The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Drei-Und Vierzig

To listen, poke the bat ar right.

To read this week's episode, click the snow over Hessen.

The story so far is here.

Deshabille

DESHABILLE, n. A reception costume for intimate friends varying according to locality, e.g. In Borrioboola Gha, a streak of red and yellow paint across the thorx. In San Francisco, pearl ear-rings and a smile.

2009 Update: Casual or careless garb. According to the lexicographer, the antonym for nudity.

And a very happy birthday to sister AP3. May Facebook fete you as warmly as the blogosphere remembers.

Dragon

DRAGON, n. A leading attraction in the menagerie of the antique imagination. It seems to have escaped.

2009 Update: A genus comprising greater variety in character than either canis or barber. The key traits include a leathery and scaled hide, moral dubiousness, destructive expression and appointment as opposed to election.

Advice to my nephew, Eamon, before his second birthday

Monday's your birthday, make of it the most.

Pull a toy under Murphy and feed him your toast

Bite your mom's ankle, spill your dad's beer,

Frustrate your brother til I hear him scream from here.

Put Bapu's camera into your juice.

Grab Ganny's flowers and pull each petal loose.

Some days are good and some days are bad.

The best days are days you make everyone mad!

EXPEDITION, n. A long and demanding mission, such as the journey from infancy to propriety or from the cradle to a vase.

Digestion

DIGESTION, n. The conversion of victuals into virtues. When the process is imperfect, vices are evolved instead-a circumstance from which that wicked writer, Dr. Jeremiah Blenn, infers that ladies are the greater sufferers from dyspepsia. This brutal judgement is found in his pamphlet entitled Why Are Women Sickly (John Camden Hotten: London, 1870), a work that has elicited well-merited execration in seventy languages.

"Why are all our women sickly?"

Asks the famous Dr. Blenn.

That is answered very quickly,-

Our physicians all are men.

There is not in this wide world a pleasure so sweet as the vindication of lovely woman against unjust aspersion.

2009 Update: A contest between a dead and a living animal, resolved inevitably in favor of the vegetable.

Depilatory

DEPILATORY, adj. Having the property of removing hair from the skin-a quality highly developed in the hand of a wife.

2009 Update: Apeciogenic. Causing the removal or absence of especially bodily hair, such as by the presence of ambition in the blood or estrogen in the home.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Zwo-Und Vierzig

To hear my mom read, sit with Hilda Greulich at right.

To read this week's episode, take your seat in the pot.

The story so far is here.

Homicide

HOMICIDE, n. The slaying of one human being by another. There are four kinds of homicide: felonious, excusable, justifiable, and praiseworthy, but it makes no great difference to the person slain whether he fell by one kind or another — the classification is for advantage of the lawyers.

2009 Update: Inverted nostalgia. Philosophy from the seed.

Heat

HEAT, n.

Heat, says Professor Tyndall, is a mode
Of motion, but I know now how he's proving
His point; but this I know — hot words bestowed
With skill will set the human fist a-moving,
And where it stops the stars burn free and wild.
Crede expertum — I have seen them, child.
—Gorton Swope

2009 Update: The condition poets will call inspiring, construction crews perspiring, joggers respirational, surfers recreational, the sleepy soporific, and the chef prolific; as measured by a thermometer.

The Snail's Secret Secondary Source

A weasel, down a forest trail,

Trotted past a lonesome snail,

"Whither thou?" the weasel asked

"To Rome, Modesto or Damascus?"

"I keep an atlas in my shell,"

The snail replied after a spell

"And every place I roam and wander,

Is annotated 'just up yonder.'"

"And does it tell, by signs or words,

The whereabouts of nesting birds?"

"No, let me make the caption clear

Each page announces 'leaves be here'."

"What waste of good cartography

To omit the sites that interest me!"

"My map of foliage, I find fine,

And copied once upon a vine."

The weasel darted on ahead,

To see where the forest trail led

While the snail, of his terrain assured,

Sauntered right up to a waiting bird.

ROADMAP, n. The landscape of the lost.

