SMALL CHOICE IN ROTTEN APPLES

... the frequenting of non-Catholic schools, whether neutral or mixed, those namely which are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike, is forbidden for Catholic children, and can be at most tolerated on the approval of the ordinary alone, under determined circumstances of place and time, and with special precautions... Pius XI, Divini illius magistri, Dec. 31, 1939 (Vatican translation).

Disgraced $GG "$chool" has been a popular blog topic of late, inspired largely by Dannie's frenzied promotional campaign. We're sure it's aimed at offsetting the huge embarrassment of four Gertie adolescents' graduating from Protestant-Evangelical institutions. The distress signals are unmistakeable: Not only did the Wee One post a sermon titled  "A Catholic Education" (here), but he also led off last week's "Bishop's (?) Corner" with what looks like a plug for the ill-famed (and misnamed) "$chool":

Trinity Sunday marked a significant milestone in the history of St. Gertrude the Great School with one of the largest graduations in our thirty some year history. We congratulate our five eighth graders who will begin High School with us in the Fall, and especially our three graduating High School Seniors.    

There's a lot of panic in those two sentences, a lot of whistling in the cemetery. He's got his back to the wall.

But before we get started, let's immediately put one bit of silliness out of the way. In the real world, eighth-grade "graduations" are meaningless. The only genuine pre-collegiate rite of passage that counts is graduation from high school. The eight-grade transition statistic is just sleight of hand — and pretty clumsy at that — to disguise the "$chool's" dismal 30-year record.

An aside: We'd like to know just how many of the five eighth-grade "graduates"  (LOL) commencing $GG High "$chool" in the fall will remain there until graduation day. That's something we'll be keeping a close eye on. If surnames mean anything, we'll lay odds that at least one of them might end up at Mars Hill Academy. Why should a family's girls get an education inferior to that afforded its boys?

For a sharper picture of the Dirtbag's dilemma, let's consider the secondary-school numbers. In late spring 2017, Dannie congratulated seven high-school graduates: three from $GG (two of whom are the "Prinicpal's" offspring!) and four from area Protestant-Evangelical independent schools — or as Dannie said in his sermon, "the Bizarro world of ... Protestant education." What this means is that some Gertie families who wanted to give their kids an education grounded in Christian moral principles opted against sending them to $GG "$chool." To put it frankly, they made the conscious decision to trust their children to Protestant educators and institutions, the kind Dannie characterized in his sermon as "very serious and methodical in indoctrinating ... children."

The way we figure it, there should have been at least seven 2017 graduates from $GG "$chool," not three. (We don't know how many Gertie parents homeschool or choose public or other private schools, so the number could be much higher.)  Anyhow, 57% of the officially acknowledged class of '17 went elsewhere. And not just any elsewhere, but a heretical elsewhere!

Numbers don't lie.

Anybody with some elementary business smarts can see "One Hand" has a big problem. By his account, Dannie's sad excuse for a school has been around for some 30 years, yet this year it only managed to graduate three — one for each decade of operation. Furthermore, after almost a third of a century, $GG's total enrollment stands at an anemic 19, as reported last week by The Lay Pulpit (here).

Compare $GG's miserable stats with the enviable record of Mars Hill Academy in Mason, Ohio, from which a Gertlet graduated this year. The little classical Christian school started with 27 students about a decade after $GG "$chool." Ten years later it moved to a new building on a 13-acre campus and, after 20 years of operation, boasted more than 360 students and 40 staff.

The Readers' tale of two academies should tell His Idiocy something's really wrong with his enterprise. It also should wake the Gerties up. The time has come to stop funding a manifest failure. Almost eight years have passed since the $GG "$chool" $candal came to a catastrophic head in the late fall of 2009. Someone needs to do now what Dannie should've done way back then. As the Italian proverb goes, "Sometimes it's better to give your apple away than to eat it yourself."

No amount of sermonizing or hollow claims of an "excellent education" can fix the problem, which is a loss of confidence in $GG's "leadership," starting, but certainly not ending, with the "Principal." Only a few parents, among whom are the "Principal" and his wife, embrace Dannie's fictional "Catholic" education. He's definitely being sent a message. It's as if the majority of employees at a Pepsi bottling plant chose to drink Coke: a wise consumer could only infer the insiders must know something untoward about plant conditions or the product.

