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Show Anting Alone Page 25g little engineers. Faith, my friend, faith's sole function is to make life here and now livable. That's why despair is the big 0. U. S. It's a self-fulfilling damnation. Whoever is in charge of forgiving sins couldn't forgive despair even if He/She were inclined to do so; because He/She is being presented with a fait accompli." "Is that a French word, Sammy? Is that like raisin detriment?" Sam let that one pass with an appropriately puzzled frown and continued, "Once you despair you guarantee yourself a hideous, perditious life and death. You end a damned, non-writing professor." All the while Sam was proudly surveying the bulletin board full of the infantile sacrilege and poopooisms that he'd deep-carved into the brown cork and lined with blood-red theme-correcting ink, the words immortalized in Mama Mae Bell's dossier (Sam wasn't despairing of writing; he was still writing) : FUCK THE HANDICAPPED; OUR HOLY SWEET JESUS DRINKS PECKERSNOT IN HELL (even he winced at that one); SEND THE HOSTAGES BACK TO EYERAN; and, Sam's undisputed masterpiece, with a deep-carved bas-relief preface written by the author in a professorial impulse that had lasted two and one-half hours: DEAR COLLEAGUES, CONSIDERING YOUR APPRECIATION OF THE MORE DISTINCTIVE PARTS OF THE APOCRYPHA, I THOUGHT IT NOT ENTIRELY BEYOND THE REALM OF POSSIBILITY THAT YOU MIGHT BE DIVERTED MOMENTARILY, MAYBE EVEN AMUSED IN SOME MILD WAY BY THESE HARMLESS LITTLE VERSES OF MY OWN COMPOSITION. I REALIZE THAT IT WOULD BE GROTESQUELY PRESUMPTUOUS OF ME EVEN TO PRAY THAT THIS SLIGHT SALLY OF MINE MIGHTN'T BE TOO SHODDILY WROUGHT AND THAT IT DISPLAY SOME INFINITESIMAL YET RECOGNIZABLE ATOM OF ERUDITION OR MENTAL AGILITY ON MY PART. STILL, I OFFER, IN TOTAL, ABJECT HUMILITY -: |