ROGUES, VAGABONDS AND STURDY BEGGARS

 Editor's Note: In restless anticipation of St. Nick's visit tonight, the Readers are posting early. We've got to hang up our stockings and wiggle into our toasty p.j.'s long before the jolly old elf lands on the roof of PL's editorial offices. (We've been very, very good this year.)

Don't worry: we'll leave Krampus a nice bottle of Himbeergeist along with GPS coördinates for all the SW Ohio-Brooksville cult centers and affiliates. (Let's hope he's got enough switches for the terribly naughty Tradistani "clergy.")

The horseleech hath two daughters that say: Bring, bring. The Book of Proverbs

The Readers thought they'd heard it all.

Then they saw last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner."

Mind you, we're accustomed to the degrading image of His Mendicancy's mooching fully prepared suppers from impoverished Gertie families. But nothing, and we mean nothing, beats the following example of grotesque impudence:

We’re surely grateful for meals for priests. Last week we did very well. Sometimes, though, it’s a question of meals or priestly work, and we’d much rather attend to the spiritual, but we are used to eating, alas! So, let’s work together. If you are cooking, please use the Cucina Clerical website. For last-minute offerings, just let me know, or Fr. Lehtoranta, so the food doesn’t get missed. Sometimes we forget to check the fridge. We should be good for Christmas, as we were indeed for Thanksgiving. But there can be some pretty spare days in between….

What was he smoking when he wrote that?

Unless you assume Panhandlin' Dan, suffering from some dissociative disorder brought on by increasing defections from his cult, is babbling some loopy, stream-of-consciousness monologue, it's hard to make much sense of the paragraph. To decode the Dirtbag's secret message, you've got to anatomize the text. In case you quickly skimmed over the immodest proposal, thereby missing all the parasitical implications lurking under the zany prose, here's our reading. Let's start with the third sentence:

Sometimes, though, it’s a question of meals or priestly work, and we’d much rather attend to the spiritual, but we are used to eating, alas!

That line is much more than a mortifying specimen of Dannie's frightfully gauche humor. It's a brazen threat:

"If you want us to do the job you're paying us for, then you'd better make sure we don't waste our time or money on grocery shopping and cooking for ourselves."

So what if your employers expect you to feed yourself on your own! So what if you have to take time out from what you want to do in order to shop and prepare dinner! The clerical leeches feeding off you in grand style won't be confined by the silly constraints of daily life. No way! If you want 'em to work, then you gotta feed 'n' serve 'em.

Like all inveterate freeloaders, Dannie's too practiced a sponger to let you ponder his insolence for too long. If he gave you time to reflect, you'd be furious. That's why he immediately made his move to lock in your thoughtless assent as you were still recovering from his aggressive cadging:

So, let’s work together. If you are cooking, please use the Cucina Clerical website. For last-minute offerings, just let me know, or Fr. Lehtoranta, so the food doesn’t get missed. Sometimes we forget to check the fridge.

See, Gerties, you've been slow on the uptake. He'll "work together" with you to guarantee a non-stop supply of ready-to-nuke-'n'-gobble goodies for himself and his bone-lazy clown crew. And since the cult "clergy" aren't resourceful enough to open the refrigerator to check whether you've brought their chow, it's now up to you to inform them. (N.B. In fairness, the cult "Fathers" might be scared to open the refrigerator door for fear of encountering another mouse inside. See our post of January 3,  2015. )

Apparently, the unannounced food drop-offs forced the curiously incurious "clergy" to rustle up their grub using their own cash. Gertie Gals, it's your fault the "missed" victuals rotted away or were carried off by the filthy vermin nesting in SGG. All we can say is that Li'l Daniel must be pretty cross at your inconsideration.

What makes your thoughtlessness more reprehensible is that on those days when the "clergy" missed the catered eats, Dannie probably had to pressure one of his work-averse "clerical" parasites to whip up something for his din-din. Can you imagine the screaming and yelling it takes to herd those layabouts into the kitchen, especially if they're squeamish about rodent scat?

After Dannie 'fessed up to forgetting to check on meal deliveries, he probably realized he'd crossed the line. The cultlings signed on to SGG for the sacraments, not to run a "clerical" chuck wagon and ring an iron triangle dinner-bell for loafers too indolent to crack open the icebox door. That's really taxing the dirty Gerties' vanishing patience, even by cult-master standards. Accordingly, his survival instincts cautioned him to pivot by playing the sympathy card:

We should be good for Christmas, as we were indeed for Thanksgiving. But there can be some pretty spare days in between….

"Some pretty spare days..."?

Did he say, "... SPARE..."???

What? Does "One Hand" mean the SGG chow-hound "clergy" didn't have enough freebies to wolf down between Thanksgiving and Christmas? Is the old scrounger's cupboard so bare that his poor "clerical" doggies have nothing to nosh on between holiday pig-outs? Can His Esuriency be suggesting that Gertie Gals bust their household budgets to cater meals every day, or else he and his famished entourage will starve? Could it be that Uneven Steven's at risk of involuntarily attaining the Body Mass Index recommended by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute?

If true, it's strange, because in the next paragraph "One-Hand Dan" reveals the "clergy" actually do have the resources, batterie de cuisine (almost), and advanced culinary skills to pull off a crockpot pot roast.* Experienced cook that he is, Dannie himself crowed, "it really is easy to do." Moreover, His Gourmandiseship pronounced the dish "delicious! A great winter dinner."

All-righty, then... the question we have — and one that should fester on the lips of every haggard Gertie scullery maid — is:

Why can't the scum "clergy" make their own dinners in a slow cooker every day?

There are hundreds of economical recipes online, such as this one for hillbilly crockpot raccoon stew, seeing that SGG has a generous supply of the critters infesting the ramshackle cult center. Alternatively, they could get hold of the bestselling Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes which features a bonus chapter on 5-ingredient recipes. That way, Deacon Dan only has to use one hand when he goes marketing.

But don't waste your breath. Stop these bloodsucking worms before their hungry proboscides strike again:

END THE MEALS-FOR-CLERICAL-HEELS PROGRAM AT ONCE!

* Weirdly offensive as the "Corner" was, PL got a kick out of Dan's anecdote about cajoling the hapless Lurch into making a slow-cooker repast: 

... the other night after an excellent supper of Aztec Soup, I inveigled Fr. McGuire, of all things, into making Crockpot Pot Roast. He likes it, and was familiar with the concept... 

Hold on now! Fixing a pot roast in a crockpot is a CONCEPT????

Sheesh! He makes it sound as if he'd asked Lurch to factor 4th degree polynomials with synthetic division instead of dumping 3 or 4 pounds of eye-of-round along with a can of cream-of-mushroom soup into the inner bowl. Well, we suppose if one of your "things" is Lurch, you've got to pretend it's high functioning.

But right after Dannie declared the dish "delicious," his finely tuned prudentia carnis counseled him to excite the Gerties' pity lest they get the impression that the idle "clergy" are capable of fending for themselves in the kitchen:

The only problem is that when [Lurch] started, after having shopped for the ingredients, he discovered we had the crock but not the pot, the lining having been lost. 

Oh, brother!