The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Neun

To hear this week's story, click on Elizabethkirche on your right.

To read this week's part, come the castle.

This week in The Prattler, Low Batteries.

Arena

ARENA, n. In politics, an imaginary rat-pit in which the statesman wrestles with his record.

2009 Update: An inverse pyramid in which the center is weighed down by steroids and the sides lifted up by alcohol and hot dogs.

Arsenic

ARSENIC, n. A kind of cosmetic greatly affected by the ladies, whom it greatly affects in turn.

"Eat arsenic? Yes, all you get,"

Consenting, he did speak up;

"'Tis better you should eat it, pet,

Than put it in my teacup."

—Joel Huck

2009 Update: A metal element used in the past to cure communicable diseases such as syphilis and egalitarianism.  Less toxic antibiotics have since been discovered as well as more lethal anti-ambitionates, rendering the preparation obsolete.

UPDATE:  Happy Birthday to Karma!

Ash Wednesday, 2009

Now comes the time we stop to rue

His suffering on the cross.

But this year we pray not to smile

Seeing Jesus in the boss;

And for the strength to sacrifice

What's not yet gone away;

And patience for Heaven's call

Should it not come today;

And for the symbols that recall

The sweet gift of the Son,

Remembering once He gave His life

And Citi traded one.

-Right Reverend C. James Wigginthroop

AUSTERITY, n.  The practice of the pilgrim or the protest of the picketer.

Adolescent

ADOLESCENT, adj. Recovering from boyhood.

2009 Update: Undergoing the transformation from external to internal disappointment. In the chrysalis between larval and carnal stages.

Affirm

AFFIRM, v.t, To declare with suspicious gravity when one is not compelled to wholly discredit himself with an oath.

2009 Update: To wisen the world by verifying what another would otherwise falsify. To prepare for citation.

The Reformation of Wolfshausen

Teil Acht

To hear my mother read this week's story, click on Frau Braun's dream to your right (and turn up the volume.)

To read this week's part, come to dreamland.

This week inThe Prattler, Finding Abel.

Quill

QUILL, n. An implement of torture yielded by a goose and commonly wielded by an ass. This use of the quill is now obsolete, but its modern equivalent, the steel pen, is wielded by the same everlasting Presence.

2009 Update: A source of levity in the wing of a bird, of gravity in the hand of a poet and of obesity in the caricature of a pol.

Quaker

QUAKER, n.  A second person singular.

2009 Update:  A pacifist Christian, redeemed by his neighbor from redundancy.

(Before anyone asks, I have no idea what Bierce meant by that. -UPDATE: I think Weirsdo has the right answer in the comments.)

The Calming Coup

A mob can rise to causes various

But revolution gets precarious

When fratricide among the elect

Leaves only one party the state can select.

Senator Cogdill was hanged this very morn

But would it be decent for us now to mourn

When the hands at the rope and the hands on the chair

Belong to armed men he'd led, himself, there?

It brings us no sorrow, frustration or grief

Nor does it provide us a sense of relief

To see one party disorder our Golden State

Unless the remaining one shares the same fate.

Gathered on the coast by Keats' blood-dimmed tide

What Republicans teach us, we ought to abide.

When rulers see lynching written into their jobs

Shouldn't the people rally our own mobs?

USURPATION, n.  The expropriation by government of the Jacobin instinct.  Parliamentary ochlocracy.