Freak Orgy

Music: Steve Earle: El Corazon

CONSERVATIVELY DRESSED LADY #1:Does your Ultrathin ever get wet and sticky? YOUNGISHLY DRESSED LADY #2: Yeah [elaboration ensues] --Dialogue from a commercial I just witnessed

I swear there is something in the air today, tons of freak-out fumes wafting from the SUV Juice factories down the Mississippi, over our humble, pot-holed streets and into our places of work, worship, learning (and places of pretend-to-work, pretend-to-pray-but-secretly-look-to-see-who-isn't, and pretend-to-learn). Lord knows I've been talked to because I am too free of opinion in the classroom, but today something unfortunate slipped. We were discussing arguments concerning the validity of alien abduction stories. One student suggested that if aliens existed, then we would have been eaten and enslaved by now (flashback to the V miniseries). Another student said, "cause that's what we would do if we actually found an alien race, especially one that was inferior" or something like that. A student asked my opinion, and I inappropriately retorted: oh, hell, we'd probably kill or enslave the poor folks. For sure some idiot male would want to screw one. Well, by "we" I meant we conservative, Republican, militia-types. But the larger "we" know this is true: if it moves, some idiot male will want to "probe" it (or stick it up his derriere). I don't suppose anyone watches The Blob anymore (unless they're in Tracy's horror film class). Doncha' know the first thing the old man does when he discoveres the new life form is poke it with a stick?

Like I said, but this time in rhyme, there's something in the air

MICHAEL JACKSON IS A FUCKED FUCKER

Every day the story becomes even more absurd. Money does, indeed, buy one whatever warped reality one wishes to be inside. While unmistakably the prosecutors of the case and their team have not lost sight of the humanity of the situation (that is to say, the recognition that Michael Jackson sees these poor damaged boys as a some over-zealous macho type would see helpless animals), the reportage of the courtroom horror in the television and newspaper is downright surreal in terms of its ability to withhold judgment or censure. A colleague recently said that is was as if Jackson could not "help himself." And this is the point: Michael Jackson, as Jean Baudrillard might carp in a flourish much less but so much more pretentious, does not exist. He is, effectively, an automaton of the collective imaginary.

GRAPHIC NOVELS

I am mildly self-disturbed at my perverse enjoyment of The Preacher comic book series, which is so full of hetero-fantasies of abject machismo that I'm sure it gives Sin City a run for its money (I can see someone filming this one next). I picked up the series some weeks ago, remembering an answer to a question I asked almost four years ago at the comic shop on the corner of Larpenteur and Snelling Avenues in St. Paul, Minnesota. I told a clerk I liked Hellblazer, which I had read as a teen up until I left for college. What's the most Satanic or religious-themed comic out there? He said next to Hellblazer, it was Preacher. Somehow I filed that away and then, after I saw the filmic version of my favorite Teen Age graphic pleasure (proto-porn, like Heavy Metal magazine in the days before Internet porno was just a key stroke away), I ordered a couple of the graphic novel sets of the comics. It's about a dude from Louisiana who was born into a warped and racist family who produces lines of preachers who escapes and then is possessed by a spirit/entity called "Genesis," which is the oops offspring of an Angel and a Demon who did the dirty deed in purgatory. God is all pissed off, orders another wingless order of angels to keep this Half-Evil-Half-Good entity in check. But the entity escapes and possesses the preacher and gives him magical powers of command . . . and so on and so forth. Lots of dirty language and cartoon breasts, excessively violent, inexplicable vampiric buddies, people's whose faces resemble assholes, and so forth.

I, TOO, HAVE A CRUSH ON MABALEAN EPHRIAM

In the past year I have developed a healthy addiction to courtroom shows, especially Divorce Court. My favorite episode thus far is about a couple with two very interesting and dynamic personalities. The husband is into "role playing" with women in dominant roles. The wife enjoys dominating the husband, and demonstrates to the court how a certain tone of voice can make the husband howl. She uses "the voice," and the husband howls uncontrollably. As the episode progresses, we learn that the one of the bases of the divorce is his irrational attraction to the judge. The wife again demonstrates by reaching to a shopping bag, pulling out a robe and gavel, and putting them on. Suddenly the viewer is treated to a pretty charming look-alike of Judge Ephiram and the obviously turned-on husband, and the judge herself is visible amazed and embarrassed. I have not seen better television in many, many months.

MY CAT PSAPPHO AND MS. BIRDPARTY

To round out my rumination on the freak orgy, I present the gentle reader with a photo of my cat, Psappho:

I also present to you the photo of the newest member on my blogroll, the most luscious Ms. Birdparty:

Please click on her link to the right or the photo above to be whisked away to her blog, which is almost entirely a chronicle of her most excellent responses to random personal ads (you'll thank me later, I promise).

Freak Orgy: I rest my case.