Futile Horn

10.19.2003 - 8:32 pm (face off 2003)

So David Blaine has successfully fasted for forty-four days. Well, he’s got four up on Jesus now, doesn’t he! So the makers of South Park were right: David Blaine is trying to start a new world religion. Well, I’m game; I’m changing the cross around my neck for a glass box. I heard in a chat room last night that Blaine only pooed one time while he was in the box. Too bad no one recorded how many times Jesus pooed in the desert. We could do a side by side statistical comparison. Find out who the real Messiah is.

And of course, you can’t mention poo and Jesus in the same sentence without thinking about that part in The Unbearable Lightness of Being where the face of God the Father is terrible for that sliver of a mouth. Because if God has a mouth then God eats and if he eats he digests and if he digests he shits. Which is completely unthinkable.

The more problematic image is really the part of the gospel where the resurrected Christ is given a piece of fish and he eats it. Now, the “human” Jesus no doubtly evacuated his bowels on Golgotha, but the fact the resurrected living-in-heaven-forever-and-ever Christ eats shows that his digestive track remains active. Heaven is supposed to be the place where only good things are. This story demonstrates that one of the following is true: either that idea is wrong, or somehow in heaven shit is good. Either option is intolerable.

In Greek mythology there is actually a degree of interest in divine digestive tracks. I remember looking but not finding very much scholarship on the subject, but I’m sure I’ve bantered about that topic before in relation to the Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, so I won’t do it again. I’ll just mention my favorite scene. When Apollo catches the infant Hermes running his cattle, he is about to administer a severe punishment when Hermes produces a loud emission of gas (it’s not clear from which end). Apollo laughs and lets him go.

Classical scholarship is dizzying sometimes. There is an ode of Horace’s, 3.12, on which all the commentators agree that the apparent addressee of the poem is actually the speaker talking to herself. I can find no special reason to believe this is so. One commentator says that others have maintained that it is the poet speaking, but this is not desirable. Not a word as to why, of course.

No wonder I am wary of graduate school. In addition to a reputation of being excessively pedantic sticklers, classicists also have appeared irresponsible and backward. Oh, and they went the extra mile in fostering that holocaust thing. Oops.

Last night I banged my knee fairly hard on the bottom of my desk. This would be nothing to tell about if I hadn’t hit it squarely on an old surgical scar. I’ve never really damaged it before and I was slightly worried if the whole thing would bust open or something. It was one of those concussion wounds where nothing really happens at first and then more and more blood flows, and the only other image of that kind of thing I had in my head was when the talented Mr. Ripley hits Dicky in the face with an oar, and first he just kinda yells “Ow” and then the next you know blood is pouring out of everywhere. Anyway, I didn’t die of course, but now I’ve great big scab on top of an even bigger scar. A scar that has it’s own freckle, by the way.

And no, I don’t actually wear a cross around my neck.

Born to play the funky céilí,
Futile Horn