If thou wilt return,
O Israel,
saith the Lord,
return unto me:
and if thou wilt put away thine abominations out of my sight,
then shalt thou not remove.

And thou shalt swear,
The Lord liveth,
in truth,
in judgment,
and in righteousness;
and the nations shall bless themselves in him,
and in him shall they glory.

For thus saith the Lord to the men of Judah and Jerusalem,
Break up your fallow ground,
and sow not among thorns.

Circumcise yourselves to the Lord,
and take away the foreskins of your heart,
ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem;
lest my fury come forth like fire,
and burn that none can quench it,
because of the evil of your doings.

Declare ye in Judah,
and publish in Jerusalem;
and say,
Blow ye the trumpet in the land:
cry,
gather together,
and say,
Assemble yourselves,
and let us go into the defenced cities.

Set up the standard toward Zion:
retire,
stay not:
for I will bring evil from the north,
and a great destruction.

The lion is come up from his thicket,
and the destroyer of the Gentiles is on his way;
he is gone forth from his place to make thy land desolate;
and thy cities shall be laid waste,
without an inhabitant.

For this gird you with sackcloth,
lament and howl:
for the fierce anger of the Lord is not turned back from us.

And it shall come to pass at that day,
saith the Lord,
that the heart of the king shall perish,
and the heart of the princes,
and the priests shall be astonished,
and the propets shall wonder.

Then said I,
Ah,
Lord God!
surely thou hast greatly deceived this people and Jerusalem,
saying,
Ye shall have peace;
whereas the sword reacheth unto the soul.

At that time shall it be said to this people and to Jerusalem,
A dry wind of the high places in the wilderness toward the daughter of my people,
not to fan,
nor to cleanse,

Even a full wind from those places shall come unto me:
now also will I give sentence against them.

Behold,
he shall come up as clouds,
and his chariots shall be as a whirlwind:
his horses are swifter than eagles.
Woe unto us!
for we are spoiled.

O Jerusalem,
wash thine heart from wickedness,
that thou mayest be save.
How long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee?

For a voice declareth from Dan,
and publisheth affliction from mount Ephraim.

Make ye mention to the nations;
behold,
publish against Jerusalem,
that watchers come from a far country,
and give out their voice against the cities of Judah.

As keepers of a field,
are they against her round about;
because she hath been rebellious against me,
saith the Lord.

Thy ways and thy doings have procured these things unto thee;
this is thy wickedness,
because it is bitter,
because it reacheth unto thine heart.

My bowels,
my bowels!
I am pained at my very heart;
my heart maketh a noise in me;
I cannot hold my peace,
because thou hast heard,
O my soul,
the sound of the trumpet,
the alarm of war.

Destruction upon destruction is cried;
for the whole land is spoiled:
suddenly are my tents spoiled,
and my curtains in a moment.

How long shall I see the standard,
and hear the sound of the trumpet?

For my people is foolish,
they have not known me;
they are sottish children,
and they have none understanding:
they are wise to do evil,
but to do good they have no knowledge.

I beheld the earth,
and,
lo,
it was without form,
and void;
and the heavens,
and they had no light.

I beheld the mountains,
and,
lo,
they trembled,
and all the hills moved lightly.

I beheld,
and,
lo,
there was no man,
and all the birds of the heavens were fled.

I beheld,
and,
lo,
the fruitful place was a wilderness,
and all the cities thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord,
and by his fierce anger.

For thus hath the Lord said,
The whole land shall be desolate;
yet will I not make a full end.

For this shall the earth mourn,
and the heavens above be black;
because I have spoken it,
I have purposed it,
and will not repent,
neither will I turn back from it.

The whole city shall flee for the noise of the horsemen and bowmen;
they shall go into thickets,
and climb up upon the rocks:
every city shall be forsaken,
and not a man dwell therein.

And when thou art spoiled,
what wilt thou do?
Thou thou clothest thyself with crimson,
though thou deckest thee with ornaments of gold,
though thou rentest thy faith with painting,
in fain shalt thou make thyself fair;
thy lovers will despise thee,
they will seek thy life.

For I have heard a voice as of a woman in travail,
and the anguish as of her that bringeth forth her first child,
the voice of the daughter of Zion,
that bewaileth herself,
that spreadeth her hands,
saying,
Woe is me now!
for my soul is wearied because of murderers.

