Parched Thistle Prairie, Texas. An Evangelical swingers club, which had defied Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s April 2nd Stay-at-Home order and continued with its Wednesday night “Commingle for Christ” orgies, has finally halted the weekly event after three of its members perished from COVID-19 and another seven have become infected.
The group, which calls itself “The Swollen Vessel,” had insisted that “Godly recreational sex with multiple Christian partners is critical to the physical and spiritual health of open-minded believers,” and that they were operating under God’s protection.
Asked about the apparent failure of God’s protection for her group, co-founder Cynthia Griggs balked. “God knows what he’s doing. If he decides to cleanse the Body of Christ in a way that seems harsh to us, that’s his business. Mankind cannot understand the ways of the Lord.”
Queried as to whether she and her husband felt any responsibility for assuring their group members they would be safe under God’s protection when three of them are now dead and at least two are in an ICU unit, Ms. Griggs was philosophical. “One of the marvelous features of Christianity is that it allows you to make extravagant promises on behalf of the Lord, and if they don’t pan out…then it’s not really your problem.”
The Griggs had previously argued that it was safe to continue with the event since there were no known cases of the Coronavirus in Parched Thistle Prairie. But now a cluster of 23 cases has hit the town that all can be traced back to one of the group’s orgies in late March, which was attended by a Godly swinger from out of town.
For the immediate future the “Swollen Vessel” will be moving its orgies to Zoom, according to Carl Griggs. “It won’t be quite the same. But it’ll be a big step up from the ‘Old Rugged Cross’ phone sex line.”
Shrapnel Fluckiger and Jeff Napolitano in happier times.
Shrapnel Fluckiger, the troubled former lead singer for the seminal Alpine-Tejano-Punk band Necrophiliac Scourge, which inspired a generation of alienated Swiss-Chicano yodelers, died from complications related to the Coronavirus on Friday in Los Angeles at the age of sixty-two. The mercurial performer and songwriter had earlier suffered a series of disasters that left him blind and paralyzed from the neck down, but that did not stop his prodigious output. His conversion to Christianity had finally brought him some calm and stability, but the implacable virus claimed his life, leaving legions of grieving fans to ponder his legacy. National Public Radio shared the transcripts of his two most recent interviews with Terry Gross on her program “Fresh Air.”
March, 2010 Interview
TERRY GROSS: Shrapnel Fluckiger, welcome to “Fresh Air.”
SHRAPNEL: Thank you, Terry, it’s great to be here.
TERRY GROSS: You’ve suffered some calamitous setbacks recently, and yet, you’re still out there, touring.
SHRAPNEL: Well, Terry, being blind and paralyzed from the waist down sucks, but Alpine-Tejano-Punk music is forever.
TERRY GROSS: It seems like things started to turn sour for Necrophiliac Scourge during last year’s tour…specifically around the time you stabbed your bass player, Jeff Napolitano. What was it that created the feud between you two?
SHRAPNEL: I just sort of flew off the handle with Jeff because he was trying to get me out of bed to do a show in Venice. I’d had a rough night, there were groupies and gondoliers all over the floor, and Jeff was shaking me and shouting at me to wake up, and there was my buck-knife on the nightstand. It wasn’t anything personal, and I think Jeff understands that now, but there was some bad blood between us for a while there.
TERRY GROSS: Like when he tried to push that stack of amplifiers on top of you in Rome?
SHRAPNEL: Right, that was intense. The crowd thought it was part of the show, and I even got kind of a brush with death rush that gave my yodeling a real edge.
TERRY GROSS: You didn’t get the same kind of rush when he sabotaged that ramp you used during the concert in Amsterdam, did you?
SHRAPNEL: No, I didn’t, Terry, and if I’d known I was going to need a metal plate in my head after that fall, I wouldn’t have finished the show. But the crowd ate it up.
TERRY GROSS: This is kind of difficult question, Shrapnel, but do you think you showed good judgement in leaping headfirst into the crowd in Brussels?
SHRAPNEL: Well, I’ve done it all over the world, and the crowd always caught me, but I guess I caught them off guard because there wasn’t a Belgian within ten feet of me when I hit the concrete.
TERRY GROSS: Do you wish now that you hadn’t jumped?
SHRAPNEL: Well, I’d like to have my legs again n’ shit, but no use in second guessing myself.
TERRY GROSS: I don’t mean to dwell on the negative, but it must have been difficult for you after having a metal plate put in your skull, getting paralyzed, going through physical therapy and adjusting to life in a wheelchair, and getting the band back together and going on tour again when you accidentally rolled into that pyrotechnic explosion that blinded you during that ill-fated show in Austin.
