Sacred Chickens Classic: Uncle Morty and Kilgore Trout on the Intrinsic Value of a Human Being11/2/2022
Your old Uncle Morty is old and tired and dead, though not without the empathy that remains in the empty brain and metaphysical heart of anyone who has ever worn a suit of flesh. His previous embodiments leave him still puzzling as to why the living seem to value the miracle of being so very little. Even when they can be led to believe that they themselves might have some intrinsic value they seem always unlikely to give that benefit of the doubt to others. I will give you a few scraps of reasonable advice that I myself found when I walked among the living. It was expressed by two of the best men I have ever known, Kilgore Trout and George MacDonald.
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 Uncle Morty Schedules a Procedure by Uncle Morty Perhaps some of you have wondered where your dear old Uncle Morty has been and why I have been so lax about communicating with you lately...  What It's Like To Walk Past a Cemetery Every Day by Jarad Johnson I am a walker, not a runner. Every day that it’s not raining, I’m out walking up and down the road that I live on. There’s quite a bit of scenery, and thankfully it's mostly trees and peoples yards. The yards in my neighborhood vary greatly. There’s a cute blue house with some pretty standard cottage garden plantings. There’s my house, with still far too much grass (both in the flowerbeds and otherwise) and there’s a few houses which appear to be professionally landscaped, by which I mean, boring. No offense neighbors, but your yards need a little color. I also live in an area where somehow the woods have escaped construction. It’s always nice seeing what random changes pop up there. Of course, there are also people who clearly don’t like to (or are too busy) to work in their yards. And then there are those few yards that I have thrown seeds in, just because I felt sorry for them. I don’t know if the people who lived there wanted cosmos next to their mailbox, but they certainly got it. It looks better, anyway.
 Lucid Dreaming and the Man in the Hat by Uncle Morty In which our own Uncle Morty advises you about your existential and metaphysical problems. Please remember the advice is free when judging its worth.
Dear Uncle Morty, I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts the other day, The Last Podcast on the Left, and they were recounting listener stories about a faceless man with a hat who appears during sleep paralysis. (Sleep paralysis is that feeling that you’ve just woken up, but you can’t move. A lot of people who have it say they see a shadowy figure coming towards them.) Anyway, after listening to a bunch of emails where people describe this shadowy figure as a faceless man with a tall hat, I realized something. I know that guy.  The Frustrated Gardener by Jarad Johnson Commentary by Julie and Morty Readers, I am frustrated. Flummoxed. Disconcerted with my garden. The soil seems unhappy with me, and I with it. Because I planted little seedlings over a month ago, and they have done nothing. Zilch. They have sat there, alive at least, staring at me as weeds have grown around them. You see, we have had some unseasonably cool weather, and it has stunted the growth of my annuals. And how does one enjoy the garden when it. Just. Does. Nothing. It’s a little discouraging, and the connection with nature I seek to foster seems to flounder. Or, at least, stagnate. O mother earth, why can I not enjoy the growth of the seedlings that I hath planted? Hast thou forsaken me?
Morty: A bit dramatic are we?  Advice For Everyone by Uncle Mortimer Dear Uncle Morty,
I have a weird and kind of embarrassing problem, and I really don’t know who else to talk to. I’m a twenty-something year old male, a philosophy grad student, who has suddenly developed excessive body hair and a few other medical/psychiatric issues? I don’t even know if what I’m experiencing is real. All I know is I need help.  Advice for Everyone by Uncle Mortimer Dear Uncle Morty,
I’m writing you as someone who’s been recently disembodied. I received the packet and I have examined all my choices. Even though it isn’t recommended, I have decided to hang around and haunt my old house. This seems like a good idea given that my son, let’s call him George, inherited the home. George is thirty and my only child. Quite frankly, I think maybe I spoiled him. He has no children, and his wife finally left him due to his bad behavior; he was always asking for money and he could never hold down a job. I don’t know exactly where I went wrong, but I’m his mother and mothers never give up. Even when we’re dead. Believe me, when I say that I have no problem hanging around and scaring this problem child into some semblance of adulthood. I’m not writing so you can lecture me about letting go or moving on to the Netherworld. I’ve made up my mind.  Ask Uncle Morty by Uncle Mortimer Dear Uncle Morty,
I’ve been seeing this guy for about a month now and he’s asked me to be exclusive. He’s almost too perfect. He’s tall, handsome, and rich. He’s a smooth dresser. We go to exclusive clubs and restaurants. So, what’s the problem? We only go out at night. Not in the evening but after dark.  Ask Uncle Morty by Uncle Mortimer Uncle Morty sometimes gets requests to apply his Netherworldly wisdom to the problems of existence of one kind or another no matter which side of the veil you call your home. He has decided to share his answers with our readers in hopes that you also may be heartened by his sagacity. (He told me to write that.) Following is a request for advice and his response. Enjoy.
 In Conversation by Jarad and Uncle Morty Jarad:
I recently read Sir Phillip Sidney’s, “In Defense of Poesy,” for class, and it got me thinking about my own relationship with poetry. “In Defense of Poesy,” is an essay written during the time of Queen Elizabeth, in response to another essay, written by Stephen Gosson called “the School of Abuse,” which argued that poetry was a waste of time, the, “mother of lies,” (a BIT dramatic there if you ask me), the “nurse of abuse”. Gosson even said that Plato had been right to banish poets from his idealized commonwealth. That last bit is a little inaccurate, actually. Plato only banishes the rogue poets from his utopia, not all poets. But that’s really neither here nor there. Overall, Gosson had some harsh criticism for poetry, and while I sometimes find myself unmoved by poems, I wouldn’t say that it’s a waste of time because that seems like a slippery slope towards censorship, not a censorship by the state necessarily. Even a personal form of censorship is the enemy of free thought. A total ban on one type of expression will probably mean you miss something. Of course, it’s important to understand that “poesy” at the time referred to all fictionalized arts, even prose and drama. Poesy in this usage is the artistic sculpting of truth and beauty, expressing yourself in artifice and fiction, metaphor and symbol. |
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