Dannie doesn't need an MBA to come to the same conclusion as PL. The primitive survival instinct of a plague-rat drowning in raw sewage should be sufficient to tell him $GG "$chool" along with its "Principal" constitute an unsustainable drain on diminishing financial resources. The dreaded "'big ticket' expenses" are coming fast and furious, as we learned in last week's "Corner," in which "One Hand" confessed the air conditioning had "conked out."

A question: Is this the same AC system that was to replace the "dying" system in March 2016, just a little over a year ago? You remember: the one that cost "the princely sum of $11,000 to $12,000," and for which Dannie adjured the Gerties to "do your part" by donating "$100 in a lump sum, or $30-$40 in monthly payments"[click here].)

Panhandlin' Dan may try to cajole, wheedle, spook, and shame until his overstressed vocal cords snap, but the majority of Gerties won't heed his call. Oh, they may smile blankly at their "old 'bishop" or convulse like a distempered cur in nodding assent as he pleads to stanch the flow of red ink. Good parents however, will receive the grace to shield the apples of their eye from $GG's hickory-stick curriculum. Moreover, these moms and dads will parry every effort to intimidate them into enrolling their kids where they won't receive "a Catholic education."

Seeing that the rational solution to the Dirtbag's problems — close the $chool and remove the "Principal" from the cult center — is forbidden to him, we can expect his message to become increasingly agitated as Gerties turn their backs on his frantic appeals. The unbearable tension between his need to free up more cash and his inability to invoke the necessary remedy may well cause $GG to crater sooner than we expected: Gerties with insurance policies naming $GG the beneficiary aren't dying fast enough to soothe Dan's itch to spend.

Although PL is delighted about the impending crisis, we imagine some of you cultlings are depressed. Quite laudably you refuse to condemn your children to the cult's educational black hole, yet you wince in sympathy whenever the Mitered Maggot poor-mouths.

Well, then, why not help the larval creature? Make a counter-offer the Maggot can't refuse: Withhold all donations until $GG "$chool" closes down on its own, thus wiping the "Principal" and his wife off the cult's welfare roll.

STARVE THE BEAST AND UPSET THE ROTTEN-APPLE CART. THEN YOU CAN BUY A MAINTENANCE CONTRACT FOR THE HVAC SYSTEM. 

RUN, RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN!

I've got a little list — I've got a little list... Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado

After the self-elected "Superior General" announced his new "Institute" back in April,  PL expected him to follow up with more commentary on his directories. After all, he did write "To be continued" on p. 12 of the newsletter supplement. We also assumed he'd be reporting on swelling membership rolls. With all the fanfare and hoopla of the April announcement ("We hope and pray that the Institute will grow in the future, and that God will bless its undertakings"), it wasn't unreasonable to anticipate a rush of enlistees, at least from the sycophants who wanted their names on the "List of Approved Clergy."

Think of our disappointment when not a syllable about the "Institute" appeared in the pesthouse's May newsletter. (The post nominal initials R.C.I. don't even follow Tradzilla's name in the signature block.) In any new venture, the smart practice is to keep up the buzz with frequent progress reports. Does the Donster's silence here imply the grand initiative has, like so many self-defeating cult-master daydreams, fallen flat? Or worse, has the sought-after divine benediction been withheld?

Insofar as Big Don's being coy and won't tell us, we'll have to launch our own investigation into why the "Instritute" seems to have stalled just after it got started. To do that, we need the assistance of YOUR eyes and ears and enquiring minds.

Below is a select list of indie trad levites, which a correspondent helped us put together. None of the individuals, we think, has any formal or quasi-formal affiliation with the Big Kahuna's direct competitors, e.g., SSPX, the Resistance, SSPV, FSSP, CMRI, Society of King Louis of France, Society of Jesus and Mary, etc. (Tell us if we're mistaken on that score.) We've also taken pains to omit the names of individuals suspected of  over-leaning toward the SSPX or openly hostile to or noisily contemptuous of Tradzilla. (For the latter, that's a huge number, BTW. If we considered the internal forum, it might be close to universal.)

Many on the list have, or have had, more than a nodding acquaintance with the "Superior General," and, although each one may not be a rabid sede, none seems to hold an ecclesial position repugnant to his. (Correct us if we're wrong, please!) Furthermore, a few are pesthouse completers, two are former pesthouse associates, while others were members of "The Nine." In sum, each individual could be a candidate for membership in the Flushing Rat's "Roman Catholic Institute."

