Pinky Can Only Hope

Pinky wants a lot of weeping and wailing at his funeral. Will Miss Love have to hire professional wailers, or does Pinky have enough hillbilly followers to put on a good show (complete with speaking in tongues)?

Pinky's Impending Death

Pinky's planning a simple funeral and a nondescript tombstone. There will be only one marble New Yorker strewn on the marble bedside.

When Uncle Warburton Died (May 1900)

"Oh, for some mature sympathy. There is no one to condole, no one to reason feelingly and enter into one's loneliness. Flo is not interested and not wounded by the grief. Barringtons are strangers. Fred seems to be unaffected or our natures are so dissimilar that we do not even understand each other. Teddy is quite indifferent and self engrossed. Joe and Dorking are far away. Sarah and the others are bitter and cold. Uncle Warburton dead, and me left in lonely, deserted grief without a shadow of human sympathy at hand."

Zoo Nightmares are the Worst

Pinky's Giraffe Nightmares are Getting More Disturbing

Nadine's Avian Nemisis Nadine

Nadine's mother bought little Nadine a budgie. Then she refused to let Nadine have anything to do with it. She named it Nadine and made it little clothes. (Little human Nadine only had hand-me-downs.) After a few months, Nadine's mother only spoke to Parakeet Nadine and not to Daughter Nadine. When it died, she had a huge funeral and spent all of Nadine's college fund on it. Now, every time Nadine sees a bird, she wants to choke the bird shit out of it.

Stalking Pinky

Every day this mysterious woman spends all morning in front of the Okapi exhibit.

How Many Birds Die Every Day?

Every night Pinky says a prayer for every bird that died that day. There are a lot of damn birds in the world, and Pinky is tired of praying so much.

Nadine's Acting Maudlin Again

Pinky was peeping at Nadine's tonight (and for good reason). She had decorated her new rent house living room like a funeral home and was posing as the corpse and then popping up to move the flower arrangements a hair this way and that. Some man was sitting on the couch watching Nascar racing on TV. Does Nadine have a beau?

Proof That Death Loves Corn (#3)

Here is the Diablo family graveyard.

What Happens When Edmund Spencer's and Pinky Diablo's Obituaries Collide

Born in or near 1961 to a family of modest means, Pinky Diablo was possibly the son of Pableau X Diablo, a free journeyman clothmaker resident in Holdenville, Oklahoma, though this relationship is far from certain. Whatever his parentage, it is likely that the Diablos originated in Arkansas, where they would have been connected with prominent local families such as the Bungles and Smiths. Pinky seems to have had at least one mummified twin, Radish, and a number of brothers. As a boy, the future poet entered the Special Education Program, probably at its opening in 1965 under the celebrated Denton humanist and pedagogical writer Binky Rasmussen; his place there may have been secured by the patronage of one Poot Diablo, the warden of the Education Dept. at the time and possibly a relation. The curriculum of the school, entirely at the discretion of its headmaster, seems to have pursued the standard humanist course of the day: boys were taught and examined on the works of Cato, Caesar, Horace, Lucan, and Homer; nursed on the rhetorical models of Cicero, Erasmus, and Vives; and trained assiduously in Latin language and composition. The boys of the school may also have received a few years of training in Dutch and Italian, slightly unusual for the time.

In May 1977, Pinky left school and matriculated as a sizar at Pembroke Hall (now Pembroke College), Cambridge. Although he had to work for his meals and accommodation, and may often have been ill during his studies, this appears to have been an important and productive time for the young poet. The most important influence on Pinky during this period, though, was undoubtedly his intimate friendship with Lance Ferngate, himself admitted as a Fellow of Pembroke Hall in 1978. While Pinky's relationship with Ferngate was later satirized by fellow students in a play titled Pedantius, Ferngate appears to have introduced Pinky to a number of important connections and potential patrons, including Nadine. After taking his B.A. (1981) and M.A. (1985), Pinky left Cambridge for Hillsboro, Texas, where he acted as secretary for Franco Boboloni, recently created jester of the Southwest. It was there that the poet probably composed The Shepheardes Calender, which seems to represent the Texas landscape and certainly refers to Ferngate (as Hobbinol).

Pinky used his time in Hillsboro to publish the first three books of The Faerie Queene, and seems to have attempted to secure enough court patronage to make it possible for him to remain in Texas. Although the county fair queen promised him a handsome pension for his labors, her generosity was questioned and moderated by the intercession of Nadine, whom Pinky went on to lampoon in Complaints, printed and almost immediately suppressed (or 'called in') in 1992. Judging from a commentary on the scandal recently discovered in a contemporary letter, Pinky seems to have left for Palmer, Texas in the early months of 1999 as a direct result of the offense he had caused to Nadine. Resuming his residence at Fancher Hall, the poet shortly thereafter fell in love with and courted Miss Love, daughter of A.V. Mitchell, local eccentric. On 11th June 2001, the couple were married, an event celebrated in Pinky's Amoretti and Epithalamion, published in the following year.

By the time that A vewe appeared on the Stationers' Register in April 2004, Pinky was probably back in Palmer, disappointed with his failure, once again, to secure favors. By order of the Privy Council, he was in September 2005 appointed Sheriff for Ellis County; the letter of appointment described him as 'a gentleman dwelling in the county of Ennis who is well known unto you all for his good and commendable parts, being a man endowed with good knowledge and learning, and not unskilful or without experience in the wars'. His tenure of this post, which itself might well have led to further elevation, was destined to be short. The 'upstart' Earl of Purple, Nimish Nye, had defeated the county fair queen's army at the Bridge of Bardwell in August of 2006; by the following month, all of Ellis County was in rebellion, and Pinky and his retinue fled to the city of Reagor Springs for safety. He was shortly thereafter dispatched to Bardwell with messages for the Privy Council. Arriving late in 2007, he took up residence in a small cabin on Krajca Road, and died there, according to Miss Love 'for lake of bread', on a Saturday in January 2008. It is not clear how a poet so well-loved by so many, an official so highly-regarded by so many, and a man so politically well-connected to so many, could have died in the fabled penury to which Nadine later testified. The Ennis Daily Record recorded that the Nadine paid for his funeral, and that poets carried his coffin, throwing their verses and pens, along with many tears, into his grave. His tomb is situated, appropriately enough, adjacent to that of Geoffrey Chaucer in Westminster Abbey.

