For The Love Of A Good Sore

We all remember the story of poor Lazarus in the Bible -- poorer even than me -- dogs came and licked his sores. I heard the old preachers of old expound on this passage at some length. By the time they were done, he'd suffered long and they were terrible sores, with one brutal sore right at the nucleus. Of course it took three or four sore points to finish the soremon. Ah, for the love of a good sore!

One of my favorite jingles in advertising is, "Dog’s don’t know it’s not bacon!" Let's say we have a guy carrying bacon in his back pocket. The dog comes running up and bites his ass. Because, "Dog’s don’t know it’s backend!" Now I got another hole where the good Lord folded me, very holistic. My dog’s never been picky either when it comes to food. If it’s related to the meat family, it’s 10 times better than the world’s finest grain.

You get a sore, the sore has to heal. Dog’s also heel, eh? I have a few little sores. Who doesn't. You scratch too much, there's one, then another. And sometimes I get banged up. A cut. And I always hope the same thing, that the tetanus shot I got in 4th grade is still working its magic.

Other than that, there’s always dogs. Just take your mind off your problems. Watch TV, lay back, relax, and let the dog lick you, like Lazarus. It gets so comforting, you might set an alarm. I had a sore on my leg one time and the dog started licking me. Naturally I went to sleep. I woke up and there it was, all the color out of it, like a bit of ham fat from a can of soup after it’s processed in the soup factory. Hanging there, no substance, no strength, just dead tissue. Two minutes later the dog would’ve been bitten it off and I'd've never known.

Pa, is that dog still licking you? Cover that thing up or it’ll never heal! The dog hears heel and dives to the floor. Dives, of course, being the name of the rich master in the story of Lazarus. He had enough of life here — overdosed, I’d say — and had to go to hell, took a dive, dove right in, to a place where dog’s don’t heel, including Cerberus, the hound of hell. He’ll never heel in hell. I’d rather kneel in heaven than heel in hell, amen? For the love of a good sore.

A sore can be useful. It's nature’s bandage, an organic arrangement of blood and evaporation.

Dogs get so they understand the word sore, depending how accident-prone you are. Especially way back when, when they didn’t get treats like today. It's just like you say ‘You wanna go bye bye?’ They know bye bye means a car ride. You wanna go to the park? They know park. One of my dogs knew the word squirrel. I’d tell her “Squirrel!” Her ears perked up like satellite antennae. She’d look for my finger to point the way, even though if she wasn’t so dependent on me she could’ve just discerned it. Then she was off, blazing speed. Even caught one one time, but I didn’t want her tasting wild blood, so I called her off, letting the squirrel live. There was, however, a time when I came around the bandstand and there was a dead squirrel at her feet. It looked fresh with some fresh sores, and naturally I didn’t let her have it. A squirrel’s a rodent, and rodent’s carry disease. That’s why I don’t allow mice in my home, even if they are good for keeping roaches at a decent level.

Milton, he milt hell for all it was worth. Besides him, mythology has Long Schlong Silver (his distinguished appendage tastefully censored with a dime) with Cerberus appearing on the vast hellscape, that three-headed dog pissing on Satan to help relieve his pain. Or something. 

Sometimes, though, as Kenny Rogers said, the hurting won’t heal. You get a sore, it gets worse, other sores pop up, things run, things get pusy and drip, and the whole thing degenerates into a mass of coagulation, looking a sight. There's purpose in that, too. A good sore sets things right, if you tend to it right. Or not, either way a good sore does its thing. Finally in the end, we fall on our sore and die a noble death.

Great Caesar's Ghost

PROLOGUE: Lend me your eyes. Look at that picture, man. Isn't that a thing of beauty? I'll say it is, since I worked on it and am in some degree responsible for it. (I didn't make the original, of course, since I can't draw flies.) Looks like Julius Caesar, too, doesn't it? In a chariot being pulled by a couple brute animals, bred back then for that purpose. I really like the trees, how they stand out, evocative of entire trees but only a few random limbs or trunks.

