The Lotus Eater

Oh, my stars! I’m finally invited! At long last, I get to go to the big dance! What, pray tell, am I going on about? Well, let me tell you…

* It is unclear whether the invitation was sent to Bigfoot or the Bondo Mystery Ape; in any case, they are very similar and can be treated equally in all regards.
**There are 132 words that mean “to smash” in the Sasquatch language.

Kim Jong Il (Dear Leader)
Location: N. Korea
Style: Bat Shit Do
Bio: No one is quite clear on what exactly Dear Leader hopes to accomplish in the Tournament, though it is suspected that he is motivated by his desire find the Perfect Universal Hairstyle and impose it upon the people of the world.
S/D: Immune to most diplomatic attacks.
Weakness: No diplomatic powers to speak of; very few powers at all to speak of.
Hobbies: Cinema Criticism, Famine Management.

I think my favorite comment ever made by President Bush (and he says alot of amazing things) is when, in his stirring speech following Katrina, he claimed that “we will prevail against nature”. It just might have been topped, in a disturbing, nerdy way, had he further pledged to prevail against the wind, but I totally respect anyone who challenges that bitch goddess, Mother Earth. In Roman times, Caligua only had the balls to declare war on Poseidon; once again, we have one-upped our forebears. Bush Dynasty-1, Julio-Claudian Dynasty-0!

In anycase, it got me to thinking about how much I adore the President’s lofty, triumphant rhetoric (which has been noticeably absent lately–where’d you go, big guy?). He may be the greatest conceptual warrior in all of recorded history! And there are a wonderfully astonishing number of abstractions that, if all goes according to plan, we will have prevailed over by the end of his term in office. I have compiled a working list here, but please feel free to add any crusade I may have overlooked in the comments.

Things Over Which We Will Have Prevailed By 2008
• Evil (as an ontological entity)
• The Axis of Evil (around which ontological evil rotates once a year)
• Evil-doers
• Terrorism
• Terrorists
• Narcoterrorists (who represent a non-Muslim, Spanish-speaking branch of Islamofascism)
• Illegal Drugs
• Generic Drugs
• Trial Lawyers (cf. “evil-doers”)
• Activist Judges
• Loose Constructions of the Constitution
• Moderately Strict Constructions of the Constitution
• Strict Constructions of the Constitution That Bend the Rules on Saturday Night
• The Culture of Death
• Vegetable Euthanizers
• Assisted Suicide
• Roe v. Wade
• Indulgence-oriented Forms of Contraception
• AIDS
• Homosexual Men and Unattractive, Politically-unconnected Lesbians
• Same-sex Marriage
• Same-sex Adoption
• Man-on-dog
• Human-animal Hybrids
• Cloning
• Clones
• Stars Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones (universally panned)
• Spoilers
• Leaks
• Self-aggrandizing Whistleblowers
• Poorly Concealed Corporate Malfeasance
• Progressive Taxation
• The New Deal
• Sharing
• Unionization
• Unfree Trade
• Third World Poverty
• The Poor
• Children Who Have Been Left Behind
• The Politicization of Politics
• Flip-flopping
• Cutting and Running
• Being Against the Troops
• Televised Burials
• Fossil Fuel Dependence
• Unexploited Caribou Preserves
• Unmelted Glaciers
• Unlogged Forests
• Uncleared Brush
• Unbagged Quails
• Skeptically-based Initiatives

Hmm, that is all I can recall at the moment. Now, I realize that I am not your commander-in-chief, but I would like to propose just a few more things that we can prevail over in the next few years. I know it’s a tall order–we have so much on our plates already–but rally round and give it your best.

The Lotus Eater’s Suggestions For Further Things Over Which to Prevail
• The Ubiquity of Salmon
• Bands I Don’t Know About But Are Evidently “Cool”
• The Crushing Loneliness of 21st Century Anomie (felt when you dine on salmon by yourself while listening to some emo band you have never heard of and understand just how much is wrong with the world)

A dear friend of mine recently confided to me her deep and unexplainable love for those animals that natural selection saw fit to make caricatures of themselves. She adores predators that can’t be trusted (as every good predator must be), builders that build only by the dictate of uninspired instinct, and all those other animals Dame Natura has carelessly mutated to the point where ordinary human eyes fail to make a connection between visage and utility.

In fact, this extraordinary young woman’s passion for the absurdities that are the necessary result of our Creator’s concept of infinite variety has taken her beyond a state of appreciation for the world’s oddities. She has become something of a naturalist. She is a collector of ecological unlikelihoods. And like every good naturalist, she has specialized; she has narrowed her field of focus. As of late, she has taken a great deal of interest in dental irregularity. A wide interest, I must say: beavers (those builders spoken of), sharks (and those great, unanswered ichthyological questions: Why so many teeth? And why so many sets of them?), and crocodiliians (whose mouths appear almost too primitively ferocious to make it in this, our diplomatic age).

I have learned, however, that she has begun to feel her collection, at least toothwise, is complete. It is like watching a driftwood artist moving into coral sculpture–I anticipate eagerly her new direction without completely comprehending how she will travel from point A to point B.

