Janauary 25: Iron Maiden, Alternative Facts, Chocolate Chip Cookies

It was a patter.  It was a crazy, sexy, murderous relationship Weary entered into with people he eventually beat up.  He told them about his father's collection of guns and swords and torture instruments and leg irons and so on.  Weary's father, who was a plumber, actually did collect such things, and his collection was insured for four thousand dollars.  He wasn't alone.  He belonged to a big club composed of people who collected things like that.

Weary's father once gave Weary's mother a Spanish thumbscrew in working condition--for a kitchen paperweight.  Another time he gave her a table lamp whose base was a model one foot high of the famous "Iron Maiden of Nuremberg."  The real Iron Maiden was a medieval torture instrument, a sort of boiler which was shaped like a woman on the outside--and lined with spikes.  The front of the woman was composed of two hinged doors.  The idea was to put a criminal inside and then close the doors slowly.  There were two special spikes where his eyes would be.  There was a drain in the bottom to let out all the blood.  

So it goes.

Medieval torture devices.  Thumbscrews and leg irons.  Iron Maidens.  I am not going to take this opportunity to point out that, in less than a week, Donald Trump has turned into the Dictator in Chief.  I am trying not to dwell on the dismal news reports.  I will say that Roland Weary's father and the President of the United States seem to have a lot in common.

I am trying to remain positive, to maintain a small sense of hope.  It's difficult with Kellyanne Conway talking on Meet the Press about "alternative facts," as if facts are something mutable or debatable.  Although I have been enjoying the idea of alternative facts, picking and choosing truth.

Here are some of my alternative facts:

• I am often mistaken for George Clooney.
• I won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry last year.
• Bob Dylan gave his Nobel Prize money to me.
• Hillary Clinton won the popular vote last November.  (Oh, wait, that one is true.)
• Barack Obama was unanimously voted President of the United States for life.
• I have six-pack abs.
• Chocolate chip cookies have zero calories.

That was fun.

Saint Marty is grateful tonight that he is not an immigrant from Syria or Mexico.