Fuck Joy!

The concept of joy naturally has a positive connotation, but it’s really camouflages the need for escape and oblivion. Joy may be associated with so called Dionysiac type experiences in which wine and other substances produce the illusion of oneness with nature and others—an illusion that's quickly dispelled by the path of destruction generally left in the wake of such experiences. Jon Krakauer’s book about Missoula and the Grizzlies reviewed recently in the Times recounts the aftermath of several on campus Dionysiac experiences (“Jon Krakauer’s ‘Missoula” Looks at Date Rape in a College Town,” NYT, 4/19/15) Fuck joy! It’s just materialism in formal dress. The reason so many people are loathe to meditate is that it’s the opposite of a joyous experience and it’s certainly not something that can be attempted if you’re inebriated. Meditation puts you in touch with reality. In this sense it tends to be rather disappointing since it’s not the white light experience which most people anticipate. Rather meditation is a shedding of wishes and desires, culminating in a rather disconcerting and sometimes frightening nothingness which constitutes a form of human truth. Once a session is ended, the meditator returns to the comforting strife of his everyday existence, with its temptations, desires and hallelujahs. Joy is like a popper. It raises the bar too high. Yet get a rush then you crash. Momentary joy may be found in a steak or a great orgasm, but it passes with nothing left to fill the emptiness than the prospect of the next joyous event--or hit. Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (l968) tells the story of one such search for joy by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

Survival of the Fittest?

Dwight Garner starts his Times review of the fourth volume Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle by citing Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 (“Review: Karl Ove Knausgaard’s: ‘My Struggle: Book Four’”, NYT, 4/20/15). My Struggle or Min Kamp is naturally an intentional and provocative allusion to Hitler’s infamous ars poetica. Garner remarks “ There’s a special kind of despair, Thomas Pynchon observed…that can arrive ‘when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.'” Garner discountenances the kind of despair Pynchon is talking about in the case of the “quasi-autobiographical”18 year old character depicted in the novel. However, that sounds precisely what he's suffering from to the extent that he's a virgin and gifted with a mind that easily makes fictions out of everyday reality. In our day and age when varying sexual styles--transgender, transvestite, homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, pre-op transexual--are openly flaunted and politicized, it’s hard to imagine one finding the equivalent for the thrilling shame of a secret and transgressive obsession. The Crying of Lot 49 was published in the sixties, which while the heart of the Woodstock era, was still the dark ages for things like SRS, sexual reassignment surgery and hormone therapy Now, even soldiers in army brigs have the right to it (“Military Approves Hormone Therapy for Chelsea Manning," USA Today, 2/13/15). Yes, the interior of the mind is a separate place that doesn’t always participate in the ideological advancements of an age, at least as far as sexuality is concerned. But still the wonderful secretive thoughts that Pynchon and Knausgaard both allude to has been almost violently transfigured by amongst other things midday talk shows, on which sexual chimaeras are now free to air their once dirty laundry. It’s all kind of sad, since shame aided and abetted by institutions like the Catholic church, can be such a delicious turn on. Now people do whatever they like and it’s sometimes hard to tell if anything, well nigh anything momentous, is happening at all. Even movies like Louis Malle's Murmur of the Heart, which deals with incest, fail to make filmgoers bat an eye.The butter scene from Last Tango in Paris is looked at as normative sex and the almost clinically displayed fellatio of Marco Bellochio’s Devil in the Flesh fails to have the shock it did when it was released in l986. Thank God for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo, Or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) whose graphic depiction of coprophilia is still singular in its ability to elicit a gag reflex.

Pornosophy: The Blue Angel Inspires a Class Action Suit

Are you over 50? No this is not an advertisement for auto insurance from the AARP or for Tadalafil, but it's a notice from the Law Firm of Andrews and McCaffrey that you may be able to collect a substantial reward for suffering incurred by younger men and women who give you the impression they're attracted to you. Let’s say that the young man or woman greeting you at the gym in the morning bats her eyelids and makes you feel that you're the one thing that has made it worthwhile to be sitting in front of the drafty door at 6 in the morning. He or she doesn’t know you from Adam. They aren’t aware of  the beautiful soul hidden within an aging body, but still you persist in the delusion that there's something, perhaps even an oedipal transference that's accounting for an otherwise unlikely attraction. Because you're a human being and fully licensed in self-deception, you have little understanding of the fact that this younger person totally understands the impact they're having on you and is employing it to increase the feeling of power they can have over another individual. What better way to weather the slights of the dog eat dog world of competition that most young people face? Weeks pass and even though you don’t know his or her name, you begin to imagine impassioned kisses. You begin to give serious consideration to giving up the husband or wife and the comfortable middlebrow life with all the conveniences (including short hops down to Boca on President’s Day weekend) it’s taken decades to create. You imagine a colorful bohemian existence replete with all the hot post-adolescent sexuality that’s been missing from your life as you move into your new lover's tiny studio apartment in one of the few remaining parts of the outer boroughs that has yet to become gentrified. If any of this rings a bell then call our toll-free number to find out if you're eligible to receive compensation from a major class action suit. Would you rather hold on to a hopeless wish or have some money in your pocket? Call Andrews and McCaffrey today and our friendly consultants will discuss your predicament with you at no charge. Don’t let a twenty something make themselves feel powerful at your expense.

