My Old Apartment

My 'allergies' are clearing up nicely now, two years later.

My sister was shocked when I told her I paid $8,000 in rent last year.

That’s enough to buy a house, but of course people on the Ontario Disability Support Program can’t get a mortgage—maybe that’s a half-truth. I once went to the bank and they were prepared to give me a mortgage of $30,000. They wanted a down payment of $15,000. So they would have lent me $15,000, at about six percent as I recall.

You can’t buy a house for $30,000 unless it’s in Taliban country or at the extemities of the Earth.

There are no services in Taliban country or at the extremities of the Earth. No plumbing, no heat, no electricity, and of course your investment is uninsurable.

(Without insurance, you can’t get a mortgage. Catch-22, don’t you know.)

With a house, it’s not just the mortgage payment. There is heat, hydro, insurance, property taxes, and water, which includes a lot of hidden charges for ‘delivery’ and surcharges for past debt. Also, in this town at least, some of the price-jacking on the property taxes is stuck in the water bill.

City Council talks big about ‘diversification,’ mostly before election time but not much afterwards.

The Province of Ontario talks big about ‘poverty reduction’ before elections, but not much afterwards. It is a slogan, nothing more, and the bourgeoisie buys into it, but then they are all cynics and hypocrites and they all know it is bullshit.

I owned a house once. Before I bought it, I did a budget and came up with a figure of $675.00 a month average. My ODSP income was $930.00 a month at the time, and I knew it would be a tough go. I knew I’d be going to the food bank, and I knew I wouldn’t have a car, and I knew I’d be sponging smokes off anybody that had ‘em…but at least you are building equity in a piece of property, and my grandmother was kind enough to give me $1,500 for a down payment.

For a while there, it felt good to own a home, although my working class neighbours didn’t like it much. They had to get up and go to work in the morning, while I was ‘sponging off the system.’

One of the neighbours told me that once. He was self-employed, although he has since gotten hired to work for the city, at about $25.00 an hour for unskilled labour.

Who’s sponging now, (insert disparaging term of choice, but mine is very naughty.)

(It rhymes with fuzzy sock licker, sort of.)

In summer, it might be less, in winter, it would be more. That included a mortgage payment of $292.00 per month on $50,000 amortized over 25 years.

Now, buying a trailer is different. The lot fees run anywhere from $350.00 a month up to over four hundred, possibly higher depending on where you live. This includes the lease and water, as well as the property taxes. 

If nothing else, you get a place to live out of it.

You can get a trailer for as little as $6-12,000, and I have looked at trailers in the $27,000 range. I’ve seen them as high as $72,000. The six thousand dollar one was a wreck. It had been gutted inside. As soon as I bought it, it would have been condemned.

There would still be heat, hydro, and obviously home insurance is a must if you have a mortgage—that only makes sense.

My home insurance went from $220.00 a year when I moved in, (in 1999) up to about $465.00 four years later. One month (February) in winter I had a $270.00 gas bill. For two months in the summer, there was no gas bill. Then I could at least eat.

Trailers are nowhere as well insulated as the typical home as the walls are only two inches thick.

Even so, they are smaller and the heating would be less, on average. The hydro might be less, but typically I run one or two lights, a computer, and air conditioning in summer. I’m fairly frugal in that regard, and I do have some respect for this planet, and never run Christmas lights, and all that sort of thing.

When I owned that home, my property taxes went from about $1,400 a year to over $1,800.00 a year within four years. I once used eleven dollars worth of water in a six-month billing period but the bill was more like two hundred due to all the ‘hidden’ charges.

Poverty is endemic to our system. It’s built in. My sister was shocked at that tax rate incidentally, as she only pays about $1,200 a year for a small bungalow similar to the one I had, but my name is Mudd in this town. 

You can attempt to appeal to the property tax assessment people, which is a provincial agency, even though property taxes are a municipal affair.

(Good luck on that, by the way.)

Municipal taxes have provincial sanction ever since the province downloaded certain costs of social programs onto the municipality.

Bureaucratic harassment of the disabled is also endemic here in Ontario, which is in Canada, one of the greatest countries in the world by all accounts.

I had no problem renting my present pad.

My credit checked out, and in fact my credit rating is surprisingly high for a guy on ODSP. That’s because I am a responsible adult and I pay my bills first and eat later.

In some sense, ODSP subsidizes landlords. They know it is a secure and steady income (disability is for life) even though the bank sees it as high risk.