NON-PROLOGUE: I'm making my way through The Adventures of Superman TV show again. And as I already well know from childhood, Daily Planet editor Perry White's go-to expression of outburst -- astonishment or disbelief -- is "Great Caesar's Ghost!" At some point in the first 8 or 10 episodes, he says it a time or two. It stands out more for me now as an old man than it did years ago when I was a kid. Because people just don't say things like that anymore. No more than we'd say a similar phrase that old people (on TV anyway) used to use, "Land of Goshen!" Now they just say "What the hell" or worse.

Later in the series there's even an episode in which some guys gaslight Perry White, with one guy dressing as Caesar and showing up at Perry's home, etc. He's got the weird helmet they used in Roman times, a kind of mini-skirt of mail, the strap-em laces and boots, legs a'showin', the whole bit. Perry is of course taken in and doesn't know what to think, how to overcome the nauseating effects of the whole scheme. Superman flies in and tidies it up, sending the faux Caesar down the Appian Way to the closest clink.

Perry White and the '50s aren't so terribly far away. Kind of a while back. I was born then -- how about that? -- so even though I'm getting older all the time, I'm not exactly ancient history. Yet when's the last time you heard someone use the expression "Great Caesar's Ghost"? It has to have been a while. Anything else sounds better. What the hell? What the fuck? What in Sam Hell? Goddammit to a Christless Hell is one I use from time to time, which is very interesting, isn't it? I am very invested in the Lord, let me put it that way ... He's building for me a cabin in the corner of Gloryland, and some glad morning I'll wake up there, arrange my things, take a shower, and go out to see what it's all about. Now, if there were a Hell in the traditional sense of the word, isn't it damned awful that it would somehow be entirely apart from Christ, Logos, and even an ounce of good or light? I shudder... I used to dream of it as a kid, brought up in the church when Hell was the main attraction week after week.

But no one in the show ever offers up (in my memory) surprise at "Great Caesar's Ghost!" Not Jimmy, Lois, Clark, or even Superman. They put up with Perry's brusqueness and just chalk up the expression to "Everyone's gotta say something, we guess." It's a personality device, his catchphrase, and that's all there is to it. It makes me wonder when they were doing the writing that someone actually pitched the "Great Caesar's Ghost" episode, since it assumes a guy who says a phrase would be especially susceptible to it being literally true. I don't see that. We're usually able to separate blank expressions from daily reality very easily.

I should read up on Julius Caesar a little more. Maybe I'd dream of him. Maybe I will now, having written this. "You summoned me, here I am! None of those other people can see me, only you." Etcetera, etc., and so forth... I know I'll be terrified -- maybe that's true. It could be one of my patron saints, George Reeves, will swoop in and save me. Let's hope, shall we? that George Reeves, whatever happened to him long ago, also has a corner in Gloryland. And that he and I get to be fast friends. My so-called friends from long ago used to (not often) taunt me that Superman killed himself, etc.

That's it! I get to Heaven, I immediately find George Reeves. Then we get together with the whole Superman gang, and go find John Hamilton (Perry White), and Julius Caesar -- say he somehow makes it -- and we have a damned ball? How about that?! I'll take that over a Christless Hell any day of the week.

Thanking The Four Prisoners

THE GOLDEN CHILD - #15

One of my favorite things to do in life is to get a big sincere look on my face, then face someone who's apparently done me a favor or some nice thing, and give them a fulsome compliment and my richest thanks for a job well done. I lay it on thick, too: "Ohh, it's just the nicest thing anyone's ever done, you're such a good person, and when they made you they threw away the mold, your afterlife's bound to be pleasurable, a thousand virgins," the whole bit. I fell on the ice one day and a neighbor came to check on me and, for no more than that, he got 500 virgins!

So in the aftermath of the whole Myra Kula Electra/demons episode, involving the Tractor Promenade and the old Coal Mound, a creepy place when I was a kid, I had to pass out the plaudits and make them good. And appear as gracious as I can, because nothing says "You owe me" like complimenting and praising true scum of the earth, as I faced in the four prisoners. Hell, it's only been a few days and I can't actually remember what they did in this whole episode! But, in their favor, I've been experiencing short term memory loss since falling on the ice.

