painted whores, praying

On Sundays, because the public library shuts its doors and turns off its wireless router, I buy a hot tea and blog from a chain eatery that provides Internet access at no additional cost. This week, while re-posting the shit out of tumblr and tweeting POTUS beseechingly, I got a real treat when a skinny girl with an attractively-muscled upper back and shapely legs who was wearing a low-cut halter top and skin-tight shortshorts sauntered past me on laced-up high heels to sit at a booth a few down from my own. While I frequent this eatery primarily to feast my eyes upon the tight bodies of such dolled-up professional women and attention-hungry milfs who regularly grace its nonslip tiled floors, this girl and her twenty-something companion seemed worthy of more than just a few perverted and sidelong glances. An equally skinny girl wearing a similarly revealing upper and shortshorts that left little to the imagination, the companion's eyes were made up a bright aquamarine blue to offset the relatively subdued paint-job on the rest of her face, with a clunky necklace and a pair of reflective metal discs shoved into her perforated lobes rounding out her ensemble.

Having observed whores at work in Berlin, Bangkok, and Tijuana, I have scrutinized done-up street walkers and down-and-out alley rats alike, and upon seeing these two young ladies, my first thoughts were, “Oh brother, these ladies-of-the-night are out during the day and not even trying to hide the nature of their business.' Regardless of my tendency to avoid buying sexual favors, I was mulling over the prospect of getting a Billy Joel in one of the bathroom's stalls, or paying for a Howard Johnson in the back of the one girl's car, when the girl facing me – the one with the painfully-bright, aquamarine-tinted eyelids – set a tray of food onto the table, distributed the various dishes, bowed her head, crossed her hands, and prayed for a good thirty seconds before digging in.

This is a religiously-conservative area, one in which the local Catholics stand out on the square in the center of town for five weeks at a time protesting abortion and birth-control and generally trying to revoke a woman's right to her own body. Therefore, I was not expecting – early on a Sunday afternoon at just about the time when churches here let out – to see two girls dressed in the manner of prostitutes praying over some hastily-constructed panini sandwiches and meager cups of chicken tortilla soup. I even feared for their safety, since the Old Testament of the Christian bible instructs true believers to kill or at the very least banish and persecute persons painted in the manner of whores (Psalm 51:4). I have seen Thai girls stop to pray at alters to their god, asking Buddha to send them a man who will support them financially; I have no problem with prostitution, even supporting its legalization here in America; I wonder, though, if those girls had dressed up in the manner of cheap sluts in order to make a statement, as a reflection of the latest trends in mainstream fashion, or out of a misguided effort to make themselves look pretty. However things shook out for them that day, though, at least they supplicated to their god in a socially acceptable way, praying quietly and otherwise keeping their opinions to themselves, unlike the anti-abortionists and their nuns and priests, who make a terrible stink any time anybody even looks like they might be going into Planned Parenthood.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on balls on cars

Living in rural south-central Pennsylvania, I see many different things. A number of these things are strange; others, unusual; and some, even, are downright sad. Among the most sad of the things I see are pairs of plastic (or metal) testicles hanging from the undercarriages of cars. When I see such a Ride With Balls, my first reaction is to assume that the testicles of the person driving the vehicle are so small, inadequate, and insignificant that he had little choice but to go out and attach fake balls to his vehicle in the invariably unsuccessful attempt to compensate for his glaring male deficiency. More often than not, such fake testicles are attached to the rear struts of modified, raised pickup-trucks, vehicles sure to be driven by men with massive inferiority complexes, insignificantly-sized balls, and length- or girth-challenged penises. Occasionally, however, I see fake balls attached to the bottoms of beat-up sedans driven by scruffy, thuggish-looking persons with poorly executed prison tattoos who, since they seem to be always slumped into their seats in the same awkward fashion, apparently suffer commonly from a certain type of spinal injury.

One reason for hanging artificial testicles from the back of one's car could be to signify to other persons that the car – possessing as it does of massive, brass-coated fake bull's balls – is so powerful, so souped up, and so very fast off the mark that to even dream of challenging it to a race would be to beg for swift defeat and assured disappointment. However, since serious racecar drivers work diligently to shave as much unnecessary weight off their vehicles as possible, this argument does not favor the person who feels the need to hang a four pound, cast-iron scrotum from his car. Perhaps the artificial-sack-danglers act in this fashion out of a deep, unconscious yearning for the Olden Days, back when conveyances ate straw, shit manure, and actually had balls that they used to inseminate their species' females, but, given that most of males I see overcompensating for their shriveled, tiny nuts in this way are under the age of thirty, they cannot possibly have been alive during the time of horse and buggy. A final reason for a person to hang with a bent coat-hanger from his automobile's bumper a lump of plastic shaped like a set of well-veined testicles could be that he is a funny-man, a laugh-riot, the kind of guy who comes into a room and has everyone in stitches with the first phrase out of his mouth. As I have spoken briefly with but a few persons who owned a Ride With Balls, I cannot speak to the extent of their comedic craft, to the well-honed delivery of their witty, sardonic comments, or to their overall side-splitting hilarity, but I doubt that anyone who would pay good money to have his truck jacked up so that it sticks up in the air and wastes precious fuel because of its horrible aerodynamics, I doubt that any such person would have much of a sense of humor, let alone humility, self-loathing, or tact.

