Thoughtless for the Day

Saturday, April 23rd

Quilt of Lies


Dear Mrs. Dibbely,

quilt1 (42k image)Today on NPR's Morning Edition I heard a segment about how,
following the closing of a mine in your hometown of Hackett, Tennessee,
you began making quilts for the families of the newly unemployed miners. I
was so moved by this piece that I felt compelled to write you and let you
know that no one, absolutely no one, gives a rat's ass about either you,
you're shitty quilts, or a bunch of dirty, out-of-work miners.

Normally, a feebleminded lowbrow such as yourself wouldn't warrant more
than a few seconds of my attention, let alone a letter; however, I find
your actions to be so reprehensible that I decided to fire off a few lines
in an admittedly futile effort to make you come to the realization that you
are a truly horrible person. Hopefully this information will sink in and
you will sink into a state of ennui from which you will never recover. I'm
also planning on sending an email (that's a letter send from one computer
to another. A computer is a machine that allows people to exchange
information about penis enlargement pills. A computer has a screen not
unlike a television's. A television is a box on which talking pictures
appear) to NPR imploring them to cease their endless parade Appalachian
artisans. Apparently the producers of Morning Edition were raised in
an upscale, urban environment and are therefore unaware that when you say
"all of the problems in the world" you mean "Colored people".


Quilts? Now, if I lived in some backwater hellhole and discovered that my
county's de facto sole employer was shutting down, I might do something
like organize a grassroots campaign to force the corporation to provide
job-training and educational programs to the people it was laying off (This
is, of course, assuming that I am actually capable of caring about the
conditions of others: which I am not. I am particularly uninterested in the
plight of miners since they tend to vote for "pro business" politicians
and, ergo, bring economic suffering upon themselves).You, on the other
hand, saw fit to make these people aware of their new, bottom rung, status
in society by presenting them with a collection of rags, as if to say,
"Here's a bunch of useless cloth that I've stitched together and am
presenting to you as a reminder that you are worth nothing more than a few
scraps of cloth." This was made evident when you accidentally provided a
glimpse of the true contempt which you feel for those people you're
claiming to help by letting drop, "Once or twice I've even included some
of my old bloomers in the quilts.", or, as my mind translated it, "Oh,
and some of these worthless rags that I hand to off to the destitute and
culturally challenged are, in fact, the remnants of my shit-stained
skives.."

As if that wasn't enough to make me utterly despise you (and, trust me, it
was), you then added insult to stupidity when you followed up the preceding
statement with, "Can you say 'bloomers' on the radio?" Sweet Son of God
being dragged behind a john Deere, can you imaging how cringe-inducing that
question was to me? Of course you can't because you, Mrs. Dibbely, are a
pig: a pig wallowing in a troth of your own stupidity. That's why I'm going
to describe to you the rush of painful thought that simultaneously leaped
into my skull causing great mental anguish and a nose bleed. There was
"Well, if the FCC continues upon their present path then, no, in a few
years you might not be able to say 'bloomers' on the radio: or on cable
TV, for that matter." This thought walked hand-in-hand with "Maybe this
old bitch is some sort of prophetess? Like that stoner back in hometown
who once said 'Dude one of these days they're gonna make a retard
President.'" And, somewhere in there (almost lost amid a swirl of flaming,
screaming skulls) was "Holy bird-fucker, how out of touch with the modern
world is this miserable Visigoth? Shit Luther, if you showed these Ludite
a refrigerator cable of dispensing ice, she's probably cower in the corner
and mess herself: thereby delaying the production of another 'bloomer
quilt'."

I soon learned just how out of touch are you when told how your husband
helped out by gathering sticks which you incorporate into the hobby horses
which you distribute to the children "at Christmas" (or, as those of us in
the Civilized World say, "during the holidays"). There is so much wrong
here that I'm not sure where to start. Naturally, there's the soul-crushing
mental imaging of your husband, a sad and defeated character, searching a
gray landscape for twigs. Oddly, this tragic vision soon gave way to some
very positive thoughts. I pictured your stooped husband returning home
after a days search with a practically promising stick in his hand. "Oh,
that minds me," you say to him, "that story about me is going to be on the
radio." You rise from your rocker and slower make your way to the radio:
fiddling with the dial under the assumption that the piece about you is
constantly being aired. "Dagnabbit woman," screams your husband, suddenly
springing to life, "you knows I likes to listen to that program that I
likes to listen to when I gits in an' likes to listen to that program,
the one wit all the talkin', that I likes to listen to." "But Tom, it'll
only take a minute." "Git away from that radio, woman!" "But, I'm going
to be…" "I said git away!" And that's when I picture Tom's shadow,
cast against a cabin wall, stick raised high. The stick that had been
meant to be the body of a hobby horse now turned into a cruel instrument
of murder. In my minds eye, I see Tom's shadow raising and lowering the
stick again-and-again as your shrieks pierce the air and blood splatters
(I think the technical term is "arterial spray") unto shabby furniture,
cheap nick knacks, and a 3-D picture of Jesus.

