• If we eliminated the stock market casino and investors made money on company profits, would they still invest? Or would capitalism die? #
• If we eliminated the stock market casino and investors made money on company profits, qould they still invest? Or would capitalism die? #

• If we eliminated the stock market casino and investors made money on company profits, would they still invest? Or would capitalism die? #
• If we eliminated the stock market casino and investors made money on company profits, qould they still invest? Or would capitalism die? #

by Patton Lee Beaugus

I’ve always wanted to be really evil. Ah, ha, ha-ha ha, haaa!

This desire is not a new thing. I’ve always wanted to live on the dark side. Be the bad guy. Wear the black hat. Frighten little children just by smiling at them.

While other kids were practicing basketball, I practiced a mad laugh patterned after some mad scientist I saw in a b-movie on Shock Theater. The only person my laugh scared was my little sister, Jody Lee, who was also afraid of her Guardian Angel night light.

I was fortunate in that I was raised as a Catholic at a time where an eight year old kid could a commit mortal sin with cheese on a Friday afternoon at McDonald’s without even trying to be bad. Eternal damnation with fries. Every Friday. As long as I didn’t go to confession, I was a made guy! But alas, and even Aflack, I went to a Catholic School where we had mandatory confession every Saturday morning, which was more often than some of us bathed. Joyously damned on Friday afternoon. In the state of grace in time for Communion on Sunday. I just couldn’t win!

I’ve always identified with bad guys, starting when I was a little, little kid and watched Soupy Sales at lunchtime. There was Soupy and White Fang and Black Tooth. White Fang was “The Biggest and Meanest Dog in the USA,” so he was my favorite. “Lo ho ho!”

Then there was my favorite movie character in the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan — Captain Hook. I learned the words to all his songs… like the one about poisoning Wendy with a cake with “icing mixed with poison, ’til it turns a tempting green”. Hook made being bad so cool!

When grownups asked us rugrats what we wanted to be when we grew up, my cousins would say cowboy or nurse or fireman or astronaut. I’d say, “henchman.”

But it was not to be.

I did try. I did.

When I was a teenager I sold my soul to Satan. Well, to be honest, which I am, even though I don’t want to be, it was more like I gave my soul away, and I’m not even sure if Old Nick accepted it. You see, I’d just read George Bernard Shaw’s play, The Devil’s Disciple and like the hero, Richard Dudgeon, I decided to stand by Satan in this life, with the understanding he’d stand by me in the next. It made a man of Dudgeon, but it seemed to have no affect on me, my soul, or the growing of chest hair which I was convinced was a prerequisite for evil, and that lack may have been the prime reason I never quite reached the evil incarnate stature of Charles Manson, Idi Amin, or Microsoft.

In high school I did acquire the nickname Beelzebub. But that wasn’t earned by acts that lived up to Nazi bedtime stories. I got the nickname partially because I had bright red hair, but mostly because when the other kids took flash pictures, everybody had eyeballs but me. In my case you could only see the whites of my eyes. Eerie, but not as evil as performing operations on small woodland creatures while chanting in upside-down Latin.

I would gladly have become a vampire. The height of my high school fantasies was imagining a date with Cheryl Mary Slamkowski, our head cheerleader. In my fevered imagination, the date would end with warm, sticky, copper-flavored blood dripping down my chin onto her pure white blouse unbuttoned just enough to lay one perfect drop on her white cotton bra! What a great fantasy, huh? But it never happened. I never got the date. I never even asked Carol Mary out. I never was bitten by a vampire. I was never able to lay a wet one on Carol Mary’s neck like I was sure she would have wanted her Evil Overlord to do at the stroke of midnight on our first and last date.

I’ve always wanted to shoot somebody. I’d loved to have shot a good guy, preferably in the back. But I’d have settled for winging an innocent bystander with a ricochet. Unfortunately, I’ve never fired a gun. It just isn’t fair!

Over the long boring years of no mass murders, no human sacrifices, no parking in handicapped spots, I’ve had to face up to it. At evil, I’ve always been pretty much of a non-starter.

I know I could have been great at evil. I just didn’t know how to do it correctly. What I’ve needed all this time is a Handbook like “Evil For Dummies.” While I’ve been a Dummie all my life, I never found a Dummie’s Book that could teach me to be as nasty as I want to be. They don’t have anything like that at the Southbury Public Library. Or even on Amazon.com. Darn it, I need that damned book quickly, or pretty soon I’ll pass away and my headstone will read, “He Led A Nice Life.”

