Thursday, December 11, 2008

skit #20: loaned bones

Mr Moule dismissed his servants after supper, as he did every night, for a private sip of tea with the Lord. Moule unfurled the schematics he drafted to God's estimates from prior consultations.

Diagram 1, labeled "The Unfortunate Circumstances of Nutrition": A man's midfellow is distended, one may infer with food, much like how Mr Moule's belly bulges. The figure's transparent flesh yields rosy bowels, outlined with an indubitably expensive pink ink. Incipient and established digestive matter is in a mulatto brown. Mr Moule's color key reads: "Pinke: Thee Heavenly Procession; Brown: Depravities & Im-purities".

Diagram 2, labeled "Our Father's Dry Earth Closet": A sturdy oak chair, barring a few details, looks much like what Mr Moule sits on. The sketched chair has no occupant so as to reveal the detail of its utility. An ominous hole resides in the center of the seat, as a pillory reserves a portal to bind the neck. It is presumably a mouthpiece for the devil's lips to speak in sordid tongues. An obsequious bucket remains in utter subservience below deck. Mr Moule neglects to provide any explicit instructions on use.

Diagram 3, labeled "The Resurrection": A servant shovels "Foul & Vile Matters" into trenches four hands deep, a quarter-hour of labor for a boy. Time elapses from winter to spring, from frost to flowers, from left to right. "Triumphant Bounty" grows where malignancies stewed: corn, squash, tomatoes, and other New World imports. A farmer with a distended belly looks suitable to star in Diagram 1.

Diagram 4, labeled "Our Tenancy": A lamb is shorn and shanked by the servant from Diagram 3. The farmer wears woolen long johns, bears what must be mutton-made distension, etc. The servant returns the loaned bones and excrement to "God's Earth". A panel encapsulates two dead men, illustrated as having skulls for heads. One's soul remains in the trench, fettered by sin and shite. The other's ascends from the trenches, gassy, effervescent.

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