Leo Wong is absent from Vleeptron without a note from the school nurse

The Vleeptron Ministry of the Census is disappointed to report that Leo Wong is absent without any sufficient explanation or note from the school nurse.

Those who sing God's praises are a dime a dozen, they keep the acoustic guitar industry thriving. Painters, sculptors, writers, poets who focus their skills and energies on God's glory are falling out of the trees.

But in my relatively long-ish experience, Leo Wong is the only human being who directs his/her entire artistic and spiritual energies on glorifying the Name and Word of God through computer programming.

Or maybe there are lots of these, too -- but Leo is the only one I've found with so powerful and rich a skill, talent and Vision.

Leo runs a joint in cyberspace called J4J, or Java For Jesus. Needless to say, he programs and manipulates his electronic palette using the programming language Java. Java is Muy Caliente these days, everybody wants the community college to teach him/her Java, the heck with C++. Java is Hot, Java is Now, Java is exeriencing explosive growth in its popularity, Java is The Future.

The idea behind it, if I got this right, is that Java programs (or applets) love to wander through cyberspace from Alien Operating System to Verkakte Operating System to Clumsy (© Microsoft) Operating System to Different Operating System -- but a Java applet will have no problem running and executing correctly on nearly every computer it encounters. Java is eminently Portable.

Java also I think was Sun Microsystem's Champion to Slay the Evil Microsoft Competitor, VisualBasic. I bought VB, took the shrinkwrap off, stuck the disk in, and holy crap that was scary and ugly and senseless! I never went back THERE again! It was like some kind of radioactive toxic assaultive electronic arcade video game.

This venture into the bowels of computer technology is being written by The World's Oldest BASIC Programmer -- but not the last! QuickBASIC rawks! BASIC will Live Forever!

Beginner's
All-Purpose
Symbolic
Instruction
Code

-- Dartmouth's Precious Gift to Suffering Humanity, which was Screaming in the Darkness for a Way to Control them New-Fangled Computer doohickey things back in the 1960s. The buzz is that there is more BASIC code in the guts of the galaxy's computers than code writ in any other lingo. And when the Seti Thingies finally pop the hood on our far-flung NASA Voyager Probes, they will realize that All The Most Sentient Earth Bio-Units program in BASIC!

Here is an exquisite VLEEPTRON from Leo and J4J -- far more beautiful that this thuggish, vulgar, talentless planet deserves, but it's on permanent display in the Vleeptron Planetary Portrait Gallery ("the Sznuuurvv"), in the Poortown Parva neighborhood of Ciudad Vleeptron.

If anybody sees Leo, the Ministry asks that you tell him to check in and Leave A Comment. Meanwhile, being quite incompetent at computer programming and writing poetry, I Copy and Paste the following, which was written by a fellow who had taken a Vow of Poverty, and so didn't want any compensation, or credit, or protection of his intellectual property. Right? Well, he hasn't been alive for a very long time, and that means I can post it to Vleeptron.

* * *

Two poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins
(1844 - 1889)

Spring and Fall:
to a young child

MÁRGARÉT, áre you gríeving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, líke the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you wíll weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's spríngs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It ís the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

~ ~ ~

The Blessed Virgin compared
to the Air we Breathe

WILD air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that 's fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing's life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life's law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God's infinity
Dwindled to infancy
Welcome in womb and breast,
Birth, milk, and all the rest
But mothers each new grace
That does now reach our race --
Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess's
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do --
Let all God's glory through,
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

I say that we are wound
With mercy round and round
As if with air: the same
Is Mary, more by name.
She, wild web, wondrous robe,
Mantles the guilty globe,
Since God has let dispense
Her prayers his providence:
Nay, more than almoner,
The sweet alms' self is her
And men are meant to share
Her life as life does air.
If I have understood,
She holds high motherhood
Towards all our ghostly good
And plays in grace her part
About man's beating heart,
Laying, like air's fine flood,
The deathdance in his blood;
Yet no part but what will
Be Christ our Saviour still.
Of her flesh he took flesh:
He does take fresh and fresh,
Though much the mystery how,
Not flesh but spirit now
And makes, O marvellous!
New Nazareths in us,
Where she shall yet conceive
Him, morning, noon, and eve;
New Bethlems, and he born
There, evening, noon, and morn --
Bethlem or Nazareth,
Men here may draw like breath
More Christ and baffle death;
Who, born so, comes to be
New self and nobler me
In each one and each one
More makes, when all is done,
Both God's and Mary's Son.
Again, look overhead
How air is azurèd;
O how! nay do but stand
Where you can lift your hand
Skywards: rich, rich it laps
Round the four fingergaps.
Yet such a sapphire-shot,
Charged, steepèd sky will not
Stain light. Yea, mark you this:
It does no prejudice.
The glass-blue days are those
When every colour glows,
Each shape and shadow shows.
Blue be it: this blue heaven
The seven or seven times seven
Hued sunbeam will transmit
Perfect, not alter it.
Or if there does some soft,
On things aloof, aloft,
Bloom breathe, that one breath more
Earth is the fairer for.
Whereas did air not make
This bath of blue and slake
His fire, the sun would shake,
A blear and blinding ball
With blackness bound, and all
The thick stars round him roll
Flashing like flecks of coal,
Quartz-fret, or sparks of salt,
In grimy vasty vault.
So God was god of old:
A mother came to mould
Those limbs like ours which are
What must make our daystar
Much dearer to mankind;
Whose glory bare would blind
Or less would win man's mind.
Through her we may see him
Made sweeter, not made dim,
And her hand leaves his light
Sifted to suit our sight.
Be thou then, O thou dear
Mother, my atmosphere;
My happier world, wherein
To wend and meet no sin;
Above me, round me lie
Fronting my froward eye
With sweet and scarless sky;
Stir in my ears, speak there
Of God's love, O live air,
Of patience, penance, prayer:
World-mothering air, air wild,
Wound with thee, in thee isled,
Fold home, fast fold thy child.