Dirty Rotten Scoundrel

Leave a Comment / By Paul Hughes / May 2, 2016

Some of my best friends have a problem with the dirty poor.

These are the folks below the dirt-poor — which describes a financial level not the person himself. These are the dirt-encrusted, unemployed, possibly begging (relying on strangers, kindness, and a fair economy as much as the rest of us, anyway), frequently transient (the weather when warm is welcome), simple-dieted types.

Weirdos — #AmIRight? — who seem to be talking to themselves much of the time, and when they’re talking to others most people don’t see the thread, can’t quite get it. Trouble with the law — outright opposition to it — is in both their past and future.

Not just white but black and yellow and red trash. It’s usually them furriners — not the ones on the EB5 Visas or the foreign exchange student progs. They dress funny.

Some are little better than a dog, really.

Recent

Coyotes and Christians

I am not saying Christians are like coyotes. [For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ] Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear,

And Did Dostoevsky Say ‘Beauty Will Save’

Short answer: he did not. Neither did Prince Myshkin, that we know of. Likely both believed it. Beauty — in the person of Christ — will do so. And clearly D wrote of M in The Idiot to explore art and beauty and ugliness and salvation. But did he say it, and did he believe that

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Game Face

F Buechner on the faces we will meet or do not … T.S. Eliot read by Sir Anthony Hopkins … Helen of Troy, beauty + danger … 3D-printed face shields … Melania Trump … Cassavetes … Gangsta … FDA … … ah, but we find this hard

The Country for Old Men

Walter Hartwell White is going to hell. Whatever else happens — whoever dies in the shootout, no matter what-all happens in the final three episodes, whatever he’s planning to do with the ricin recovered from his burned out house — that’s a fact. In fact, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan said that was the point, one which

Trouble and Strife

Septic tank is Cockney rhyming slang for “Yank” which may suggest what trouble and strife is slang for. But it’s not fair of course, and good men, and most men some of the time, know she’s not only that. Upon noting once how, yes, “children are a bother,” Dallas Willard made the important philosophical distinction

Barbaric Yawn

One of the saddest things about Mildly Somnolent and Her Raging Nonesuch is she prolly thinks she’s transgressive, mayhap even original. Please. Madonna did it 30 years ago. Figure 15 more for Britney’s turn. Now it’s 15 again. See Ecclesiastes for explanatory of this clockwork snore — What has been is what will be, and

The Adult Test

If you have thought — This is dirty This is broken This is wrong And decided to help — Scrub it Repair it Right it You may be an adult.

What We Need

Seek and find We all need something. I need a new power cord. They need to read the Psalms. You need to shop shouting at your kids. Guy on that bus bench needs a sandwich. Two. Fellow on the couch at this Starbucks needs to stay off drugs. Woman talking to herself, petting a collie

Giant in the Land

Dallas Willard revised his affairs yesterday, moving to the headquarters of the Kingdom of the Heavens to live slightly nearer to God, whom he spoke of, served, embodied. The life he continues to live today. Unceasingly infused, this life was and is. For these ideas and Our Lord were everywhere in what Dr. Willard said

It’s Not Gonna Be Me

First thing I noticed anew this year watching It’s a Wonderful Life was how happy George Bailey was to be going to jail. He celebrates it, as he bursts through his front door to be greeted by a bank examiner, a journalist, and the sheriff. If those three “walked into a bar” it might not be

Do anything not everything