Hypocrite

HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.

2009 Update: A man alleging hypocrisy.

Horrid

HORRID, adj. In English hideous, frightful, appalling. In Young-womanese, mildly objectionable.

There was a pretty girl.

In the terror and the whirl
Of the tempest of her passion she was torrid!
But when moderately moved
By what she disapproved
She said, with gentle censure, it was horrid.

2009 Update: Punishable by exclamation.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Ein-Und Vierzig

To hear Minka read, scratch Dietmärchen on the ears (click at right.)

To read this week's episode, sit down by Dürer's saint.

The story so far is here. Quick note on format, episodes will now begin with one of Luther's theses. For educational purposes.

Free-Will

FREE-WILL, n.

A chip, in floating down a stream,

Indulged a gratifying dream:

"All things on earth but only I

Are bound by stern necessity-

"Are moved this way or that, their course

Determined by some outer force.

"The helpless boughs upon the trees

Confess the suasion of the breeze.

"The stone where it was placed remains

Till loosened by the frost or rains.

"The animals go here and there

As circumstances may declare.

"The influence they cannot see

Is clearly visible to me.

"Yet all belive they're governed still

By nothing but their solemn will.

"Deluded fools! I-I alone

Obey no forces but my own.

"Without or sail or oar, I glide

At pleasure to the ocean's tide.

"No pow'r shall stay me till I lave

My body in the salt sea wave.

Just then an eddy's gentle strength

By hardly half a finger's length,

His chipship drew aside. Said he;

"'Tis far indeed to reach the sea."

Now more and more, behold him swerve

Along the eddy's outer curve.

He says: "My joy in swimming's o'er

I'm half inclined to go ashore."

As still he sweeps his arc,

He adds: "The day is growing dark,

"But still there's time to reach, no doubt,

The point for which I first set out."

The circle was completed quite.

"Right here," he said. "I'll pass the night."

Nor ever once that chip suspected

That ought but he his course deflected.

Free-will, O mortals, is a dream:

Ye all are ships upon a stream.

2009 Update: The iron shackling each to his or her own failures, felonies and follies.

Fear

FEAR, n. A sense of the total depravity of the immediate future.

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch-
Who'd rather pass than call.
Earl of Montrose

2009 Update: Panic at the mundane or its variations.

The Tragedy of The Commons Explained

An open meadow, green and thick

Makes every shepherd wild

To gather his whole wooly flock

And graze the free land mild.

But where one herdsman tarries

The land will soon be full

Of other shepherds gathered

To deplore the price of wool.

And soon they bring their flocks and kin

To reap each blade, leaf, root and feather

And gather up to drink rum

And to predict the weather.

And once the lea has been stripped bare

And no-one's left for thanking,

The flock is left to starve or

Follow graziers into banking.

The tragedy's a common one,

Cultivated from these roots:

Too many open ovine mouths

Near surplus farmers' boots.

-Anatole Idyll

COMMONS, n. A pastoral resource held collectively in trust by the parents of malthusian libertarians.

Fidelity

FIDELITY, n. A virtue particular to those who are about to be betrayed.

2009 Update: A portable promise of permanence. The peanut butter on the trap's trigger.

Forma Pauperis

FORMA PAUPERIS. [Latin] In the character of a poor person — a method by which a litigant without money for lawyers is considerately permitted to lose his case.

When Adam long ago in Cupid's awful court
(For Cupid ruled ere Adam was invented)
Sued for Eve's favor, says an ancient law report,
He stood and pleaded unhabilimented.

"You sue in forma pauperis, I see," Eve cried;
"Actions can't here be that way prosecuted."
So all poor Adam's motions coldly were denied:
He went away — as he had come — nonsuited.
—G.J.

2009 Update: A certification that one party's destitution prevents them from addressing the court in a living language. However the case shall be decided, the world and fortune have been held liable.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Vierzig

To hear Brudder Daniel read, click on the holy man and his likely young gentleman.

To read this week's episode, referee the wrestling match at left.

The story so far is here.

