Vampires as a whole mock the celebration of Christmas on December 25th, knowing that it’s merely a placeholder on the Julian calendar. But don’t mistake these vampires for blood-sucking atheists. They believe wholeheartedly in the power of Jesus’s blood. They observe Maundy Thursday as the most important day of the year. Conversely, on that day, true believers partake of the sacrament of communion as Christ showed them what it truly means to be devoted to God and to each other. But for these hideous creatures, the body and blood of Christ are a means to an end of survival. They believe Jesus to be the last prophet in “the order of Cain” these last 1,500 years, to save them from one called “the Impaler.”

In order to invoke imagination, we must break free from the contempt of illusion by appealing to the wondrous child in people. Doubt is the current condition; impartiality is the preferred attitude; familiarity—the hackneyed cavity; and so the method is to strike the “nerve of novelty” (as Chesterton brilliantly puts it), in order to achieve the goal of being winsome, like a fetching story…

A strap hangs off her missing shoulder—

a pragmatic prostitute at a makeshift bordello

where there are no curfews,

rules or chores

only dark alleys and cardboard boxes

to claim and explore…

“The gluttonous full moon shines a wide-angle lens at the ocean’s curvy body below. Warm, salty hips give birth to an El Niño storm….”

If you know me, then you know how much I appreciate understanding why people do the things they do. When I get to know someone’s psychology, I feel closer to the person (for better or for worse). So, here is a tribute to– Actually, I’ll let you figure it out.

The day of his release from The Farm she took him to his favorite po’ boy establishment where she presented him with a possible solution to permanently crush the source of his agonizing quandary about the existence of providence and freewill by performing a radical surgical procedure, which could theoretically remove the part of his brain responsible for the freedom of the will to make autonomous choices, according to the Cartesian view that the pineal gland is the hub where the mind and body unite and interact, making decisions that could’ve been otherwise. By removing this gland, as well as the adjacent midline region of the brain, the corpus callosum, which is responsible for connecting left and right cerebral hemispheres, and then replacing it with an A.I. Vertex database housed inside a silicon neuromorphic chip with 1,000,000,000 times more dense “neurons” than the corpus callosum, Griffin would be the first walking humanoid robot, able to process information faster than any computer and able to react faster to both the rational and emotional sides of his brain, simultaneously thinking and feeling like no other person alive. Griffin was in favor of the innovative procedure. The date was set. He was made aware of possible complications, including a high percent chance of mortality. The neuro-surgeon who performed the operation was paid handsomely for his time and discretion.

…Hobbes believes people need to be ruled by a Sovereign—a Sovereign with no emotions, desires, or freewill. No, the drastic range of variability within each of those aspects of human nature will never lead to the summum bonum or “the greatest good” necessary to live the good life. The competing conceptions of the good lead only to chaos and war, a “war of all against all.” A social contract is needed for the religious community or the commonwealth founded for the common good of all. Ironically, Hobbes’s catalyst to peace is grounded on a negative view of human nature. The summum malum or “the greatest evil” is used in order to keep the peace, which is stipulated by the social contract. This evil is the fear of violent death given the state of nature or lawless condition of man vs. man. Thus, a Sovereign without wayward human characteristics—a hyper-intelligent Transhuman incapable of disobeying orders—is Hobbes’s contribution to the revolution, from the kingdom of God (the kingdom of already-but-not-yet) or the “kingdom of darkness,” as he likes to call it, to the kingdom of once-and-for-all, Hobbes’s temporal kingdom of absolute rule.

“He massages people’s feet

as he washes away the dirt

and the stench of the street.

He walks with those who suffer

and suffers when those who suffer

go astray.”

This is the Rabbi

who inspires closet skeptics

to “come-out” and pray.

Aretaics and arts were never meant to exist separately from one another. They were meant to overlap (not just on paper but in our own lives) and be an example or an apologetic for others to witness.

As sensitive (artistic) souls, those of us who have the capacity to hold in the most light, light that shines brightest from fragile jars that are living miracles of the conversion of the sweetest wine from the sludge of the darkest and deepest bayous, we were designed as living metaphors of empathy and dependency. We…