Diasporic Dining XXXVIII: Hamlet in Chinatown

Know any Hamlet clones wandering around Chinatown (Feng Xiaogang’s The Legend of the Black Scorpion, originally released in China as The Banquet, finds its roots in the Shakespeare play)?  Wanton egg drop is the soup that's tailored made for them. The question remains is the fusion of two proud specimens of Chinese American cuisine beneficial to one’s health and well-being? Or is it a form of enabling? Will such institutionalized waffling become a metaphor for the dangers of equivocation and set the style not only for  culinary taste, but for life choices in general? Sure it’s easier not to make a choice. Let’s say I go to a diner and am tempted by the turkey meatloaf special but also have a hankering for the fried  chicken basket? Do I order the turkey meatloaf fried chicken basket? Do I go for matzo ball pea when I can’t choose between matzo ball and pea soup. On a macro scale you see this in the profusion of Chinese and Japanese restaurants whose so-called fusion cuisine is really an attempt to play both ends against the middle, resulting in a cuisine that is neither fish nor fowl. Fressers who grow up slurping mixed wanton egg drop and eating in Chinese Japanese restaurants are likely to turn into lawyer/ accountants, architect/ builders, editor/ writers or coach/athletes. While there are virtues to playing both sides of the fence in work as well as love (ie being AC/DC), the danger is always of a watering down the original intention. Whether it be in soup or lovemaking there’s a point where you don’t taste anything any more. In one sense mixed wanton egg drop is a product of our modern internet culture in which the amount of choices available through Google and other search engines makes it impossible to make decisions. But most everyone will agree, the last thing you want is Italian ISIS.

Pornosophy: The Postmodern Playboy of the Western World

John Millington Synge

How does the post-modern playboy pass his day? Back in the 50’s Hugh Hefner introduced the Playboy life style which had something in common with Ian Fleming’s James Bond. Fearlessness and savoir faire were combined in a gently sadomasochistic form of hedonism. The hero of Fifty Shades of Grey is perhaps the grandson or great grandson or a close relative of Bond’s just as the literary heritage of Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus might be traced back to Hamlet. But surely today’s metrosexual is not mixing martinis in a silk bathrobe or looking for direction on sophistication from the Playboy advisor or anywhere else. For starters the postmodern playboy might literally be questioning whether he is in fact a boy. Perhaps he partakes of the sensibility of a woman who loves other woman or even of a woman who loves other men or simply a man who loves other men. But like a Connecticut Yankee, it would be fun to consider the possibility of  scenarios where our hero is sent back to the equivalent of King Arthur’s court. Give this creature a fast car, beautiful women and a cold war adversary and let’s see see what SSRI would enable him to weather the ensuing anxiety attack? Hugh Hefner is still living. Albert Broccoli who produced many James Bond films is dead. Perhaps our hero would be a sad boy with a book, a Hamlet  picking up his well-worn copy of Shakespeare’s play. J. M. Synge wrote The Playboy of the Western World. Someone should write The Postmodern Playboy of the Western World, perhaps modeled, not on spies like Wild Bill Donovan, but on the career of polymorphously perverse mega artists like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons.

Pornosophy: A Survivor Recounts His Experience of a Radical Craniectomy

                                                 NBC Television

“It was like quartering an apple. My skull simply fell into pieces on the operating table. I was totally awake during the procedure and I was able to see my brain ooze right out into the open.  Being able to perceive the very thing that is doing your perceiving is an experience no one should miss. I’d been addicted to pornography and I’d embarked upon the craniectomy in the hope of getting involved in a loving and committed relationship. In fact after my doctor informed me about the specifics of the operation and I responded ‘that sounds like brainwashing,’ his response was, ‘your brain needs to be washed.’ I’d told him about the porn sites I went to. Some were really dirty. So his rub a dub dub approach was spot on. I had to nip my addiction in the bud, before I did any further harm to myself or others and I needed a real hands-on approach. I was tired of the softer and easier path of talk therapy which produced little results. No pain, no gain. A craniectomy is not something that can be done arthroscopically, in the way that orthopedists treat a torn meniscus, since you have to remove the whole crown of the skull which means that the recovery period is going to be much longer. I had tickets for the Bosox game the day after the scheduled surgery and I was sorely disappointed when I was told that I couldn’t simply be put together like Humpty Dumpty and then head up to Yankee Stadium on the 4. I was going to have to rest and it would be a while before it was possible to tell if the operation had been a success and the dirty thoughts abolished. If not they could always open me back up and start all over again. Luckily the operation was a total success. I had completely cleaned up my act and before long I returned to school and became an egghead. Not surprisingly neuroscience was my field of interest and I was appointed a tenured professor at a small liberal arts college. I got the wife and kids and a little house with a white picket fence. The scars eventually healed and my hair grew back. Looking at me you’d never suspect that a troubled mind had once inhabited my skull.”