Author Archives: Xenomanes

Cold war

I didn’t start it, but you might say I carried my weight as best I could during the cold war. So I have earned the right to speak plainly to you, as thou art either the best of men or the better half of women — exclusions may apply in some jurisdictions. We thy servants must be a sorry flock to set before the king.

Please to forgive these scholarly blind alleys — I don’t have time to become immortalized as a poet of the first magnitude. But someday, if my ship comes in and I can afford to become a philosopher, I would like to solve once and for all the riddle of existence. And if it was in my genes to become a that molecular biologist who can put it all togetjher, I would trace my ancestries to the skin of a virus. If I could get into psychoanalysis, given my upbringing, I would make your head spin. Figuratively, of course.

Diet of Worms

This new Christian diet is all the rage, the Diet of Worms. The infidels tend to choke on it, as was its design. The doctors of divinity prescribe a bracing tonic of extreme devotion to those in remission. Many long-standing disputes have finally been settled, to the best of our knowledge.

Pantagruel was dubious of the press release, but Panurge cried to open a can.

As they say it used to be

I had a funny dream when my screen went to sleep. I dreamt that a little dog was taking a leak on the carpet in the living room.

But I had the activity monitor on, so I woke up with a start. There was a dog barking in the neighbourhood. And water was dripping from the roof.

We all know what Freud said about such a situation. But I wouldn’t dream of bringing it up now.

Rape of Sabines

There were ane huge nowmer of Sabinis with þare wyiffis, barnis, and servandis, according to Bellenden’s translation of Livy, 1553. Festus says the Sabines dream what they will. And it is said that the Sabines fled to the mountains. This happened a generation before the time that the abomination of desolation stood in the holy place.

And the youth of Rome upon a signal, fell on every side to carry away the Sabine maidens.

Tone deaf

I was tone deaf half my life, until I fell out of the crow’s nest and woke up with perfect pitch. There are no other cases in the annals or in their executive summaries.

In the beginning I could make nor head nor tail of it, but when the nor’westers blew, and the trees began to sing, I noticed that Forty Mile Creek was in the same key as the Magic Flute. Down at the switching yard, the locomotives were idyling in C, but not a well-tempered sea. The vibrations are arbitrary, but the harmonics are pythagorean. Abstain from beans.

Inquisition

Raise the glass to the days of the inquisition, when god gave man a ticket to torture and sanctity ruled the land.

In those days the weasels of rightousness could ferret out the sins of the witches. Though the devil lurked in every crack, the hammer had the writ of the pope. The hammer came down hard.

So with your one good eye and bushel of fingers, raise the glass and pass the ammunition.