Contest Winner?

We already have a winner for the "Death, Where Is Thy Sting?" contest (see the blog below). The correct answer was sent by reader tkeok231 in his or her comment attached to that blog---namely, the woman would think that the man, whom she met at the funeral and wanted to see again, logically would come again to another funeral by that family, in this case the funeral of the sister; and when he would, the woman would finally ask his name, etc.

But is tkeok231 really the winner? Will he or she really have the all-expense paid visit to my house where we can both be in Seine? Any winner of this contest question is, in a certain sense, to be avoided. Why? Because the contest question is a psychologist's test. The psychologist, a criminal profiler, theorizes that the "correct" answer would be quickly thought by someone prone to murder. So, tkeok231, I'm sure you're a, er, nice person, but since you're a potential serial killer, I'm chopping your airplane ticket into my rabbit stew as we speak.

-Old Gargoyle

Contest Reminder

The contest in the blog "Death, Where Is Thy Sting?" below is still in process. Send your answer. The winner receives a paid weekend in my cabin overlooking my beets and squash fields here in Seine.

-Old Gargoyle

Beware of the Dark

It's almost Halloween. Damn, I hate the doorbell constantly ringing that evening. So what I've done the past couple of years is send the little woman to play bridge somewhere that night, then extinguish all internal and external house lights, and sit quietly in the darkness in my easy chair curled into a semi-fetus position. But don't you just know, it didn't help---still had three or four rings at my door. This year I'm ready; I'll still do the same above, but this time, wearing a mouthbrace with sharp metal teeth in it, I'm gonna sink those suckers into the neck of the first person, child or otherwise, for whom I have to open my triple-bolted front door.

-Old Gargoyle

Monkey on My Back

I'm exhausted. I feel as if I didn't sleep at all last night. Well, yesterday afternoon I waited in line for four hours to buy a ticket for the showing of Michael Jackson's "This Is It" film in the town's theater. Finally admitted into it along with hundreds of shouting fans, I sang, I danced, I swayed, I jumped up and down, I spun around, I screamed "Miiichaaael," I cried. It was dawn before I made it home. . . . Wait a minute---all this was my nightmare from last night.

-Old Gargoyle

Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

Here's a test I was sent. Reader, see if you can pass it:

Susan, while attending the wake of her mother in the funeral home, met a man there whom she (Susan) didn't know about and never had met. The man fascinated Susan to the point that she thought she was quickly falling in love with him. Unfortunately, she forgot to ask his name, phone number, etc., and after a while he left without her knowing it, and he never returned to the funeral. A few days later, Susan murdered her own sister.

Why did Susan murder her sister?

-Gargoyle

What Goes Around . . .

I'm $200 richer! WalMart, here I come! I won the money yesterday through a contest here in town, one conducted by an under-30 group of techno types. They advertised for creative new, zippy, catchy, trendy slogans or sayings to be incorporated into cell phone or texting advertising, etc. So I submitted "Twenty-three skidoo!" and "You're the cat's meow!" and "Hubba-hubba!" and "Your momma wears army boots!." And lo and behold, all of my slogans won. The reason? The under-30 group, ignorant of American cultural history, had never heard of these.

God bless our youth.

-Old Gargoyle

Vamoosh

So the Vatican is beginning a two- or three-year investigation of the teachings and practices of American Catholic sisters (nuns), to their surprise and disturbance. As some of them have remarked, it's the good sisters who should do an investigation of priests and the Vatican. I'm reminded of some of the harsh categorizations of women in general by some medieval male theologians and canonists especially of the 11th to 13th centuries when celibacy had become mandatory for all priests and bishops. Here's one addressed to the good ladies from St. Peter Damian, a monk and later a cardinal:

"I speak to you, o charmers of the clergy, appetizing flesh of the spirit, that castaway from paradise, you, poison of the minds, death of souls, venom of wine and of eating, companions of the very stuff of sin, the cause of our ruin [the fall of Adam]. You, I say, I exhort you women of the ancient enemy, you bitches, sows, screech owls, night owls, she wolves, blood suckers, [who] cry, 'Give, give, without ceasing!' (Proverbs 30:15-16). Come now, hear me, harlots, prostitutes, with your lascivious kisses, you wallowing places for fat pigs, couches for unclean spirits, demi-goddesses, sirens, witches, devotees of Diana, if any portents, if any omens are found thus far, they should be judged sufficient to your name. For you are the victims of demons, destined to be cut off by eternal death. From you the devil is fattened by the abundance of your lust, is fed by your alluring feasts."

Oddly, he doesn't condemn bleached blonds.

-Old Gargoyle

Waiter, Is That a Fly in My Soup?

Soupy Sales has died. Soupy was the mast. Soupy was my captain of humor. Soupy and I imaginatvely saled the seas of laughter. But then one day years ago, I joined the mutiny against Soupy, and he had to retire from the docks. Now the Soup has met his ship of fate, and the winds have ceased.

I think I'm hungry now. Little woman, is that Slavic soup of yours ready yet?

-Old Gargoyle

Keep Him Sweet

Restless-leg syndrome, microfibermyolgia (or whatever it's called), dry-eye syndrome, etc.---all these medical conditions I see on tv I think I have. But I think I know what I need for all this crap: good old cane syrup. Yes, heavy, black, sweet cane syrup, not this sissy maple stuff sold here in New England and Delaware. Gotta get me some cane syrup! Reader, feel free to mail me a few cans; whatever I don't eat I'll use as motor oil.

-Old Gargoyle

Toss and Blast

While driving home from my part-time job as a perfume-odor scenter (sniffer) at the J.C. Penny Store, I passed the park and noticed a sign at its edge: "Ultimate Frisbee Here." A dozen or so guys in the field were playing the game by downing each other's tossed frisbees by actually shooting them with handguns.

-Old Gargoyle

Little Green Men

Dozens of new planets in our galaxy have been discovered in recent weeks, increasing the odds, people say, that intelligent life exists on some of them. For a long time, I agreed with scientists in speculating that the possibility of intelligent life on some planets in the entire universe, if not merely in our galaxy, was strong. Yet in the past few years, after more reading in the most up-to-date facts and theories of scientific cosmology, I think I'm reaching the opposite scientific conclusion, namely, that intelligent life exists only on Earth. Religious fundamentalists and conservatives, with whom I generally disagree, tend to agree with my preliminary conclusion on this matter, but for theological, not scientific, reasons.

-Old Gargoyle

A Stiff Upper Lip

For decades the Catholic Church has allowed married Anglican or Episcopal priests, who wanted to convert to Catholicism but then continue their professional ministry as married Catholic priests, to do so in a quiet, semi-private manner. Now the Vatican announces that it not only will make it easier and more public for married Anglican priests especially in Britain (and presumably Episcopal priests in the U.S.) to be ordained as Catholic priests, but will allow them to retain some aspects of the Anglican liturgy when functioning as new Catholic priests. I can hear the howls of confusion or frustration from "lifelong" Catholic priests who had to resign their ministry when they married, from "lifelong" married Catholic deacons, and from "lifelong" Catholic women who wish to be ordained as Catholic priests.

-Old Gargoyle

Who in the Hell Was That?

I returned to Delaware just in time to renew the license plates for my old Yugo. "Hey," I said to meself, "it's time I obtained personalized plates." So I chose the ones with an owl pictured in an environmental theme in the background of the letters "TIC DOC."

-Old Gargoyle

Eat More Chicken

Whew, I made it back safely. It's good to be in Seine once again. When I told the Ontario magistrate that I had mad-cow disease, he turned white, and immediately ordered my release and deportation back to the U.S. (something about protecting Canadian's precious meat supply; baloney---what I'm worried about is protecting---as the colonel in "Dr. Strangelove" would say---my "precious bodily fluids").

-Old Gargoyle