SHRAPNEL: Oh, it was Terry. I mean, one second, I’m belting out the number one song in the country, and the next, I’m a raging inferno on wheels.
TERRY GROSS: What went through your mind when you, uh…?
SHRAPNEL: Burst into flames?
TERRY GROSS: Right.
SHRAPNEL: I remember thinking, “Shit, somebody put me out!”
TERRY GROSS: You were lucky your roady was right there with the fire extinguisher.
SHRAPNEL: Right, uh, Steve…Steve, uh, Steve something…he saved my life.
TERRY GROSS: It was sad what happened to him.
SHRAPNEL: Yeah, I mean, he was depressed before he was disfigured by the fire, but that kind of pushed him over the edge.
TERRY GROSS: I know when you were young, you split time living with your father, who was a Swiss cowherd and alphorn player, and your mother, who was a celebrated Tejano singer in Texas. But where did the punk influence on your music come from?
SHRAPNEL: A lot of people don’t know it, but there was a thriving punk scene up in the Swiss Alps in the mid-late 70s. Young people up there were fed up with the hardy, cheerful existence mountain people had been living for centuries, bringing their cows up to the alpine pastures every summer, playing their alphorns, yodeling and so forth. Some of us started wearing safety pins on our lederhosen. Where do you think Sid Vicious got that? He was up there on vacation, I think, in ’75. He was just a poseur.
TERRY GROSS: So what’s next for Necrophiliac Scourge?
SHRAPNEL: Well, as soon as Jeff gets out of the hospital–
TERRY GROSS: Jeff Napolitano is in the hospital?
SHRAPNEL: He had an altercation with the drummer from his other band.
TERRY GROSS: Oh, that’s right.
SHRAPNEL: And skin grafts take a while to heal.
TERRY GROSS: He threw scalding oil in his face?
SHRAPNEL: I warned Jeff about that drummer–he’s just bad news.
TERRY GROSS: So you’ll be working with Jeff again?
SHRAPNEL: We’re doing a benefit in Chicago for people injured in freak accidents. It’s called “Freaks for Freaks.”
TERRY GROSS: Wow, that sounds–
SHRAPNEL: Terry, did you know that every year almost two million people are maimed or injured in freak accidents in this country?
TERRY GROSS: No, I didn’t.
SHRAPNEL: This one construction worker fell off a building and was impaled on a protruding pipe. It went straight through his head so he has this giant hole in his head now.
TERRY GROSS: My God.
SHRAPNEL: His story is so inspirational. He still functions well enough to punch tickets at the movie theater.
TERRY GROSS: That is inspirational.
SHRAPNEL: So the performers are all people who’ve had freak accidents. Cora Phillips will be there–
TERRY GROSS: She also had a pyrotechnic accident, didn’t she?
SHRAPNEL: No, she fell off a building and was impaled on a pipe just like the–
TERRY GROSS: What?
SHRAPNEL: She was shooting a video up on this building and–
TERRY GROSS: That’s crazy.
SHRAPNEL: You’d be surprised, Terry. People get impaled on pipes. They fall into vats of beer or chemicals, they walk into propellers at airports, they fall into sinkholes or old chandeliers drop on them, their dogs sit on their guns and shoot them or their kid runs the power lawnmower over their feet. It happens almost two million times a year. So we’re trying to bring awareness about it, and raise some money for people who’ve lost arms or feet or had their noses ripped off.
TERRY GROSS: It’s great to see you turn your misfortune into something positive.
SHRAPNEL: Thanks, Terry. Don’t go up on any tall buildings…
June, 2011 Interview
TERRY GROSS: Shrapnel Fluckiger, welcome back to “Fresh Air.”
SHRAPNEL: Thanks, Terry. It’s great to be back.
TERRY GROSS: There have been some big changes in your life since the last time we spoke.
SHRAPNEL: Praise the Lord.
TERRY GROSS: Did it ever cross your mind that Jeff Napolitano still harbored resentment against you when you took the stage for your duet with him during the “Freaks for Freaks” benefit concert?
SHRAPNEL: Not really, Terry. He’d become a Buddhist while recovering from facial surgery, and I thought he was at peace with himself, but apparently he was still brooding over losing the lawsuit about getting the rights to some of the band’s songs.
TERRY GROSS: So that’s why he pushed you off the stage in your wheelchair?