  1. Ahern, Daniel

  2. Andrade, Paul

  3. Berry, Eugene

  4. Cekada, Anthony

  5. Collins, Joseph

  6. Dolan, Daniel

  7. Dolan, Patrick

  8. Ércoli, Carlos

  9. Finnegan, Terrence

10. Hall, Bernard

11. Hecquard, Guillaume

12. Hogan, John

13. Jacqmin, Eric

14. Larrabee, Julian

15. LeGal, Thomas

16. Lehtoranta, Vili

17. LeMay, Peter

18. McGuire, Charles
19. McKenna, Stephen

20. McMahon, Denis

21. Moylan, Marcellus
22. Neville, Robert

23. Nkamuke, Bede

24. Ramolla, Markus

25. Ricossa, Francesco

26. Saavedra, Oscar

27. Siordia, Jaime

28. Stuyver, Geert Jan

29. Trauner, Arnold
30. Zapp, Thomas

Now the question we'd like answered is this:

How many of these apparently viable candidates for Tradzilla's new "Institute" have actually signed on? 

Out of 30 names, surely 20% (6), or even 10% (a paltry 3), must've answered the rector's call, don't you think? At a minimum, the Skipper (#26), Wannabe (#14) and My-Way Carlito (#8) must've joined up — Skippy for sure — right? If MR. WORLDWIDE can't recruit those three guys, then whom can he get? That is to say, if they're not onboard, then the "Institute" is dead in the water, and PL will have to change its thinking on one important matter.

Now, here's where you come in. Read over the list. If you know one of these men has enlisted, tell us in the comments section, even if Big Don rejected his application. Then the Readers will know Sin-burn hasn't completely lost his grip over trad "clergy." That's important to us because we're trying to revise our prediction about when the Kid will get his miter. We had thought he would have received it by now, but it looks as though the long-awaited event depends on whether Tradzilla can get the "Institute" afloat.

If no one else wants to join Big Don's "Fight Club," then we don't see how B'ville can possibly have two "bishops" in the compound's garage (unless the pampered priory princesses are to get their very own prelataster). It's safe to say that an "auxiliary bishop" would make the Florida cultlings look ridiculous in Sedelandia's eyes. Without anywhere to go, Tradzilla will have to stay put while Junior will have to keep wearing his sour face and priest's cassock in the group portraits appearing in the newsletter.

We surmise that, at best, only Skippy has scrambled to join, but that's as good as zero new members. (By skipping the consecration at Mass, he's become the poster child for malformation in TradWorld. Not the kind of klutz self-regarding sede "liturgiphiles" want to hang out with, is he?)  As we see it, a lot of prospective candidates appear to be running for their lives to get away from the "Superior General." Others would seem to be flipping him an extremely impolite hand gesture.

If no new members materialize soon, the Readers'll be able to consign the "Institute" to the ash heap of trad history along with Don's big $30K plan and his planned takeover of Our Lady of the Sun.

Then we'll look for signs of mayhem in the fetid swamp as a resentful élite chafe at Junior's denied birthright.

O HATEFUL ERROR, MELANCHOLY'S CHILD

I tell thee, thou foolish Philanthropist, I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. Emerson

The woebegone rector's May pesthouse newsletter is out. In addition to "a one-time appeal" for your hard-earned dollars to pay for outfitting the cult's new Melbourne satellite (more about this below), there's a lengthy section on the "Evolutiion of dogma" aimed at proving Bertgoglio "dead wrong in his examples."  Embarrassingly, the Donster proves himself as hopelessly fact-challenged as Bergie. Look at p. 2 where he makes makes this astonishingly absurd — and unsupported —claim:

80% of the population of the Roman Empire was slave. 

So preposterous is the assertion that we had to read it over four times. The Readers understood the cult masters were ignorant of Latin, Greek, classical literature, and ancient history, but we weren't sure until now that they had no grasp of fundamental macroeconomics and demography. You don't need a college education to realize dour Don's statistic must be wrong. Common sense should have been enough to rescue him from this depressing blunder before going to print.

As you might imagine, historians lack reliable data on the scale of slavery in Rome (the city), Italy, or the empire. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (1989) puts the estimate for the slave population in Italy at "about one in three of the adult free population." In our own past reading, PL has seen tenuous estimates for the slave population in the empire ranging from 8% - 20%.

The most detailed study we've read on the subject comes from the Stanford specialist in ancient social/economic history and pre-modern demography, Walter Scheidel. In his 2007 monograph "The Roman Slave Supply" (click here), Prof. Scheidel, who BTW edited the Cambridge Companion to the Roman Economy and wrote the chapter on slavery, produced a hypothetical model that "yields a share of slaves between 7 and 13% of the imperial population — i.e., somewhere close to one-tenth" (p. 5, emphasis ours).

N.B. That's one-tenth of the empire, NOT four-fifths as somber Sin-burn fallaciously writes. (We should add that Schediel's estimate for the slave population in Italy is 15-25% of the population, lower that one-third estimate we quoted above.) But forget about professional historians' educated guesses: the sub-amateur Donster's monstrously high figure is plain-and-simple hogwash. It betrays breathtaking economic illiteracy as well as an absence of critical-thinking skills.

Although it would be sufficient for most people to attribute the bizarre statistic to malformation (clearly the zero wasn't a typo), PL tries to dig deeper. What could be the source, we asked, of that other-worldly percentage, which an average public-high-school senior would suspect if he read it? Tradzilla's an intellectual piker, that's for sure, but it's hard to imagine he'd be that dumb without outside inspiration. He must have come across something that either he or his ill-trained helpers misread.

From reading his critique of Bergoglio, it's plain he attempted some research to make his case. (The despondent Donster's trying to show Tradistan he's superior to the Novus-Ordo establishment.) We conjecture that in an online search for material, he might have come across Prof. Scheidel's paper. Hurriedly skimming the document in search of something to make him sound authoritative, the bilious "bishop" might have stumbled upon the following statement on p. 4 (emphasis ours):

The big question is whether the other provinces were, on average, closer to the ‘Italian’ or the ‘Egyptian’ end of the spectrum. On a rough estimate, these other regions accounted for about 80% of the population of the Empire. 

(The last words are within a gnat's whisker of the liverish rector's wording, don't you think?)

Now, if Scheidel were his source, then we can see how the gloomy Grand High Panjandrum of Tradistan got his wild -and-crazy figure: an alien to the norms of mainstream academic discourse, too lazy or ill equipped to read the article carefully, he or one of his flunkies probably didn't understand the professor was saying that the geographical areas outside Italy and Egypt contained 80% of the entire imperial population.

Can you believe some people think this dud is some kind of oracle?

The point of today's post is not to shame the rector. We've already tried that on many occasions. It doesn't do any good: Cult kingpins are immune to shaming, and it won't induce them to admit their error or cure their defects. They just dig in deeper because cultlings are too witless themselves to care.

You, on the other hand, can learn something important: Bummed-out Big Don is NOT the scholar or deeply analytical thinker he wants you to think he is. He's not much better than a barroom braggart on a hot Saturday night at a noisy trailer-park honky tonk: All wind and no substance, hoping an air of empty authority will fool his fellow losers. No man of any sense would ever have claimed that "80% [our emphasis] of the population of the Roman Empire was slave." That's award-winning stupidity.  It should warn Catholics not to reward such surrealistic ignorance by answering the call to furnish the Melbourne Mass center with 

vestments in all the colors, copes in all the colors, High Mass candlesticks, a thurible, a processional canopy for Corpus Christi, Holy Week items, an extra chalice, two ciboria, a monstrance, and many other things. (Emphasis ours.)

Remember that Tradzilla's morose retreat to Australia with his tail between his legs is the price he had to pay for getting himself kicked to the curb in Arizona. That was HIS fault. And it was his decision to pay back the CMRI for rolling all over him. Revenge may be well and good, but why should others bail him and the Ocker cultlings out? If the Melbourne coterie wants to sever ties with the CMRI to become a dependency of the Swampland, then they should buy their own vestments, instruments, and vessels — like every other new chapel.

It's no one else's charitable duty "to help Melbourne get a start," as doldrums Donald implies with a self-aggrandizing allusion to the apostle Paul's collecting from the Gentiles "a contribution for the poor of the saints that are in Jerusalem." For one thing, those Aussies are far from "poor," and for another, the Melbourne Mass center is not the mother-church of TradWorld. More importantly, victims in thrall to a non-Catholic Svengali are definitely not "saints."

