Every time I make a sexy post, every time I despoil the pristine gift God gave me, I must make two self-flagellating posts and three Torahdic posts.
I must virtually scourge myself for my sins, staying awake until dawn, tossing and turning on my floor and jumping up every hour to blog something bad about myself.
Every time I succumb to fornication, I must blog against it five times!
(This counts as one of those times.)
Every time I deny my savior, Chaim Amalek, I must date an Oriental and like it.
Remember the 2000 movie Quills where the Abbe du Coulmier tells the imprisoned Marquis De Sade to write out his sick thoughts. He thought it’d be healing.
From the plot description on IMDB.com: "The infamous writer, The Marquis de Sade of 18th Century France, is imprisoned for unmentionable activities at Charanton Insane Asylumn. He manages to befriend the young Abbe de Coulmier, who run’s the asylumn, along with a beautiful laundress named Madeline. Things go terribly wrong when the Abbe finds out that the Marquis’ books are being secretly published. Emperor Napolean contemplates sending Dr. Royer-Collard to oversee the asylumn, a man famed for his torturous punishments. It could mean the end of Charanton and possibly the Marquis himself."
I hated that movie. I went to it with a woman I thought I was dating. We’d been arguing about degradation. I said the desire to sin and degrade is essential to sexual excitement (or so says Dr. Robert Stoller). She disagreed violently.
Three-quarters into the movie Quills, I look away. I can’t take watching the degradation on screen.
My date forces me to watch.
Afterwards, we exchange some nasty words and never go out again.
I’m listening to a book on CD — Geraldine Brooks‘s Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague.
I’m struck to the quick by the gentle clergyman at its center who holds his community together against the contagion.
From Publishers Weekly:
Inspired by the actual town commemorated as Plague Village because of the events that transpired there in 1665-1666, Brooks tells her harrowing story from the perspective of 18-year-old Anna Frith, a widow with two young sons. Anna works as a maid for vicar Michael Mompellion and his gentle, selfless wife, Elinor, who has taught her to read. When bubonic plague arrives in the community, the vicar announces it as a scourge sent by God; obeying his command, the villagers voluntarily seal themselves off from the rest of the world. The vicar behaves nobly as he succors his dwindling flock, and his wife, aided by Anna, uses herbs to alleviate their pain. As deaths mount, however, grief and superstition evoke mob violence against "witches," and cults of self-flagellation and devil worship.
