SHEAVES OF DROOPING DANDELIONS

Crown'd with rank fumitor and furrow weeds. Shakespeare

After the last few heady posts, we Readers agreed it's time for a little "inane blather" (in the words of one learned commenter) to lighten things up a little. The good part is, no matter how vacuous the subject we propose, you'll always find something solid either to encourage you to leave Raggedy Dan's fake-Catholic cult or to thank your lucky stars you have nothing to do with those untouchables. Today's proudly frivolous post is no exception.

On April 19, Dirtbag Dan effused in his "Bishop's (?) Corner" cum crop-progress report:

The grass of course is back, positively Gaelic in its green, thriving on all of the wet; bright with lion’s teeth, dandelions, little yellow buttons of Spring color. You can look on them as a weed or as a Spring salad in the making.

No wonder the secular, Novus-Ordo, and Protestant worlds combined scorn Traddies as riffraff.

Only the scummiest neighbors let their yard morph into a dandelion marsh, menacing the virgin turf of better-bred homeowners who care for their lawns.

SGG is carrying five clerics -- three idlers are in their twenties or maybe early thirties -- lounging around the cult center or its missions playing church. Why couldn't the "young fathers" have gotten a little exercise in April and spread a couple bags of discount weed-'n'-feed to prevent the annual yellow blight? Couldn't the cult afford it after Dannie's wasteful winter-vacation jaunt to sunny Mexico? Waiting for the serfs to crawl out of their shacks to cut the grass isn't going to solve the problem. Even pulling weeds is a puny half measure.

The noxious cult center may be situated in a dreary industrial park, but across the street lies a nice housing division. Those star-crossed homeowners must stare in horror at the SGG eyesore as it bristles with angry weeds, unsightly débris, and filthy vermin: they must live in mortal fear for their health and property values. From all appearances, we suppose the nasty landscape reminds the cult masters of their childhood homesteads. All that's missing is an old truck on cinder blocks -- and maybe a stray tire or two to shelter the rats when it rains.

For all his boastful talk about SGG, you'd think His Indolence would take some interest in the cult center's curb appeal, if only to entice more prey. That, however, would require a sense of personal pride. The cult kingpins probably tell each other that pride of ownership is a petit-bourgeois virtue. From the way they act, they seem to fancy themselves as a kind of changeling -- upper-crust scions whom the wee folk guilefully snatched from golden cradles and jettisoned into steaming, flyblown, hillbilly hovels.

Their whole career as ecclesiastical buccaneers has been a frustrated effort to reclaim an imagined lost heritage of leisure and privilege. Reasoning that "the swells" don't bother themselves with gardening or yard work, they don't lift one sticky finger, preferring to coerce the congenitally deficient culties into rendering the honest labor that's beneath their invented dignity.

Well, it may be true that the gentry's yards aren't the shimmering, emerald glebes of the middle class, but they aren't the bleary, topaz bogs of rednecks either. The "quality" see to it that their lawns get regular, chemical treatments to keep them looking respectable.

Indeed, in the suburban Arcadias of the wealthy,  you'll frequently spy well-coifed trophy wives in designer flip-flops pertly squirting lethal streams of weed killer onto undesired sprouts, while nimble, bronze pool boys eagerly supply them with fresh banana daiquirís and Sisley® Sunleÿa sunscreen. As every sociologist knows, the élite don't strive for perfectly manicured, country-club putting-greens: they see those every weekend. They just don't ever want to be mistaken for nouveau riche trailer trash.

Scuzzy SGG will continue to offend taste and the surrounding community as well as religion. Since you'll never see toujours-pauvre Dannie the Dalit shlepping a jug of Weed B Gon® in an effort to render SGG a fit venue for decent folks, the Readers suggest the following remedy for the woefully few Gerties whose sainted mothers warned them to steer clear of socially unacceptable low life:

Tell to your family, "We'd Better Be Gone!"