If the Aussie culties cannot afford the whole kit and caboodle now, they can wait — like everyone else. Think about it: Why should the Melbourne coven need your money if it can afford to pay all doleful Don's travel expenses in December, then fly over Junior and Toady roundtrip, right after that fly in Junior and Beanpole roundtrip, and this July fly Beanpole back again?

They must be swimming in cash.  (Click here for details of "clerical" travel and of the Donster's lavish, all-expense-paid trip to gorgeous Down Under). Melborune doesn't need your welfare. And if the pesthouse paid for a couple of the junkets, then it doesn't need your charity either. (Why did Junior have to tag along anyway for two trips? Chaperone?)

But there's another reason to deny Tradzilla's demand for you to pick up the tab for his Australian adventure: You'll most likely be overpaying. As Big Don mopishly passed the hat for Melbourne, he disclosed, "The seminary has had to pay for these items and it added up to quite a bit." 

You can bet it must've added up, especially the "many other things."

Probably no expense was spared to purchase any new items, and anything that may have come from the pesthouse's stock* of liturgical goodies acquired in the rector's salad days would also have been super pricey.  Many start-up trad chapels have found more economical alternatives, such as ordering vestments from India and shopping for great deals on ebay for the rest.

If the Melburnians want extravagance, then let them reimburse the pesthouse with their own money.  We're certain Big Don can set up an easy-payment plan for those folks.

Emancipate yourself from the cult masters. Keep your money where it belongs, at home for you and yours, not with misguided strangers who obviously don't need it. 

STARVE THE GRIM, ERROR-BREATHING BEAST. 

* Maybe we're completely off base, but PL can't help suspecting that Tradzilla might be using Melbourne as an occasion to hold a "garage sale" to raise some much needed cash. Old reports from Michigan insiders told us he had a stockpile of valuable stuff, which is now probably gathering mold and insect larvae in some musty storeroom in the fetid swamp.  

THE "BISHOP'S (?)" BESTIARY, Chapter 3

Bestiary: A type of literature, particularly popular in the medieval centuries, in which the habits of beasts, birds, and reptiles were made the text for allegorical and mystical teachings. These bestiaries often ascribed human attributes to animals and were designed to moralize and to expound church doctrine. The natural history employed is fabulous rather than scientific... Thrall, Hibbard, and Holman's A Handbook to Literature (1936).

Editor's Note: This is the third installment in a series inspired by a comment letting us in on Dannie's secret critter code. According to our informant, the stupid but deadly animal stories in Wee Dan's weekly "Corner" are apologues about his critics/enemies or his sufferings at their hands.

In the two previous chapters of THE "BISHOP'S (?)" BESTIARY (see 4/22 and 3/18), the Readers handily managed to decode "One Hand's" disturbingly obsessive narratives of his cutthroat cats' butchering bunnies and mutilating mice. Today, however, we're facing a big challenge. To tell you the truth, we're really stumped, so PL begs your indulgence as we work through it all.

For Easter II 2017, in that charnel house of bloody horrors he calls "The Bishop's (?) Corner," Dannie intoned the following goose-bump-inducing, throbbingly hypnotic pronouncement (we've marked the primary stresses so you can shiver along with him to the haunting dactylic lilt):

Two vúltures were pérched on the réctory roóf. I wónder what thát porténds.

di-DUM-di-di-DUM-di-di-DUM-di-di-DUM: di-DUM-di-di-DUM-di-dum. 

Saints preserve us! That IS o-mi-NOUS. Mwahahahaha.

As Dan's ill-boding incantation reveals, the baleful spectacle must've rattled His Credulousness. No doubt he recalled a Mexican exorcist's eerie vision of a ghostly, moribund $GG encircled by robotically marching, downcast Gerties. No doubt the humble devil-fighter's stark warning came to mind again after years of repressing his message of conversion:  That courageous man had battled demons in Oaxaca, where to this day curanderos ply their dark trade, where ancient pagan beliefs and hideous rites abide. The roosting pair of raptors must've reminded Druid Dan how ill-starred he was when he turned a deaf ear to the saintly Tapatío's sobering admonition.