(I don’t know if anyone has ever escaped the ODSP, but as an officer and a gentleman, my duty is to escape.)

(Or at least give ‘em hell whenever I can.)

You can’t really get a mortgage on a trailer.

That’s because it’s movable and the bank figures you’ll stop paying and drag the thing off somewhere else, an expensive process involving permits and fees and of course the cost of the contractor. It’s helpful if you have someplace to go.

I once signed up for geared to income housing. I’m not stupid, and I thought it was the right thing to do, according to all conventional wisdom. And almost two years went by. We took all the ‘facts’ into account.

When we knew my old man was going into the old age home and his house was to be sold, I called the Sarnia-Lambton Housing Authority.

I had been told the waiting period was about two years for a single person. My number was supposed to come up in ‘May or June’ according to them, right?

We kept my old man in his own home as long as we possibly could, and it was reaching a crisis point. We did the best we could for him. He went into the old age home in February 2011.

So I called up, as my old man’s house sale was closing July 15—I lived there in the basement while looking after him—and they told me something special.

They said they wouldn’t have anything until September or October.

I had no choice but to rent an apartment, right? Geared to income housing is pegged at one-third of income. 

Now I pay, according to my calculations, more like sixty percent of my income—rich people are smarter than that, as I’m sure most will agree.

Imagine my disgust when I had moved into my apartment, and paid over $1,500 up front to move in. 

Imagine my disgust when there was a noise problem from the landlord’s kid, living below me rent-free while he saved up to go to university. I was paying all the costs of the house I was in, with some left over, probably a couple of grand a year, for clear ‘profit.’

I paid first and last, and of course the landlord wanted thirty days notice of leaving, oh, yeah, and one week later, the Housing people were calling my alternate number, i.e. my mom’s place, and they said they had a placement for me.

One week later, ladies and gentlemen. That’s why I call them bad things.

I sent the Housing Authority a letter stating that if they ever tried to contact me or my family again, I would call the police and charge them with criminal harassment.

Don’t you ever talk to me about a ‘sense of entitlement.’

All human beings are entitled to food, shelter and clothing. That’s the position of the United Nations and I won’t contradict them because they are big, important people who wear suits and ties and make the papers every stinking day.

Some would argue that everything we do in life involves some moral choice. I would retort that back on the government, this city, the bourgeoisie and anyone else who will listen.

If you don’t like that, you can pull a black hood over your face, and come around here and kill me.

You see how it is, don’t you?

I know who you are.

It is never a mistake to stand up for the disabled, the mentally ill, the working poor, and plenty of other unfortunate people in this town, your town, any town you care to name.

I live in Ontario. Someday I will tell you about how the pigs got me out of that house. Perhaps someone else will tell the story, but I doubt if they have the fuckin’ balls.

On Church and State

Epicurus: 'Why does evil exist?'

We don’t really have separation of Church and State in this country, even though the claim has been made that we do. 

There has never been a church that revolted against this state, and the state has never represssed a single religion. 

Well--maybe a few. Maybe just a little bit--but they came around in the end.

To the state, all religions are equally useful.

They keep the people placid, and that’s good if you want to exercise power over them. Once the truth has been revealed, it is unchangeable—an important element in any system of beliefs.

The truth is unchangeable. Truth comes from somewhere far above you.

Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, these are all state and religious holidays. People who haven’t seen the inside of a church in years for any reason other than the wedding of a friend or the funeral of a relative celebrate religious holidays with an inconsistency that to me seems schizophrenic.

Religion is an excuse to have festivities.

The state itself rests on some religious foundation. The Queen of England, the titular head of our constitutional monarchy, is also the titular head of the Anglican Church. We have Henry VIII to thank for that, when all he wanted was to appoint his own friends to benefices that were up for grabs, (and the income derived from them) which up until then were strictly Catholic. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen—Henry VIII was a Catholic. Some would argue that all he wanted was another divorce, and the pope at that time refused.

It was a power struggle, nothing more, and I don’t think Henry VIII had any great theological arguments to back him up. So in that sense, it really wasn’t about the Reformation or Protestantism per se.

No one wants to talk about this. We prefer to let sleeping dogs lie. I’m just supposed to accept things and keep my mouth shut—because you guys have given me freedom.

And you’re not going to give it up—or the power that goes with it, anytime soon.

What a ludicrous claim. You have given me my freedom.

No one can set you free, ladies and gentlemen.

