The penultimate voyage of St. Paula Apprentiss

I bring for your birthday two ripe melons.

None could but acknowledge that it were a convenient conceit to pretend that the bell tolls for thee. She broke a heel as she fell.

I don’t know what felony or misdemeanour sent you to this here prison, but I plan to make your stay most forgettable. Right off the bast, would you like some juice? We’ve got cumquat sperm in alium ambergris from Moby Dick, procured at extreme personal risk by Mark O’Polo of the Great White Nort.

You’ve said a mouthfull already. Best to zip your lips.

In one eye

Check your internet speed connection. You may be hindsighted in one eye.

Like the woman who only has one ear on the right side of her head, ever since she was a child, that’s what they told her. She had a nose not to be looked down upon, unless you had a hair trigger.

I met her in a grotto of the pool at the playboy mansion, while on state business on Michigan avenue. Gauss was called in as there was some deviations from the normal. The Spaniards could not be eliminated. All customers are required to update their firmware.

Dix o clock

It’s dicks o’cock, dude. Time to be out there snaring the ladies in your web. This ain’t vaporware, not in our neck of the woods.

Spoiled childs in the plural. Married under a rapper. He spoke fluent gascon, down to the last polysyllabic soliloquy. She ran a hair salon, since before Samson met Delilah. Many a mung bean has gone to their just reward since those days. And god knows how many human bean got the same deal.

Opopanax

Opopanax, also known as opobalsam, refers to a number of gum resins (natural substances that are a mixture of water-soluble gums and alcohol-soluble resins) traditionally considered to have medicinal properties. Pliny (Historia Naturalis) and Dioscorides (De Materia Medica) described various kinds with uncertain identifications, which have been distinguished as:

  • A species of Centaurea
  • Lovage (Levisticum officinale)
  • Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)
  • Echinophora tenuifolia (Umbelliferae)
  • Ferula opopanax, also known as Opopanax chironium (Umbelliferae)
  • Fig-leaved cow parsnip, Heracleum panaces (or other species of Heracleum)

In recent times, the main source of commercial opopanax is from species of Commiphora, particularly C. erythraea and C. kataf. (Some sources suggest the entire production is from C. erythraea var. glabrescens, a tree growing in Somalia.[6]) Myrrh is also obtained from Commiphora species.

Men of brains and brawns of women

Men of BREina

Men of brains! Let us not be led astray by our low-hanging grapes.

Women of fruit, we can’t say by how much.

When, as so-and-so is said to have said, the abomination stands in the holy place, and all the decimation points of consumer capitalism no longer fit the human concussion, then keep calm and carrion.

When the psychopath of the cycle path sets his sights on the city on the hill, then shoulder the salt, and pass the pepper.

And dos be donny, my furry friend, just this once and for all.

Off grid

A number of individuals have or will be disappeared from the grid. The British mathematician who tied himself into a torus, the cat man do gooder, the lady of shallots, the token arabs, the halt and the dumb, that crazy baldhead, the victims of the CIA the KGB and the PTA. Those bootstrapped, befuddled, and beyond cognition.

Some others, some other individuals, are so far merely off sides. Wouldn’t you say that they stink of heresy? Can you stomach their sort of bile? Please respond on form C-79, link to follow, on pain of death to you and your descendants.

Seven noble youths

The legend relates, that when Decius was still persecuting the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain, where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured with a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged, without injuring the powers of life, during a period of 187 years. At the end of that time the slaves of Adolius, to whom the inheritance of the mountain had descended, removed the stones to supply materials for some rustic edifice: the light of the sun darted into the cavern, and the seven sleepers were permitted to awake. After a slumber, as they thought, of a few hours, they were pressed by the calls of hunger, and resolved that Jamblichus, one of their number, should secretly return to the city to purchase bread for the use of his companions. The youth could no longer recognize the once familiar aspect of his native country, and his surprise was increased by the appearance of a large cross triumphantly erected over the principal gate of Ephesus. His singular dress and obsolete language confounded the baker, to whom he offered an ancient medal of Decius as the current coin of the empire; and Jamblichus, on the suspicion of a secret treasure, was dragged before the judge. Their mutual enquiries produced the amazing discovery, that two centuries were almost elapsed since Jamblichus and his friends had escaped from the rage of a pagan tyrant.

The violation of Bathsheba

Wages of fear
Wages of fear

Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam. Her father was Eliam son of Ahithophel, who is described as the Gilonite. Bathsheba was the wife of Uriah the Hittite, and afterward of David, by whom she gave birth to Solomon, who succeeded David as king.

David’s seduction of Bathsheba is omitted in the Books of Chronicles.  David, while walking on the roof of his palace, saw Bathsheba, who was then the wife of Uriah, having a bath. He desired her and later made her pregnant. In an effort to conceal his sin, and save Bathsheba from punishment for adultery, David summoned Uriah from the army (with whom he was on campaign) in the hope that Uriah would re-consummate his marriage and think that the child was his.

But Uriah was unwilling to violate the ancient kingdom rule applying to warriors in active service. Rather than go home to his own bed, he preferred to remain with the palace troops. After repeated efforts to convince Uriah to have sex with Bathsheba, the king gave the order to his general, Joab, that Uriah should be placed on the front lines of the battle, where Uriah would be more likely to die. David had Uriah himself carry the message that led to his death. After Uriah was dead, David married the now widowed Bathsheba.

David’s action was displeasing to the Lord, who accordingly sent Nathan the prophet to reprove the king. After relating the parable of the rich man who took away the one little ewe lamb of his poor neighbor, and exciting the king’s anger against the unrighteous act, the prophet applied the case directly to David’s action with regard to Bathsheba. The king at once confessed his sin and expressed sincere repentance.

Bathsheba’s first child by David was struck with a severe illness and died, unnamed, a few days after birth, which the king accepted as his punishment. Nathan also noted that David’s house would be punished to avenge Uriah’s murder. Bathsheba later gave birth to David’s son Solomon.

David’s punishment came to pass years later when one of David’s much-loved sons, Absalom, led an insurrection that plunged the kingdom into civil war. Moreover, to manifest his claim to be the new king, Absalom had sexual intercourse in public with ten of his father’s concubines, which could be considered a direct, tenfold divine retribution for David’s taking the woman of another man.