SHRAPNEL: He may have still been pissed about the stabbing thing in Venice too.
TERRY GROSS: Shrapnel, after everything you’ve been through, getting your skull cracked in Amsterdam, being paralyzed from the fall in Brussels, getting blinded by the pyrotechnic explosion in Austin, being pushed off the stage in Chicago and losing the use of your upper body must have been a real blow to you.
SHRAPNEL: It was a real wake-up call, Terry. I wondered “Why was all this bad stuff happening to me?” It couldn’t just be bad luck. God was telling me to get me my soul in order so I gave my heart to Jesus Christ.
TERRY GROSS: What do you say to the cynics who say you only turned to religion when your body could no longer indulge in the epic debauchery you were notorious for most of your life?
SHRAPNEL: All I can do is pray for them, Terry.
TERRY GROSS: Are you working on any projects right now?
SHRAPNEL: Yes, my new album is going to be called “Responsible Rebel.”
TERRY GROSS: I like that.
SHRAPNEL: Let me sing a little of the title track for you…
TERRY GROSS: That would be great.
SHRAPNEL: (singing) I like working full-time, paying taxes and monogamy.
Going to my kid’s school night and volunteering at the library.
Now I don’t need lots of oral sex
From underage groupies
I get my kicks trying to build
My community…Cuz’ I’m a Responsible Rebel…
TERRY GROSS: That’s wonderful, thank you much, Shrapnel Fluckiger…
Patriots and Constitutional scholars around the nation have begun to rise up and defy the left-wing, modern medical science that has needlessly brought the economy to a standstill and cast the long, sinister shadow of socialism over our fruited plains.
Ironically, the focal point of the rebellion is in Idaho, a state that now has more Coronavirus cases per capita than California and includes Blaine County, which boasts the highest per capita concentration of confirmed cases in the entire nation. Rural Idaho conservatives are generally wary of socialist government services such as paved streets, fire codes, postal deliveries, police and fire departments and public libraries.
Constitutional experts such as Ammon Bundy, who led an armed takeover of a wildlife refuge in Oregon in 2016 that became a 41 day standoff with law enforcement, says that Republican Governor Brad Little “overreached” with his March 25th stay at home order. Bundy said he is willing to “physically defend citizens’ constitutional right to peacefully assemble and share the ‘Chinese virus,’ which is either the flu or a bio-weapon or the common cold or a hoax or all of the above, with fellow patriots.”
“I want the virus now,” Bundy exclaimed in a meeting with other patriots in an old factory north of Boise. Bundy is currently searching for a venue for an Easter Sunday service he hopes will attract up to one thousand people. Bundy is extending a special invitation to those who may be infected with the virus to attend. “I’m asking those with symptoms or who have tested positive to spit into a bathtub which I will get into and soak in while the pastor prays over me. That way, I can get it, develop Godly anti-bodies, and be resistant to future strains of it so I can continue my fight against the socialists who perpetrated this hoax in the first place.”
President Trump issued an executive order Wednesday morning declaring that “the past does not exist, never took place and therefore cannot be referred to in public discourse or in print in any way.”
Critics immediately claimed the president was attempting to erase the recent historical record of his statements on the Coronavirus, which, if they existed, would have shown that the president dismissed the crisis early on and were replete with dubious information, distortion and lies.
In contrast, Trump supporters were elated with the new order. Senator Lindsey Graham noted that “the Deep State has viciously used the president’s own statements against him in the past…well, I guess I can’t say that now that the past doesn’t exist. They’re planning to use his past comments against him, which they can’t do now, since they no longer exist. Checkmate, libtards.”
However, far-left, extremist anti-Trump radicals defied the order and underscored a series of non-existent Trump quotes from the past and contrasted them with his more recent statements, including his reversal on the Coronavirus being like the common flu.
For instance, yesterday, in his press conference, the president said, “A lot of people that thought about it, ride it out, don’t do anything, ride it out, and think of it as the flu. But it’s not the flu. It’s vicious.” As rabid Trump haters pointed out, as recently as February 26th, which no longer exists, Trump said “This is a flu. This is like a flu.”
Another Trump critic, Milo Ranchard, alluded to Trump’s non-existent March 17th statement in which he claimed that he had “always known this is real–this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” Ranchard pointed out that the World Health Organization had declared the Coronavirus a pandemic on March 11th, just six days before, and that Trump had insisted on continuing his mass rallies six days before that on March 6th, apparently while knowing a pandemic was sweeping the world.
