CONSTIPATED

So I have a few ideas for posts germinating in my brain, but at the moment I seem to be incapable of turning those ideas into actual words so, for now, I'll give you a sample scene from the book.  Hope you enjoy.

Way back when, when the soon to be Israelites were meandering about in the desert for forty years trying to recall how they’d confused good old ‘I am who am’ with the oversized bull from Wall Street, Moses faced a similar problem. Jews, even then, were a litigious bunch, and with an entirely new set of codes and regulations, loopholes and their corresponding lawsuits abounded. Now this was fine - especially for the lawyers - but, much like today’s judicial system, the courts, or in this case, court, found itself backlogged and overburdened. You see, for all his laudable traits, and I’m sure there were many (personally I think humility is a bit overrated, but whatever), Moses was a bit of a control freak. I suppose it’s understandable, you commune with God for a few days, carry his tablet down a mountain twice and all of a sudden you feel like you’re the only one who can explain what God really wants. So, Moses goes off and becomes God’s own judiciary, adjudicating his butt off eighteen hours a day five days a week from the relative discomfort of a bench in a tent. As you can imagine though, standing in line in middle the Sinai desert waiting for your case to be called isn’t anyone’s idea of a day at the beach, sand notwithstanding, and whether Moses knew it or not his customer service rating was taking quite the hit on Amazon.com. Anyway, this goes on for a couple hundred sunburns when along comes Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law (and inspiration to every delegater and contractor since).


“Moses” he says, “your people are suffering.”

Now Moses was a man of God and like most men of that ilk he was a bit of an ascetic and so he responds, “I know it’s a bit warm Jethro, but it’s a dry heat.”

Jethro himself was a former pagan priest so he knew that without having ritual human sacrifice as a backup plan keeping the people happy was mucho importante (Jethro took Spanish in high school, and, little known fact, was actually the inventor of the chalupa), so persists.

“Moses” he continues, “couldn’t you train a few disciples, teach them what they need to know so they can handle the basic stuff?”

Moses was intrigued at this point because really, ascetic or not, how many times can you listen to people fight over who owned the nasal spray (Like I said, it was a dry heat), so he says to Jethro, “You might be on to something here dad (Moses was respectful like that), but won’t the people complain if they have to settle for some schnook judging for them instead of me?”

Now as I said, Moses was a humble man, but even humble men can take pride in their work, so Jethro knew he had to play it safe if he didn’t want to hurt his son-in-law’s feelings – plus Moses still had that plague wielding staff and, after the whole smashing of tablets thing, a reputation for having a bit of a short fuse. “Of course they’d prefer to have you judge them personally Moses, but we’re in middle of a desert, and for all manna’s wonderful properties it doesn’t have much in the way of SPF.”

“This is true.” Moses replied, recalling with a bit of shiver the manna disaster of 2 p.e. “That stuff is like body oil. Aaron was practically molting.”

“Exactly,” said Jethro, “this way people can go to men they know you’ve trained and who report to you for their all small claims stuff instead of having to line up from here to the Red Sea.”

“Reed Sea.”

“We’ll see about that one, Moses.”

Anyway, after a few tugs at his beard Moses told Jethro he liked the idea and so division of labor was born.

Teasers

Hello folks, after several consecutive weeks of blogging I find my creative juices restored and my slightly off kilter world view decidedly askew.  I want to thank you for helping me reach this point again and giving me the wherewithal to pick up my long neglected Cinderella of a book. As a thank you I will be posting several excerpts from my magnum opus over the next few days.  These tidbits will, I hope, grant me some measure of believability when I blame a day without a post on being busy with my book. Anyway, here are a few paragraphs from the opening chapter of Part II of my novel 'Codswallop'.


Chapter I

When I was twenty-three, and in my defense, quite lonely, I agreed to go on a blind date at the urging of a family friend. The girl, I was assured, was a dark haired beauty with the kind looks that drive men to bad decisions and lawyers to raise the price of prenuptial agreements. The “matchmaker” may have also mentioned something about her personality, I don’t recall. I do, however, quite clearly recall thinking upon her opening her apartment door for me that my decision-making faculties would remain decidedly unimpaired. It may well have turned out to be a pleasant evening.(1) I mean Monica Lewinsky managed to catch the eye of the most powerful man in the world, so nothing’s impossible, but about twenty minutes into our evening she made a declaration that guaranteed that our already doomed experiment of a blind date would end in total and complete failure.

 She was a “naturist.”


Before I could inquire as to whether that was an actual word, (2) she explained that naturists (by this I deuced that there was at least one other) don’t believe in wasting their lives indoors. They prefer to live, as she put it, lives engaged with nature. Her idea of a night of fun included hiking, sitting in front of a bonfire, taking walks on the beach, and anything else you might do in summer camp or read in a personal ad. Anyway, the long and short of it was, she didn’t own a TV! I knew right then (along with when she opened the door(3)) that would be the last time we went out.


Television is, as you may have gathered by now, very important to me. In fact, during summers when I wasn’t in school or working, and during my extended period of unemployment, television made up a solid three quarters of my waking life, trumping such activities as exercising, being outside and dating. If she was a naturist than I was technologist, an avid indoorsman, preferring to live a life engaged with my remote control. It was nearly four years since that unfortunate date and in all that time, I had never met another person who cared about TV as much as I did. Then I met six hundred of them.


Footnotes:
1) As I understand, there are an infinite number of parallel universes in addition to our own, and the way I see it, in at least one of them, I must be something other than shallow.
2) My spell check seems to think it is though I still have my reservations.
3) Like I said, decidedly unimpaired.