You must free yourselves or be perpetual slaves in service to your corporate masters.

Personal freedom requires the individual to take full responsibilty for themselves—and responsibility is hard.

Before each session of the Legislative Assemby of Ontario, the proceedings are opened with a prayer.

It is true those dummies need all the help they can get, for surely one or two of them had some vision…before they got elected, and had hopes of making some sweeping social progress in the context of this century, a hope that will be quickly pounded out of them by ‘realities.’

I’ve never actually heard it, but it’s likely not the Roman Catholic version of the Lord’s Prayer that they use. 

They had to pick one, and only one, of several creeds.

In fact, when I switched from a public school to a Catholic school back in the 1960s, the words of the prayer were slightly different. The hair-splitting of theology is legendary.

One syllable, one wrong word, one wrong inflection or accent and the transgressor is immediately condemned to everlasting hellfire. Since I’ve uttered that prayer both ways, it’s difficult to see me as anything other than but one of the damned.

The trouble with atheism is of course morality.

Without a God, one socially-acceptable to my neighbours, where can morality possibly spring from?

What if I agreed that murder, theft, arson, violence of any sort was wrong?

Would you doubt my word, even though these things are first of all illegal, and secondly, they are impractical methods of conflict resolution?

Ah, but Ian, where are you getting all of this? Surely a man, a normal man, is incapable of figuring these things out without some miracle of divine intervention, a lightning bolt, a splitting of the Earth, or even just a stork leaving town in a hurry—a flock of birds behaving strangely, or perhaps the meteors of the air, showering the world with sparks and pestilence…but I digress, ladies and gentlemen.

Where do atheists go on Halloween? Because we don’t believe in the supernatural, it would be hypocritical to dress up as a ghost or a goblin; or to indulge in superstition such as reading the horoscope, crossing our fingers for luck, or throwing a penny into a wishing well.

Atheism, in order to be valid, must be supremely rational, and that is also its greatest weakness.

That’s because none of us are completely rational beings.

We cannot escape our upbringing. From our upbringing stems all prejudice, for we were born a clean slate with no rational thoughts at all.

Atheism takes power away from Church and State. No longer is there a fountainhead of morality, one that all can recognize and agree to, even if it is only as a legal fiction.

Atheism empowers the individual. It empowers them to be free.

I say the power to govern stems from the people, but in the maternalistic political world, the people can‘t be trusted and so we need a Queen. And in order to justify one person being Queen over some other choice, a person equally or perhaps even better qalified to be Queen, we must accept their ‘Divine Right of Kings.’ 

We must accept the prerogatives of birth and blood, their pedigree. We must accept not only history as it was written—mostly by educated males of the ruling class, but we must also accept that it can be no other way. We must accept the tyranny of past precedents without question.

Otherwise there is no legitimacy, and that includes the legitimacy of elections based on historical precedent, which is the only argument that you have when God is taken out of the equation.

Our ancestors fought for those rights for sound personal reasons.

Personal reasons, and today we can only speculate as to what they may have been.

***

You could try speaking to me in purely practical terms, but I think you incapable of actually doing it, without quickly running out of arguments and falling back on tradition.

Genetically, we are asked to accept that the blue-bloods are not just morally superior in that they have the right to govern, it seems we must also accept their genetic superiority! Something that has not been scientifically proven seems to be an unwritten law.

Otherwise, the only other possible argument is that they are rich—or that they have a monopoly on truth, one which stems from somewhere far, far up above the common man.

Objectively speaking, if we did away with Queen Elizabeth II, would the country collapse of its own internal moral inconsistencies?

(But of course you don’t see that we have any moral inconsistencies.)

Of course not. Someone would find the justification to continue with our present system, with absolutely no changes (or disruption,) at all. Anyhow, they always have another king or queen waiting in the wings to take over, don’t they? If you follow the genealogy of the Royal Family, it goes all the way back to Wotan—the god of war, whose effigy was placed on a wagon and drawn through the camp of the barbarians before battle in order to remind those savage warriors that the gods were on their side and that Valhalla awaited the heroes who gave their life for their king and country.

It would seem that either they were wrong or now, in the present day, we must be wrong. For now all religions are equally valid before the law.

We have changed religions many times over the last two thousand years, and in fact Christianity itself would be almost unrecognizable to Jesus in the unlikely event he should be ressurected and return to Earth for a quick look to see how things were going.

Our ‘belief system’ is irrational, and even more so, it is perpetuated by an unwritten code of bigotry and prejudice, a system of checks and balances to keep us from asking all the wrong questions.

It must be based on a system of unconscious assumptions.

It has to be unconcsious, it has to be unwritten, and it has to be accepted by all, just like the emperor’s new set of clothes, for to question it is to unravel the whole fabric of our society, very quickly, and in the interest of order, we prefer not to do that.

We simply must have order.

To an atheist, the whole basis of Canadian law and government is irrational—because it is based on assumptions of the divine, the revelation of religion, which oddly enough always seems to favour the predominance of the rich—and the well-born—and it is really nothing more than a way of squelching dissent from ordinary people, most of whom do not have time for great philosophical debates.

They’re too busy struggling to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

I have no doubt most of them have an opinion, one which no matter how loudly shouted, bears little evidence of actual thought, any real practicality, or any real usefulness at all.

I don’t really have the right to say this. Freedom of expression is in the Constitution? Yes it is, but then the neighbours also have pitchforks and unlit torches in the back closet, just in case something goes terribly wrong and another belief system comes along to threaten their comfortable assumptions.

You see, since atheism is not a religion, my belief system is not protected by the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of religion. It most definitely does not guarantee ‘freedom from religion,’ because Canadians ‘don’t want that.’

They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to be left alone and not to have to think too much. 

They want some nice Christmas gifts, they want to eat turkey and give thanks for not being Americans—how many times have we watched Canadian journalists on TV, who report on the U.S. with such smug and self-righteous glee.

“Thank God we aren’t Americans.” How many times have we heard it?

To an objective observer half a world away, Canadians and Americans are almost indistinguishable.

But it means so very, very, much, to a Canadian, not to be an American.

Because Americans are unwashed. They are loud, boisterous, obnoxious people with a little too much power around the globe and a little too much money to spend at home…unless they’re here as tourists, in which case, ‘Bienvenue.’

Welcome to Canada, eh. The home of peace, order and good, rational government, a government of the people and by the people—well, two out of three ain’t so bad, eh?

And it is the home of an irrational system of beliefs which justifies much.

I hate justification. I think justification would suck a basketball through a garden hose if you gave it half a chance. In that sense, justification is much like assumption.

I hate assumptions, for they are a form of limiting beliefs.

If this nation really has a moral system of beliefs, a moral system of government, one which takes into account more than just the ignorances and prejudices of the loudest mouths, would someone please tell me why the disabled must live thirty or forty percent below the poverty line; a situation which has persisted for decades, and which will go on for the forseeable future?

But you can’t do it, can you?

Religion, morality, tradition, none of that can help the true hypocrite explain a situation that is intolerable to any thinking person.

Maybe that’s why I became an atheist.

You simply couldn’t satisfy my inquiries. And now I have become like the state—I see all religions as equally valid, or perhaps vapid would be a better word.

The state sees them as useful, a fundamental difference of philosophy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism

Sort of Unethical for One Such As I.

Go ahead. Make my day.

I know, I know.

Make me feel like a perv.

But it looks like I got my cover shot for 'Two on One,' which is due out any day now but I would have to check my calendar.

It's like waving a fucking steak around in front of a drowning man.

(Can you talk to me later, ladies? Like when I got money and stuff?)

I'm just kidding ladies and gentlemen, I joke, I joke.

But this is the worst fricking job in the world sometimes, I really mean that.

Here we got signed model releases and everything, which looks good for me and all that, but it would be, ah, sort of unethical for one such as I to call them ladies up and sort of ask for a date, right?

God, would someone please come around here and kill me or something.

Holy shit, you could say I was feeling my oats. And my inadequacies.
The whole point of this is that my short story, ah, what the hell is it called. Oh, yeah. 'Two on One.' I forget what it's about. But it will be coming out soon. If you got a gun or something, that would be good.

END

The Philadelphia Cream Cheese Experiment.




Courtesy U.S. Navy

 

Top Secret

Your Eyes Only

From:  Chief of Naval Operations                                                                 August 29/2015

            COM-USPACFLT       

            Admiral Owen Jenkins

To:      David Weslingham

           Vice President Product Development

           Krafft Foods, Dairy Products Division

Dear David;

Regarding the test results from experiments with your product conducted from May 12/15 to June 17/15 inclusive. The majority of fleet personnel have responded to the questionnaire issued to U.S.S. Bainbridge ad U.S.S. Cormorant, the vessels participating in the aforesaid experiment. Breakdown is as follows. Preference for pineapple additive, fourteen percent, French onion additive, twenty-six percent, jalapeno, thirty-one percent, cinnamon-apple, nine percent and the other three flavors, dill pickle, peanut and olive, were evenly divided at about or just under seven percent each.

Yes, in general, ratings and senior personnel liked the cheese. Aroma, flavour, and mouth-feel were all rated as A-Plus or equivalent. The appearance of the product was appealing in ninety-six point-seven percent of cases. The product did not produce excessive amounts of intestinal gases, and neither did it cause undue indigestion.

Under FDA testing, the product met or exceeded all guidelines for food safety including low counts of toxic constituents. Independent laboratory examination has corroborated these results.

Moreover, the ability to store the product for extended cruise duration is a prime indicator that it would be available in sufficient quantities to satisfy crew desires for unique flavour combinations over the duration of a deployment. The resulting boost in morale is significant. There would be minimal need for replenishment in foreign or suspect markets, thereby eliminating security concerns regarding offshore vendors and contractors, which as you are aware is an ongoing process of the Department of the Navy.  The ultimate goal of this three-year study is to select a core group of suppliers and reduce the dependence on offshore vendors. In short, David, congratulations. Your firm has the contract for the next two years of shipboard trials. I think we can all look forward to a successful conclusion to this phase or aspect of the experiment.

Documents confirming the order are forthcoming.

Addendum:

The unfortunate incident aboard U.S.S. Cormorant of June 2/15 remains highly classified. Early indications from the ongoing investigation are that the personnel found embedded in the decks and bulkheads of Cormorant resulted from experimental work being conducted at an undisclosed location, unrelated to this project. Krafft Foods and their Products Development Division have no cause for alarm in the opinion of this office and should not unduly concern themselves with issues of liability, culpability, or other issues, other than nominal security issues upon which you will be briefed.

It would be best if speculations about this event among Krafft Foods staff were kept to a minimum. Such speculations should most especially not be shared with outsiders or those not connected to the project, or those without sufficient security clearances.

                    

Officers of the Department of the Navy will attend your offices and facilities by appointment only, in order to further inform you of your duties and responsibilities in this regard. They will instruct you and your staff in civilian contractor security protocols. There were a limited number of Krafft Foods staff involved aboard on the day in question and we will take all measures to limit further disruption. Krafft Foods representatives will also be briefed by members of the Judge Advocate General’s office regarding the Department of the Navy’s provisional compensation package.

We deeply regret exposing you and your staff to unanticipated dangers, and this office assures Krafft Foods that such an event will not occur a second time.

You have this office’s deepest apologies.

In a more personal note, the Department of the Navy knows, David, just how upsetting it must have been for you and your staff members to have witnessed such an event, and you are applauded in your commitment to limiting disclosure to all but the most crucial staff members involved in this matter.

Thank you and have a good day.

Sincerely yours,

Admiral Owen Jenkins

United States Navy, Pacific Fleet.

END

On Right-Wingers.

WW II Universal Carrier, (mortar) as used by Canadians. (Paul Hermans.)

“If you don’t want to stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them.”

So goeth the popular and even fairly common bumper-sticker here in Canada; which as you may know; sort of lies there sideways, snuggling in close and spooning with America.

If leftists are so unpatriotic and perhaps even cowardly, why was the former Soviet Union such a big threat during the former Cold War; a former phenomenon of the upper northern hemisphere?

Was the place formerly being run by a bunch of leftist right-wingers?

And why does the People’s Democratic Republic of China have to be perceived as such a big military threat, an issue which pops up from time to time in popular media coverage? People’s news coverage.  Democratic news coverage. Sometimes even Republican news coverage. It even turns up in Chinese news coverage.

(I think you’re onto something here. It might even be some kind of secret code. Careful you don’t sign away those film rights. I’ll call Tom Hanks right away. –ed.)

In Afghanistan, or Iraq, or the former Northwest Frontier Province of Kiplingesque, Khyber Pass memory, are the Taliban or Al Quaeda; are they like the right-wingers in their country?

What does a left-winger look like in Afghanistan?

(An ineffectual puppet installed by some superpower. –ed.)

Well, I guess we got it good here then, eh? We install our own ineffectual puppets.

You know, with D-Day type news presence from the TV, Marcia Kirck-Schmedlowzitz would look good in a pith helmet and a beige bush jacket with all kinds of handy pockets…you know, the pleated pockets with matte buttons that don’t shine in the moonlight.

    (Quite frankly you lost me somewhere old boy. –ed.)

What’s this? Oh, sorry. Togoland, dummy. We’re going into Togoland. Get with the program. Holy crap. So anyway…

Um, when we send troops over there to fight them, are those people our right-wingers?

Because I can see the poetic justice in that.

The trouble with the left-wingers in this country is that they have a vast military-industrial complex, very well connected (yet it’s an illegal hook-up,) in the outhouses of power. And essentially, they’re using it to grow pot!

You’d think they would try to build a better bomb or something, or even a bigger, more expensive multi-role attack plane. Something useful, maybe show some reverence for something greater than themselves.

(A big corporation? –ed.)

You know? What a curious misapplication of resources.

I just don’t know what this old world is coming to sometimes.

All I can say is, sometimes the middle ground is highly-contested by parties who seem to forget that us normal people have to live somewhere.

    To coin a phrase; it kind of inhales rapidly.

    What we should do is to set up some kind of international institution, one where all parties can come together in mutual accord, and provide everyone with a kind of forum or arena where our bad people can fight their bad people.

Now that would really be something.

(Out of the mouths of babes sometimes come pearls of wisdom. But more often it’s just a little bit of vomit or maybe some of that foamy, yellowy, gucky goop. –ed. )

END

The legend of Dr. Faustus: Truth depends on who you ask.

Faust, etching, Rembrandt van Rijn

The figure of Faustus is both fact and fancy.

The legendary figure of Dr. Faust has fascinated philosophers, theologians, spectators and audience members for centuries.    

According to ancient lore Faust was a traveling fortune-teller and wizard.

A learned man, he may have taught in the universities of his era, ultimately living in Cologne.

Contemporary scholars depicted him as a charlatan, unscrupulous, yet hard evidence on his life is lacking; and they may just have been jealous.

Whispered stories of supernatural powers helped create the legend of Faust in his own lifetime, (1480?-1540?).

One tradition has it that Faust was a respected, prominent citizen living under the patronage and protection of the Archbishop of Cologne. Alchemy and magic were not that far removed from sorcery and witchcraft in the minds of the common people; any kind of knowledge was suspicious.

Doctor Faust may have been employed by the Archbishop to get a psychological edge on his enemies. The Renaissance was in full swing thanks to Gutenberg’s printing press.

This helped to spread revolutionary new ideas, yet it was also a time of great ignorance and superstition.

One widely held folk belief at the time was the notion that the Jews, in league with Satan, had conspired to crucify Jesus. It coloured public opinion.

Faust the man may have been a victim of anti-Semitism, or who knows, he may have been a genuinely rotten fellow. It is possible he was Jewish, yet it is a known fact that both Martin Luther and Melancthon believed him to be in cahoots with the Devil.

The “Historia von Dr. Johann Fasuten,” (1787) was published in Frankfurt. In this compilation of tales, Faust makes a deal with Mephistopheles, who grants him magic, knowledge and power, but only for twenty-four years. After which, his soul belongs to the devil…Eventually Faust repents having “bartered his soul for illusory knowledge and pleasure.” Well, we all have to grow up some time, eh?

This collection of legend and fact appeared in English verse in 1587 and German verse in 1588, and was released in French and English prose versions in 1592.

Marlowe.

Playwright Phillip Marlowe produced a “Tragedy of Dr. Faustus” in 1589. But it is the great poetic drama ”Faust” (written and re-written between 1808 and 1832) by J.W. von Goethe, which is the best known to the world. In his version Faust is not damned, because he genuinely desires to expand the boundaries of knowledge.

Possibly von Goethe thought a person could play poker with the Devil – and win.

Goethe’s story became the definitive version; later writers did not tamper with his outcome. Other classic works include the dramatic epic “Faust” (1835) by Nicholaus Lenau; Heinrich Heini’s ballad of the same title appearing in 1851 and “Doktor Faustus” (1948) by Thomas Mann.

The average person on the street might tend to identify Faust as “The man who sold his soul to the Devil.”

Thomas Mann. Portrait by Carl van Vechten

They say history is a generally agreed upon thing. That really depends who you ask.

End 

Author's Note: my short sexual memoir 'The Note' is now free on Smashwords. here is my profile, below that is the link for the book. Use coupon code SSW75 on checkout. Offer ends July 31/13.

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/iCooper

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/315026

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> Ian