And then my joy at the irony that a pig such as you might someday be
slaughtered is suddenly dashed when I picture the faces of the poor
children who wake up on Christmas morning expecting to find an Xbox under
the tree only to discover some dirty rags, in the vague shape of a horse's
head, tied to a stick. Since you're so enamored with homemade things,
please allow me share with you this old family recipe:

Take one (1) child dreaming of a snowboard, Barbie's Dream House, or DVD
player.

Add one (1) "rustic" hobby horse.

Let stew for a dozen years in an area where there are numerous, easily
accessible fire arms.

We like to call this dish "Serial Killer Surprise".





Rodney on 04.23.05 @ 10:54 AM EST [link] [No Comments]


Wednesday, April 20th

NOTICE:


Due to the 3 1/2 hour daily commute to my new job, RATYHTL will be shutting down indefinitely.

In the meantime, please DO NOT clutter up either my inbox or my voicemail with messages.
Rodney on 04.20.05 @ 07:00 PM EST [link] [56 Comments]


Monday, April 18th

Fabulae Pontificalis (Today's episode: Does this miter make my ass look fat?)


popejoan (26k image)Number One on the list of The 10 Most Popular Questions Which Milkmen
Fans Ask Me upon Meeting Me for the First Time is "Where's Joe?" I
could understand this question if Joe and I had made a career of appearing
in side shows, joined at the side, or if we were married (which, no matter
what you've read in Kerrang!, we are not). Often, just to freak the
questioner out, I'll close my eyes, extend my arms, and, after a moment's
silence say something like, "At this exact moment he's in Buffalo, New
York: enjoying his meal at a pizzeria called Angelo's. My God! He's
wearing new shoes!"

The tenth spot on the list is held by "So what's the deal with Pope Joan?"
For the longest time this question was as mysterious to me as "Where's
Joe?", until someone pointed out to me that in a series of interviews,
following the release of Soul Rotation, I had said (lied, to be
specific) that the DM's next project would be a Rock Opera based on the
life of Pope Joan.

"So what is the deal with Pope Joan?"

"In the middle of the 9th century an Englishwoman named Joan, who'd been
raised in Mainz and spent many years posing as a man and being promoted
up the clerical ladder, managed to be elected Pope. Her reign either fell
between that of Leo IV and Benedict III, or between Benedict and Nicholas
I: depending on whom you believe.

Apparently her secret came out when she gave birth, in public, on the way
to St. Peters. Something like that would, obviously, be a little hard to
put a positive spin on. 'It's a miracle! The Pope just had a baby!' She
was either hanged, forced to enter a convent, or died giving birth (once
again depending on whom you believe). Her name was stricken from the
official Vatican records. I've heard that her baby grew up to become the
Bishop of Ostia.

And that's why, to prevent a repeat of this sort of embarrassing episode,
to this day, shortly after a new Pope is elected he has to sit in a special
"groping" chair and have his testacies felt by a Cardinal as proof of his
gender: The Pope's, that is; not the Cardinal's"

"Wow. There was a woman Pope?"

"No. There was never a Pope Joan. She was a Protestant invention; you know,
like mayonnaise or golf. They circulated the myth during the early days of
the Reformation in order to cast doubt upon the authority of the Catholic
Church. She's kinda like Pope Bigfoot."

"So the Pope doesn't get his balls felt after he's elected?"

"At least not officially. I mean, there is no 'groping' chair."

"Damn. That's a shame, because it's a good story. So…um… where's Joe?"


