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'.

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.

Self-Published

Getting in mind all the chores for today-

Some are for pleasure, some are for pay-

I notice there's no list of things I should say.

Words are made by volunteers.

We do what we must do, most of the time,

Work, wander and worship, Caritas and crime,

And reserve to our liberty, those minutes most prime,

Selective invective toward each neighbor who hears.

For what is a man, but the sum of his grousing,

Over healthcare, despair, law, whiskey or housing?

A man in his grief, like a cat in her mousing,

Pursues his own nature and forgets his own fears.

And so, today, providence finally has granted

To we who rose upright, made fire and ranted

The means to pronounce our fretting unslanted,

By blog, bloodless bluster and unsalted tears.

WEBLOG, n. A personal chronicle of universal stasis.

The Weasel's War Dance

In a poor chicken coop,

Just over the rise,

A weasel stood up to speak.

Her tail and back drooped,

There were tears in her eyes

And some egg yolk stuck to her cheek.

"The farmers down yonder,

How they harry and try us,

They use and abuse and upend us.

I ask you to ponder

Just one moment, why us?

Are there no wolves out there to defend us?

"Foresaken, my sisters,

Forgotten indeed,

Patronized, hammered and roasted!

Boiled to a blister,

Robbed of our seed

But peace I can bring you," she boasted.

"Hide your eggs in my warren,

There's a tunnel just by,

And the farmer's pail holds death.

The coop's now as foreign

As the white-clouded sky

And you all deserve bugs on your breath."

Her sermon stuttered,

The old screen-door slammed

And the farmer, in coveralls, came.

"Weasel?" he muttered

Under each nest he peeked,

Took some eggs and scattered some grain.

When he'd gone,

The weasel that he hadn't seen

Returned to homilize and inspire

The laying hens cackled along,

And crowned her hen-house queen,

So she bowed, took an egg and retired.

WEASEL, n. The new lion. Homo pirroueticus.

Open letter to the cowards, idiots and reprobates in the U.S. Congress

Honorable madames and dearest sirs;

Something in e'ry loyal heart stirs

At the thought that you will soon pass a new FISA,

Thinking none of us will be the wiser.

For freedom's sake, challenge liberty

Assuming that no one can see,

And set aside the only courts

That judge a scoundrel's last resorts.

The assumptions under which we labor,

That domestic spying is best left to our neighbor,

That privacy's too precious to be bought

Surely needed a second thought.

And so you took initiative,

Little enough to offer but much to give,

And provided us with your new thinking,

Muddled some, I reckon, by your drinking.

Enlightened now, I find the need,

For sympathy with your misdeed,

For I, myself, wish I could wiretap

The minds behind your flapping traps.

Let the government now listen in

To the words we speak within the din.

But, of what you hear, take care what's true

Because some of us have learned from you.

WOLFPACK, n. Change we can believe in.

Thanks, Cooper for the inspiration.

Weaknesses

WEAKNESSES, n.pl. Certain primal powers of Tyrant Woman wherewith she holds dominion over the male of her species, binding him to the service of her will and paralyzing his rebellious energies.

2008 Update:  The collection of insecurities, appetites, addictions, agitations, temptations, frustrations, aspirations and allegations that machines, demons and neighbors provoke to distract us from our obedience.

Washingtonian

WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.

They took away his vote and gave instead
The right, when he had earned, to eat his bread.
In vain — he clamors for his "boss," pour soul,
To come again and part him from his roll.

—Offenbach Stutz

2008 Update:  An American commoner far from home, hearth, hardship, heart and harp.  An ambassador plenipotentiary to the law from a mob.

Worm's-Meat

WORMS' MEAT, n. The finished product of which we are the raw material. The contents of the Taj Mahal, the Tombeau Napoleon and the Granitarium. Worms'-meat is usually outlasted by the structure that houses it, but "this too must pass away." Probably the silliest work in which a human being can engage is construction of a tomb for himself. The solemn purpose cannot dignify, but only accentuates by contrast the foreknown futility.

Ambitious fool! so mad to be a show!
How profitless the labor you bestow
Upon a dwelling whose magnificence
The tenant neither can admire nor know.

Build deep, build high, build massive as you can,
The wanton grass-roots will defeat the plan
By shouldering asunder all the stones
In what to you would be a moment's span.

Time to the dead so all unreckoned flies
That when your marble is all dust, arise,
If wakened, stretch your limbs and yawn —
You'll think you scarcely can have closed your eyes.

What though of all man's works your tomb alone
Should stand till Time himself be overthrown?
Would it advantage you to dwell therein
Forever as a stain upon a stone?

—Joel Huck

2008 Update:  The substance assuring the fisherman of bait and the poet remorse, through which all men are productive.

Wheat

WHEAT, n.  A cereal from which a tolerably good whiskey can with some difficulty be made, and which is used also for bread.  The French are said to eat more bread per capita of population than any other people, which is natural, for only they know how to make the stuff palatable.

2008 Update:  A grass which, unsuited to the estate lawn and non-narcotic when smoked by the butler, found favor as a substitute among the Earth's needy for gravel.

