Justariff

Dear diary,

Superheroes are a really big concept now: they’re one of the ideas that’s accepted with open arms by all people of this current generation. I myself don’t like superheroes much, but that’s OK cuz I’m not really part of this current generation. Most of the movies that are released in 2019 are superhero movies. The reason that people like them is that the actors must wear tight-fitting suits. The suits are made of latex or spandex or rubber (if any of those names actually denote the same material, forgive me: I’m sorta flying by the seat of my pants here; I don’t know that much about this topic: I just got out of bed & I’m not really awake yet; I haven’t had my breakfast or my vodka; plus nobody loves me), I say, the suits that super­heroes wear are form-fitting and translucent, which means that they reveal the shape of the body underneath. Here’s a poem by Valentinus:

I see in spirit that all are hung
I know in spirit that all are borne
Flesh hanging from soul
Soul clinging to air
Air hanging from upper atmosphere

Crops rushing forth from the deep
A babe rushing forth from the womb.

That’s called “Summer Harvest”; & it was translated by Bentley Layton.

So people deem superheroes worthy of attention because their [the superheroes’] choice of clothing allows each viewer to lust inwardly after the hero’s physical form. I myself am almost never not lusting in this fashion; mostly for Wonder Woman or Catwoman. And some superheroes can fly; as it is written: “Soul clinging to air / Air hanging from upper atmosphere.”

The big draw of superhero lore is that it was published not as plain text on the scroll of a website, like Isaiah or Ezekiel, but rather in what they call “comic books”, which contain full-color pictures, and the text is encased within “speech bubbles” (or occasionally “thot bubbles”). This makes it more fun to read. However, because fun is prohibited from polite society, certain officials from the Court of Elite Prigs have ruled comic-book perusal to be a base activity: an ignoble pursuit.

First of all, war is a base and ignoble pursuit, but the Elite Ones still pursue THAT activity; so you know that they’re full of baloney with their stupid prohibitions. More importantly, however, the practice of accompanying one’s scripture with full-color drawings or paintings (in other words, cartoons) enjoys a long tradition that is populated by the highest geniuses. Take William Blake, who is perhaps the highest genius of modern times: he chose personally to canonize certain scriptures of his own oeuvre by “illuminating” them; that is: enhancing their words with a visual accompaniment, in a way that is not essentially different from today’s comic books. Here’s a quote from The Marriage of Heaven & Hell (which is itself an illuminated manuscript):

...first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

Adding an image to one’s scripture facilitates additional dimensions of irony. The picture can work at cross purposes with the seeming thrust of its text, thus “melting apparent surfaces away” (altho that last phrase can also be taken literally to refer to the method of etching-with-acids, corroding the metal of the medium, that Blake employed to create the ink-plates of his works). If you read his Songs of Innocence and of Experience in their comic-book form, you’ll note, for instance, that the Tyger is a little less “fearful” in its “symmetry” than the speaker (or mask) of the poem would have you believe.

But enough of Blake. I’m here to talk about superheroes in the United States of America. I only mentioned Blake so that we could feel that he had cast his vote in favor of our favorite artistic pastime. (Blake never participated in electoral politics, because he considered such behavior “something other than human life”, but I think he would’ve gladly filled out our multiple-choice questionnaire asking whether or not he approves the concept of illuminated mythologies; especially if we caught him on a good day.) So what’s the deal with superheroes? What’s their function in society? I say their function is to fight crime. But this is why I’m uncomfortable, even impatient, with the way that we’re expected to love such heroes (when we see them on the silver screen at the theater, or on the TV screen in our living room): I know that crime is an offshoot of poverty; therefore if we eliminate poverty, there’ll be no need for superheroes. Therefore superheroes are like dentists, if we buy into the…

I’ll refrain from continuing along that line; I’ll curb that impulse. I was gonna rehash my sister’s famous quip about dentists being immoral on account of their desiring tooth decay to increase and multiply upon the earth rather than to diminish, because they [the dentists] get paid to clean teeth and battle gum-disease, whereas if all disease is annihilated then humankind will live forever in blissful harmony HOWEVER dentists will be out of a job & THEREFORE they [the dentists] will become the snake in the primordial garden who lures the best of us to transgress our dictator’s edict. And I was gonna say that, in the same way, superheroes have a double stance toward the crime that they’re supposedly hired to fight (this is basically the same dilemma that is exploited in my favorite film Wrong Cops (2013), which implies that, in the future, the crime rate has dropped so low as to be nonexistent, & yet policing remains an institution, thus all cops are now bored): Like politicians, super­heroes harbor a private stance and a public stance toward crime. Their private stance is intentionally kept a mystery: it is known only to other superheroes; howbeit, perhaps they do not even discuss it amongst themselves: perhaps it is too shameful a matter to put into words. On the other hand, the superheroes’ PUBLIC stance is that they want all crimes to be solved; they even say “Call me, dear city folk, any time you see a crime occurring, and I will promptly remedy the situation; if you are the one being threatened or attacked, I will rescue you: for I am like Yahweh, the god of our forefathers: I will be wherever I will be, and absent myself otherwise (I am suspiciously non-omniscient, which is why—again, also like the LORD—I require you to pray, to call me for help, before I spring into action)”; but if all crime were to go extinct, on account of our perfect economy that has a garden-full of robots who do all the work (see: fully automated luxury communism), then superheroes would lose their necessity, their purpose; they would prove no more heroic than your “average Joe”; their only distinction would be their fine attire, which, as I explained above, is rather tight-fitting; so they’d be relegated to serving in the realm of sensual entertainment. Hence the popularity of superhero movies. (It’s all real; except the eradication of poverty.)

