NEWS UPDATE: TYING UP SOME LOOSE ENDS

We've just passed the autumnal equinox, so perhaps it's time to take a breather and catch up on some unfinished business:

1. There's been no MHT pesthouse newsletter so far for the month of September. That means, there's still no word about the rector's big $30 K proposal. Perhaps it's dead, so the cultists might be able to start saving for their children's Christmas presents.

2. With no newsletter, there's also been no word about any "permanent arrangement" with Our Lady of the Sun Chapel in Arizona. Let's hope, for the rich, little chapel's sake, that the rector is still simply a mere tenant with no immediate chance to grab the brass ring.

3. "One-Hand" Dan may be in France taking names and kicking Gallic derrière, but Pistrina has learned this week that only one of the three French seminarian candidates for the pesthouse has actually shown up in the swampland. The other two declined to attend. This is specular news, for it shows that the world is catching on to the problems with the cult.

SPECIAL POST: IN THE BURROWS OF THE NIGHTMARE

De vils despotes deviendraient/Les maîtres de nos destinées. Rouget de Lisle

Last Sunday la belle France awoke to a nightmare: “One-Hand” announced early in the morning that he’s on his way. Coyly, he claimed he would abandon his Ohio cult for three Sundays in order to help his client and protégé, but Pistrina knows that he’s headed to Chambéry.

“Demolition Dan” has gotten very small in the U.S. His influence is as slight as his diminutive, though corpulent, stature. He can’t threaten Americans any longer, not even his hypnotized, semi-literate cult followers. He must treat them very gently now, lest they all walk away in disgust and leave him, and his boss, "The Principal," penniless. That’s why he’s off to France: to show the French a good, old-fashioned American whip hand after they dared to seek their own priest when Dan’s collaborateur couldn’t serve them. Making the French submit as he swaggers before their downcast eyes (he must imagine) will restore his lost grandeur while destroying their sense of self-worth. Yes, three Sundays of triumphant, pip squeak bullying will be the tonic he needs before he must return to his cult and begin begging again for meager macaroni suppers and hand-me-down stoves. No matter what, the rector will be impressed! And the Blunderer, too.

As a rule, pride and piety are impossible companions. In this case, however, the Reader sees an exception. If they awaken, the faithful of Chambéry have the opportunity to assert their independence from a destructive foreign intruder and affirm that they are Catholics, not narrow-minded, divisive sectarians of the ghastly American variety, with their nightmarish cult of personality and hallucinatory insinuations. Moreover, now might be the perfect opportunity to repudiate once and for all “One-Hand’s” well-documented inclination for destroying chapels -- his lasting legacy to traditional Catholicism.

Pistrina wouldn’t presume to tell the French how to act. That’s why we haven’t appended a French translation. We have too much admiration for the French nation. We can say only how we would behave, were we proud and pious French men and women. The solution is really very simple. If the Readers believed they had been wronged by “One-Hand’s” unwanted intervention in a private matter, they would boycott all his Masses for the three Sundays during which he proposed to darken their door.

We would stay at home. Say the Rosary. Practice acts of perfect contrition. If we happened to see the Destroyer sashaying down the street wearing his trademark rigid and foolish grin, we would cross to the other side and bless ourselves for having avoided an ill-omened presence. We would not welcome him into our homes. We would not feed him. We would demand that he live in the tiny priest’s apartment or take lodgings in a luxury hotel at his cult’s expense. We would not give him money. (We might even summon the gendarmerie.)

Yes, he would become incensed, as all puffed-up, bruised egos do at well-merited slights. We would find strength in our proud resistance to an impiety. Even if he threatened to destroy our chapel, we would be resolute. We would show him that our self-respect could not be compromised. We would remember that we were free men and women, citizens of the guardian of high culture, in need of no lessons from an underclass, ill-educated, pretentious outsider, who is vilified in his country. We would send him packing. God will provide for us, since we remain true to our conscience.

If, as our punishment, "Demolition Dan" withdrew the services of his creature in France, we would beg our beloved, former priest to return to us.

The living nightmare would then end.

BUT WHAT IF THE CHEAP HOTEL HAS A REWARDS PROGRAM?

Ed. Note: Ludwig Wittgenstein was right: "Logic must take care of itself." Our bizarre series from the emailing clerical messenger concludes with this other-worldly, logic-bending, dreamscape excursus on (1) the pesthouse’s determined efforts to steer clear of demimondaines and (2) the eerie effects of the absence of control exercised by reason.

Oh, where is André Breton when you need him!

And then every once in a while we hear something else weird. The latest thing is that [two Russian seminarians] wanted to spend Easter vacation in New York City, but [the rector] would not let them because they could only afford to stay in a cheap hotel, and [the rector] said that if they stayed at a cheap hotel, people would think they were there to meet a prostitute. I didn’t hear what [the rector] said directly; I only heard what [Scut the Prefect] told us, and he tends to misunderstand and exaggerate things that [the rector] says. So I don’t know which of them said this, but [Scut the Prefect] said a priest cannot stay at a regular hotel; he can only stay at a very expensive hotel costing at least $100 a night, because if he goes to a regular hotel people will think he’s there to meet a prostitute.