Instead of me referring back in the posts of the last week, let's just say the four prisoners did something worthy of commendation. Would I have been victorious without them? Absolutely. Would Myra have overcome the demons? I can't see why not. Would the town have survived without the prisoners? Of course. It's like a thought experiment. Let's say in the best of all possible worlds there would've been four or eight guys a hundred times better than these four idiots. Can you picture the four or eight other guys? Can you grasp the fact that they are one hundred times better? All right. We survived without those guys, guys whose contributions conceivably would've been vital! Let's say we couldn't do it without them! And yet we did... Ergo, we could've done it without these four, too.

Be that as it may -- and Spud, Tipsy, Cannibal, and Danny, if you're reading this -- again, it's just a thought experiment. The fact is, we couldn't have done it without you. In a sense, then, you can assume this was your purpose in life. This was the vital mission you were born for. You worked yourself up from childhood, then into a life of crime, not because you were simply meant to be criminals and go to prison and still be there, albeit living on a work release farm. All your errors, all the things you've suffered in prison, all the joy you may have had in ordinary society, with wives, kids, homes, and dogs. All of that was deprived you so you would be in the right place for when I needed you. To accomplish whatever it was you did. And I believe it had to be something. Otherwise why would I be commending you?

Thank you, gentlemen, for a job well done!

When I think of the enormity of the challenge: Every demon from every pit in hell itself, every devil from the furthest, deepest, darkest hole, dwelling in unimaginable darkness, hanging from sharp crags, with the uncanny, disgusting sound of blood dripping into pools of blood, with the sound echoing from vast canyons that have never been seen by the eyes of men... Every scurvy son-of-a-bitchin' filthy slimy, wasted away, moth-eaten bat or devil or demon or wraith or scurvy whatever, hanging from the rafters, pushed back upon the shelf, not able to tell a stalactite from a stalagmite with its eyes wide open in the pitch black sky untouched by the slightest beam of light, lost in an unmapped hellscape of such a description that there's no way even to describe it... Gentlemen, all that you faced! And the sounds, O, the sounds! The screeching, the howling, the growling, the long nailed feet prowling, their bare feet lacerated by stepping on broken glass and nails, then the crying out. The fact that God is so angry in His wrath that there is no broken glass or nails except what is immediately created in the darkness for them to step on as they take the step! That's bad, beneath contempt, as far as I'm concerned, diabolical!

I think of the enormity of the challenge you faced, gentlemen, and I can only say, "Thank you."

Now, gentlemen, let me say in addition: You helped rescue Myra Kula Electra from all that, and for that I am also grateful. But that is where my thanks ends. The black school bus from the prison farm awaits you outside. As you collect your certificate of merit, you will be immediately escorted to the bus, to be taken back to the farm, where you will live out your days. I shared my concerns about you and women with the warden, and he -- a man who once had a dear mother who was a woman -- says you should never again taint polite society with your disgusting animal lusts.

Without bringing the thoughts of pleasure into your mind too much, remember, you had public sex with Myra Kula Electra, the four of you. And that must never happen again! Be gone with you! Get out of my sight! And never come back! Having now fulfilled your purpose in life, take your certificate and kindly leave my sight. Vacate the premises...

This Putin Thing Is Good News After All

I know everyone's up in arms about Putin invading the Crimea, then next, perhaps, Ukraine, and then the vorld! I am, too, since it's always been my belief that a guy ought to live a humble, peaceable life, for the greatest personal happiness and also for the good of the community. On this point, apparently I and the ex-KGB agent, for unknown reasons, disagree.

I actually sensed all along that the guy was bad news. There was his background, right away a red flag, so to speak. Then there was all that business of him having the actual control of the country even after they had elected a president. Then the macho pose he was striking for the last several years, killing bars with his bare hands like Daniel Boone, and shirtless to boot.

And when you get me going on this stuff -- stuff I'd much rather ignore -- it can be very unsettling. Because, being an old guy, I have clear memories of the old Soviet Union and the way they haunted my childhood. There was always talk of us being blown off the map, etc., which never happened, as it turns out, but as a child I didn't know it'd have a happy ending. I was also a child in Sunday School every week, so I went to bed each night with two terrors: a literal Hell and a literal Soviet Union. They vied for which might be worse. It wasn't till I was an adult that I realized they were people very much like us and not big raving monsters. And that was just Hell. As for the Soviets, the thought of Brezhnev's ugly blockhead and shadowy features still creeps me out.