They say,
If a man put away his wife,
and she go from him,
and become another man's,
shall he return unto her again?
shall not that land be greatly polluted?
but thou hast played the harlot with many lovers;
yet return again to me,
saith the Lord.

Lift up thine eyes unto the high places,
and see where thou hast not been lien with.
In the ways hast thou sat for them,
as the Arabian in the wilderness;
and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness.

Therefor the showers have been withholden,
and there hath been no latter rain;
and thou hadst a whore's forehead,
thou refusedst to be ashamed.

Wilt thou not from this time cry unto me,
My father,
thou are the guide of my youth?

Will he reserve his anger for ever?
will he keep it to the end?
Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.

The Lord said also unto me in the days of Josiah the king,
Hast thou seen that which backsliding Israel hath done?
she is gone up upon every high mountain and under every green tree,
and there hath played the harlot.

And I said after she had done all these things,
Turn thou unto me.
But she returned not.
And her treacherous sister Judah saw it.

And I saw,
when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away,
and given her a bill of divorce;
yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not,
but went and played the harlot also.

And it came to pass through the lightness of her whoredom,
that she defiled the land,
and committed adultery with stones and with stocks.

And yet for all this her treacherous sister Judah hath not turned unto me with her whole heart,
but feignedly,
saith the Lord.

And the Lord said unto me,
The backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah.

Go and proclaim these words toward the north,
and say,
Return,
thou backsliding Israel,
saith the Lord;
and I will not cause mine anger to fall upon you:
for I am merciful
saith the Lord,
and I will not keep anger for ever.

Only acknowledge thine iniquity,
that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God,
and hast scattered thy ways to the strangers under every green tree,
and ye have not obeyed my voice,
saith the Lord.

Turn,
O backsliding children,
saith the Lord;
for I am married unto you:
and I will take you one of a city,
and two of a family,
and I will bring you to Zion:

And I will give you pastors according to mine heart,
which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding.

And it shall come to pass,
when ye be multiplied and increased in the land,
in those days,
saith the Lord,
they shall say no more,
The ark of the covenant of the Lord:
neither shall it come to mind:
neither shall they remember it;
neither shall they visit it;
neither shall that be done any more.

At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord;
and all the nations shall be gathered unto it,
to the name of the Lord,
to Jerusalem:
neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.

In those days the house of Judah shall walk with the house of Israel,
and they shall come together out of the land of the north to the land that I have given for an inheritance unto your fathers.

But I said,
How shall I put thee among the children,
and give thee a pleasant land,
a goodly heritage of the hosts of nations?
and I said,
Thous shalt call me, My father;
and shalt not turn away from me.
Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband,
so have ye dealt treacherously with me,
O house of Israel,
saith the Lord.

A voice was heard upon the high places,
weeping and supplications of the children of Israel:
for they have perverted their way,
and they have forgotten the Lord their God.

Return,
ye backsliding children,
and I will heal your backslidings,
Behold,
we come unto thee;
for thou art the Lord our God.

Truly in vain is salvation hoped for from the hills,
and from the multitude of mountains:
truly in the Lord our God is the salvation of Israel.

For shame hath devoured the labour of our fathers from our youth;
their flocks and their herds,
their sons and their daughters.

We lie down in our shame,
and our confusion covereth us:
for we have sinned against the Lord our God,
we and our fathers,
from our youth even unto this day,
and have not obeyed the voice of the Lord our God.

Moreover the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

Go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying,
Thus saith the Lord;
I remember thee,
the kindness of thy youth,
the love of thine espousals,
when thou wentest after me in the wilderness,
in a land that was not sown.

Israel was holiness unto the Lord,
and the first-fruits of his increase:
all that devour him shall offend;
evil shall come upon them,
saith the Lord.

Hear ye the word of the Lord,
O house of Jacob,
and all the families of the house of Israel:

Thus saith the Lord,
What iniquity have your fathers found in me,
that they are gone far from me,
and have walked after vanity,
and are become vain?