Now, those of you who are regular readers of RATYHTL are no doubt familiar
with the doctrine of Anonymal Infallibility which states, simply,
that I can never be wrong; however, I can, from time-to-time, make
tiny mistakes. But I'm positive that Pope Joan was a Protestant invention!

Pope Joan Was Not a Protestant Invention

The reason that I, along with just about everybody else who has looked into
the Pope Joan story, considered the tale to be a Protestant invention was
because no one could find a reference to Joan that had been written before
the Reformation. True, there were over 500 documents which mentioned Pope
Joan, but these were mainly copies of earlier medieval manuscripts: not the
originals. It would have been easy for either a Protestant copier, or a
monk who harbored Protestant sympathies, to insert a few lines about Joan
into the new version of a manuscript.

This was my take on the matter until I recently picked up a copy of The
Legend of Pope Joan by Peter Stanford. No investigator of historical
weirdness' library should by without this handy little tome.

While digging into the Pope Joan saga, Stanford found, in Oxford's Duke
Humfrey Library, an authentic 14th century copy of Martin Polonus'
Chronicon Pontificum et Imperatum which, in part read:

After the aforesaid Leo, John, an Englishman by descent, who came from
Mainz, held the see two years, five months and four days, and the
pontificate was vacant one month. He died at Rome. He, it is asserted,
was a woman. And having been in youth taken by her lover to Athens in
man's clothes, she made such progress in various sciences that there was
nobody equal to her. So that afterwards lecturing on the Trivium she had
great masters for her disciples and hearers. And for as much as she was in
great esteem in the city, both for her life and her learning, she was
unanimously elected Pope. But when Pope she became pregnant by the person
with whom she was intimate. But not knowing the time of her delivery, while
going from Saint Peter's to the Lanteran, taken in labor, she brought forth
a child between the Colosseum and Saint Clement's Church. And afterwards
dying, she was, it is said, buried in that place. And because the Lord Pope
always turns aside from that way, there are some who are fully persuaded
that it is done in detestation of the fact. Nor is she put in the Catalogue
of the Holy Popes, as well on account of her female sex as on account of
the foul nature of the transaction.

As if that weren't shocking enough, there, in the margin of the manuscript
as written ffemina fuit pp. That's a sort of medieval shorthand for
"The Pope was a Woman". In order words, some nameless monk, living in the
Middle Ages, had come across the passage above and, being unable, thanks
to his vow of silence, to cry out "Sweet Mother of Crap! The Pope was a
Woman!" he scribbled a little note in the margin, drew and arrow pointing
to the remarkable passage, and slid the book over to the monk sitting next
to him, who immediately soiled his habit.

Well that answered a couple of question that had been rolling around in my
studio apartment of a brain for some years now: namely, how could a
conspiracy to alter hundreds of documents over centuries and in dozens of
countries be pulled off, and why would the Protestants even need to invent
Pope Joan when there was such a wealth of factual dirt in the official
histories of the Popes?

OK, so the Protestants didn't invent Pope Joan. That doesn't prove that she
actually existed. I mean, where's the evidence? It's not like the "groping"
chair actually exists.

The "Groping" Chair Actually Exists

While it may be easy to believe that a myth somehow got copied into some of
the official histories of the Catholic Church, the idea of a Cardinal
cupping the Popes nuts is a little hard to fathom. After all, it's not like
anybody has ever witnessed this ceremony.

Unless, of course you want to count Bernardino Coreo, a Milanese author
who, in 1503 had this to say about the coronation of Alexander VI nine
years earlier:

Finally, when the usual solemnities of the "sancta sanctorum" ended and
the touching of the testicles was done, I returned to the palace.

The irony here is that Alexander's four adult sons (Alex was one of the
Borgia Popes) were in the audience for the ceremony.

So what (Quid ergo)? That's just one guy's account. It's not like there's
any collaboration of this Gayest of Catholic Rites out there. Oh yeah,
there is this chunk o' strangeness which was penned by Adam of Usk in 1404
about the election of Pope Innocent VII:

Then, after turning aside out of abhorrence of Pope Joan whose image
with her son stands near Saint Clement's, the Pope dismounted from his
horse, enters the Lanteran for his enthronement. And there he is seated in
a chair of porphyry, which is pierced beneath for this purpose, that one of
the younger Cardinals may make proof of his sex; and then while a Te Deum
is chanted, he is borne to the high alter.

