Monday, January 27, 2003

Of The Frying Pan As An Instrument Of Torture Mention is made of the frying-pan in the Second Book of the Maccabees (Chap. VII) and in very many collections of the Acts of the Blessed Martyrs, as of St. Eleutherius the Bishop, Saints Fausta and Justina, virgins and martyrs. The frying-pan --if we may trust the natural meaning of the word and the afore-named Histories of the Blessed Martyrs-- was a wide open dish or plate, which (as the Acts of the Martyrs bear witness) was filled with oil, pitch, resin or sulphur, and then set over a fire; and when it began to boil and bubble, then were Christians of either sex thrown into it, such as had persisted steadfastly and boldly in the profession of Christ's faith, to the end they might be roasted and fried like fishes cast into boiling oil.           --Rev. Antonio Gallonio, Tortures and Torments of the Christian Martyrs 4:31:04 PM

Leave It To Les Moonves To Give Us The Plain Hard Truth The world as we knew it is over.           --CBS President Les Moonves in a story on the triumph of reality television, 1-27-2003.   America's Milkmen In Crisis: Desperate, Aggressive, Near Suicide I'm home sick one day, coughing so hard I'm breathless and my ribs hurt. I have no idea how I made it downstairs to the front door, where someone's been leaning on my doorbell for five minutes. There's a milkman on my front steps, and I honestly have no decent explanation for why I opened the door. I didn't even know there were milkmen anymore. I'm warm, I'm sweating, and I'm trying to tell the man, no, thank you, no, no milk today. No, please, thank you, no. I'll choke, for God's sake, I haven't had a glass of milk in probably fifteen years. And this milkman literally has his foot in my door; he's actually leaning into the frame, like he's just about to barge right into my house. This is the most persistent milkman on the planet, and he's talking fast, a very irrational spiel, very desperate, like his life depends on selling me a carton of milk. No milk, I keep saying, No, thank you. And it looks like they make him wear this white stick-on mustache, and the mustache is all crooked on his face, slipping down on one side so that he keeps trying to push it back up with his tongue, and there's sweat rolling down his face from under his cap. He's sweated clear through his white shirt with the "Got Milk?" patch; you can see the black hair on his chest pasted to the inside of his shirt. And he's got this wire basket or whatever it is, the thing he's carrying the milk in, and the cartons of milk are also dripping with sweat, there's this puddle forming on my front porch at the guy's feet. The guy actually appears to be shaking, he wants to sell me some milk so bad. The more I say no, no, thank you, no the crazier he seems to get, until he's muttering through clenched teeth, clearly now abusive stuff, and when I finally manage to get the door closed on the poor bastard he's in the middle of a fragmented rant about lactose intolerance. 2:40:22 PM

© Copyright 2003 Brad Zellar. Last update: 4/6/03; 9:58:21 PM.