IJ study archive

Joelle's walk and U.H.I.D. (pp. 226–227)

quote

The Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed was unofficially founded in London in B.S. 1940 in London U.K. by the cross-eyed, palate-clefted, and wildly carbuncular wife of a junior member of the House of Commons, a lady whom Sir Winston Churchill, P.M.U.K., having had several glasses of port plus a toddy at a reception for an American Lend-Lease administrator, had addressed in a fashion wholly inappropriate to social intercourse between civilized gentlemen and ladies. Unwittingly all but authoring the Union designed to afford the scopophobic empathic fellowship and the genesis of sturdy inner resources through shame-free and unconstrained concealment, W. Churchill—when the lady, no person’s doormat, informed him with prim asperity that he appeared to be woefully inebriated—made the anecdotally famous reply that while, yes, yea verily, he was indeed inebriated, he would the following A.M. be once again sober, while she, dear lady, would tomorrow still be hideously and improbably deformed.

Context

The origin myth entire, off the back of Joelle's laminated membership card: casual cruelty from the summit of power unwittingly authoring a fellowship of the hidden. The mission statement is embedded in the anecdote — "scopophobic empathic fellowship… shame-free and unconstrained concealment" — and the foundress ("cross-eyed, palate-clefted, and wildly carbuncular") steps straight out of scene 053's litany. (The doubled "founded in London in B.S. 1940 in London U.K." is as written.)

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