Chapter 13 - Father Oregano waxes philosophical about American saints and the Jamaican Bobsled Team

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete

And at long last, it would be great to have another American saint. Of the 10,000 saints venerated in the Roman Catholic Church, fewer than a dozen were from the United States.

Whenever Father Oregano thought about this anomaly, the Jamaican Olympic bobsled team came to mind.

For as there was not enough snow in Jamaica to favor sledding champions, in America there was way too much adoration of filthy lucre - 'the devil's dung' - to foster sainthood.

Hell, in the USA even local cafes and pizzerias were quoted on the stock market and generated bigger revenues than the GNPs of most 3rd world countries.

In any case... If the identity of this eventual benefactor and future saint was still a question mark, his demonic counterpart had a name and a rap sheet as thick as an encyclopedia:

the driver of the offending Toyota, a certain Hilario Baltazar, had stolen the vehicle and at the time of the accident had been even more wasted on drugs than Del. Pulled out of the wreck more shaken than battered, no doubt thanks to the simultaneous inflation of twenty airbags, he was promptly arrested and - for the fifth time - released without bail, with his trial scheduled for whenever he decided to come back from Quetzaltenango, a hidden city in the hidden western highlands of spectacularly beautiful Guatemala.

Comments

Chapter 15 - It gets real. Juula, an Estonian girl visits Del at the ICU - Text Editing will soon take a quantum leap forward

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete Del came back to his senses chastising himself. Lucidity, lucidity at all costs! Machines don't beg doctors to kill patients! Lucidity, damn it!!! How is lucidity obtained when in a coma? he wondered. And as always, because of his experience, the answer came instantaneously: prayer. He mumbled a Rosary. And in the middle of a Glory Be, out of the blue but with poignant clarity, he remembered a moment well after he had been banished from the keyboards, but shortly before the 'additives' - the damned drugs - had lost their magic. He had met a marvelous Estonian girl, marvelous because she was so pure and clean and straight and unsullied by drugs or cynicism or attitudes. Juula was fresh and had honest twinkles in her eyes. Del had been entranced. But after all the bad living he'd been through (with the worst yet to come) for all he was bedazzled, he had refrained from courting her because for the first time in his l...

Chapter 18 - Juula promises to get a "new and improved" DEL back on phones and tablets

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete "Good morning, Del! Ready for the big day?" "Sure, what do you have in mind?" "A tour... to a place you've often seen but never noticed." "I like it already. Where?" "A page in MS Word." "Eh? Microsoft Word? I must've done two-thirds of all my work there - even starting before Windows. If there's one place that holds no mysteries for me!" "So you might think, my sweet bundle of mashed-up bones, so you might think!" "Okay, I believe you, number one because I have to and number two because I want to. But may I ask why?" "Yes, of course. You feel that you were unjustly removed from the telephones and tablets of the world, correct?" "Well, I can't say 'unjustly' - there wasn't any room for two deletion buttons, so they left the big guy - they left Backspace... but all right, yes, it hurts." "What if I told you I could...

Chapter 17 - Whoa! Del trips the life support apparatuses for the wrong reasons. Not near death, but certain life!

THE STORY OF DEL - Delete This is when life support apparatuses should ALSO be clamoring, thought Del. Not only when he was about to die, but also when he was about to live! La Vita è Bella! "How did you get in?" "After we met, you never let me out, remember? So, I'm not here," she said indicating the whole ICU, "I'm here." She touched the side of her head. "That's terrible. One wrong impulse and I could turn you into a carrot juicer!" "I know, but you won't, because I have a job for you. And it's right up your alley, and since you like me so much, I'm going to be your muse. And you and I are gonna be too busy having fun!" "Whoa!" And just as Del had ruminated, all the warning bells went off and it was a concert of ringing, singing, wailing and bling-blinging. And one of the apparatuses - Infusion Pump N° 17 regulating Medication Line N° 23 - even started playing the bagpipes. To hell wit...

AN EDITING REVOLUTION FOR PHONES & TABLETS

Search This Blog