Current mood: Munchausen
In this month's
Steve the Raven Interviews Dead People I landed an exclusive interview with little known "Saint of the Bereft and Offensive," Mother Marconi de Poloma.
Mother Marconi was no doubt Jesus' favourite wife, but did you also know that she's believed to be the inspiration for the "Saint of the Gutters" herself, Mother Teresa (aka Agnes "Rosebud" Bojaxhiu)?
A word of warning to former/current Catholics: The following interview will likely make you very uncomfortable - perhaps to the point of needing to bathe. Subtext: Please don't send me hate mail
STR: Mother Marconi, what do you miss most about being alive?
MM: Please, call me Francis. I think I miss leper colonies the most. Especially the smell.
STR: Fine dining for corvids !
MM: All that decay and suffering. It's the smell of love really. Beautiful rotting anguished love.
STR: . . . . . . . . . . I don't know how to respond to that. Why don't we move on to another question. I know you struggled with your faith when you were alive, what are your thoughts on Catholicism now that you're dead?
MM: I think I wasted a perfectly good vagina is what I think.
STR: Becoming a nun was a waste of time?
MM: A big hairy waste of time, my child. To think that I could've served the poor and the stricken while also having intercourse regularly really chaps my hide.
STR: Why'd you become a nun?
MM: The truth? I have no idea. I joined the Catholic church when I was very young. Very young and naive and idealistic. Well, it didn't take long to learn that power and money were worshipped at the Catholic altar. Did you ever see that big obnoxious car the pope gave me? I'll tell you what . . . that car was the nail that broke the camel's back for me.
STR: Sucks for the camel. If I remember correctly, you were accused of misusing charity money too.
MM: Listen here, Mister Know-it-all, that money was used to do Christ's work. Do you know how much it cost to feed and care for all those poor lost souls? I don't know what you've heard, but I had the gambling under control until the late eighties when my goddamn luck ran out. Until then the pope thought my knack for picking winners was worthy of canonization. Truly miraculous. No matter how hard I tried after that though I couldn't pick a winner if one came up and tapped me on the shoulder. The money was never for me, mind you - unlike some Catholics I know. I'll have you know that a lot of people benefitted from my time at the horse track. I was doing god's work until I started losing and realized there wasn't a god - that no god would let me lose at the track if he knew I was doing it to help his flock. Lord almighty, my ass.
I'll also have you know that the only money I ever spent on myself was to satisfy a very minor drug habit. Mere pennies really. I rarely paid for drugs since my dealers gave them to me for free - bless their sweet hearts. So really the amount of charity money spent on pills was minimal. And here's the bottom line - there was just no way I could live with myself eating three meals a day knowing so many were going without. Amphetamines really helped curb my appetite and my guilt. And I got so much accomplished.
STR: Wow, I didn't see that coming. Since you're being so open . . . what's the worst sin you committed while alive?
MM: I once spit sunflower seeds at a Jew. I was trying to get them in his ears. They were quite large, his ears. Like funnels really. I couldn't help myself.
STR: You're an interesting woman, Francis. Do you have any words of wisdom you'd like to share with the living?
MM: Yes, I think I do. I once said that abortion was the cause of all the disharmony in the world. I must have been tweaking very hard when I said that because it really just sounds ridiculous now. I'd like to encourage people to get abortions. Or better yet, wear a condom. For god's sake, adding more people to the world's population is not going to make it a more peaceful place. I don't know what I was thinking.