But, lest I bore my reader with the topic of hot god bods, I will hedge this entry’s bet by talking about something else for the remainder of its…

First, let me type a star:

*

There. Now let’s tackle the tried & true taboos: religion & politics. These are the things that you’re not supposed to talk about when you enter a foreign household to marry its mistress, or when you’re out on the town with twelve diplomats feigning to be enjoying yourself but really worrying all the while about whether their company will offer to distribute your new production. Because the diplomats are obviously Christ’s disciples, and the movies that they wish to evangelize the world with are all the Hollywood films about the life of Jesus, many of which were even written and directed by non-believers – yes, the gospel knows no bounds, except for Asia, as it is written (Acts of the Apostles, ch. 16):

A certain disciple was there, named Timotheus. Him would Paul have to go forth with him; thus he took and circumcised him with his own bare hands and one sharp rock. For it is written:

This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me and you and thy seed after thee; Every man child among you shall be circumcised. And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house, and he that is bought with thy money, must needs be circumcised: and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the uncircumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant. (Genesis 17:10-14)

[I’ll get back to Paul & Timotheus, but first I gotta fuck with Exodus 4:20-26. So please take the following as a continuation of the quote-with-the-quote above, but I’ll leave off from italicizing it, cuz all that swoopy lettering is making me lecherous.]

And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the LORD said unto Moses:

“When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou perform wonders before Pharaoh, even the feats of a North American Superhero, which I have put in thine hand, by way of this magic wand of mine (this rod of God), which I have bequeathed thee. Then, after you finish your show, I will harden Pharaoh’s heart. He will dislike thy movie: he will rate it ‘two thumbs-down’. And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh: ‘Thus saith the LORD: Israel is my greatest movie, even my most perfect motion-picture: Therefore I say unto thee: Distribute my film to the people, that they may view my handiwork: and if thou refuse to let my masterwork be shown in the multiplexes, along with the standard fare of heroic superfolk (so sexily clad!) then, behold: I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.’ Yes, that’s a threat. But that’s not me, Moses, speaking, no: those are the words of the LORD, otherwise known as Yahweh who is God.”

And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that Yahweh met Moses, and sought to kill his son, the same lad that Moses had fathered upon Zipporah, for Lord Yahweh apparently did not understand that Moses had voiced the aforesaid threat of post-birth abortion in God’s holy name unto “the leader of the free world,” Pharaoh. Yahweh just got excited to go child-killin’ and forgot to heed Moses’ instructions. In other words: he jumped the gun.

Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her infant, & cast it at Yahweh’s feet, & turned to Moses & cried: “SURELY A BLOODY HUSBAND ART THOU TO ME.”

So Yahweh let the lad go, with extreme reluctance. Then Zipporah repeated, screaming at the top of her lungs, in all capital letters:

“A BLOODY HUSBAND THOU ART, BECAUSE OF THE CIRCUMCISION.”

[So that was Exodus 4:20-26. Now back to the adventures of Paul and Tim... & recall that St. Paul has just “taken and circumcised Timotheus with his own bare hands...” (Acts 16:3)]

So, then, a few years later, as Paul and Timotheus went through the cities, they delivered them the decrees for to keep, that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.

Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia. [Acts 16:1-6]

I don’t remember what my original point was in quoting any of this, or in my adding of quotations-within-quotations. I think I simply enjoy Greco-Romaning the scriptures. (Here, by the compound “Greco-Roman” I mean the famous style of wrestling; which, earlier, I referred to as making sweet love, when I said “but first I gotta make sweet love to Exodus.”) But I do recall having the impulse to underline the differences between what we call religions and what we call countries, with an eye toward the U.S.’s oft-mentioned “separation of church and state”. I wanted to ask: What’s a church and what’s a state? Yet I only got so far as thinking (not even writing; just thinking to myself privately):

“OK, a nation or country or state is a collection of people; and a church or religion or [insert third synonymous term] is a collection of people as well. So what’s the difference? Well, a state maintains its power by way of violence: it owns and operates an army, and this army threatens the surrounding nations with force, and those nations therefore sell their goods and resources cheap to the terror-monger, and then this same state charges its citizens taxes, which can only be paid in the currency issued by the state, thus its dollar remains strong. AND YET what about religion? How does a church maintain its believers without the use of force? And consider that even the state must turn to religion for recourse & pay lip-service to the church. That’s why U.S. presidents carry Bibles & swear on Bibles & attend Church Funerals when a fellow statesman lucks out and dies. But religion—which, as I always repeat, is a subsection of poetry—it uses persuasion, verbal eloquence, rather than physical violence as its coercive technique. Might this mean that religion, with all its silly fables, is actually more advanced than politics, with all of ITS silly fables (and firearms)?”

My problem with nuclear weapons is not that they exist or that we’re constantly kept in fear of some nation using them to destroy the general whatness. Or, rather, I do indeed have a problem with both of these things (I have a problem with everything, to be honest); but I mostly wish that people would stop threatening to use nukes: they should instead simply either destroy them all OR fire them all off. (In summary: ultimatum equals DULL; mute or play equals FUN.) – I hate the threat: that’s what I’m saying. Stop keeping us in a state of suspense. This isn’t a Hitchcock movie; you’re not going to get a better review if you keep us on tenterhooks for thousands of years. Just end earthlife, or destroy your arsenals: either will do; but I’m sick of waiting. (Sorry I said this.)