Calling upon all his pesthouse logic chopping skills and powers of inference and discursive reasoning, our priestly correspondent demolishes his superiors’ artful theses:

Well, that’s about the craziest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. He also said a priest could not stay at just a regular hotel off of highway 75, for example between here and Cincinnati, for the same reason. I realize that there are very low hotels in bad parts of town, where prostitutes are walking all over the place, and where they charge you for the number of hours you stay there instead of by the night — those places are places of sin, and a priest shouldn’t stay at a place like that at all. But to say that every cheap hotel — even those places off of highway 75 that are just there for the people traveling up and down the freeway to spend the night in — are places of prostitution, is completely crazy.

Unsure that logic applies in this situation, our exasperated and unwilling epistolary informant first essays an introspective Socratic method (of sorts), staggers in the absence of synthesis, and limpingly clings to an analogy to convince himself that the pesthouse nomenklatura is as wrong as Siamese triplets on a one-wheeled bicycle.

And why is a priest safer in an expensive hotel? Do people NEVER have prostitutes in expensive hotels? I just don’t know what to think. More than 90% of the people who stay at a hotel are just there because they’re traveling a long ways, and they need to stop for the night. To say that people would think a priest is meeting a prostitute at a hotel, unless he goes to a very expensive hotel, is like saying a priest shouldn’t go into a bookstore because people will think he is there to buy bad books.

Ed Note: A dialectical effort worthy of Peter of Spain, that’s for sure! We hope Scotty beams our messenger back up to reality: There’s no intelligent life in the swampland (or at the SW Ohio cult center, for that matter). Not much of a chance for that, however. He’s been packed off to a Seattle gulag, probably for re-education, where he may have a chance to read and think about what he wrote in 2009.

Both the messenger and his new minder share the same opinions about the pesthouse, the rector, Scut, and the SW Ohio cult masters. The difference is, the minder was nastier but never put it in writing. He got his dose of therapy by shooting off his mouth to the laity. He also had the good sense to get out on his own. Now all he has to do is come wagging his tail when they occasionally whistle. Otherwise, he's got the backyard all to himself, so all strays are welcome -- under certain conditions...

THEY WON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER, WILL THEY?

Ed. Note: Below is a continuation of the Marathon of Weirdness chronicled in a 2009 e-mail message plucked from oblivion, which we introduced in the Aug. 21 post MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE? You'll recall that we interrupted this series upon learning that our priestly messenger was on vacation and therefore wouldn't be in SW Ohio to answer in person to "One-Hand" Dan when he convened the Rialto-Road star chamber. Oh, how sharp will be the thorns of the cruel trilemma upon which our diffident and epistolary informer will sit, for he seemingly has no courage to screw to the sticking place.

The first two following excerpts expose the creepy-crawly mind-control games these cult masters play; the third attests to how they game-played in micromanaging the life of a priest who, at the time, wasn't going to enter into indentured servitude to them.

"Recently [the re-admitted Russian seminarian] told me that [the rector] told him he would be expelled if he had any communication with [a French former seminarian] or [a German former seminarian]. I can understand to some extent that [the rector] would disapprove of [the Russian] talking to them, but to threaten him with expulsion just for talking to them is pretty outrageous. I mean, these guys weren’t expelled for being heretics or for immorality; they were basically expelled because they didn’t observe the rule of silence perfectly, and they didn’t clean the kitchen as well as they should have*.

Another incident was that [a then-current seminarian] asked [the rector] if he could get a ride from [an American ex-seminarian] from Cincinnati to Chicago after Easter, so his brother [name withheld] could pick him up in Chicago and take him toMilwaukee. [The rector] said no, because he said [the ex-seminarian] had a bad attitude when he was in the seminary. I don’t even know what [the rector] was referring to. It might be that [the ex-seminarian] would not give up his silly idea that geocentrism is a dogma of faith; and he also clung stubbornly to some other ideas that were wrong, though not as serious as the geocentrism thing. But [theex-seminarian] and I were good buddies, and I never got even the smallest suggestion from him that he had what would be a bad attitude; and his moral character was above reproach. So whatever disagreement happened between [the ex-seminarian] and [the rector], it remained behind closed doors. I don’t know, maybe since he has been in Cincinnati he has been speaking out against the seminary or something, but if he has I haven’t heard about it. So to forbid [the current seminarian] to get a ride from him to Chicago is disturbing.

And on another occasion recently I suggested to [the Blunderer] that I could work with [the smurf], since it doesn’t seem like there is anywhere else for me to work. He just said, “No, don’t go to him.” I asked him why not, and he said, “There’s so much baggage there… well, transeat ["Let it pass," Ed.].” And he wouldn’t say anymore or even give me an explanation. If [the Blunderer] doesn’t like [the smurf] or doesn’t want to work with him, I don’t care; but how does it hurt [the Blunderer] if I work with [the smurf], especially when he is practically the only option I have left?"

* For the true story with all the facts, read our post from January 23, 2011.

Ed. Note: Some Kool-Aid anyone? We'll be back soon with more weird tales from the pesthouse as we continue to share our intrepid narrator's further reflections on the strange and unnatural. The next post, we promise, will be positively surreal!