Conservative radio host Glenn Beck set himself on fire to encourage
other fifty-plus Americans to do away with themselves in order to “clear
the deck” for younger Americans to resume their work and jump-start an
economy shut down by the Coronavirus.
Mr. Beck was the third prominent conservative to immolate himself in
recent weeks. Fox News’ Brit Hume and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan
Patrick had publicly torched themselves earlier in the month to
dramatize the need for older Americans to “remove the dry brush in the
path of the oncoming fire” as Mr. Hume put it in a sobering Fox News
commentary.
Brit Hume had told a friend that older Americans needed a “wake-up
call” before dousing himself with gasoline and igniting himself in front
of the Fox News building in New York City. Lieutenant Governor Patrick
had similarly expressed disgust for “selfish seniors who insist on
surviving while the Dow drops like a condemned man falling through a
gallows trap door” before squirting lighter fluid over himself at a
Texas barbecue restaurant and lighting himself up.
Beck had lauded the self sacrifice of Hume and Patrick on his radio
program Tuesday and acknowledged that his initial plan to send older
folks out to work was flawed. “Older people going out to work who get
infected are going to bring the virus back to other, younger people in
their families. I hadn’t really thought it through carefully. The fact
is we are the weak link, and the weak link must be eliminated or the
whole chain breaks.”
Right wing radio titan Rush Limbaugh was not impressed with the trio’s solo acts, however. The Medal of Freedom recipient, who had previously told his listeners “the coronavirus is the common cold,”
said their efforts were a step in the right direction, but that a
larger group of older patriots needed to step up and make a much bigger
“splash” to promote a mass die off of seniors to save the economy.
“Folks, we need a busload of brave seniors to barrel over a cliff to
counter the lamestream media’s mantra of ‘every life matters.’ Hell,
I’ll drive the bus myself.”
Parched Thistle Prairie, Texas. An Evangelical Swingers Club, which has been criticized by local authorities for continuing its Wednesday night “Commingle for Christ” orgies in spite of the growing menace of the Coronavirus, has decided to carry on with the weekly event. Leaders of the group, which calls itself “The Swollen Vessel,” insist that “we are operating under the protection of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that the demonic power of the Coronavirus holds no power over us.”
Carl and Cynthia Griggs, the couple that founded the association, argue that “Godly recreational sex with multiple Christian partners is critical to the physical and spiritual health of open-minded believers” and that to suspend it in a time of crisis is more likely to leave its members vulnerable to the demonic power of the virus. The Griggs, who up until a week ago dismissed the Coronavirus as a liberal hoax, are now describing it as “the infernal Chinese affliction.”
Carl Griggs pointed out that Texas Governor Greg Abbott had not issued a state wide “shelter-in-place” order, and that there were currently no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Parched Thistle Prairie. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the Chinese affliction is ravaging ungodly places like Austin and San Antonio, do you?”
Passionate Donald Trump supporter Phil Jaworski died of the Coronavirus Monday night at Presence Saint Joseph Hospital in Chicago, insisting to his final breath that he was in fact dying from the flu despite testing positive for COVID-19 last week.
Jaworksi made news last year when he warned during an interview at a Trump rally in September that “My AR-15 is locked and loaded if Democrats abuse the Constitution by using one of its provisions” in reference to House Democrats’ efforts to impeach the president.
Doctors believe Jaworski caught the virus from his son Mike, who was visiting his parents in Chicago and who also tested positive for COVID-19 but was asymptomatic. The younger Jaworski similarly dismissed his father’s diagnosis as the work of “left-wing, Deep State medical science.”
“He didn’t even want to go to the hospital,” Jaworski said. “My mother dragged him here. He knew Medicare was a socialist Ponzi scheme. He should have died in front of the TV watching Fox News and cradling his AR-15.”
Jaworski, who was in town to attend the “Paunchy Patriots” gun show when his father got sick, vowed to carry on his father’s fight against the Deep State. He planned to attend the gun show in spite of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s executive order banning gatherings of 50 people or more.
“Governor Pritzker’s ban is clearly unconstitutional since it selectively targets large gatherings on the unfounded theory that larger groups of people increase the odds of transmitting a virus. I don’t know where they came up with that.”
Some music critics are growing unsettled by the recent trend in Country Music toward more cerebral themes and elaborate concept albums they fear is tearing the genre from its humble roots. Carter McFarland, editor of Country Music Today, worries that some artists are drifting too far from the fundamentals. “We’ve got some folks out there who are straying from the Six B’s: boozing, brawling, balling, breaking up, believing and bombing. If you don’t have at least one of those ingredients, it ain’t country.”
