THE END PROVETH EVERYTHING

Straw shall not be provided for you. Exodus (CCD Version, 1952)

Shhhhhh!

You can hear it, can't you?

The throaty growl at the rickety door? The muffled snarls leaking through a cracked, dirty window? The menacing tattoo of razor-sharp claws against rotting porch floorboards?

The wolf is at Dannie's door.

Take a look, perhaps for the second time, at last week's "Corner":

How Fr. Cekada manages to pay for all of [the many repairs to the crumbling cult center]  remains a mystery to me, for like the Hebrews, he is always making bricks without straw [sic!]. But I do know that more bills will be coming in, and more work needs done. Many of you, when you do come, contribute nothing, not even a token amount. How’s about it? If not for justice sake, at least for charity. Contribute your fair share to your church each week or each month. You know God will reward or punish you accordingly. As with forgiveness, we get to write our own ticket ...Will you alone come without a gift? God is never outdone in generosity but men are always outdoing each other in cold-hearted cheapness, whether in support or service. “Freely you have received. Freely give.”

There you have it! And in the Dirtbag's very own words. Confirmation of what PL's reported all along: the disillusioned Gerties are STARVING THE BEAST within decaying $GG. "One-Hand Dan" has mocked human nature for the last time. Vanished is his claim over the cultlings' income.

Ask yourself this: Why should culties surrender more of their treasure to the Wee One? He cynically warns, "more bills will be coming in, and more work needs done," while they remember he's just returned from unnecessary junkets to sunny Mexico and Argentina's wine country with its architecturally stunning bodegas (right on the heels of splurging on a vacation for two to chic New Mexico)!

How in the world could the Argentines have ever afforded the exorbitantly costly airfare from Los Angeles all the way down to Mendoza — a ways south of the Tropic of Capricorn —and then back up across two continents to SW Ohio? Didn't His Itinerancy recently describe his mendocino hosts as "truly poor, dirt poor, as they live a hard life among the dusty vineyards in Argentina. They even manage without a car, so that every little shopping trip or sick call entails begging a ride"?

He sure did!

Could the Mexicans, at least, have sprung to underwrite their part of Travelin' Man Dan's south-of-the-border autumn getaway?

Doubt it!

It's no surprise the cash-strapped Gerties are holding back: If His Profligacy can blow so much "needed" money on expensive foreign travel, then there's plenty of coin in the kitty to cover  upcoming expenses. Right? At any rate, cultlings never "freely received" anything from the Mammon-mad cult "clergy." Over the years, they've paid dearly for everything. Indeed, they've paid so far ahead they can give their exhausted pocket books a well-deserved rest.

Seeing that Gertlings have already sacrificed an un-fair share from their family fiscs for the "clergy's" comfort, they won't be intimidated by impious threats of divine retribution. Nor will they blush in shame at loutish insults or self-serving recriminations. They've become defiantly prudent cheapskates who also refuse to cook and clean-up-after an ill-bred "clerical" boys club.

Dannie's angry tirade against his wised-up flock foreshadows the impending end of the SW Ohio cult. But that's something you and we already knew. What IS revealing, though, is his wrong-headed reference to the Hebrews' "making bricks without straw." But first, let's show you why it's wrong.

Without the addition of straw (1) to allow the clay or mud to dry more easily and, as a binder, (2) to add stability to the product, the finished bricks would have broken and crumbled. (Straw, acting as a "flexible supporting lattice ...  will redistribute the force throughout the brick, decreasing the chance of breakage" [Smith, as cited in Capaldi, 2011].)  Pharao(h)'s taskmasters would, therefore, never have permitted the fabrication of such defective building materials. After all, scholars believe brick-manufacture was probably a government monopoly in ancient Egypt, since most bricks are stamped with the name of the king.

As any literate person who reads Exodus 5 will tell you, the problem for the Children of Israel was that "[w]hile some continued at the [brick] works, others went about the fields to gather up every grain of chaff and piece of straw which they could find" (Haydock). The consequent diminution of the brick-making labor force would've made it impossible for the Israelites to meet the daily quota of bricks set by the Egyptian overseers.  ("Why have you not completed your prescribed amount of bricks, yesterday and today, as before?" [5.14]).*

This means that the Hebrews never stopped adding straw to the bricks they produced; they simply produced bricks in reduced quantities, since under the new regimen they had to collect, sort, and chop the straw in addition to digging, tempering, mixing, and moulding the clay ("The people, then, scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw" [5.12] ).

