Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Egregious

In Kansas identical twin boys were once forced to fight to the death barehanded. The winner would eat the loser’s brain, be granted two wives, and appointed sheriff of whatever county he chose while his mother sang the old Mayflower hymn "Life is the Seed of Death and we Come to Sow anon anon."  The practice was banned in 1983. No Kansas Democrat has been elected to statewide office since. "Old Twin Killer Two Wives" remains common slang for "sheriff" throughout the Great Plains.

No culture is innocent of the Martyr's fallacy. That old movie "Quills" for example has it all wrong. The Marquis de Sade actually lived as long and comfortably as most Marquises and died in his sleep not quite a day after having buttsex with his teenage girlfriend.  So I've read anyhow.  I haven't really looked into the sources for this and can only guess that one who'd have Sade for a boyfriend would be the sort to write a thousand pages on "The Last Buttsex of Sade". "The 120 Days of Sodom" is ridiculous by the way and I don't mean in the sense of a good basketball player.  It may feel heroic to presume that anything conventionally shocking must be liberating by definition but the actual work of Burroughs lower end Von Trier or Pink Flamingoes etc., is just a deadening stream of shit piled on top of shit literally or otherwise. That one movie from Europe I saw for example; either Spain or France I'm pretty sure. A teenage boy comes across his newly dead father's porn stash and responds to this discovery by throwing the mags into a trashcan, pissing on them, masturbating on them, (not to them by any means just on them) and then dousing it all in butane and setting it alight. The kids mother flirts with him repeatedly while referring to herself as "a bitch and a slut."  Later a group of men at a touristy restaurant have a spontaneous jerkoff contest.  No one asks them to so much as keep the noise down.  At last the kids mom french-kisses him while fondling his junk and then immediately slits her own throat. Roll credits. One may compare all this shit to Herzog, for example, who while intentionally shocking himself also has something to say about authority, masculinity, the illusion of triumphing over nature vs. the just as illusory romantization of it and how all of this blends together to make people stupid.

The Chili Peppers' "One Hot Minute" isn't as bad as people say.  "Aeroplane" is one of their best songs straight up and overall I'd say this desk is the best of their Currently on Drugs Right Now work.  Most people haven't heard a bit of their leering, dope sweat bro music from before Mother's Milk and this is for the best.
 
I would trace my immunity to bad trips to a point at age twenty or so when I watched Apocalypse now alone on mushrooms. It was orgasm-level stimulation as you may well assume and unqualifiedly positive. After the movie I went outside just to be outside. Across a church yard from my apartment there was a pink house with purple window frames where a woman in this I swear to God Ms. Gingerbread style getup was watering her plants. I stared at her and her house for a time, maybe an hour. Then I went home and watched Apocalypse Now alone on Mushrooms again.