an afterthought occurred to God.
Adam fell into a deep slumber, while God
soliloquized out of his hearing,
planning the first arranged marriage.
The groom slept unaware.
Adam’s sleep was dreamless.
What need of dreams,
when one is hopeless and fearless?
Nothing left unprovided or undone for which to hope,
nothing yet created to engender fear ?
Dreams came later, with the need
to resolve waking conflicts, to sort out the day’s enigmas.
Eden was perfect, complete, and,
lacking contrast,
as unaware of its own state as Adam was of his.
And one prohibition only;
to avoid the fruit of that certain tree
growing there, apart from the others.
It seemed a very little thing.
Where everything that could be, was,
what need of more, of curiosity or speculation.
Adam woke.
When he sat up in the sun-speckled shade
beneath the sheltering, shimmering leaves,
he felt something had changed,
was aware of God’s touch while he slept,
saw a fading pink line on flesh already healing,
felt a tingling, a sort of irritated itchiness
in the area of his ribs, just below his left breast.
It was Adam’s first experience of self-awareness;
something in the perfect, static world had changed.
The change was somehow in him, of him, from him.
A rustling of the leafy shrub to his right…
a lamb, perhaps, nibbling at new grass;
or a bird, tending her fledglings, her nest low to the ground
to gentle their fall in learning to fly.
Adam turned, unalarmed, a friendly hand
extended to rub a muzzle or provide a perch--
but from the spring green leafiness emerged no bird or lamb--
instead, a new creature in Eden,
a creature too much like not to be perceived as different.
He had not wondered at tails, at paws, at antlers or wings.
In creatures so unlike, no dissimilarity causes surprise.
But this -- a different situation altogether.
This, for the first time, was genuine “otherness” –
the only not I who in so many respects might have been I
but somehow was not.
God appeared, named Eve to Adam,
placed her hand in his.
She kept her face toward God,
seemed less interested in Adam
than in her Maker and all else He had made.
But Adam…
the hand in his was smaller than his own,
seemed to quiver with the coursing of its blood,
its bones more fragile, closer to the moist warm skin
that covered it.
He wished to clasp it tighter,
but feared to crush it, sensed as much as felt
her efforts to withdraw.
Reluctantly he loosed his clasp, the small warm
hand was drawn quickly away.
God was speaking, but Adam, for the first time,
was not fully attentive.
He watched the new creature step delicately
upon the verdant ground,
saw the tender grass compress
beneath the pale, blue-veined foot and
spring up again as she passed.
That grass then, to Adam, seemed even sweeter.
God was talking of the tree.
Eve was absorbed in Eden, and Adam in her.
Neither heard, or if they heard, not with full attention.
They did not notice when their Maker withdrew.
Eve, a slender column of curiosity,
poked, prodded, and examined
all the marvels of creation.
Adam, beguiled by her beguilement,
followed her steps everywhere,
noted that the birds amiable to him
settled lovingly on her shoulders and
plucked playfully at her cascading hair,
that a pair of foxes trotted beside her,
deer ate berries from her hand.
He felt a vague unease when her path led her
toward that certain tree,
but his enchantment was stronger than unease.
His steps slowed, but did not falter;
he followed where she led.
Close to the tree, Eve looked up into its branches,
unstartled, more than unstartled – pleased –
that within the opalescent luster of its fruit
she could see a soft-hued reflection of herself.
Her hand reached up, less to pick
than to caress the lovely image.
Suddenly the birds started from her shoulders,
the foxes barked,
nipped at each other in misdirected alarm.
The deer bounded away, paused, watched,
then disappeared into the foliage.
Eve took notice, looked to see the cause.
Twined about the trunk of the tree,
its lustrous green-black skin gleaming even in the shade,
was a serpent,
its yellow eyes heavy-hooded, its tongue flicking.
It spoke to Eve in unctuous tones, insinuating, low,
a murmur seductive in its silky warmth.
Adam, belatedly mindful of the recent prohibition,
stood back, watching,
unable to hear what the serpent so softly whispered,
wishing to draw Eve away,
but fearful of the consequence –
less fearful of the breach of God’s commandment than
of the lovely new creature’s resentment of interference.
He could move no closer, but neither could he move away.
Transfixed, he watched the unfolding of the scene,
witnessed the moment when Eve
seemed altogether forgetful of the warning,
when the small hand he had clasped reached up,
its fingers gently circling and grasping,
pulling toward her the fleshy, lustrous fruit.
Adam took a step forward,
the serpent’s tongue darted warningly…
he hesitated, and in that instant, Eve bit into the fruit,
its ample juices spraying forth, moistening her lips
with sweet syrup,
running from her chin and spilling to her bare bosom.
The air was filled with wonderful fragrance, pungent,
heady – Adam was half-drunk with the aroma
and strangely lulled, his limbs heavy, his mind slowed,
its only image Eve, the fruit to her mouth.
The serpent’s coils quivered, pulsed, as it drew back
a little, draped itself upon a low-lying limb and
watched through the heavy dark leaves.
Eve turned to Adam and held forth the partially eaten fruit.
He could see its pinkish inner pulp,
glistening with its abundant juice.
His nostrils were filled entirely with its seductive aroma.
“Eat of this,” she said.
She had not spoken to him before.
Her voice was another birdsong,
another melody on the perfumed air.
Adam, forgetful of all except the vision,
the sound, the smell of Eve,
took the fruit from her hand, and ate.
Somewhere in the foliage of that tree, a hiss of triumph,
a kind of sibilant chuckle of satisfaction.
Adam moaned and cast aside the fruit,
saw it resolve itself into a tiny mound of ash,
carried away by a breeze that arose, turned chill,
and blew finally with the force of Eden’s first wind.
Darkness out of its hour descended, obscuring vision.
The trees and brush were suddenly loud
with the panicked movements
of birds, of creatures scurrying
in response to Eden’s newest gift, fear.
In the gloom, Adam and Eve stared at each other
in the grip of new feelings, of fear and shame.
Hostile sounds erupted about them;
one of the foxes that had frolicked about Eve’s feet
emerged from the underbrush,
in its mouth the broken, bleeding body of one of the birds
that had played about her head.
Eden’s first victim had been claimed.
The darkness deepened, and for the first time
paradise seemed not home, but a foreign place,
uncharted, dangerous.
Too dark now to see each other, too late to recall
the one, the single limitation on their perfect bliss.
Cowering, attempting to shield themselves
equally from the chilling wind and each other’s eyes,
they half-hid among the leaves,
and waited.
© XristiM 1998-2006
Thanks for sharing! (Comment this)
I have this odd mental image of you parading through Eden in stout walking shoes, carrying a placard insisting on an end to war and renewal of diplomatic relations with the snake!
(Comment this)
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You give me such a clear idea of Adam and Eve that I already have the young Marlon Brando cast as Adam (in my mind, of course) and Eve must be Jacqueline Bisset. The serpent, well, that causes me problems...
I hope your Thanksgiving went well, and that we will all soon be treated to your Christmas postings. We miss you at Mock, Paper, Scissors, and hope you are well.
Best regards,
Tengrain (Comment this)
The tree should have been fenced. No doubt at all in my mind.
As for Patience, she is modeled after my wonderful LA friend of many years ago, to whom I'll refer by her "professional name" - Marvel. Marvel was a call girl of almost Puritanical rectitude in all other matters. While hers was not a line of work I'd have chosen for myself (more because of its inherent dangers than for moral reasons), I have to confess I found her unapologetic pursuit of her craft did not at all interfere with our being good buddies. (Comment this)
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