De Haut En Bas

The Tutor:  "My not-so-little missy, the model for Zulily full-figure accoutrement that you are, I must inform you."

Me:  "Another 'de haut en bas' prognostication from above?"

The Tutor:  "Yes.  If I might write something so obtuse and abstract that it could not be understood or at least, falsified, then I am not writing anything of import.  I stake my reputation on being true to the world as it is.  My great fear of intellectuals is a result of their propensity for abstraction and deracination – abstraction in their thinking and deracination in their lives."

Me:  "Nonsense!  Did you not deracinate me from Myanmar and a life of poverty and is your white-boy sexy-talk not certainly an abstraction?"

The Tutor:  "Your response appears to be full of the empty abstraction referred to above, and without any intellectual content.  And don't bother pointing out that my response doesn't have much of the latter either."

Me:  "You needn't worry that I might point out anything.  Phrasal verbs are an abomination unto the lesser known deities - especially those ending in a preposition(the verbs, not the deities).
Employing as you have, and then with certain egregious malice of intent actually concluding, a horrid phrasal verb with a vile preposition is something up with which Sir Winston and I will not put.  As for the quantity and quality of the latter, to which you referred earlier, I would never be so presumptuous to comment - I knows me my place, I does.  As to the former, to which you do not refer in the above, however, our word salads are awash in it.  But as far as empty abstraction goes, it's some of the best!  Innit?"

The Flying Buttress

The Tutor:  "Ouch!  Why the fuck did you do that?"

Me:  "An experiment."

The Tutor:  "You probably broke my nose and maybe even my jaw.  What the fuck?"

Me:  "I'm testing the 'Protective Buttressing Hypothesis'.  You'd suck at fighting for access to my carnal attentions and for the resources I most assuredly deserve."

The Tutor:  "If it came to that, little missy, my 'flight-or-fight' response would come to the fore.
The general discharge of my sympathetic nervous system would favour the former response."

Good Neighbours

A scholar who had heard Jesus' commandment to love his neighbour as himself, and who lived in a crowded tenement, feared lest his love might be spread too thinly to do any noticeable good. He therefore approached Jesus one day and asked, "Rabbi, who is my neighbour?

"Jesus said, "A man was travelling on foot from Jerusalem to Jericho, trusting in God to protect him on the dangerous roads. On a particularly trustworthy stretch of public highway, he was set upon by thieves who beat him senseless and took everything he had, including his clothes

"After some little time, a Levite approached and saw the man's unconscious form; and, bethinking himself of the peril he was in, hurried on his way. Later a Pharisee came along and, crossing to the other side of the road lest any groans disturb his virtuous meditations, fled from the spot as fast as he could go.

"Then a Samaritan came along and saw the man. The Samaritan gave the man water, bound up his wounds, wrapped him in his best blankets and set him on his own camel. He took the victim to an inn and paid the proprietor generously to look after him, promising more should the man be well again when the Samaritan returned that way in a few days' time.

Now," said Jesus, "in the eyes of God, who was the best neighbour to that man?"

The scholar shifted feet and averted his gaze, and fiddled with his robe; but he could not escape Jesus' meaning. "The Samaritan, I suppose," he mumbled at last.

"Far from it," said Jesus. "In the eyes of God, the man's best neighbours were the men who robbed him. They relieved him of the spiritual burden of his worldly goods, and they failed to deposit him in the Lord's paradisiac bosom only through excusable haste."

Tyrannicide

"A respected Left-Wing blogger has said it would be morally justified for a suicide bomber to murder the President.

"Blowing up the President is a thorny potato: it has its pros and cons. I see that Fox Television has come down very firmly on the 'Don’t blow up the Pesident' side of the fence, no doubt they feel the time is not ripe, but there are strong arguments to be made on both sides.

No one would seriously deny that the President should to be put to death, but after a fair trial. You can’t just go blowing people up willy-nilly. Sorry, Abdul, but that’s not how we do things over here. You have to go through the proper channels.

But what if the trial drags on for years? What if the President escapes to his Golf Course in Ireland and cheats the noose? There is always that risk. Others would argue that blowing him up will only give him the publicity he craves.

Opinion on whether we should assassinate the President has become dangerously polarized in recent months. It is time to take a step back and consider these questions calmly and dispassionately. And let us focus on the things that unite us, not those which divide us. At the end of the day, it is a matter of individual conscience whether one assassinates the President.