Please, fine citizens of America, good readers of these posts, please try not to mock too badly persons who dangle fake nuts from their cars, for they appear to be simple-minded, foolish individuals whose own testicles are so awesomely small that they need to hang a Real Pair from, of all things, their cars. Perhaps we should all just mock them later on, quietly, and in private, together.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

guerrilla tactics - squared

(This update covers the first and second of November.)

  On Wednesday, I arrived on the square around noon, and skipped diagonally across it to my post opposite the anti-choice crowd, leaping high in the exact center to click my heels. Once entrenched, I bowed to them, low to the ground and proper-like, to initiate the day's bout. Among my counterparts were new faces, most of them boring except for the blatantly sex-deprived young man who recited his religion's slogans at high volume, continuously. There was also a curious older man who walked up carrying a cane and pushing a wheelchair (briskly), only to sit in his device and to prop his PRAY TO END ABORTION sign on his seemingly all-too-functional legs.

  My dear readers, the foes of freedom are pulling out all the stops in their battle against the right of the American adult to make a decision. While their minor offenses of blatantly and continuously obstructing foot traffic on their staked-out sidewalk and of jaywalking in full view of the world (to escape proximity to me), their major offense is their continued struggle to force the American People to live according to one set of religious rules among the thousands practiced here every day. Such actions, honored friends, constitute religious oppression by any rule and measure. Hence, my newest sign, END THIS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION.

  Regarding the name of this article, my guerrilla tactics have proven very effective. (I would like to thank Sun Tzu, and Mao Zedong.) Instead of just waving at the people who give me thumbs up, I have begun waving at everyone who honks or waves, without exception. This has led to a general decrease in honking, and to many upset anti-choicers who try to convey with any hand signal but the middle finger that they in no way support me. This has also led drivers who happen to be watching to think that I am waving back at my supporters, which helps them to override their fears, whereupon they give me a nice broad smile or a secret nod of approval.

  As I am taking from my opponents their (open) public support, so have I taken their slogans. My signs, (DEFEND FREEDOM | END THIS RELIGIOUS OPPRESSION | WHAT'S NEXT? PRAY TO END FREE SPEECH), when used properly, in thirteen words are capable of changing the mind of the wary passer-by, whom I can watch evolve from impartial spectator to full-blown, horn-honking supporter. If I am lucky, I actually witness the beginning of long and potentially deal-breaking conversations between romantic couples who probably should have talked about the whole abortion thing before they read it on some crazy guy's signs.

  As an effort to maintain a level of self-mockery, I always come dressed in different costumes. This confuses my foes and robs them of the power to offend my pride. (Pride is a huge factor in participatory democracy: maintaining a stable emotional state is crucial, so my distinctive lack of self-respect is really coming in handy.)

  In line with the ancient tactics of long-deceased military minds, I am flexible where my foe is stagnant, my message fresh, entertaining, attention-getting, their message one-sided, fixed. I have side-stepped the false prizes my counterparts have offered (calling the cops of them, responding physically to harassment by priest or parishioner), striking instead boldly to the crux of the issue. One of the most important victories I have won is the ability to control the dialogue. By addressing my opponents directly (when they are trying so hard to ignore me, and to shut me down), and by cutting to the honest core of the issue, I have exposed the cruel, thinly-veiled heart of their message: YOU WILL BOW TO OUR GOD. To force the American People to live according to the rules of one god in particular is to rob us completely of our freedom. If we ease off, and allow religious fanatics to erode just one of our Constitutional rights (such as a woman's right to her body, which is her property), we will forsake all of our rights, we will destroy our inalienable protections, and we will make a mockery of a once free People.

  I was in the middle of my dramatic farewell bow, when, righting myself, I turned to find a quasi-homeless man (with whom I have spoken previously) smiling at me from a few feet away. “Why don't you leave those poor crazy people alone?” he said. A note to the anti-choicers: if homeless people are calling you crazy, then your message is in serious trouble. Our foes are shaken, their position increasingly untenable.

  Long live the forces of freedom!

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp