As a graduate student, if much-sought-after Tomorrow's Technocrat and
Today's Warlord's Sister, Lady Liu would have been much better off had she
been merely perverted, which is our denigration of what Everybody, tout le
monde, the possessors of Invitability, were doing, whether merely uncensuredly,
Elsewise faddish-crazedly. Drusilla said as much, "sweetheart." Though Lady
Liu was far worse off than that.
"Honey, you are *hung up*."
"What, in the name of Xiwangmu, is *hung up*."
"Xiwangmu?"
"Something like your ladyfreind Atargatis, Goddess of sexual intercourse
and Protectress of the Female Gender from getting into Even Bigger Trouble
than already is. Though the *representationality* this Greco-Roman shit is
getting to me. This solid silver statue of you, here, what sez in Greek caps
characters ATAPUATNZ, like in the book by Lucian of Samosata, *De Dea Syra*.
"Damned-to-hell demon. Don't look at her, she's full of germs."
"Drusilla, why are you wearing shoes?"
"What?!"
"I'm not wearing shoes in your house cuz I'm waiting f'r y' t' tell me,
'That's Highly Inappropriate, you never know who's germs are on that thing.'"
"Feet?"
"Feet."
"Why feet?"
"Cuz the white americans who run my country, behind the Legitimate Ruler,
of course, graciously condescended to bestow upon us a provincial variant of
what they truly believe is the Greatest Thing in their own country and time.
What is...graduate schools. Now, in my study of The World System in Classical
Antiquity, this period now being known, thanks to a great deal of cosmetizing,
as Late Antiquity, our TAs and faculty were, as is Normal among these white
Aliens, 'liberal/lefties.' One of their Thingies being most In at this time
is the Illumination to the effect that at all times and places when Man was
this or that, women were doing the work. For Classical Greece the idea that
there were women took blind faith. Dig. Sensu emotional, not archaeological.
A card-carrying woman, named Anna C. Keuls, wrote a book for the General
Reader, the women who did not go to graduate school, where she said that
Athenian vase painters from BC 530ish, tellya whut, this yere year is 376
AD. Forget what it means, go back to the indiction, keep track of the census
and taxes. 530ish to 480ish, when they ran the first Marathon. 'Scuse me.
Hee hee, bizarre's whut keeps this girl alive. To continue, the vase painters
experimented with fake perspective, she said, by fixating on, and drawing
lotsa, penises and feet. Means, hadda cut down onna number of women they
drew till they got it right, and with women, it hadda be, just plain feet,
but time went on, see, and the potted Athenian, patronizing the Athenian
potter, could be pretty sure of a good job on the feet. Which got a good
public showing among men as well as slave prostitutes. Men got to show lots
of penis, too, of course. Now, I took a looksee 'round stoa an' cemeteries
and fora and wherever better graven images are found, and checked out, there
is covered feet in this situation, barefoot in that. Called coding. By
anthropology, don't leave home without it. You know, through last century,
that a woman's gonna have sex cuz she's barefoot, but still got her brassiere
on; and she charges extra, whore or not, if she gotta take it off. X-tianity's
changing this shit, dunno exactly how. Now, tell me 'bout me, cuz I dunno.
"You are hung up. We hadda make up a word for you and your Thingie, cuz
we never saw this before. X-tianity causes it. But *you*, you had an
unX-tian upbrining in an unX-tian country, what with worshipping graven
images an' heathens an' all."
"Such as."
"Inflicting Pain, says you, is Bad and Evil, cuz it is indicative of Pure
Selfishness, done for the gratification of the Inflicter of said Pain. Tell
me, whaddabout the local town or village *tortor*?"
"Whuzzat?"
"Well, y'know how, if yer a craftsperson, ya keep the Tools of the Trade
on display in your, how the song goes, "barrow in the marketplace." Carpenter
got saw, Smith got Jones from Drug Addiction, and the Maximus family is keeping
up with the Joneses. Excuse me, I tell jokes, useta do it for a living. What
means, I stripteased, wiggled around, took of a bit o' clothes here, another
there, till I got stark naked, gotta tell jokes after that. This wuz before
the X-tians got in. We figured, "Nah, it can't last," so when Julian kicked
ass on 'em, we sez, toldja. Stinking hairy guys wuz praying roun'da clock that
Julian drops dead, gets killed, which was not trick onnacounta he had
Grandiosity Delusions 'bout he had military experience, when he had dumb luck
an' the enemy dropped dead or surrendered before getting fought. An' he aint
never invaded noplace. You are on defense, you know where you, basically
speaking, are is. Julian, he is gonna march as far up the Silk Road as Alex
The Great, for a change. They all say that. But come back plain old Greeks.
