HYPOCRISY EXPOSED!

Disturbing news has been leaked from the Monasterio de Santo Holiday today, which throws new light upon the true character of the one commonly known as the Venus de Show Low. Humor has it that Yo Yo Pa, as he is affectionately called by the adoring acolytes who manage his exclusive compound on the city's fashionable 8th Avenue, took a fat fatwa to the heart in the midst of his own sanctuary early this morning. While searching for his personal Blarney Stone, a gift from Hym Selph, the exiled King of the Emerald Isles, he opened a drawer of the Lovely One's desk and discovered a massive, secret cache of assorted chocolates. For nearly eight years, the Right Rev has been happily-married to the provocative mall-mouse and henherdess, who is sometimes justifiably compared to Raquel Welch in her hayday, and yet he never once suspected that she has been living a parallel life of her own, consumed in her own addiction to chocolate. This has been the most shocking thing he has experienced since the pecking of Tippi Hedren. In response, St. Holiday has cancelled tonight's meeting of the White Mountain Sacred Cow Coalition and has suspended tomorrow's expedition in search of Occam's toothbrush. There is fear that he may lapse in preparation for a relapse and revert to a cowboylike silence.

This revelation of his wife's duplicity could not have come at a worse time. Paying the wages, principle, interest, tithing and taxes of old age, tectonic pressures of daily life have placed St. Holiday a mere heartbeat away from the low swing of the sweet chariot. In his mind, he has always been the shirtless, dirty coalman, shoveling coal endlessly into the locomotive's unsatiated steam furnace, vainly hoping for the station at the end of the eternal tracks. Recent events have thrust the holy man from the comforts of domesticity and from the maternal care he has always craved. He has worked at the limits of his strength, quelling national rebellions, and struggling against enormous odds to express his deep-seated opposition to resistance in all its contrary forms. However, he has learned through it all that patrician cheekbones can only get one so far. In his world of ruptures, the Lovely One always supplied the trusses. Nevertheless, it is expected that he will haul her hallelujah corpus down to the White Mountain Institute for the Clinically Addicted and enroll her in the same program that recently upholstered him for recovery.

Our sung hero is intensely public and notoriously reluctant to discuss his personal life anyplace but on television, radio, the internet, in all forms of print media, face to face or by telephone. However, in view of today's distressing revelation, he has decided to quit all public speaking in order to spend more time with his family. He will recommence communication tomorrow.

WIFE TIRES OF BOY TOY, BEGS TO COME HOME

Soon after returning from his pilgrimage to the Ganges River, where the holy man, in the company of sacred cows, spent a week ridding himself of the filthy excreta of this present world, Saint Holiday was surprised to receive several emotional telephone calls from his distant wife, who pleaded with him to take her back. She has grown weary of the young Asher Guillory. He lacks maturity, she said. And though the Marquis de Sad may not be able to surpass his rival in maturity, he does have the advantage of height and reach. Because the pious one dispenses mercy and forgiveness the way the US Treasury prints tens and twenties, he has agreed to receive his prodigal wife with open arms.

There he was, sitting cross-legged on his living room floor, singing, "Felines; nothing more than felines! trying to forget you, and these felines of love!" when the first call came. He listened as the Lovely One whimpered on the phone, allowing himself to be drawn from his great, overarching ideas into a few moments of pity for his anguished bride. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know I've hurt you deeply. You didn't deserve what I've done to you. I was carried away by infatuation. O, how can you ever forgive me? I was so wrong! Did you get your paycheck yet?"
"Come home," he replied. "Let's take it one stipulation at a time."

Since the collapse of the subprime market, Saint Holiday's struggle to find liquidity led him to the Ganges. There, among a poor and simple people, the holy man was inspired from on high. He now plans to establish the Equatorial Center for Middle Intermediacy, where he shall assume a state of equipoise in this unbalanced world, and where he shall offer courses for mental and emotional steadiness and physical equilibrium to the masses of staggering humanity. Voila le philosophe! Here is a man to be wrecked with. In the alternative, he has been training to become a hand model.

REMEMBERING ST. FRANCIS

On the sandy bank of the Ganges River, St. Holiday paused from his ablutions today to remember St. Francis of Assisi, who died on this day in 1226 Anno Domini. He is greatly admired by St. Holiday for his reverence for life, his exceeding kindness to animals, and his sincere efforts to imitate the character of Christ is his own life. The following poem is attributed to St. Francis, and though it has not been possible to prove an historical connection to him, it can at least be accepted and enjoyed as a reflection of his spiritual nature and consecration to charity. God bless St. Francis.

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.

ST. HOLIDAY CLEANS CAT BOX!

The Relief Society refused to send help. "Clean your own damn cat box!" yelled the Relief Society President, as she slammed down the phone. "She must be having a difficult moment," thought St. Holiday. "I'll try her again in a few minutes."

The Relief Society has changed. It used to give more relief. Back in the day, representatives of that once charitable organization would show up faster than Dominoes Pizza, whenever a cry went out for help managing the gross domestic product of his children. Jenna, Ethan, Josiah, Amanda, Micah, Hannah, Abigail, Noah and Jonah were all beneficiaries of the Relief Society's Sacred Diaper Changing Service, during those difficult times when their angel mother was hospitalized to deliver a baby or to be treated for some disease. After such a long and satisfying history, one could hardly blame St. Holiday for assuming that the Relief Society could be relied upon to save him in the hour of this latest category five emergency. It was not to be. The poor man was left to deal with the dire consequences of his wife's cruel departure alone. He may never forgive her.

A children's choir sang Panis Angelicus outside the saintly one's Show Low retreat, as he brought the heavy bag of used cat food to the trash. Then he headed for the airport to catch the first of several flights that would take him eventually to Global India, where he plans to bathe in the Ganges, soaking with the ashes of the dead, in an attempt to restore the pure patina of saintliness that, until today, was a grace to gaze upon. When asked who would tend to the cat box in his absence, St. Holiday said simply, "The Sisters of Mercy."