Now, looking back over all that, except for my grief and that of millions of other kids, the key thing is it did have a happy ending. Despite Ronald Reagan's best efforts to keep the grief going, the Soviets finally crumbled on their own. And we thought we were home free.

Now all our enemies would be pipsqueaks we could swat like flies, our industrial might would transition to fulfill domestic and global peacetime plenty, and we would be free of Republican warmongering. Instead, we got brazen terrorism on the home front, industrialism shipped abroad, and Republicans up the ass, not only with warmongering but every other evil. This is not the world I signed up for when Gorbachev and Yeltsin were doing the right thing by committing national suicide.

So Putin's forays, gobbling up his neighbors and making feints at a larger global hegemony, might be good news after all. If it means we become more insular, nationally and industrially, we can have jobs and a better standard of living. If we're focused again on mutually assured destruction, hallelujah, because we know it's only a fiction. (And if it turns out not to be, at least we'll die heroically, not with a whimper as it'll be with global warming.) Speaking of global warming, troubles with the Russians is something the Republicans won't deny, so we'll be in it together. We can heal our divided nation, bringing reasonable people and these others, the crazies, back together.

I honestly think the best thing after this would be to give up the Internet to hackers, then at the height of their reverie, destroy the whole thing. Again, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, insularity and the fever of fearful nationalism is our only hope. And without computers and the Internet, we'll have an even better jobs outlook. Phone operators will be back, we'll be building filing cabinets once again, and getting to know our neighbors in a friendly way over coffee, not berating them in anonymous chat rooms and shocking them in endless sexting sessions.

Viva le Putin!

The Damnation Of Sam Hell

"Go to Hell!" he cried, in a fit of pique, an expression of hostility and ire, when confronted by a friend when he was caught doing something wrong and upbraided. Some people are like that; they could just say sorry -- after all, they're the one in the wrong. Maybe it's pride -- it probably is -- or maybe it has something to do with being surprised, then embarrassed -- it probably does.

Sometimes we think Hell is mythic. Mythic in the sense of something that isn't literally true. But when it comes to Hell, can there be any doubt it's real? I tell myself, We have black holes the size (diameter) of the earth's orbit around the sun, oceans 5,000 miles deep on Uranus, planets that are solid diamond through and through, what's so tough about carving out a little niche for Hell?

Well, Samael Heck, said it, "Go to Hell, and then ... guess what? ... He woke up one night; it seemed like a nightmare but it wasn't, there he was, dangling on a ladder, halfway between Heaven and Hell -- true story. It appears he had died. And he saw the souls of the other dead either going up or being dragged down by demonic creatures. It was one or the other. There was no exception. Until, who knows how it happened, somehow Samael swung back up to the ladder. And he must have been hidden from view by the others on top of the ladder, as he managed to shimmy back down, flip over the top of the ladder, and run. He escaped back to the world, and reentered his body.

So much for the 12th century, for that's when all this stuff happened. A long time ago. Leaving us to contemplate something equally fantastic, that this guy has since lived all these centuries. The whole list would include the 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th (in which he briefly knew John Wilkes Booth), 20th, and now the 21st centuries. Meaning, unless he hurries up and dies, he's going to surpass Methuselah! Another guy who must have flipped the ladder.

Anyway, maybe it was back when he knew Booth, he toughened up his name to Sam Hell, becoming proverbial, like Waldo and Carmen Santiago, with his question being, "What in the Sam Hell?!" My grandpa used to say that all the time, openly, although perhaps ignorantly, invoking someone who was at least familiar with a presidential assassin, not to mention being a rare escapee from the fiery judgment. But what did Grandpa know, and when did he know it? Probably not much, with the date indeterminable.