Costs too much, they sez. Julian, he is majorultranuts. Not merely does he
get lost, he does not care. Having burned all the crops of the Persians, he
figures, the Persians must get hungry very soon, no matter the Romans are
starving at this very moment. Air raid siren goes off, he aint got time to
put on his breastplate, whatever, and someone, nobody's sure on which side,
got off a *beautiful* shot."
"Pity, he had such a good education, he was so prolific an author, he had
no business with *wu*."
"Wu?"
"What I said yesterday, 'bout strategic political power entailed by control
of the definition of the cognitive, which makes you, the smartest woman in
Antioch, a gutterwench of no refinement and cultivation, and myself, with a
*jinshi* in World System Studies, hopefully, unable to think of, and at times
refusing to say the words, *sexual____...."
"....*intercourse*!"
"Supposin' you had to say it in nonmedical unscientific discourse, in no
more than four or, in Latin, merely three alphabetic characters."
"I have heard that in Chicago, in the year 1995, there is a Federal Communi-
cations Commission, and by the following year, 1996, there will have been, oh,
how one gets one's tenses fucked up, excuse me, a Communications Decency Act."
"What you do talk about is, as we said 'fore you diverted the conversation,
was this notion that Inflicting Pain is Bad, cuz the Enemy is not thinging, uh,
*totally preoccupied with*, your own spoiled-brat self, which the *hurter* is,
totally and helplessly. So, you play matchmaker, telling me that Fujian, the
greatest lover in addition to the greatest ruler and greatest warrior in Asia,
how you said it, ah, *hurt me just so perfectly*, what the Greeks call this,
they are slandered 'bout having words for everything, is *anhedonia*...."
The reader will observe that Anhedonia, today, is a ski resort in New
Hampshire, more granite than snow due to usual Warming On A Global Scale.
Cognoscenti, however, avoid the place, knowing that the real skiing is to
be had at Anhedonia Notch, where Alien invaders from odd states get lost
in the finding of.
"Imperial Princesses, which I now prospectively are one of, are historically
the most egregious spoiled brats found anywhere in the universe; how else could
one be daughter of God Incarnate."
"Don't spoiled brats, even, fuck too?"
"Thingofitwuz, getting killed for losing yer virginity. When I wuz a mere
spratlet inna Officer Class, Junior Grade. The Officers got what's later gonna
be called Class Consciousness, which is gonna be talked to death by Georg
Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci. Cuz the Great Houses of the most Exalted Aristoc-
racy will not marry daughters to or stand to greet as a guest in the stately
home a "Mere Military Man," even if dictator, with muscle enough to arbitarily
massacrate them all on trumped-up charges, which lasts for six months, one
year, two, and Thingies all go back to Parasitic Landlordism and Nonfunctiona-
lity of the State as usual. Legends are told, In the Beginning, which was 312-
317, when the Broad Masses fled in terror from the Huns, the People freely
elected the Lords, then volunteered to the Lords to be Serfs. And everyone's
lived happily ever after. The Lords, having titles going with offices of State,
deem it Dishonourable and Unlordifiable to do the work, especially of such
routine nature as to entail showing up at the *yamen*, office, when yer
s'poz'ta. Cuz y'could be doin' art. Don't get me wrong, some of this Art
wuz not bad. Ninety percent, however, of all art, predictably, is shit. What
women do, being Crafty, is gotta be Acceptable, so what with that kinda quality
control, they can't do art, by definition. But this got changed with the
American imperialist intervention. There is this guy, Anton Sunderland Wroxxt,
betokening very mixed ancestry, Vaguely Central European, Decadent British
Aristocratic, and Extraterrestrial. He has offices in Jiankang and Luoyang,
capitals of Southern and Northern Empires, where Art, Antiquities, is brought
from the whole Late Antique world. For this, he uses the three and one half
tons of the southern empire's gold reserve as working capital, then exports
the profits along with the art to the year 1995, 1996. One catch is, the
Southern Empire's ruling class does nothingatall on principle, so there is
another Wroxxt outfit, Society Reengineering Consultancies, offices in the
same place, 32 Broad St, New York City, will explain significance of this
building later on, who picked on unmarriageable daughters of the Aristocracy
as a *reserve, untapped talent pool of human resources*, dig, to Get This
Empire Moving Again, sez John F. Kennedy, memorably and decontextualized.
These Reengineers are Lefty-Liberals, like the University folks, and honestly
and really and truly believe they are Doing Good, alleviating human suffering,
an' stuff.....
cont'd tomorrowŁ
Daniel A. Foss