Neither said they,
Where is the Lord that has brought us up out of the land of Egypt,
that led us through the wilderness,
through a land of deserts and of pits,
through a land of drought,
and of the shadow of death,
through a land that no man passed through,
and where no man dwelt?

And I brought you into a plentiful country,
to eat the fruit thereof and the goodness thereof;
but when ye entered,
ye defiled my land,
and made mine heritage an abomination.

The priests said not,
Where is the Lord?
and they that handle the law knew me not:
the pastors also transgressed against me,
and the prophets prophesied by Baal,
and walked after things that do not profit.

Wherefore I will yet plead with you,
saith the Lord,
and with your children's children will I plead.

For pass over the isles of Chittim,
And see;
and send unto Kedar,
and consider diligently,
and see if there be such a thing.

Hath a nation changed their gods,
which are yet no gods?
but my people have changed their glory for that which does not profit.

Be astonished,
O ye heavens,
at this,
and be horribly afraid,
be ye very desolate,
saith the Lord.

For my people have committed two evils:
they have foresaken me the fountain of living waters,
and hewed them out cisterns,
broken cisterns,
that can hold no water.

Is Israel a servant?
is he a homeborn slave?
why is he spoiled?

The young lions roared upon him,
and yelled,
and they made his land waste:
his cities are burned without inhabitant.

Also the children of Nophe and Tahapanes have broken the crown of thy head.

Hast thou not procured this unto thyself,
in that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God,
when he led thee by the way?

And now what hast thou to do in the way of Egypt,
to drink the waters of Sihor?
or what hast thou to do in the way of Assyria,
to drink the waters of the river?

Thine own wickedness shall correct thee,
and thy backslidings shall reprove thee,
know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter,
that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God,
and that my fear is not in thee,
saith the Lord God of hosts.

For of old time I have broken thy yoke,
and burst thy bands;
and thous saidst,
I will not transgress;
when upon every high hill and under every green hill thou wanderest,
playing the harlot.

Yet I had planted thee a noble vine,
wholly a right seed:
how then art thou turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine unto me?

For though thous wash thee with nitre,
and take thee much soap,
yet thine iniquity is marked before me,
saith the Lord God.

How canst thou say,
I am not polluted,
I have not gone after Baalim?
see thy way in the valley,
know what thou has done:
thou are a swift dromedary traversing her ways.

A wild ass used to the wilderness,
that snuffeth up the wind at her pleasure;
in her occasion who can turn her away?
all they that seek her will not weary themselves;
in her mouth they shall find  her.

Withhold thy foot from being unshod,
and thy throat from thirst:
but thou saidst,
There is no hope:
no;
for I have loved strangers,
and after them I will go.

As the thief is ashamed when he is found,
so is the house of Israel ashamed;
they,
their kings,
their princes,
and their priests,
and their prophets.

Saying to a stock,
Thou art my father;
and to a stone,
Thou hast brought me forth:
for they have turned their back unto me,
and not their face:
but in the time of their trouble they will say,
Arise,
and save us.

But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee?
let them arise,
if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble:
for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods,
O Judah.

Wherefore will ye plead with me?
ye all have transgressed against me, saith the Lord.

In vain have I smitten your children;
they received no correction;
your own sword hath devoured your prophets,
like a destroying lion.

O generation, see ye the word of the Lord.
Have I been a wilderness unto Israel?
a land of darkness?
wherefore say my people,
We are lords;
we will come no more unto thee?

Can a maid forget her ornaments,
or a bride her attire?
yet my people have forgotten me days without number.

Why trimmest thou thy way to seek love?
therefore has thou also taught the wicked ones thy ways.

Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents:
I have not found it by secret search,
but upon all these.

Yet thou sayest,
Because I am innocent,
surely his anger shall turn from me.
Behold,
I will plead with thee,
because thou sayest,
I have not sinned.

Why gaddest thou about so much to change thy way?
thou also shalt be ashamed of Egypt,
as thou wast ashamed of Assyria.

Yea,
thou shalt go forth from him,
and thine hands upon thine head:
for the Lord hath rejected thy confidences,
and thou shalt no prosper in them.

 The words of Jeremiah the son of Hilkaih, of the priests that were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin:

To whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

It came also in the days of Jehoiahim the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah the son of Josiah king of Judah, unto the carrying away of Jerusalem captive in the fifth month.

Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying,

Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations.

Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child.

But the LORD said unto me, Say not, I am a child: for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak.

Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.

Then the LORD put forth his hand, and touched my mouth. And the LORD said unto me, Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.

See, I have this day set thee over the nations and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.

Moreover the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Jeremiah, what seest thou? And I said, I see a rod of an Almond tree.

Then said the LORD unto me, Thou hast well seen: for I will hasten my word to perform it.

And the word of the LORD came unto me the second time, saying, What seest thou? And I said, I see a seething pot; and the face thereof is toward the north.

Then the LORD said unto me, Out of the north an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.

For, lo, I will call all the families of the kingdoms of the north, saith the LORD; and they shall come, and they shall set every one his throne at the entering of the gates of Jerusalem. and against all the walls thereof round about, and against all the cities of Judah.

 And I will utter my judgments against them touching all their wickedness, who have forsaken me, and have burned incense unto other gods, and worshipped the works of their own hands.

Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them.

For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, against the priests thereof, and against the people of the land.

And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee.

Primary Day in Pennsylvania.  If you're registered Republican, get out there and vote for Ted Cruz, and your district's Cruz delegate slate.  It's important.

So, the Centre County GOP sent the following information this afternoon, which is supplemental to what the Tribune-Review reported last week:

Delegate Candidates 

The information presented below was gathered from each candidate's response to Centre GOP's inquiry, discussions with another candidate(s) for Delegate and/or from TribLive.

Candidate names within each category are listed in the order in which they appear on the ballot. 

Will Vote for the Winner of the 5th Congressional District

Joyce Haas

Scott Schreffler

Shelia Fitzgerald Sterrett

Ash Khare

C. Arnold McClure 

Will Vote for Ted Cruz

Richard Chura

Lyle Stewart

Barry Kroeker 

Will Vote for Donald Trump

James Feuer Klein 

For additional information about each candidate, visit www.centregop.org

Lyle Stewart is an additional Cruz delegate-candidate, which makes for a complete slate for the Fifth Congressional.  I don't know what to think about that, Haas has given me a reason *not* to vote to send her to the convention, which seems somehow fundamentally unfair.  

Oh, well, politics ain't beanball.

For your information, the Pennsylvania presidential primaries on the Republican side are a "beauty contest", the actual votes that count are for the individual delegates.  There's a primer here that claims to have interviewed all of the delegate candidates, most of them say "support whoever wins the congressional district's popular vote", but there's a few verbally-committed candidates in each district.

Just as a reminder for y'all, the Pennsylvania primary is April 26th, three weeks and change from today. The primary campaign is almost always decided by the time we vote, but not this year.  It's absolutely down to the wire this time, and trench-warfare at the convention itself.  Your vote matters this year.

So don't throw it away on a narcissistic idjit like John Kasich.  He has zero chance of winning the nomination, and is only running for the high and the off-chance that somebody might bribe him out of the race.  Nobody has time for that, and it's technically illegal, so he just keeps chugging away, feeding his ego and making messes.  To heck with John Kasich.

And Trump? How many times do you have to be told - Donald Trump is a con man, a grifter, a scammer.  He was born on third base and thought he hit a triple. He's a terrible businessman, an awful human being, and doesn't bother to do his homework.  He recently bragged about how he liked to surround himself with losers, because the way they hang on his stories makes him feel like a winner.  His version of conservative pieties sounds suspiciously like a liberal's fevered imagining of what they think conservatives believe in their hearts of hearts.  He lies like he breathes, and generally can't be bothered to align any given set of lies with any previous set of lies he might have said on a previous occasion.  He divides the world into marks and fellow grifters.  He flatters his audiences that they're in on the con, they're going to be junior partners in his grand confidence game.  But remember - the heart of the con is to flatter your marks that they're your partners.  Trump's current set of marks is his prospective voters.

Don't be a mark.

