Potpourri
by Shelton Hull
September 19, 1999, 1:27 PM
I‘ve been slacking like a gallows on the moon when it comes to
writing this column. I have no excuse for it, other than the attention
lavished on my new zine, Section 8. But I am back in the saddle,
buckaroo, and I’d like to share some thoughts I’ve been having lately.
To wit:
You cannot spell “deflagrate” without “flag.” I tell this to people and
they look at me with incredulity, even though it’s true. Part of the
pre-millennial press’ burden is to refurbish the same old arguments
for a new generation of freshly emancipated young adults.
“Deflagrate: (n) to burn suddenly and violently.” Flag burnings do tend
to happen suddenly, as desecration of national symbols is best done
with a minimum of fanfare, so as to keep the violence down to that
requisite flag-stomp at the end. Once you’ve burned so much of it
that holding it becomes painful, it almost seems like a waste of all
that attention from the cops, media and constitutional lawyers to not
end the affair with some dramatic flourish. The flag-stomp also
scatters the flames, cinders and ash (in varying proportions
depending on the amount of flag left when the stomp occurs) up into
the air and outward into the crowd, giving the offender time to run.
It seems to me that the role of the citizen in a democracy is to push
the limits of our constitutional freedoms on a regular basis, its effect
being the continual reaffirmation of those freedoms. So far, we the
people have yet to think of too many means of personal expression
that are absolutely unacceptable, but still we try. Why? Chalk it up to
the allure of innovation. What is the point of doing anything unless
you’re going to do it better than those who have done it before? That
cannot be done without being New. New changes the very nature of
the act by simplifying it, which creates profit, and that’s what it’s all
about.
For example, the makers of Astroglide wanted to get into the
personal lubrication business, which was dominated by the folks at
K-Y Jelly. K-Y is owned by Johnson & Johnson – a great name for
the “parent” company – whose penetration of the market was such
that Astroglide could not compete without a better product or superior
advertising. Even in our modern, desensitized cultural climate, there
isn’t much you can do to pitch personal lubrication to a mass
audience, so instead they had to improve on flaws in the design of
their competitors’ product. They realized, probably through personal
experience, that K-Y tends to dry up and requires frequent
reactivation with water in order to work. This is only mildly irritating if
water is nearby, but odds are that the only liquids at arm’s reach are
alcoholic, so someone will have to make a trip to the faucet. This can
destroy all the erotic momentum that a couple has built up. So the
geniuses at Astroglide created a formula that doesn’t dry up. What
gets wet stays wet, and the fornication can continue all night long,
without interruption. This selling point allows the Astrogliders to make
a tidy profit every year.
The shreds of decorum left in our society are in some ways rather
unfortunate. I, for one would jump at the chance to create advertising
schemes for Astroglide. The possibilities are endless. Perhaps a
television commercial: fade-in to a bunch of guys at a bathhouse.
They’re wrapped in towels, lounging around the tubs, or whatever they
have in bathhouses, eyeing each other seductively. Buncha slick
homos, literally and figuratively, the hip, trendsetting type, as
apparent as this can be when wearing a towel. One by one they
begin to produce their lubes, and all the smooth operators pull tubes
of Astro. The last guy is clearly a rube, freshly off the turnip truck.
Maybe he has big buck teeth and a piece of rope tied around his
waist, which is always useful. This guy has a tube of K-Y. The man
next to him shrieks, in a note-perfect 16-year-old valley girl accent,
“Ewww! You’re a freak!” The others jump up and run away in mincing
strides, leaving the rube alone in silent contemplation of his failure.
And then the slogan: “Astroglide, if you really want to fit in.”