Wrath

WRATH, n. Anger of a superior quality and degree, appropriate to exalted characters and momentous occasions; as, "the wrath of God," "the day of wrath," etc. Amongst the ancients the wrath of kings was deemed sacred, for it could usually command the agency of some god for its fit manifestation, as could also that of a priest. The Greeks before Troy were so harried by Apollo that they jumped out of the frying-pan of the wrath of Cryses into the fire of the wrath of Achilles, though Agamemnon, the sole offender, was neither fried nor roasted. A similar noted immunity was that of David when he incurred the wrath of Yahveh by numbering his people, seventy thousand of whom paid the penalty with their lives. God is now Love, and a director of the census performs his work without apprehension of disaster.

2007 Update: A "hissy" before it has passed.

Wit

WIT, n. The salt with which the American humorist spoils his intellectual cookery by leaving it out.

2007 Update: The whiplike, agile and fast-moving feature of the well-developed mind connected to the hubris. The wit is prominent in dogs who call it wag and prehensile in tree-monkeys who call it grasp.

Happy birthday to Pia. You're still much too far North.

Witch

WITCH, n. (1) Any ugly and repulsive old woman, in a wicked league with the devil. (2) A beautiful and attractive young woman, in wickedness a league beyond the devil.

2007 Update: A sorceress responsible for, among other things, men turning into apes; enchantments that cause obsession, indifference or distraction in the victim; the levitation of owls; the nocturnal rituals of cats; and, in many cases, profligate drinking, foolish voting and debt.

Merry Christmas in July to The Ice Queen. Alles gut zum geburstag!

Werewolf

WEREWOLF, n. A wolf that was once, or is sometimes, a man. All werewolves are of evil disposition, having assumed a bestial form to gratify a beastial appetite, but some, transformed by sorcery, are as humane and is consistent with an acquired taste for human flesh.

Some Bavarian peasants having caught a wolf one evening, tied it to a post by the tail and went to bed. The next morning nothing was there! Greatly perplexed, they consulted the local priest, who told them that their captive was undoubtedly a werewolf and had resumed its human form during the night. "The next time that you take a wolf," the good man said, "see that you chain it by the leg, and in the morning you will find a Lutheran."

2007 Update: A creature divided between two natures, fictional and toothy, and of the unelected sort.

Fatal Attention

Episode 21 of The Meditations of Diogenes The Cynic. Thanks to the Arctic Multinational Women's And Moriae's Association (AMWAMA) for this week's reading. And welcome, L.

Listen to the fates tell their story.


This week, in The Prattler, "BYOF."


















Read the story on the loom

Preaching in Persia

Episode 17 of The Meditations of Diogenes The Cynic. Thanks to this week's reader.

To hear the story, come swiftly to Zeno. No, faster.

No Prattler this week on account of I'm tired and lazy. The link below is repaired. I'll be doing penance if you all need me.












To read the story, a king from the orient be.

Two Fables

The Snowy Egret and The Hunter

Once upon a time, a hunter came upon a snowy egret and asked it's purpose. The egret proudly explained that while it spent most of its time catching crabs and newts, its pure-white plumes were prized everywhere it went. "Sometimes, I like to soar above the cities and towns and see women of fashion with long white plumes in their hats and poets holding my plumes to paper. The poets will be mottled with black ink while my feather stays pure for the poet feels more for the stylus than for style, work or words. My feather over their own feet. Truly, I am blessed among birds. And what is your purpose?"

Moral: Every question contains an answer, and every answer holds a shell.

Two Crows in A Cornfield

Two crows sat in a cornfield one day. "Why are we here?" asked one of the other.

"We are part of a great circle," explained the second crow. "in which a farmer plants her seeds and the fertilizer she spreads leaks into the stream and kills the fish which are taken by rodents who crawl off into the cornfield where we eat them, leaving behind a second fertilizer which nourishes the weeds that drive the farmer into politics and social commentary."

The first crow raised a proud wing to salute the second. "Cursed will be the generation without ecologists."

Moral: It takes an infinity of tangents to make a single globe.

Wisdom, n. Delirium in a careful cadence.

Two Poems

My Lonesome Lover

I made my wife of corpses' skin
And found true love deep within
She says just what I want to hear
When, breathlessly, she calls me near.

My love to her I represented
With wine of vintage less fermented
And flowers that would make her blush
If the ones she offers weren't so lush.

The road we travel, we travel often.
Me on my feet, her in her coffin.
Though the miles we cover aren't many,
She stays with me, my lucky penny.

And when my time on Earth has passed
And finally, I breathe my last.
I have no fear of what's in store.
Making love in her bed as mine before.

Come live with me and be my love,
Here on Earth and below, above.


Union

There are two kinds of people I have known
One suffers misery, stoic alone.
And drinks at night a wine of soured fruit
And greets each dawn in turn, a howling brute.

The other kind fills our prosp'rous nation
With grinning kids, clubs and conversation.
And there, inside a bustling hectic house,
Afflict their misery on a spouse.

And you, who love true, despite the danger-
Happy Valentine's Day, matchless stranger!

Cupidity n. Prevenge.
Wedding Cake, n. A rich tort.

Happy Ogre Day Eve to all

Wine

WINE, n. Fermented grape-juice known to the Women's Christian Union as "liquor," sometimes as "rum." Wine, madam, is God's next best gift to man.

2006 Update: A fruit juice fermented to make airs. Or heirs.