OK, so a Wop and a Welshman claiming to have witnessed the Pope getting felt
up. It's dark in the Vatican; who knows what could've really been going on.
It's not like there are any pictures of the "groping" chair. I mean, other
than this one:

chair1 (54k image)

And that picture doesn't count because it's a drawing. In this case an
illustration from a 1644 account of the coronation of Pope Innocent X by
Swedish writer, Lawrence Banck, but a drawing nonetheless (By the way, I
can't make out the words in that little speech bubble, but the second word
is "habet": "he has". So we can now guess what the first word is). Hell, I
could draw a picture of Rick Santorum in bed with George Bush, but that
would'nt prove they've every acted on their mutual lust. What I'm talking
about is an actual photograph of the "groping" chair. And no picture of
that sort has ever existed. With the exception of this one:

chair2 (17k image)

That pic was snapped by Peter Stanford who found the chair, unaccompanied
by any sort of description, in a small room that was off limits to the
general public in the Vatican Museum.

Shit Martin Luther (I've been waiting years to say that), sure the
Protestants didn't make up Pope Joan, and yes; the "groping" chair is real,
not to mention the Vicus Papissa (the street of the woman Pope) in Rome,
but c'mon, Pope Joan couldn't have been a real person.

Pope Joan Was (Most Likely) a Real Person

As Peter Stanford points out in the conclusion of his book, the odds that
Pope Joan actually existed, although perhaps not in exact concordance with
the legend, are pretty good. There was, for example, a woman known as the
prophetess of Moguntia (Mainz) who conned her Archbishop into ordaining her
as a priest. It's very possible that this woman's story was later
exaggerated into the legend of Pope Joan.

I hate to sound like on of those tinfoil hat wearing beardoes who presents
a crop circle and a story about an anal probe as proof of alien
intelligence, but I'm almost positive that Pope Joan, in some form or
another, existed.


I can't believe I just wrote that.




Rodney on 04.18.05 @ 03:28 PM EST [link] [20 Comments]


Sunday, April 17th

Fabulae Pontificalis (Today's episode:I was a teenaged Pontiff)


popejohn (27k image)Adolescents: they're surly, disrespectful to their elders, and high on
everything from household cleaning products to badger tranquilizer. Thanks
to their raging hormones and various addictions (not to mention their loud
hair and long music), teenagers are completely incapable of performing even
the most menial of tasks. Shit Luther, each year Junior Achievement has to
kick at least 7,000 of these snotty little punks out of the program for
attempting to start companies which manufacture either sex toys, bongs, or
sex toys which transform into bongs. And don't get me started on what
really goes on between a teenager and his 4H project once the barn
doors have been closed. If teens can't be trusted to mow the lawn without
attempting to smoke the clippings, you'd never expect someone to put a
teenager in charge of the spiritual welfare of a few million Catholics,
right?

And yet that's exactly what happened in 955 CE when an 18-year-old ascended
to the Papal throne and took the name John XII.

Now, I know what you're thinking: "Wait a minute; 18 back in 995 wasn't
like 18 today. After all, wasn't the average life expectancy for men
something like 34? And didn't women, as soon as they reached puberty
become pregnant and die during childbirth?" Well, yes and no. The average
life expectancy for poor men was around 34 years of age, but men
from wealthy families (and Pope John XII was from a very wealthy family)
often lived well into their 80's. It's kind of like when Bush tried to
sell Blacks on the idea of Private Accounts by pointing out that
statistically Black men live shorter lives than their Honkey
counterparts. What Bush failed to mention was that the lower life
expectancy rate for black males was the result of a high death rate (from
acts of violence) among young Black men, and that a Black man who reaches
the age of 65 has a better chance of reaching the age of 80 than does the
Cracker down the street. You know, even in a piece about an 8th century
Pope, it's hard not to include a few lines about what a major DICK George
Bush is.

Anyway, like I said, Pope John XII came from a very wealthy family. In fact
(quidem), in order to understand how young John got to be Pope we'll need
to take a look at his sordid family history. Sherman, set the Wayback
machine for 890 CE.

For it was in that year that a woman named Theodora and her husband,
Theophylact, first appeared in Rome. Together they would spend the next few
decades amassing copious amounts of wealth and power. Before ol' man
Theophylact snuffed it in 920, he not only served as a judge and a senator,
but had also been made a Duke and put in charge of both the finances of the
Pope and of the Roman militia.