In company with the Wee One, we find ourselves asking each other, What can this wake of peering vultures mean? Casting welcome light on the question is a May 1 comment from a knowledgeable correspondent:

... there are two kinds [of vultures] in Cincinnati. The red headed Turkey vulture, a strict scavenger with weak talons and a good nose, and the black headed vulture, which is an opportunistic killer and a bully who drives the Turkey vulture from its finds. I doubt Dolan knows this stuff, but vulture life seems to fit the antics of these guys quite well, the black headed kind of course.

A definite insight, for sure, but we remain perplexed.

IF the $GG cult masters are the Coragyps atratus, the aggressive black vulture known to kill lambs and newborn calves, and IF they are not the dumpster-diving, roadkill-feeding turkey vulture, then why did Double-Whammy Dannie choose the word "portends"? According to our lexicon, that means serving as a supernatural omen of impending calamity.

Could it be, do you think, Li'l Daniel has been so weakened after the 2009 $GG $chool $candal that he sees himself not as the dominant black-headed Coragyps but rather as the timid, red-headed turkey buzzard Cathartes aura, which feeds off the dead because it's not strong enough to prey on the living?

Considering what Wee Dan wrote in his May 21 "Corner," His Enfeeblement's diminished self-image could open the way to the explanation we've been seeking. Let's read his words with care:

Did you ever see the little reminder in the bulletin: “Remember St. Gertrude the Great in your will”? Barb Steinmetz did, or more properly speaking, actually took out a life insurance policy in our favor. We are so grateful to her for this! The “big ticket” expenses are many, and our income just does not meet them. Would you consider remembering us in your will?

All righty! Now we're finally getting somewhere. What Dannie seems to be saying is:

The only way for $GG to maintain its extravagantly wasteful expenditures is for Gerties TO DIE!

Yes! Yes! Yes!  That's IT!  By Jove! We think we've got it!

PL isn't stumped any longer.

"Bp.(?)" Dan IS the red-headed, scavenging turkey buzzard, not the black-headed vulture. No doubt about it. (We should have guessed it beforehand, what with all his horaltic posing in cope and amaranthine biretta.) Accordingly, if Deacon Dan's merely a mild-mannered buzzard soiling his own legs and vomiting foul-smelling, semi-digested carrion to ward off enemies, then the key question to finding the answer to what the raptor sighting "portends" is this:

If Dannie's the weakling Cathartes, who is the threatening SW Ohio Coragyps?

In other words, which of His Uneasiness's many competitors for scarce financial resources is "the opportunistic killer and bully who drives the Turkey vulture from its finds"? And is there just one black vulture menacing his besieged territory or could Hoo-Doo Dan be on edge about several?

At last, the profound truth seems clear:

Dannie doesn't quite yet know whom or what the black vulture represents. It could be any one of five territorial rivals: the Ham Sandwich, SSPV, CMRI, FSSP, or SSPX. They've all got roosts right next to his in SW Ohio, each one ready to plunder the carcasses he's found. There's also a possibility that the second vulture on the roof could be an interloper from Tradzilla's new "Institute," perhaps one of Dannie's own fledglings who'll leave the nest when the Donster swoops in on a recruitment drive for his "Institute." 

Were PL asked to wager which specific threat the black vulture symbolizes, we'd have to put our money on the Ham Sandwich. Not only does "The Sammich" have a miter and a vulgarian's taste for big shows, he knows the Gerties, many of whom once admired him (and more than likely still do). 

Rambozo's a likable bumpkin with sharp-elbows and upwardly mobile aspirations fueled by outsized appetites. He could step right in to fill Dannie's episcopal sandals. Moreover, as a former garden-store helper, he would properly care for the sickly-looking, neglected Knockout Roses Li'l Daniel so often mentions in the "Corner." 

After taking charge of $GG, the Ramster would immediately get rid of the biggest of the "'big ticket' expenses" — the "Principal" who brought on the 2009 $GG $chool $candal.  Naturally his removal would come with predictably disastrous consequences for the two cult masters: The "Principal"once menacingly confided he knew too much to be fired. Letting the cat out of the bag at long last might be what our red-headed turkey buzzard dreads most. 

As ever in this series, the Readers invite the viewing public to weigh in on the comments page with their own interpretations. After all, the two vultures Wee Dan spied may have an altogether different significance. More specifically, the doom they presage may be worse than a hostile takeover of the dying $GG cult.