(I hope it's obvious that this image is just an unmanipulated detail of junk-mail.)
Dear diary,
Halloween wasn’t bad, after all. I was afraid it’d be bad, but it went smoothly. I’m just too uptight; I gotta relax and learn to think more positively. I assumed there’d be punk teenagers everywhere, and that they’d come banging on our door way late in the evening, and if we accidentally missed their call because we were sleeping, they’d throw eggs at our house and spray-paint “RAP SUX” on our garage. And I’d be like “How’d they know that I was a wannabe rapper!?” And my sweetheart would say, “They probably bribed the FBI to get your file.” And then I’d go into a tailspin of panic. Plus I’d have to clean the eggs off our siding, as I explained in my earlier entry, and paint a tropical island motif over the graffiti on our garage, to cover up that evil message. (Instead of “RAP SUX”, I wish they had written the short poem that we saw spray-painted under the bridge when we were walking to the park last spring, so that my house would read: “GINA ROX MY SOX.” I’d never wash that off, even if you payed me. We’d have the coolest garage on the block.)
Yeah, so Halloween went really well, just as I did not predict. There were a few teenagers, but they were the politest teens I’ve ever met. They were smart & well dressed. They were attired as superheroes, in fact; cuz the Eve of Hallowmas is a time to express your wildest aspirations, and today’s teens, unlike the teens of my bad era (who only wanted to harm individuals, break up families, and eat blood with their mouth, plus bones and fur), I say, today’s teens have only one desire: to run for office and implement policies that help rejuvenate the Working Class. My only problem with that is that I wish there were no Working Class. By which I DO NOT mean that I’m against the generous souls who comprise the group; on the contrary, I love them all; I’m just categorically opposed to the concept of WORK. so I’d recommend changing the name to Prophet Class, cuz, like Moses, I’d prefer to see the 99% of the world’s population who remain downtrodden escape from slavery and become prophets, so that they could save the 1% from being their taskmasters.
Moses said: “I wish to God that all the LORD’s people were prophets, and that the LORD would put his spirit upon them!” (Numbers 11:29)
Now, when I say that I want the slaves to save their masters via prophesying, the reason I’d rather have the masters saved than lost is cuz, like James the Just always sez (and his brother Jesus agrees): Whoever has power will be judged proportionately harsher than those who are powerless. Now, if you really believe this, as I do, then you’ll want to help those innocent fools avoid their fate.
My brethren, be not many masters, knowing that such shall receive the greater condemnation. (James 3:1)
And if you wonder what exactly a prophet does all day, as opposed to the slavery that the Upper Class urges the Working Class to keep calling “work”, I’m right with you: I wonder too: What exactly is the prophets’ job description? But I do not know how one gets converted to such a calling, because the opening verses of the first book of Samuel tell how pre-King Saul attained his prophetic credentials: he just observed the goings-on and felt inspired and then joined in. That’s why I think that art and prophecy are one, and thus Jesus was an artist (because he was a prophet). You don’t teach genius; you just make artworks, and others view them and remark “I see your own genius therein; now lo, I feel that I myself harbor genius as well—so why should I not let my genius out likewise?” that’s how one artist becomes a multitude of artists. You don’t even need to resort to sticky-sweaty (physical) sex.
Samuel said unto Saul: “Thou shalt meet a company of prophets coming down from the high place with a psaltery, and a tabret, and a pipe, and a harp, before them; and they shall prophesy: and the Spirit of the LORD will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.” (1 Samuel 10:5-6)
It’s even easier than getting your Class-D driver’s license. And I’d like to note (tho I’m afraid to, so I won’t) that the above passage does in fact document at least a few of the “general tasks & related duties” of a prophet. (I’m answering my own inquiry from this entry’s earlier paragraph, where I shouted: “You wonder what exactly a prophet does all day?—well I wonder as well, yet I can’t tell you, because the Bible itself offers not a single detail about it!”) Yes, the above-quoted passage describes not only the functionary to whom the prophet must report, but also the qualifications needed by a soul in this profession, as well as its salary range:
For the scripture specifies that prophets travel in “companies” or “bands” (as in rock-n-roll bands), who speak their prophecies to rhythms deriving from musical devices similar to our modern-day synthesizers and drum machines: that is, “psalteries” and “tabrets” and “pipes” and “harps”. Now, just to take the first example listed:
A psaltery is an ancient instrument like a dulcimer, played by plucking the strings with the fingers or a plectrum.