Theodora, perhaps shortly after being appointed to the senate: or maybe she
got hit on the head with a coconut, like on Gilligan's Island,
somehow got it into her head that the House of Theophylact should become a
major dynasty who's chief duty would be churning out future Roman Emperors.
In order to achieve this lofty and vaguely creepy goal, Theodora would need
to control the papacy.

In 904, Theodora managed to get her candidate for the coveted position of
Pope elected. He would be known as Pope Sergius III and, as a
congratulatory gift, Theodora and Theophylact presented him with their
15-year-old daughter, Marozia. Sergius wasted no time in impregnating the
girl: she soon gave birth to their son, John (In what was then a
statistical anomaly, she didn't die giving birth to him.)

Sergius III bought the Papal farm in 911, and Theodora orchestrated the
election of the next three Popes: Anastasius (911 - 13), Lando (913 -14),
and John X (914 - 28); who, by some strange coincidence, happened to be
her lover.

By this time Marozia had come of age and become very popular within Roman
society: Which is a polite way of say "she slept around a lot". Quidem,
she was so popular that she soon became the de facto ruler of Rome. This
brought her into direct conflict with John X, the Pope who was banging her
mother ("Oh yeah. Who's you Holy Father, baby?"), so she began plotting his
removal.

The main bulwark of Marozia's plan, and I remind you that I'm making none
of this up, was to create a hereditary papacy. This would clear the
way for the ascension of her son John. Remember him; the bastard fathered
by Pope Sergius III?

The situation between Marozia and John X (there should really be a Pope
Malcolm X; that would be so cool.) reached its apex when Marozia, with the
help of a private army, laid siege to St. Peters. John X managed to hold
out for two years before capitulating and being hauled off to prison;
where, in the spirit of Stephen VI, he was murdered.

Marozia would be in charge of picking the next three Popes: Leo VI (928),
Stephen VII (928 - 31), and, finally, her 20-year-old son, John XI
(931 - 36)

As far as I know, Pope Sergius III and Pope John XI are the only father/son
Papal team in history.

Marozia fell from power after she ditched her husband for his brother. She
was deposed by another of her sons, Alberic. After the death of his
half-brother John XI, Alberic would go on to engineer the elections of the
next four Popes. So influential was Alberic that, on his death-bed, he
managed to get Rome's leading clergy and statesmen to promise to elect his
son, Octavian, as the next Pope.

And that, boppers, is how 18-year-old Octavian became Pope John XII.

But wait, there's more…

February 2nd is not only Groundhog's Day, the day on which Sid Vicious
died, and the day that both Fed Flintstone and my wife celebrate their
birthdays; it's also the day on which, back in 962 CE, 25-year-old Pope
John XII anointed Otto I as Emperor of Saxony. Unfortunately, what John
didn't know was that Otto harbored dreams of restoring the Holy Roman
Empire. These dreams always ended the same way, with the removal of John.
That's why, a year later, Otto convened a synod and charged John with the
following:

Committing incest with his two sisters. Invoking the devil's help to win
at dice (this was a duel charge since playing dice was also a crime).
Accepting money for the appointment of Bishops. Ravishing virgins.
Converting the Papal palace into a bordello [the Emperor Caligula had done
the same thing to his imperial residence]. Having sex with the following:
His father's mistress, an unnamed Queen Dowager, a widow named Anna, and
his own niece. Blinding his father confessor. Hunting in public [Seems kind
of trivial compared to the other charges. Then again, they don't mention
exactly what he was hunting]. Castrating a Deacon. Arson. And "breaking
windows in the night."

Pope John XII refused to take part in the trial (no wonder; if even half of
those charges were true, he was too busy), so he was deposed and Otto's
man, Leo VIII, replaced him.

Ah, but never underestimate the popularity of someone from the House of
Theophylact. The people of Rome rose up and put John XII back on the
throne. Leo VIII, by the way, despite having his election contested, is
listed as a "true pope" in the Catholic Churches Annuario Pontificio
(I recommend the pop-up version).

And John XII lived happily ever after…

For the next two years, until he either (depending on which book you read)
died from a stroke sustained while having sex with a married woman, or was
murdered by the angry husband of the aforementioned woman.




Rodney on 04.17.05 @ 12:36 PM EST [link]




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