Sometime yesterday the most infallible of all Buzz contributors, Sagnessagiel the Angel, appeared at the home of Steve "the boss man" Siciliano. This time the angel brought a large stone tablet into which he had carved his latest contribution, a meditation on two subjects: (1) the volatile nature of certain famous/dead writers; and (2) the stupidity of macro beer marketing. Not knowing how to email a stone tablet, Steve transcribed the message on his laptop and then sent it off to The Buzz editors, who received it without questioning its origin at all. To read Sagnessagiel's first contribution, please click here.
Dear Buzz readers:
There’s a pretty complex angelic hierarchy up here in heaven. I won’t bore you with the details (if you want the complete skinny, Google “angels”—I guarantee you’ll get so much information it’ll make your head explode). I will tell you that we angels are divided into three Triads with each Triad separated into three Choirs. I’m in the third Triad (the lowest) in the third Choir (also the lowest) and to be quite honest, (of course I’m being honest, I’m a fricking angel for God’s sake) I’m perfectly happy with my lowly status. Some of my fellow third Triad, third Choir compadres (I’ve always liked the word “compadre”) would sell their souls to get to the top. Me, I have no desire to be a Seraph (the highest level of angel). All Seraphs do is chant the Trisagion (“Holy, Holy, Holy”), they have four heads and six wings, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that if I came across one in a dark alley it would scare the living hell out of me.
I realize that I’m using a lot of parentheses but I just had a long talk with Virginia Woolf and she was the one who suggested that I incorporate them into my writing. I’m pretty new at this writing thing, and while I’ve been told I have a modicum of raw talent (by Shakespeare no less) I’m not hubristic enough (pride, after all, is frowned upon up here) to blow off advice, even when it comes from someone as goofy as Virginia. Ms. Woolf is a piece of work. Come to think of it, most of the writers up here are a little wacky. Turns out that Hemingway was eavesdropping on my conversation with Virginia and he just went totally berserk. He stopped just short of calling her a devil and probably would have if Faulkner didn’t rush up and tell him to shut the F up. (Bill didn’t really say “F”, but if I wrote out the expletive it would never get past the censors.) Well, as you can imagine, old Papa didn’t like that much and he and Faulkner began shoving each other and before you knew it there was an all out brawl—Dos Passos duking it out with James Joyce, Scott Fitzgerald on the floor wrestling with e. e. cummings, Virginia and Gertrude Stein pulling each other’s hair—and while all this was going on Shakespeare hopped up on a table and kept bellowing “oh what fools these mortals be” until a couple of other angels and I could finally restore order. It was quite a show.
After things calmed back down I went off by myself and mulled over what William kept shouting. (Is “mulled over” the right wording? Perhaps contemplated would be better? Or how about deliberated? Ruminated? Reflected? Considered? Pondered? God, so many choices.) You humans can be quite foolish. (That’s not meant to be a criticism…it’s just a statement of fact. I've got to call 'em the way I see 'em.) Now I'm not talking about wars, or mass murders or the destruction of your planet. In my humble opinion those types of things transcend foolishness and enter into the realm of idiocy. What I'm talking about here is your relatively innocent, garden-variety foolishness like watching reality TV shows, being obsessed with the lives of Lindsay Lohan and Britanny Spears and, in my opinion, one of the worst types of foolishness, putting up with those ridiculous beer advertisements.
You know what I'm talking about. Are you really going to drink a beer because some Madison Avenue schmuck tells you it's triple hopped? Are you going to buy a beer because the stripe on the can turns blue? Arrgh! Stuff like that drives me crazy.
That's enough ranting. As you may recall, I'm in charge of the section of heaven where professional baseball players are sent and later today the boys are throwing a surprise party for Sparky Anderson to celebrate the fact that the Tigers finally got around to retiring his number. After that I have a (private) meeting with Faulkner. He's going to coach me on the intricacies of constructing a fifteen-page sentence.
Peace & Love,
Sagnessagiel
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