Sounds exactly like folk music or late-80s hip-hop, to me. So if you spray RAP SUX in purple paint upon your neighbor’s garage, you’re basically taking a stand against all prophecy. But I side with artists.
I’m just trying to say that I’m happy the kids were so well-behaved this Halloween, and that their parents were so friendly. I noticed that, when the doorbell would ring, and we’d open it and the little children would say “Trick or treat!”, which is a threat but they know not what they intend therefore forgive them, as we’d shovel heaps of candy into their child-size briefcases, their parents would normally be standing off a few paces, sometimes even as far back as the end of our driveway, which is located in Minnesota, and these parents, which you’d assume would be angry as heck because they’ve generated offspring into a world that torments everything alive, I say, these parents were cheerful & smiling, one & all. Their happy attitude, I hypothesize, stems from the fact that they live in a lower-middle class neighborhood, as opposed to, say, the slums of Apple Valley, where my sweetheart & I just moved from; also they probably enjoy watching their children suffer thru their first All Hallows Even. Perhaps this brings back memories of when they, the parents, were little children themselves, and they went door to door in a much safer time, when there was only World War Two to worry about and mass genocide from nuclear weaponry. Nowadays we’ve progressed to the brink of World War THREE & BEYOND; yet we no longer expect the annihilation of our species from nuclear bombs, because Communism did not take over the planet as the USA feared, instead Capitalism owns the planet; thus Peace Reigns on Earth, and Jesus need not even bother to make his second appearance here: for we’re all prophets now: we got this covered: we can take care of ourselves.
*
My favorite Halloween costumes, this year, were as follows. The Mario costume from the Super Mario Bros. Video Game, and the Princess costume from ibid. Also the kitty-cat costume, which I saw a little newborn baby wearing: The baby was crying, and its mother was holding it and saying “Halloween is fun! Halloween is fun!” I also liked the firefighter costume, and the boy in the ATF costume.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) is a police agency responsible for examining violations of Federal laws within the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice.
P.S.
I should also explain that we had to take a trip to The Party Store earlier in the afternoon, because we’ve only been living in our new house for about one month, so we haven’t had a chance to replace our front door, which badly needs replacing cuz it’s dilapidated, so we thought to ourselves:
If the families of the neighborhood include in their first impression of us this vision of our unsightly entryway, as will be the case if we meet them all tonight during Halloween, then probably most of them will not assume that the offensive look of our door was an intentional decoration, no, they’ll most likely think we’re just lowlifes and henceforth shun us. Therefore let us ride our bicycles to The Party Store, which is named The Party Store because it sells manufactured goods that facilitate partying, and search thru the products that are marketed there until we find a DOOR COVERING with creepy graphics appropriate for this high and holy day, so as to cover our living quarters’ foremost blemish.
But we could find nothing in the section of the store that was labeled “door covers” (they actually had a big sign with this legend printed on it in stern white letters); I mean, all the available decorations were depictions of chainsaw-wielding maniacs poised menacingly in the foreground underneath hideous phrases in cheap fonts dripping with blood, such as: “Enter at your own risk!” And we don’t want to scare the Christ out of anyone; we just aim to shoulder our burden of this common madness like obedient taxpayers. So, when we were at the point of quitting in exasperation, I said:
“Hey, all we need is a cloth to mask our front door’s ugly face; why don’t we check the section labeled ‘table runners and graduation balloons’? For a giant napkin would surely cover a door; and we could simply use that.”
Thus we shuffled over to the “birthday and picnic supplies” section, where I spotted this vinyl cape with glowing white skulls against a background of spider webs; so we purchased that and used packaging tape to tape it to our door. It looked unlovable, but it was only four U.S. dollars, whereas the official door coverings were more than twice that price.
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