Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Things Literary and Artistic

First things: it started for reals today, the faraway project that has consumed me and torn me from the loving bosom of my family, and late tomorrow I shall leave this place out by the highway off in deepest America for at least 4-5 weeks, the longest stretch I will have been away from it for nearly 8 months. Joy doesn't start to describe it, fellow East Coast urbanites.

I can also say that not only did it start, it started really, really well, and I am proud of and grateful to the several dozen underesteemed, mostly youngish rural Americans who work for me on this project, for their cunning and tremendously hard work and their motivation and their commitment to a thing done well for an entity I despise, despite that entity's best efforts to queer the deal. Opening Day for a big project is always fraught with little buggy things. Not so today--I can't imagine how, realistically, it could have gone better. By about 10 AM, when it became clear that we shot, we scored, I had secured from battle stations and the adrenaline crash had started, and the magnitude of the crash makes clear that this was one hell of a fucking rush. You're not reading this, mostly youngish rural Americans (and if you accidentally are, STFU, because it's a total coincidence that you think you know who I am, and it's someone else who's not me), but thanks. A tear to my eye, much larger than the one I gave Julius James last week, for reals.

But I digress, and I bore. Funny, if mostly unintelligibly clouded by literary wankitude, discussion of Moby Dick over a post and a couple of posts worth of comments over at BFF's.

I'm with the Dick haters. I learned long ago (see BFF's for cryptic clues if you give a fuck, or don't) that the novel (sperm!) is an extended and dreary metaphor (sperm!) about boyparts (sperm!) and their issue (sperm!). That is to say, it is about sperm, sperm, sperm, harpoons, sperm, sperm, harpoons, sperm, sperm, and sperm. Sure, epic framing story, way better than, say, The Menagerie and far superior to the horrific crap the same folks erected around Harlan Ellison's epic and legendary and beautiful The City on the Edge of Forever. And BFF will tell you that it's melodious, or some such poofy literary shit, and frankly, he's entitled to that sort of poetry because, well, you know, he just is.

But seriously, kids. Sperm. I have yet, in 40 years since, to hear a more compelling explanation, even from BFF, who's about as superior to me at comp-lit stuff as the Federation are to the Pakleds technologically. Hmm. Seems I'm vigorously rubbing a theme here. Oh well. Some say that's my greatest utility, and I have no cogent defense agin that theory. And let's not trivialize the Star Trek/sperm connection.

Let's flip elsewhere for further literary and artistic insight. It says here that some assclown hilariously thinks that Picasso conceived cubism as a misogynistic plot. The punchline, of course, is that the assclown writes this for First Things, a mostly Catholic journal that makes a dedicated pretense of interfaith contributions. Boggle. But read Edroso's post for some awesome commentary and meme-extension on this majestic assitude.

"Why?" you might well wail."Why do you, Landrucutus*, of all people, feel a need to pretend to any fucking substantive insight on literature, art, or really, anything other than sports or farting?"

It's a fair question. The truth is that you know what I think about me, and about Wisconsin and Egypt and admiring, and agreeing in every respect with, a SCOTUS opinion authored by Antonin Fucking Scalia, and rural America, and the ICC, and what My Local Locality's governing legislative body is getting ready to do to my wife and her ilk (which includes BFF's wife). The truth is that, of late, I've mostly used this space to whimper and otherwise proclaim my pulse to beloveds whose primary and utterly understandable reax (of late) are along the lines of, "Oh? You're not dead in a ditch somewhere along I-75, or tied to a tree grunting and squealing? Well, good for you, then, I suppose, sure, why not?"

I gotta say, I've thought about this long and hard (SPERM!) for the half hour or so I've spent writing this, and I'm pretty sure it boils down to fundamental insecurity about BFF's massive superiority in literary appreciation and his considerably less substantial superiority (mostly on account of being married to an artist and having fathered another artist, imhoe) in art appreciation, which is all a shame because we're not at all competitive except that's a lie and we are, totally. That's sort of an astonishing realization (except it isn't and shouldn't be), given that I just started popping this off (sperm!) after I read a couple of things and connected some dots that aren't really connectable except in the stream (sperm!) of my consciousness. Jealousy? Really? Jesus H Fucking Christ on a Wobbly Fucking Dryrotted Crutch, Landru! Get a fucking grip!

Finally: someone in one of the hotel rooms bordering mine is going at it really long and hard (sperm!). I mean, thump thump thump thump thump thump thump, at a really astonishing pace and rhythm, I mean we're talking like Surfin' USA or 52 Girls, sustained for a ridiculously long time. Salud, neighbors. And, of course, sperm!

Just thought you'd like to know.

*My friends call me either Landru or "Hey, Asshole," although my mother still tends to stick with "Dammit" and my wife mostly goes with, "Dood, what the fuck?"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are the obelisk and the Kirok.

Whale done, Cap'n.

Jim H. said...

Art & Sperm:

(1) http://alpha.fdu.edu/~boyer/Bostelmann_credit.html


(2) http://www.thelocal.de/society/20081223-16325.html

You're only using the word SPERM to generate Googling eyeballs?

What about Santorum?

Landru said...

OMFG. Please see BFF's place, dood.

And really? If you seriously think I give a fuck about googleballs? Please slit my throat and don't look back. Whistle a happy tune as you saunter away, even. Really.

Sasha said...

Googleballs are the province of the black physician.

Glad you aren't in a ditch dood. Knew you'd see the light on the Dick Moby. Also. Some of your friends call you "dumb shit" but not too often.

Glad about the glad. And the pulse.