The worst I’ve ever done is to register and vote straight Republican. I’ll bet after all my disclaimers of never making it to the advanced levels of evil, you’d have thought I couldn’t have achieved such infamy. But you’d have been wrong. Ah, ha, ha, haa!

I know when I stand trembling at the edge of the fiery river that surrounds Hell, and that giant three-headed poochie asks what I’ve done to earn my place among the Evil Damned, I can proudly say, “I voted for Dick Cheney three times, once on a write-in ballot for President.”

It just might be enough.

Written Under Divine Inspiration by Paddy The Prophet

As a child who thought as a child, I believed what I was taught by nuns with sharp rulers that there was only one God. One God? No problem, Sister Torquemada.

Then the nuns taught me about the Holy Trinity. God the Father. God the Son. And God the Holy Ghost, who changed is name sometime before I graduated from High School to the Holy Spirit. But I still think of him sorta like Casper, and I’m not into people who change their names. So He’ll always be the Holy Ghost to me.

As we all know, even you heathen unbelievers who never even bought a pagan baby, that important books have been written about the Father and the Son, and they’ve sold a lot of copies. There have been beaucoup paintings, a movie where He costarred with Charlton Heston, songs, mural on ceilings, concertos and even a tv series with Michael Landon. I mean, over the centuries, this dynamic duo has been bigger than Buddha or the Beatles, or even Brangelina!

But what about the poor Holy Ghost? He’s not even in the Old Testament. And He’s like a few oblique one-liners in the New One. I’m not sure He even existed until Holy Mother The Church, yes, that’s what the nuns called the Pope and his henchmen, until the one Holy and Apostolic Church declared that The Father could not have knocked up Mary because… well, I’m not sure of the because, but it has something to do with sex without marriage being a mortal sin. And like how could the Daddy God do the hunka-chunka with the Virgin Mary without it being a sin, which would mean he wasn’t God, which would have put all the Bishops and priests out of a job. So it just couldn’t be!

This problem was solved by the realization that there must be another way, and I don’t mean anal, and that it must have been God’s Evil Twin who done the dirty deed on the sleeping teenager.

But wait, as you amateur theologians just figured out, then that would mean two Gods, and we can’t have that. Or next thing you know we’d have Zeuses and Thors and pagan gods who do the nasty in the shape of swans and other heretical perversions that a well-brought-up Christian God just wouldn’t do.

So the Trinity was roughed out by The Church Fathers at the Council of Nicaea in 325. And after a while, some people got confused. So some Pope who isn’t in Wikipedia delivered a Papal Bull, which is a lot like it sounds, to proclaim the Trinity. As you Catholics might remember from your Baltimore Catechism all the Popes are infallible in matter of faith and morals, but might think the Nazis were okay. Anyway, the Holy Trinity was declared to consist of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

That’s how it stood, century after century, even surviving the Protestant Reformation, the Spanish Inquisition, and Pat Robertson — until last night.

Last Night the Holy Spirit appeared to me. At first I was afraid, especially to roll over and give Him a shot at my backside, but then His Caspar qualities showed themselves and I was able to listen to His story.

He said He like my writing style and wanted me to write Him up. Give Him his own book. Like a New New Testament. I told Him I didn’t have an agent or a publisher and the best I could do was a Blog.

He decided to take the Blog, this Blog, with the hope that a writer with an agent and a publishing contract and maybe even a three picture movie deal would get inspired to pick up the idea and run with it. He mentioned Mel Gibson, but I think He’s aiming too high.

I mentioned He might consider doing some of those “Sleep Creep” videos for the Internet, but He wants something with more class.

I said, I’d write His Story, but I needed more background to even write a blog. I asked if He’d done anything else but the Mary thing, and he said he hadn’t. So I asked about Mary, and He said, “She was Good!”

I told him that if I’m going to do this for Him, He needs to do something more that I can write about. And He said He’ll do anything or anybody for the publicity. And He’ll work for food as long as he isn’t paid in bread or wine, for which Jesus holds the rights.

He also implied unless I can make Him bigger than Pink, who He’s a fan of (go figure!), unless I got him some ink, somebody was going to Hell. I think He meant me.

Please contact me at this Blog to make Him an offer. Please! The future of eternal soul hangs in the balance. Of course, after writing this, I’m probably going to hell anyway.

Here endeth the revelation.