And so, with a certain, admitted amount of ignorance regarding the modus operandi of her lovely madness, I am going to open my impudent mouth and speak on what I feel may be a valuable tangent. I have always believed that, no matter how briefly lines of thought may intersect, each follows an interesting, and sometimes significant direction.

The premise of my commentary (or the starting point of my questionable digression, if you prefer) rests on a foundation of antithesis. That is to say, I have considered the particular category of creatures my naturalist friend has investigated and have tried to create its inverse. She has concentrated on absurdities arising from the surplus of characteristics evolution has bestowed on some members of the animal kingdom. She has not proceeded without reason–she can communicate, more ably than anyone else of my acquaintance, the endearing aesthetic of the grotesquely gifted. Her adoration of ungainly beauty, untainted by any malice, deserves nothing but the highest recommendation.

However, I spoke of opposites. I am always inclined to do so, whether or not it seems a worthwhile endeavor. In this case, I hope, my somersault approach to investigation is not in vain. When I realized that natural surfeit was the guiding principle of my colleague’s course of study, I sought, in my thinking, for its mirror image, its negative. And I came to the idea of absence. Of course, I quickly apprehended that one hundred and one forgettable poets have passed their lives moaning about that which is not there but plagues them nevertheless (indeed, this kind of muddled thinking betrays their disbelief in the reality of ideas: these men exist on a plane that requires physical presence to justify their metaphorical expeditions). It was not absence I was looking for, but paradoxical absence. I suppose what I mean is that I was reaching for those types of absurdities that arise from a lack of something essential; instances where nothingness, where the non-existence of necessary characteristics makes one of God’s creations complete. I was looking for a failure even greater than the Basset Hound.

I don’t know if the good Dr. __ has collected in the North Pole the kind of exquisite artifacts she has found in the South.

•••••

To tell the truth, I found it hard to think of concrete examples of absurd poverty, and it has always seemed to me that absurd wealth is the norm. My brain, in tight situations, always finds recourse and solace in the replaying of memories older than its critical eye. It is an involuntary reaction of mine, and, though it has sometimes provided me with insight, any knowledge I gain during the episode is a product of grace rather than intention. Blessed be then, my mind’s tolerance of free association! For in my quest to find a handicapped monster, I turned to pop culture. I do not pretend to be a trendsetter or an arbiter of what is fashionable, but, like every American-born human, I possess a great store of incidental information. I thank god my mother made me watch PBS because, otherwise, my ruminations would be far less instructive.

Nothing makes this more evident than the example I have found for my Benign Monster–that great Wooly Mammoth without tusks– Snuffleupagus. Yes, yes, I realize that he is a fictional character. His flesh-and-bone antecedents were mightily equipped, and the skills of the daring mammoth-hunter were rightly celebrated in Neolithic times. But Snuffy, man-made as he was, had none of these powerful attributes. Had he wanted to, he could not gore Bob or Gordon or Maria–he was without weapons, without teeth. In fact, this defanged pachyderm, for all his great size and bearing, was rendered so unimportant by his harmless nature, the denizens of Sesame Street did not believe in his existence. Sure, he is the elephant in the room, but he is an elephant without consquence.

Snuffleupagus brings to mind the state of oppression and victimhood that have hitherto marked the majority of the human race (blessed are the meek?). Violence has a tendency to actively forget its own violations and regard its unrecorded history in unspoken discomfort. I believe Snuffy is a particularly American incarnation of this process. With his luminous eyes and lispy lashes, I see him as an enlarged, betrunked water buffalo, alike to those that were slaughtered indiscriminately in the jungles of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam era. He is a ghost of the repressed memories of that American genocide. He is the personification of great crimes we fervently attempt to dismiss, and, who, through our dissembling, we completely disarm, only to add magnitude to his bizarrely effete spectre. I believe that Snuffy gained weight, but never corporeal presence, as the show went on.

It never occured to me, as a toddler, to distrust a program like Sesame Street. Later on, of course, the inevitable loss of innocence experienced by all the adolescents of our species made me suspicious and paranoid, even when retroactively regarding the assumptions of my childhood. I will not condemn Sesame Street. But I will tell you, I believe the show traverses along slippery ideological grounds.

Sesame Street was brave simply for treating Snuffleupagus as subject of discussion. At the same time, he is a subject within a tightly controlled frame. The program makes sure that this monster is powerless to upset the social bonds that hold its community together. Somehow the acceptance of Snuffy is too dangerous to the Street; he must be depicted as the product of a series of halluncinations experienced by an already grotesque canary (working, no doubt in the far-flung mines of the Left Wing) . It also may be of note to remark that in de-tusking him, he was not only unable to respond to any violence done to him, but lost any hope of being a sexual mammoth as well. Without status markers, he could never be considered a good mate. For all intents and purposes, Snuffleupagus does not exist because his physiological incompleteness makes him an impossibility. And that is why I feel he is worthy of my attention and love. I have always been an advocate for the dentally challenged.