Indeed, some country artists have plunged into ambitious projects that flout the Six B’s and range into topics previously unheard of in Country. Travis Crowley, a rising star on the Nashville scene, recently dropped a new concept album about the Peloponnesian War in Ancient Greece. “I was kicking around the ranch reading Thucydides,” Crowley explained, “and it struck me that the war between Athens, which was the intellectual and cultural capital of the Greek world, and Sparta, which was the dominant military state, was an apt metaphor for the perennial conflict between humanity’s higher and lower states of consciousness.”
Crowley’s sophistication does not sit well with some of the more established Country stars. Randy Weatherby, whose latest hit “Tehran Will Pay for Your Cheating Heart” is about an American pilot who drops his payload on the Iranian capital while breaking up with his unfaithful girlfriend online, guzzling Jack Daniels and giving his heart to Jesus, tweeted, “All this fancy talk about the Greeks don’t belong in Country.” In another tweet, he wrote, “If you’re writing a song about war and there are no red, white and blue five-hundred pound bombs falling somewhere in the Middle East, you’re doing it all wrong.”
In a bid to support their president’s tough immigration policies, hundreds of thousands of white Trump supporters around the country are taking backbreaking, low-paying agricultural jobs usually done by immigrants. The surprise movement, which emerged suddenly out of nowhere, has been dubbed the “Caucasian Campesinos” by the media.
One of these hardy Trump supporters, Stephanie Briggs, a blond, blue-eyed strawberry picker in Watsonville, California, said she felt she needed to do more to support the president’s policies. “You know, like everybody else, I was sharing the anti-Mexican memes on Facebook and screaming ‘Build the Wall’ at Trump rallies. But then I realized that the problem cannot be solved by the government building the wall alone. Real American patriots like me have to step up and do the grueling, dirty, thankless jobs they say we won’t do and do them with a smile.”
After Briggs’ supervisor shouted at her to get back to work, she stepped back into the field. “Gotta get back to work,” she said with a chipper grin. “But you know, the long hours of stooping and picking in the baking sun with few bathroom breaks, low pay, and primitive living conditions is a small price to pay for preserving America for real Americans.”
Alabama Tomato Farmer Barbara Franks is now turning enthusiastic white Trump supporters away from work, and the ones she has are harvesting her tomatoes at an unprecedented rate.
“I don’t know what happened,” she marveled. “Back in 2011, when Jerry Spencer tried to recruit American citizens for agricultural labor here, very few showed interest and almost none of them lasted more than a few days, and the ones that did picked a fraction of what the immigrants could pick. It’s a goddamned miracle.”
Larry Kudlow, expert on infectious diseases, says that containment of the Coronavirus is “pretty close to air-tight.”
As the rest of the world urgently prepares for a potential pandemic that has already apparently claimed the lives of 2,700 people and sickened as many as 80,000 worldwide, President Trump and his Republican supporters are not being taken in.
Radio host and Medal of Freedom recipient Rush Limbaugh sought to bring clarity to the rapidly unfolding situation with his own uniquely cogent analysis on Monday. “It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump,” he said, going on to explain that the virus was nothing more than “the common cold” being over-hyped by the media in an attempt “to get Trump.”
After accusing the media and Democrats of magnifying “the common cold,” however, Limbaugh went on to claim that the coronavirus was, in fact, whipped up in a “Chicom” (Chinese Communist) laboratory. “I’m telling you, the Chicoms are trying to weaponize this thing,” he argued. “Every nation is working on things like this, and the Chicoms obviously in their lab are doing something here with the coronavirus–and it got out.”
President Trump was also not fooled by the media hysteria about the disease. At a press conference in New Delhi, India Tuesday, he insisted the situation was “under control” and was a “problem that’s going to go away,” in spite of the fact that the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Nancy Messonnier warned that the disease will certainly spread in the United States. Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow, an expert on infectious diseases, also noted that containment of the virus was “pretty close to air-tight.”
Trump’s Director of the Department of Conspiracies, Richard Trumball, said he thought Rush Limbaugh was on the right track with his Chicom laboratory conspiracy but hadn’t taken it far enough. “Rush hinted at Bernie Sander’s involvement with the Chicoms over there, but I’ll do him one better. Sanders has funneled money from George Soros and Planned Parenthood to the Chinese government to develop a disease that will kill conservatives all over the world. I’ve got Giuliani heading over there to research it. If you don’t believe me, call Rudy.”