Wedding

WEDDING, n. A ceremony at which two persons undertake to become one, one undertakes to become nothing, and nothing undertakes to become supportable.

2009 Update: A festival to celebrate two people agreeing to reject promiscuity for adultery.

Woman

WOMAN, n. An animal usually living in the vicinity of Man, and having a rudimentary susceptibility to domestication. It is credited by many of the elder zoologists with a certain vestigial docility acquired in a former state of seclusion, but naturalists of the postsusananthony period, having no knowledge of the seclusion, deny the virtue and declare that such as creation's dawn beheld, it roareth now. The species is the most widely distributed of all beasts of prey, infesting all habitable parts of the globe, from Greeland's spicy mountains to India's moral strand. The popular name (wolfman) is incorrect, for the creature is of the cat kind. The woman is lithe and graceful in its movement, especially the American variety (Felis pugnans), is omnivorous and can be taught not to talk.

—Balthasar Pober

2009 Update: The constructively gendered portion of the adult human population for whose sake every secret is hidden and all humor diluted. In traditional societies, woman is commonly the nurturer of children while in contemporary civilization she is more often mother to hyphens, commas and quotations.

Um. I might be offline a lot today. Just sayin'.

A Fable

Once, in ancient times, two monks were walking together in the trailless Egyptian desert. As they climbed over a rise, they saw below them a vixen steal an egg from a bird's nest and scamper away into her own den, the entrance to which was in plain view.

Abba Nelson, the younger of the two monks asked his superior, "What are we to do? The egg to the bird represents her next generation, but what if this is the fox's only way to feed her young? As Christians, should we intervene to perhaps save the chick or ignore the theft and perhaps save the kits?"

"If the kits grow up will they yowl Jesus' name to sinners?" asked Abba Abercrombie, the older monk.

"Not in our language, surely, but who can tell? We do not know how God will use us."

"And if the egg should hatch, will the new dove be seen in foreign parts as a herald of the Holy Spirit?"

"If strangers don't know of the Holy Spirit, they won't receive it from the dove, I wouldn't think. But who knows how God chooses his agents?"

"Quite right," applauded Abba Abercrombie, "but we can guess that if God meant to stop a crime, he wouldn't send an old monk and a philosophical one to the scene."

INTERCEDE, v.t. To interfere in the natural order according to the creator's instruction.

War

WAR, n. A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity. The student of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself inaccessible to the light. "In time of peace prepare for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things earthly have an end — that change is the one immutable and eternal law — but that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination and growth. It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure dome" — when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in Xanadu — that he

heard from afar

Ancestral voices prophesying war.

One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.

2009 Update: The contest by which two or more governments seek to extend national sovereignty into the provinces.

Feliz compleaños, Papi Brujo

Worship

WORSHIP, n. Homo Creator's testimony to the sound construction and fine finish of Deus Creatus. A popular form of abjection, having an element of pride.

2009 Update: Ritual wonder at GOD's great grace and the petty apostasies of the fellowship committee.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Neun-und-Dreizig

To hear Vater Steve read this week's episode, get conked on the head with knowledge by clicking the tapestry.

To read this week's episode, try the campfire sermon.

The story so far is here.

Brain

BRAIN, n. An apparatus with which we think what we think. That which distinguishes the man who is content to be something from the man who wishes to do something. A man of great wealth, or one who has been pitchforked into high station, has commonly such a headful of brain that his neighbors cannot keep their hats on. In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, brain is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

2009 Update: An organ ingeniously, though mindlessly, devised by nature to absorb the force of impact against the cranium from, for example, walls, trees or incited violence. Nature's styrofoam peanut.

Without a soft, spongy, compressible brain to fill the interior, injuries such as the one depicted (right) would pose a much greater threat to the integrity of the skull.

Happy birthday, to my brother, Andy. (Be assured, today's word selection is purely coincidental)

Happy birthday, also, to Nessa.

Brain

BRAIN, v.t. To rebuke bluntly, but not pointedly; to dispel a source of error in an opponent.

2009 Update: To misdirect a rebuttal, well on the high side.