Now, I know that for a lot of Pennsylvanians, someone like Ted Cruz is a bit of a stretch.  He's a strict-constructionist conservative, ideologically rigorous, and damn churchy.  But the wonders of strict-constructionist conservatism is that the Constitution, when strictly constructed, is all about *LEAVING YOU ALONE*. It's about limiting the damage that do-gooders and fussbudgets and post-modern Puritans can do to their fellow man through the strong arm of the government.  Are you a fussbudget, do-gooder, or post-modern Puritan?  Then the wonders of federalism means that you are free to pester your fellow citizens within your state, commonwealth or polity to the limits of the law and your state or commonwealth's constitution.  Laboratories of democracy!  But a republic at the national level, so that we your neighbors can always damn you to hell and move to Texas, without making a federal case of it.

We've had seven years and counting of intrusive, big-business corporatism with the Obama administration.  The big-government corporatists have had their day, and then some.  They've dragged the captive nations behind them while feeding borrowed money to their cronies, their clients and the corporations.  Everyone has fed deep at the troughs for seven fat years.  There is one true anti-corporatist small-government candidate on offer, and that's Ted Cruz.  Give the swine at the trough their seven lean years!

They could use the diet.

So, I got around to watching the new Star Wars picture yesterday.  And... eh.  Not terrible, not great, a passable spectacle with some lovely set-pieces and decent action sequences.  It was too busy, too long, and the script didn't make a lot of sense, carried along on a stream of dream-logic by which characters appeared when they needed to appear and possessed knowledge when they needed to supply that knowledge.  The settings often felt... hermetic, insular, cramped.

One of the great aspects of the original movie was the vast, empty vistas of the various locations, especially Tunisia and Guatamala.   The original Star Wars was a journey through a haunted unknown world, and we felt small and vulnerable before the trackless world outside Luke's sandy work-shed.  At times the new picture approaches that sense of horizontal vertigo, that this great ghostly potential might suck you right out of your seat into the beautiful void.

But the director and the editors are in too much of a hurry to let the space between things breathe. They clearly wanted the picture to be *both* A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back at the same time, in the same story.  But both movies inhabited their running-times totally, with no real space in between that could be clipped and trimmed to interweave them together the way they are in The Force Awakens. There are about three sub-plots too many in the picture, and it comes across like a wrestling-match in a telephone booth.

Almost all modern pictures are in too damn much of a hurry, afraid of silence, afraid of stillness.  They forget that motion only has impact in the midst of stillness.

Still, at least it wasn't the prequel trilogy, and they've beaten the demon CGI into submission.

BTW, is it just me, or does JJ Abrams' entire film career consist of cinematic fan-fic?  Super-8, Star Trek, The Force Awakens - they all play like a clever, technically proficient fanboy making peculiar off-tone stories out of beloved but somewhat out-of-character toys.

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made"

So... The Martian is a really, really good adaptation.  The novel was easily the best hard SF book I've read this year, and the movie caught pretty much every aspect of the book without coming off as talky, poisoned-by-CGI or in any way superficial.  After getting past the weirdness of Chiwetel Ejiofor being cast as an Indian-American NASA higher-up, and snickering about how Mackenzie Davis is going to be stuck playing techno-punk pixies until she's fifty, I was OK with the cast.  Coming into the movie, I was concerned about my cordial dislike for Matt Damon causing problems, but he disappeared into the role, and barely looked like himself for most of the film.

I see Drew Goddard wrote the script, and he did a brilliant job of adaptation, because I didn't spot a fleck of him or his Whedon-stable influence in the movie: being that transparent is a real skill.  They excised some of the novel's set-piece disasters, but if they had tried to film all of that, it would have added another half-hour to the length, and probably overwhelmed the audience.   It was *just enough*.

Bravo.

Hoofbeats on the shingle of
The naked shore, the ocean of
Faith drawn back and exposing
The bare stone and sharp-edged
Not quite smoothed rocks and
Nothing like the soft sands of
Sweeter southern climes their
Beating waves wearing down the
Doubts and fears of harsher
Shores salt-stained and sere
Dead salt-marsh stalks jutting
Up over poisoned slopes at
War with its waters and the
Unforgiving sogged soil

The sixteen piston-head
Shoe-strikes thundering across
Hard-pebbled beaches not
Worthy of the name, the
Tide of prophesy driven forth
By that vexed nightmare
Awakened from a stony sleep
By a rocking cradle and the
Hand of a rough beast, her
Hour come round at last
Not to slouch, nor to roar
Nor to bathe in the blood
Of the sinners and the saints
Nor any horror of a dreaming
Asiatic visionary, poisoned by
Essene imaginings and Greek
Linguistics and the
Apocalyptic aspirations of
Those who would see the
Curtain rung down on the
Last ding-dong doom bell
On the last guttering spark
Of the last rock beneath
The last gloaming red-hued
Sputtering star

Nor, rather, the fantasies of
Union and wonder and utopian
Lion and lamb and loving
Kindness dancing together in
Febrile orgiastic impossibilities
The predator and the prey
Together in a kind-hearted
Eternity of denial of their
Essential selves as if
Truth pitted against truth
Breeds forth anything but
Chimerae and monsters and
Ravening bestial conflicting
Desires drenched in the
Worst sort of zero-sum
Devouring red-toothed nature.

What beasts are these, then
Trotting glad-hooved towards
Bethlehem to be born?
Paradox and pity
Delight and dismay
The beasts that shouted
Love!
At the frozen heart of
A world that could not
Find it in its bitter
veins to believe.

Thus the merciless Will of Melchior -
Fallen Puritan,
Man of Faith
Man of Science,
Scriptural scholar
Polymath, reader, translator
Parser of faded texts and
Pursuer of that which
Without age
Without time
Without fade
Without faecal
Foundering, faltering, failing
Retains its shape and its
Purpose in this and past
Ages and those to come
That which moments and
Men hath no purchase -
Laid out his implacable
And iron purpose:

"That which the Truth can destroy
Ought, should, and shall be
Wiped out, expunged, extirpated
Taken by Time lifeless to
The lime-pit and the potter's field
Its dross washed into the gutter of
The rest of the filth of the
Mayfly world that wafts before
Our traitor eyes like the rising
Mists of a false and gloaming
Morning that, lit by a lying
Counterfeit orb, its spark having
Spilt, is swallowed once again by
The vast and lifeless abyssal dark."

Melchior was a branding-iron
And his heavy, red-hot mind
Tore through the wisps of
Whimsy and ignited the
Tissue-paper wrappings of
Theological well-wishings
And lit alight the airy
Understandings in every
Word of every book he
Chased the God of his
Fathers and the Truth of
His self-willing into which
He would forge the
Testimony of revelation
In all the books of his
Exploring, arguing
Questioning age
Hot-hammered upon the
Predestinate anvil of his
Unyielding implacable
Towering self-regard
And refusal to bend
His human Reason before
The excuse of the Leviathan
The example of the Adversary
The admonition of Job.

Melchior's last will and
Testament, its terms to be
Taken from its compositional
pulp, and printed upon a
Rare and terrible parchment
A vellum scraped from the
Expired flesh of his
Cooling corpse, the words
Of his hot heart painted
Palimpsest upon the hide
That held within it such
Spark that would not
Spare any tinder that
Flame might flash alight
Burn, burn all that
Fire might catch fire
Until every spider-web
gives up its snares
Until every cob-web fails
Rotted by time and
Torn by the
Turning of the truth.

This, the book in your
Human hand, hot from the
Heat of your beating
Heart, is the key-stone
Of a great and terrible
Temple to the Truth his
Fortune and Faith hath
Been pledged and placed
Dedicant, a vast Library
The ritual reliquary of
Inquisition and inquiry
Without guard, without limits
Without fear of heresy or
Any fire but that lit by
The flame of providence
An edifice built as a
Lighting-rod for the
True and eternal revelation of
That eventual bolt from the Blue.

Thus the echoing
Thundering beat of
Melchior's last Will and
Testament which has been
Placed here at the heart
Of the pyre of his dreams
Of God the Eternal
That Prodigal Father
For whom our hearts await
Like the fattened calf for
The celebratory feast-fire.

Cerisuo pernices
Aoi horoborous
That which in
The grey matter
Sparks incorrect
False knowledge
False understandings
That alcoholic fire which
Burning through gut
And mind
And liver
Ruins all reason
And faith and
Common sensical
Coherent cohesive
Now to now to
Now broken by the
Burning of the
Prophesy of the
Ring of fire to
Come, consuming all
Promise of the
Grace free-given
Burnt bridles with
The parasdisical
Promised by the
Divine made man
Ruined by that wash
Blue-tinted and
Complex biochemical
Blue Ruin that
Ruins all your hopes
Of the kingdom
Everlasting.