Or: scenes from the hectic life of a prostitute. She’s standing on the
corner, walking up to cars, you see her head bobbing up and down
like in those HBO documentaries. Voice-over: “When my job requires
me to engage in the most intimate of acts with strangers in the most
dangerous parts of the city, the last thing I need” – cut to our heroine
slap-fighting with a colleague – “is friction. These dudes have one
eye on the clock, they don’t give a fuck how you feel. Well, just
because I’m a whore doesn’t mean I have to be sore.” Or: a porn star
on the job. She’s buying expensive clothes, driving a hot car, getting
make-up and practicing her lines. And then she’s being
double-penetrated by two large black guys, with a look on all their
faces reminiscent of OJ’s at his first arraignment. Voice-over: “I work
in a very high-performance environment, putting things in places they
don’t belong anyway, much less without copious lubrication. When
I’ve got nine yards of throbbing cock lined up in front of me, I reach for
Astroglide…quick!” I could be the darling of Madison Avenue if
someone gave me the chance.
To many people, mass organized prayer must seem like the sort of
utterly self-indulgent exercise that humans, particularly Americans,
are prone to because of what may be imagined as an inability to
comprehend the basic truths of science and political affairs. One
result of the emphasis placed on crime and brutality in the media –
which is somewhat justified, but hardly as much as they’d like us to
think – is that people really want to know that someone is looking
out for them. In lieu of the love and affection of one’s fellow man (a
rare commodity in these days of relentless suspicion), perhaps the
platitudes of some preacher will suffice. I doubt the claims of
conservatives that institutional prayer will improve anything: it’s
another stupid idea that escapes the genuine problem with our
education system, whatever the hell that is. Anyone who’s had to
deal with some obnoxious crusader on the street, who seems
convinced (with that mindless, unquestioning absolutism that is the
defining trait of a devout Christian, in addition to the bad clothes) that
their destiny in life is to coerce a stranger into accepting their local
shaman’s line of bullshit, can readily attest to the Christian’s
complete and total lack of reservation when it comes to practicing his
faith. Most Americans are religious in one way or another, and instill
their values in their children, so they might like to see those values
reinforced on the institutional level. I see nothing wrong with the
concept of school prayer, superficially; most of the curriculum in
schools today consists of lies and propaganda, anyway, so where’s
the harm in giving them more? The problem is that the majority of
Americans are Christians, and their collective confidence is born of
statistical superiority. A school prayer amendment (Republicans are
fond of treating the Constitution like the Sunday crossword) would
benefit these people, and give them the legal backing to preach,
preach, preach all day long. Nothing would get done at school, not
that anything gets done now.
Seen on a bumpersticker in Jacksonville: “God Is Coming – Stick Out
Your Tongue.” That’s kinda gross, but rather similar to the Catholic
Communion ritual. But that’s not important. I mentioned the
bumpersticker because it set me to thinking about an idea I had a
couple of years ago. In the 2,000 years since the events detailed in
the New Testament, the history of man has been littered with the
bodies of various self-designated saviors and messiahs. It follows a
fairly predictable pattern: one may be merely eccentric, merely
extremely eccentric, and it is tolerated so long as one does not
attempt to ascribe any sort of divinty upon oneself. To say that you
are Christ, or to say anything that remotely implies that, carries at
least the suggestion if not the declaration of immortality, and that’s a
notion that society is all too eager to refute. So the prospective
prophet can look forward to a violent, socially proscribed death if he
is not humble. Which begs the question: what if they were telling the
truth? What if Christ has been trying to return to Earth and liberate
our souls for the past 2,000 years but, every time he makes his
presence known, the establishment clergy snuffs him out? They
killed him the first time, so who’s to say they wouldn’t do so again?
Personally, I believe in the probability of a higher power, and anyone
else who believes must consider the incongruity of Jesus’ teachings
with the morally malleable doctrines on display on Sunday. Religion
is a business now, and as with any serious business operating within
the capitalist framework, profit is far more important than product
integrity. If Jesus came back, right now, on National TV, with all the
apostles in tow, and started complaining about the systematic
bastardization of his life, death and design for human behavior, I am
fully confident that he would be killed again immediately, on the spot.
Of course, they wouldn’t say it was really Jesus. They’d say he was
some nut, a dangerous lunatic with his own 12-man cult preparing
the violent overthrow of the government or something. “Peace and
love and generosity,” they’d say, “what kinda new-age nonsense is
that?”