Don't get us wrong. We're not writing to prove (once again) that the cult masters can't read Scripture closely. (They can't — click here for a recent example.) No, the Readers see much more than the expected sede ignorance, for we possess the key to "One Hand's" subconscious messaging. Years of decoding Danniespeak, you see, have led us to conclude that "straw" = "collection money." Thus in Deficit Dan's erroneous reading of Holy Writ we discover the truth about the cult:

it's runnin' outta cash! 

Ever since the 2009 $GG $chool $candal, we've observed they've been having trouble making ends meet in order to pursue a jet-setting life of ease. But now financial straits are truly grave.  At the precise moment when the cult masters need the Gerties' meager financial resources the most, they're not forthcoming.

$GG is far beyond the stage of elective repairs. As Li'l Daniel himself wrote last week,

... we have been taking care of some repair/replacement projects which have come due, or have long been delayed. A small crew has been working on one of the roof leaks, right over the vestibule... The parking lot asphalt repair has been scheduled, finally, for next month. 3 ½ heating/air conditioning units have been replaced and seem at last to be functioning well

By their own admission, the cult masters can no longer postpone essential maintenance. Engineers we consulted estimate that, based on their experience, tens of thousands of additional dollars may be needed if the "clergy" have let things slide so, considering the shoddy cult center had a limited life to begin with and experienced serious problems from the onset. Unfortunately for Dannie and Checkie,  they can no longer count on the Gerties to cough up the large dollar amounts they need to keep $GG from its certain collapse.

Insults or threats notwithstanding, disenchanted Gertlings will continue to arrive empty handed, forcing Dannie to try to gather funds from outside the cult. After so many years, unaccountable spending has at last become a casualty. Any effort to glean money from afar is destined to fail: all Trad Nation has "One Hand's" number by now. As His Insultancy accelerates the name-calling, like the Hebrews of old, Gerties will leave the bondage of the traddie cult "company by company."

Just in time, too, for the wolf has already crossed the broken door-threshold.

*in his Jewish Antiquities (II.xiii.4), the historian Flavius Josephus (AD 37 — after 93) differs from Fr. Haydock in his explanation of the division of labor :

Although formerly furnishing them chaff for brick-making, [Pharao(h)] no longer supplied it, but he made them endure hardship in the works by day, and collect the chaff by night ... the distress for them being double... (our literal translation).

The brick-pit slaves' exhaustion, therefore, could also account for the drop in productivity.

Whichever scenario you prefer — Haydock's or Josephus' — the fact remains that the Hebrews kept on making bricks with straw, contrary to His Ignorancy. BTW, here's the Greek of Josephus if you don't believe us:

 ὁ δὲ ἄχυρον αὐτοῖς παρέχων εἰς τὴν πλινθείαν πρότερον οὐκέτι παρεῖχεν, ἀλλ᾽ ἡμέρας μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἔργοις ταλαιπωρεῖν ἐποίει, νυκτὸς δὲ συνάγειν τὸ ἄχυρον ... τοῦ δεινοῦ διπλασίονος ὄντος αὐτοῖς ...

For anybody out in cyberspace who, like the cult masters, can't read Greek or understand the plain text of the Bible,  there's an alternative resource to confirm Dan's error. Cecil B. DeMille, who acknowledged Josephus near the end of the main title of The Ten Commandments, got it right, albeit with a little dramatic license:

John Carradine — "Aaron" [stentoriously]: "It is Pharaoh's order that you be given no straw to make your tally of bricks." 

Male voice amid the protesting Hebrew rabble [in outraged disbelief]: "No straw! ... How can you make bricks without straw?!" 

Edward G. Robinson — "Dathan" [nasally, with whining contempt]: "You will glean the stubble of the fields by night ... And remember: the tally must be the same!"

Didn't Dannie ever watch that flick?  NBC, we think, used to broadcast it nationally every year. Maybe it still does. His Deficiency should check his local listings this spring.