Creative Verity

05/02/2026

exert from
Paladin : An Origin Story

“Sometimes you get carried away, Ash.”
...
“And so then they declared Palestine the Jewish state of Israel and that’s when all the s**t started all over again.”
“Huh,” he said, “but haven’t they been fighting for a long long time, anyway?”
“After the treatment they got in Germany, and finally back in their ancestral homeland, fired by religious zeal and the rise of Zionism, the Jews in Israel were pi**ed at the world, had the God of America in their corner and started dishing it out as good as they got. Propped up by American Jewish businesses and the Christian Post Millennial crowd, Israel has the second best army in the world. The U.S. tests out its latest war gadgets over there, the Arabs are kept well distracted, the Saudis are in America’s pocket and all is right with the world… unless you happen to be Palestinian.”
“Oh,” he said with apprehension.
“They bomb Gaza, build a wall, put them under siege, build new settlements every year which pushes the Gazans slowly into the sea but no matter what Israel does to these people, treat them like cockroaches, and wonder why they, the Palestinians, who have lost their homes and are held hostage in their shrinking and blockaded territories, the Israelis wonder why the Palestinians are so pi**ed off. Acting like the fascists who abused them sixty years earlier they even board foreign aid vessels in international waters off the coast of Gaza while the rest of the world looks on and says nothing about these crimes because there’s some unspoken law that says you can’t criticize the State of Israel without being equated with Hi**er and N**i Germany. Meanwhile this type of behavior is imitated so that now you’ve got Somali pirates behaving like a bunch of f**kin’ Israelis!”
“Ooh, Ash,” he said shaking his head, “that’s harsh.”
“Tell that to the Palestinians,” she countered, “it’s examples like that that fuel more hatred and inspire Al Qaeda, Al Shabbab and ISIL. Its not just the Jews of Israel, or the Muslim zealot psychos like ISIS, who want to force the 7th century morals of their Prophet Mohammed on us. You know the war-lord pe*****le who married his nine year old bride, Aisha?!?! Don’t think Christian bombs aren’t equally guilty! All religions tend to fascism.”
“If you say that they’ll beat you up,” he said. “No one wants to be called a fascist.”
“I know they’ll get violent,” she agreed, “that’s my point exactly. Even the believers of the Lamb of God, who preached pacifism, are no better. Look at Christianity and how messed up the average believer, who worships and admires a Lion of the Faith as the model example of the teachings of the Lamb of God! Machiavelli said that the ideal Renaissance Prince must portray complete piety to those he rules while ignoring all moral laws of conduct when dealing with other princes. The problem with the modern Christian world, America and the Western World, is that it is a Machiavellian world, where everyone thinks they are princes. The real issue here isn’t this religion or that religion. The problem is … Religion!”
“I know, I know,” he patronized a little shaken. “I gotta go, Ash.”
“Ok, Squeegee,” she said and turned to hear the tv news feeling energetically rested for that cathartic conversation.
Christ Kennedy

05/22/2025

Christ Skull Illness
Mairéad, (Boston, 1845)

As her feverish arrest into insanity's daft wards had dissipated since first arriving at the asylum, she reasoned, with clear headed disdain, that faith's ignorant, blather maundering fools commissioned for to heal the demented, were head abluted, god enthralled lunatics themselves. Warned for to hold her tongue, and refrain from voicing public her uncanonical, Jesus nausea, so to escape from Boston's anchorage for the daft, she resolved to feign the spiritual awakening of religion's Christ skull illness. For to profess rebirth in god's sacred neurosis, she recited prayers and, awaiting her keeper's next arrival, plotted for to affect discipleship to divine, harebrained psychopathy.

- lost scullion