Gin.

Linneus sang of a single
Unified
Complete description of the
Botanical
And zoological
And mycological
Unity of the infinite world
Described by their
Deistical completist
Dream of the single
Lockean definition of
God in his epistimological
Reductionist essence of
That mechanical world
Physical and chemical
And biological and
The world in every ranked
And serried definition of
God in his every varied
Evidence of the doctrine
Displayed by his evidence
Diplayed in each and
Every evidentiary mark
And declension of the
Infinite variance of this
Our multipludinous
And infinitely various
Descriptors of the
Physicality of our
Non-scientific and non-
Descriptive world as it
Is in its undescribable
And variable infinititude
Of many-hued complexity
Created by the perfidious
And perplexing
Angels of his viciously
Anti-definitional
Refusal to be pinned
Beneath the assumptions of
Those who would
Prove their faith before
Evidence unescapeable
Before the Throne.

We are ourselves in history
We are ourselves in eternity
What can be the difference
Ourselves being who we are
ourselves being what we are
Physicality holding the souls of
Morality holding the flesh of
In flesh our lives being held
In soul the physicality suspended
The mind seeing the world through
The soul feeling God through
Each facing itself and the
Infinite in mirrored equivalence
And yet holding itself in itself
And still, being, ourselves,
Ourselves.

A very welcome antidote to recent discourse that only manages to heroically "discover" women writers in SF by erasing (or, to be more fair, being ignorant of) all who went before, sigh. It has been rather startling to me to find myself having sometimes entered the age of erasure, in some conversations. I have generational-competition bio-social theories about this.

Lois McMaster Bujold, talking about a review of an anthology of very-early female-authored SF.  It doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd find interesting - little SF from that era retains my interest - but I do find her irritation with today's gender warriors erasing previous generations of prominent women SF authors to bolster their persecution complexes interesting.

So:

3 oz. Beefeater's 24 gin
3 oz. V8 Fruit Medley
3 oz. Diet Mountain Dew

Let it gravity stir by pouring and then leaving it sit for five minutes.

I call it a "Slender Billy" after William II, one-time Prince of Orange and eventually King of the Netherlands, wounded as a lieutenant-general on the Allied side at the Battle of Waterloo.

This is the first mixed drink I've figured out which works with gin other than a gimlet.  I can't stand martinis, gin-and-tonics, and most other gin-based cocktails, so at least it gives me a reason to bother with gin on my booze shelf other than... completeness.

People writing "Paratime", time-travel and multiverse stories, kindly keep these basic points of logic in mind:

1) You do not exist in a world that diverges from your own world prior to your conception.

2) It is increasingly unlikely that someone with your name will have been born as the divergence-point approaches the conception of your respective parents.

3) Divergence doesn't change the laws of physics, unless the divergence *is* the difference in the laws of physics/magic/whatever the hell your superhero justificatory hand-waving calls itself.

4) As always, you're allowed one point of divergence.  No cheating and invoking multiple divergences, excepting only the appearance of your characters in the parallel world.

5) Point 4 goes out the window if you've included Paratime Police or Paratime Imperialists in your world-setting, but try to keep it consistent, people!

I'd beg for politically/economically/militarily realistic world-shifts (no, making the US revert to isolationism after WWII does *not* get you your shiny-green peaceful utopia, you commie-symp jackass!  It gets you Not This August in spades!) but I have to recognize that commie-symp writers gotta commie-symp.  But thanks for waving your sign wildly enough I know when to nope out of the story, you schmuck!

Alcohol marks the lines
Distilled morality determined
By edges and titrations and
The percentages of everyday
Intoxication deduced by
Proofs and procedures and
That which determines drunkeness
By the lawbook distinctions which
Divides the good law abiding
Tipplers from those who guzzle
Without limits and considerations
And Saturday Nights set aside
From Sunday early mornings and
Good standing in ones own
Baptist first service standing
Proving ones salvation by
The ability to stand in the
Face of a raving monstrous
Hangover in the face of the
Lord however willing to
Justify those who can stand with
The saved on a Sunday morn.