Because this is going too long, I'm just going to list some facts about Sam Hell, without ordering them or fleshing out any meaning or significance:

• Sam Hell's thoughts are tortured during the day ... and the night is worse.
• He has olfactory, auditory, gustatory, visual, and tactile hallucinations. It's all he can do to keep himself grounded in reality, whatever that may be.
• He's doomed to rail against his own fate in this world. But one thing he hates above all are the ghost shows on TV. Because your body and messing around is a portal to bring these now-terrible spirits back into the world... bumming everyone out. They missed the ladder, let 'em fry.
• Of course, like all things of this nature, the holy and secular, the sacred and profane, he soon became a byword for hillbillies and old men in coffee shops. (See Grandpa above). They'd be chewing the end of your average weed, invoking him in astonishment every time a cow died.
• To combat the old men would be hopeless. But he could open the minds of those yet too young to be old, children. Which opened up a perennial career as a speaker at elementary assemblies, having to soften his stage name to Sam Hill.
• Have you ever met the real Sam Hell, in his essence? Of course you haven't, very few have. Only advanced spirits. I count myself among that number. I met Sam Hell a few years ago. We enjoyed a time of spiritual reverie, then he was gone. At least from sight... How else I know him, my lips are sealed.

The Very Insulated Hospital Employee

Have you ever gotten a huge hospital bill? If you've ever been in for anything worse than visiting a sick friend, the answer has to be YES. Although, what about the weird irony that eating at a hospital cafeteria is usually cheaper than going anywhere else? It's 80 bucks for a tray of food when you're a patient, but 8 bucks when you're not!

But let's say you're in the hospital for a week. That's when you see the big charges pile up. (I'm not writing out of personal bitterness, but I have a friend who got some big time charges. Like $7,000 or $8,000 a day. Enough to take the vacation of a lifetime and happily drop dead at the end of it!)

Let's just guess at the charges, since I didn't see his itemized bill. What would the toothbrush have to be? Maybe 40 bucks. Then we have the bedpan rental fee, $50 a pop. He needed another blanket, so that'd easily be $100. Then an air conditioner fee so he'd eventually need the blanket, $500 a day. We already know the tray of food is $80, maybe more if you throw in a $10 fee for the lid, $5 for the napkin, and another $5 for tomorrow's menu.

It's great how they're able to make him well. But when he gets the bill, of course he's sick again!

Here's my thought: Folks who work at the hospital have to know what's going on. They know you can get a decent meal in the real world for less than 100 bucks. And go to McDonald's; you can take all the napkins you want for free. I know a guy who hasn't bought toilet paper for 10 years! Hospital employees have to know what expenses are like inside and outside. I bet they are! They think about it all the time, and the ones I see hang their heads in shame. To them I say, "I know it's not your fault personally. Of course you profit off the corruption, but most people, to survive, have to look the other way at their job." So I'm not condemning them. Even so, if there's a literal hell as the afterlife, I wouldn't want to be a deceased hospital employee for anything!

My thought here is, what if we had a hospital employee who was very insulated? He's been in the hospital forever. He works all three shifts. He never leaves. He's picking scraps off used trays and laughing to himself, "I just ate $400 worth of food for nothing!" He steals a hospital bandage and knows he just committed a felony, since they have to be over $20. He looks both ways to avoid getting caught and sticks a $500 gown down his pants. He knows a guy who sells stuff on eBay. That's my thought.

OK, one day a supervisor notices, "Joe's been here a long time, a loooooonnnnnng time. What the hell?" They check the video and there he is, eating scraps, stealing bandages, and smuggling out gowns. He's fired and banished from the premises. He wonders, "How am I going to eat? I don't have $300 for the day. And if I do eat, where am I going to get a toothbrush for under $40?" And so forth. Then he finds, much to his amazement, that things aren't really that expensive!

Hospitals have it made. But we're on to the bastards! After you read this, please pass the link on to all your friends. Talk them out of getting sick, whatever it takes! If they have to drop dead, so be it! Let's starve the beast, these corrupt money-grubbing hospitals!

The Hounds Of Hell

Re - lease the hounds of hell,
What the heck do we care?
What the heck do we care?
Re - lease the hounds of hell,
What the heck do we care now?

Then, after a fairly decisive victory, the hounds of hell having been released, the enemy having been chewed beyond recognition, blood and gore, and sorrow, sufficiently spread, mankind being somewhat worse for the wear but determined to turn over a new leaf next time ...

Call back the hounds of hell,
What the heck do we care?
What the heck do we care?
Call back the hounds of hell,
What the heck do we care now?