persiflage

November 19th, 2009

The O. Henry she [Ayn Rand] describes bears more resemblance to the candy bar than to the story writer.

Thomas Mallon

Classifieds

Not a damn thing is for sale this week.

Listen to Part Thirty-Two of

The Mystery of the Lost Lenore

Click on the picture. (3:18)

Or start from the beginning.

Archives

Links

Mini Book Review:
The Pot Brothers: Eviller and Eviller

An interesting new work on the two Cambodian siblings, the very well-known Pol, the despotic Khmer ruler, and the less well-known Krok, who was just as evil as his brother but who also insisted that everything be cooked really, really slowly.

Elrose Watermuldar

Address all email to:
persiflagemag@hotmail.com
I guess we mean all email than you intend for us. Don't go sending emails intended for your mum to the above address because she just won't get them. We haven't the time or the inclination to cart emails all over the ruddy place.

The Role of the Government

There has been much talk of late concerning the proper role of the government in the private affairs of its citizens.

I am starting a new paragraph here because right after I wrote the word "citizens" I dropped my pen down between my bed and the wall and as it rolled underneath the baseboard heater, it took me some time to fish it out.

My question to you is this: What help is the government to me in this? And my answer, also to you, is this: not much.

I could see no point in calling my MLA (who sent me quite a nice card today) as by the time she got here I would have forgotten what I was writing about. My City Councillor has much bigger hands than I do and he could not have squeezed his big digits under the baseboard heater, as I eventually had to. Although he and I, working together, could probably have pulled the bed out and got at it that way.

But our elected officials are only one part of the government. Clearly there are many other parts. What of all those people milling around in those office buildings? Aren't they a part of the government? What part should they be playing in my life?

Obviously a lot of them are a little long in the tooth to be playing the part of the ingenue (a role I am rather assiduosly attempting to cast) but some of them could be, say, Polonius and some of the others "Grampa" or "Apple Annie" or some such thing. They could make their own costumes.

Okay so maybe they haven't been on stage since they were in high school but maybe they miss it. Maybe they are longing to once again trod the boards as thespians. Did anyone even ask?

Hugh Briss

The Faggot

Bobby was nervous. His string had slipped and a couple of his sticks were standing out at awkward angles. It didn't look very good. They were sure to comment on it at the gate. He tried pulling his string up and that helped a bit but he wasn't sure it would hold. He couldn't get it tighter.

When Bobby got to the little wooden shed by the gate a man came out. The man was fierce looking. He had a battered old clip board with some rumpled papers on it and a short sharp pencil that he clenched in his teeth. As Bobby stood there trying to keep his sticks altogether the man pulled the pencil from his mouth and ran it down the clipboard, scanning it.

"And who are you?" the man asked rudely.

"I am a cord of wood." answered Bobby, somewhat less confidently than he had hoped. The man looked up and smiled. It was not a nice smile.

"That right eh?" he paused staring at Bobby. "You don't look like no eighty-four cubic feet of wood."

Bobby smiled at the man and shrugged. One of his sticks fell out. Bobby looked down at it but didn't pick it up. He looked at the man and smiled again.

"You look like a faggot to me." he spat. "I don't have nothing on here about no faggot." He tapped his clipboard with the badly chewed pencil.

The words stung but still Bobby stood there smiling. He thought the man might motion him towards the trucks anyway. He wanted so badly to go.

"Get lost." Bobby turned to head back into the lumberyard.

"Hey!" Bobby turned. The man jabbed his pencil at the dropped stick. Bobby picked it up and shambled off.

He sat down on a stack of old 2 X 4s that had gotten warped from sitting out too long. It wouldn't matter if he got them a little wetter.

Sally Kind