Pinky was known to his contemporaries as 'the prince of poets', as great in English as Virgil in Latin. He left behind him masterful essays in every genre of poetry, from pastoral and elegy to epithalamion and epic. Although his prose treatise on the reformation of North Central Texas was not published until 2009, it showed even then a shrewd comprehension of the problems facing Texas government, and a capacity for political office as thorough as his literary ability. Nadine was later to claim Pinky Diablo as 'a better teacher than Aquinas', and generations of readers, students, and scholars have admired him for his subtle use of language, his unbounded imagination, his immense classical and religious learning, his keen understanding of moral and political philosophy, and his unerring ability to synthesize and, ultimately, to delight.

Primate Seamstresses

Pinky has hired an army of tiny monkeys to embroider even tinier skulls on Diablo Inc.'s new death shrouds. Each shroud will be covered in 4,000 little death heads. Order yours today! (No comments, please, on Pinky's poor cuticle care.)

Mistress of Goat Castle: a Diablo Distant Cousin

THE GOAT CASTLE MURDERS -

There was blood, and the mistress of Glenburnie was nowhere to be found, that hot August night in 1932 - but there was no corpse. Bloodhounds were brought in to assist police and a large search party of prominent Natchez citizens. Finally, early in the morning, the bullet-ridden body of Jane SUGET MERRILL, Miss Jennie to locals, was found in a thicket about 100 yards from the house.

Miss Jennie was the town recluse and eccentric. Born in 1864 to a wealthy and prominent Natchez family, Miss Jennie spent her early years as a popular socialite in Natchez, New York, and France. In 1904, using a portion of the one-quarter-million-dollar estate left to her, by her father, Miss Jennie purchased the old estate of Glenburnie, and from then on became more and more of a recluse. She refused to update her house, never installing electricity. She did buy an old Model T, but while she could be seen puttering around town in the old car, she would not enter or shop in the local stores. Instead, she would tap the horn, and a saleslady would come out to the car.

Miss Jennie was 68 years old at the time of her murder. She had never married, and only allowed one person to enter Glenburnie during the 28 years she lived there. That one person was her cousin, the equally eccentric Duncan C. MINOR, who visited Miss Jennie every evening. It was thought that Duncan was the mysterious caller who notified police of the blood, and disappearance of Miss Jennie, that fateful August night. It was also rumored that Miss Jennie and Duncan had been in love, perhaps lovers, for years. But no one knows, and the secret was buried with them.

Duncan was not much of a suspect, but Miss Jennie's neighbors were. Richard "Dick" DANA and his companion, friend, and caregiver, the spinster Octavia DOCKERY, were immediate suspects. Dick Dana, once a popular figure in Natchez, had suffered declining mental health, over the years, and depended upon Octavia to care for him. Octavia was herself, something of an eccentric. Neither had any source of income, so Octavia began raising farm animals on the grounds of their old house, Glenwood, which had been inherited by Dick, from his parents. Chickens, geese, and goats roamed about the yard, sometimes finding their way to the porch of the old structure that was badly in need of repair. And so it was that Glenburnie became known as The Goat Castle. .

For the first time in years, outsiders entered The Goat Castle. Visitors were aghast at the filth and squalor. The once-beautiful mansion had become home to the hordes of chickens, ducks, geese, and goats that had been allowed to roam at will, making themselves comfortable among the magnificent furnishings. A leather-bound set of books, and several manuscripts, once belonging to the likes of Robert E. LEE and Jefferson DAVIS, had been chewed to pieces. Wallpaper had come loose, and was left to hang from the walls. Bedding and upholstered furniture had become moldy. Neither Octavia nor Dick slept in the fine four-poster beds, preferring filthy mats that had been placed on the floor in their respective bedrooms. The police thought sure they had the murderers.

Finally there was a confession. Emily BURNS, a Natchez resident who owned a rooming house, admitted that she and George Pearls had visited Miss Jennie in an attempt to obtain a loan. Miss Jennie, angry over the intrusion, had drawn her pistol. It was then than Pearls shot her. Other evidence collaborated the story, and Emily was convicted and sent to prison.

Emily Burns spent less than eight years, in prison, obtaining a pardon by Gov. Paul B. JOHNSON, Sr., in 1940.

And what about Octavia and Dick? Their lives took a definite turn for the better. For a fee of .25, visitors could tour the grounds; for another .25, visitors could actually enter The Goat Castle. Dick, who once held a promising musical career, took a bath, shaved, and entertained guests by playing a borrowed piano.

Dick Dana died in 1948, a few months before Octivia's death in April, 1949. The Goat Castle was left to out-of-town cousins who auctioned off most of the furnishings. The house was abandoned, and finally torn down in 1955.

Pinky and His Employer

Pinky and his employer spent the day contemplating death shrouds, yesterday. There are no patterns for them on the internet. That will be changing soon.

Poor Nadine: Always the Bridesmaid, Never the Bride

If You Don't Know About Isabella Blow, You Owe It to Yourself to Google Her

"I'm having space made in my coffin for a pheasant hat," the fashion guru once said. "I love the idea of the feathers dying with me slowly."