The Year of Rice and Assault

I'm a liar. In yesterday's blogs I repeated in very strong terms that no writing would be done that day, because I would be at RecJam until very late and dead tired when I got home. Which was true. I was out until very late and dead tired when I got home. But this news report has been gnawing at me for the better part of a week now:

BRIELLE, New Jersey (AP) -- An 8-year-old girl who suffers from a rare digestive disorder and cannot eat wheat has had her first Holy Communion declared invalid because the wafer contained no wheat, violating Roman Catholic doctrine.
...
Last year, as the third grader approached Holy Communion age in this Jersey Shore town, her mother told officials at St. Denis Catholic Church in Manasquan that the girl could not have the standard host.

After the church's pastor refused to allow a substitute, a priest at a nearby parish volunteered to offer one, and in May, Haley wore a white Communion dress, and received the sacrament alongside her mother, who had not taken Communion since she herself was diagnosed with the disease.

For those of you who don't know this, I'm Catholic, and pretty doggone firm in my faith. But bone-headed entrenchment like this, where the church bases doctrine on nothing more substantial than tradition, well, that sets the cat amongst my pigeons, as Harlan Ellison might say. I find it no small irony that one of the definitions of "dogma" is making a contention without adequate supporting evidence. Funny that.

So last night after I got home, I started noodling around on the old keyboard. One thing lead to another, and in one torrid, sweaty, greasy burst that required an additional pillow under my rear and lots of additional caffine, the whole ugly thing blurted itself out. The birthing process finished off around 3 in the a.m., and I dragged myself off to bed, bleary-eyed and feeling more than a little seedy, slightly concerned that Kim Stanley Robinson would ring my neck for riffing on his title. This is some of what my madness wrought:

Now, it happened that on the third day of the third week of the third year Lucifer and his minions had taken up residence in the Vatican. After storming St. Peter’s Basilica and giving severe wedgies to the Swiss Guard, the hordes of Hell set about making nuisances of themselves with a vengeance. They stubbed their cigarettes out on the furniture. They passed gas loudly in the Sistine Chapel and scrawled “Pull My Finger” on Michelangelo’s fresco. And they checked out all the Gutenberg Bibles from the Vatican library with absolutely no intention of returning them by their due date.

This morning, when I staggered out of bed, Lisa had long been up. "I read your story. Did you do that last night?" she asked, indicating the manuscript I'd left on the table.

"Yeah," I answered, wary. "Was it funny?"

"Very."

"Was it... offensive?"

"Oh yes. You offend everyone. If it's ever published, I'm a widow."

It's going out to Sheila Williams at Asimov's in the morning. She won't buy it, but I feel it necessary to inflict "The Year of Rice and Assault" upon as many editors as possible before I disappear under "mysterious circumstances."

Now Playing: Smithfield Fair Jacobites by Name