••••

Imagine, dear reader, an impoverished leprechaun or a smokeless dragon. Weak, cuddly monsters made so by the bathos of their bereft conditions. Nature too, has real-life correspondences. I can think of nothing more adorable than the dodo bird or the many other small and foolish prey that went extinct due to their complete ignorance of predators. These creatures are not merely ill-equipped (like chickens and the pekingese)–all aspects of their physiology are in direct conflict with the necessities of survival.

And so, if I could be so bold, I would suggest to my colleague, so well versed in the absurdity of over-manifestation, she might explore the absurdity of absence.

I know, I know, I am a day late on this one. This is from an unsolicited response (lucky recipient!) to a trivia tidbit sent to me about the day of the month called the Ides in Ancient Rome. Who’s up for a little light history lesson with just a dash of my world-famous denuciatory hot sauce? No shoving in line now…

Actually, Roman calendrical (is that a word?) history is all rather interesting. Their workweek was 8 days; getting one’s mind around how such a difference changes experience is the kind of thinking for which the antiquarian lives.

Until the Julian Calendar came around, the year was not 365 days, and once in awhile they would just intercalate a week or a month. However, since the Pontifex Maximus was responsible for deciding when to do it (as in many societies, Rome felt the calendar to be of a religious nature), the intercalation depended on his diligence. Many Pontifices (notably Gauis Domitius Ahenobarbus c. 90s and 80s BCE) were not interested in maintaining rigorous observation of these extra days. After all, the Roman priests and augurs were noblemen and their positions merely status symbols in what was an essentially political, state-controlled religion.

The fact that this resulted in a calendar way out of step with the seasons was a side note for powerful noblemen preoccupied with exploiting the resources of foreign provinces and large slave estates. It may have been a more significant problem for small-holding farmers trying to manage their land into prosperity, though I imagine they simply adapted, as the weak always do, to a world run by men with weapons and gold.

When G. Julius Caesar became Pontifex Maximus (a rather stunning electoral victory in a race that could have broken his career, had he lost–yes, the high priest was an elected official) things changed. Today, those who are familiar with this historical giant usually remember him as one of the West’s foremost conquerors or that baldie who said, “Et tu, Brute”. Well, the latter is in doubt (Shakespeare’s lines do have some basis, though most extant sources have him saying, “And you, my son” in Greek) and the former is certainly true.

However, Caesar’s immense intellectual energy and prowess have been relegated to the background. He was a brilliant writer and lawyer, considered only second to Cicero by both historians and contemporaries. In fact, Cicero refused, on several occasions, to oppose him in court (Cicero’s oratical and intellectual reputation was all that he had as a provincial “New Man”–to be beat by Caesar, descended from one of Rome’s oldest families, would have not only been an immense personal defeat, but would have confirmed the social prejudices of the Roman aristocracy).

Anycase, Julius’ intellect was particularly remarkable for its elegance and the compassion with which it regarded the common populace. When he was the Pontifex Maximus, he reworked the calendar, and it has come down to us with only minor changes. In this, as in other undertakings, I see him essentially as a reorganizer (or reformer, if you like). He rearranged things in such a way as to make them more efficient and useful for his own purposes and those of the world at large. In unfinished public works projects (those Ides…) and early measures to create an integrated, cohesive Roman Empire (I don’t quite mean mulitculturalism here, but it was a start) , we see a man who, while no doubt interested in his own glory, built the foundations of his legacy on the principles of universal utility. He saw the potential for a world more congenial to the human enterprise, and felt that he was just the man to do the job.

Of course, this legacy was built on mountains of blood. That’s always the case. Whether it’s Alexander or Caesar or Charlemagne or the French Revolution or the American Empire, there’s bound to be suffering and a high body count. What separates the men from the boys and the visionaries from the tyrants–all visionaries are tyrants, in my opinion, though I do not think that this formula works both ways–is a crucially important commitment to goals beyond self, beyond profit or power. It is a way of reshaping daily experience that concieves of society as tool of humankind, which always can be honed to a finer point. The small interests of small men seek only to carve out sharp, particular notches in the tip of the arrowhead, useful to none but themselves. In their pursuit of exclusively private aims, they ruin the integrity of the tool for their own short-term advantage.

Reagan lowered taxes whereas I was born in the month of July.

Some of you can claim the dubious privilege of having met the Lotus Eater (he probably doesn’t remember you). However, if you do count among this sadly condemned group , you may recall the rather precarious, or shall we say, embryonic, state of his professional career.

Well, you forget about all that. There’s a new racket in town. You see, I have found an uncharted niche in the economic waters.

Essentially, it boils down to renting myself out as a scintillating conversationalist for dinner, cocktail, and office parties. I mean, I hate to be arrogant, but I never believed in self-deprecation–I am one hell of a charming nerd. Some of you have lived it and loved it. Don’t worry, you’re still on the house.

However, hope against hope that someone will reply to my craigslist ad for Intellectual Entertainment Services. I need to join that new economy everyone goes on about. And soon. It’s getting close to the end of the month.

I will keep you updated with any responses I recieve and their concomitant adventures.

Update: Unfortunately, this posting has expired on craigslist for the time being without any replies (which either speaks to ignorance of American consumers or the high quality of cocktail parties in the District). You can still catch the text here. I am currently trying to rework my business model and will keep you informed of any developments.