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.