V. Interstate 37. Corpus Christi.
Bayfront Park.
Population: 232,134
Elevation: Sea level
Climate: Sub-tropical
Topography: Coastal plain.
Category: Port/navy town.
Historical Oddity: Whatever problems you may have with other religions,
you'll have to go a long way in the Islamic world before you find a town named
"Mohammed's Corpse," or, in the East, one named "Body of Buddha."
Prominent Amenity: Padre Island.
Best One-word Description: Maritime.
Insight: The Corpus Christi Art Museum, overlooking the bay, was designed
by Philip Johnson in his pre-post-Modern period.
1. Shakespeare is impossible in the glare of publicity. Secret art, the final and only
true luxury of middle-class civilization.fn1
–Ken Russell, Jr.
* * *
2. A old boy and his woman is fightin' to beat sixty. He finally
comes over to her to try to kiss and make up, but she won't have none of it and screams,
"Don't you touch me, you horny bastard. All I am to you is a fuckin' cunt!" And
he says, "Shhh, honey, you shouldn't say 'fuckin' cunt' in front of the
c-h-i-l-d."
–Mud Flap.
* * *
3. Affamer la bourgeoisie.fn2
–Bullwinkle
* * *
4. That's right, I called you a pervert. That means the best part
of you runs down your leg.
–Blondie.
* * *
5. Culinary theater? Yes, but all Brecht did was develop a
nouvelle cuisine. Cosmetic dramaturgy.fn3
–Fritz
* * *
6. Fatigue comes from robotic behavior.fn4
–Mahalia
* * *
7. We struggle under combinatory and often conflicting aegises.
–Spark Plug
* * *
8. Study the cobwebs carefully before you sweep them aside.
–Gray Wolf
* * *
8a. Fella goes to Hippie Hollow and gits this terrible sunburn all
over. Back home he tries to fuck but his dick starts to burnin somethin awful. He rushes
into the kitchen, pours a glass of milk and sticks it in. His girl friend comes in, takes
one look, and says, "I always wondered how men reload that thing."
–Mud Flap
* * *
9. The mobile century. We have been like ants, the way we have
scurried and re-scurried about the planet.
–Chrome Bumper
* * *
10. Sorry, Fritz.fn5
Dance, it turns out, is the least of the arts.
–Celia Celia
* * *
11. The heart speaks, and the West has forgotten to listen. At the
folk level, the East remembers. Which accounts for their primitive, but active, telepathy.fn6
–Horny Teen
* * *
12. Culinary fiction. Where is the novel to lift us out of the
century any time we enter? Maybe it's too late for words. No. No. The magic is still
there, accessible through any of the received doors, as well as through the ones yet
undiscovered.fn7
–Fritz
* * *
13. Tchaikovsky warned the Russians of their fate as
clearly–and as unknowingly–as Wagner warned the Germans of theirs. Only the
Russians haven't figured it out yet.
–Fritz
* * *
14. Science as auto-fellatio.
–Cam's Gillette
* * *
15. People ain't got no sense.
–Lone Stranger.
* * *
16. Who, the theist or the atheist, must despair more on deep
contemplation of the peacock?
–Rubber Duck
* * *
17. He's so dumb, he could fuck up a wet dream.
–Spiral.
* * *
18. The redbud tree, like the bo-tree, is everywhere.
–Celia Celia
* * *
19. Aw, he thinks his shit smells like ice cream.
–.38 Special.
* * *
20. Only the equatorial rainforests know the whole story.
–Celia Celia
* * *
20a. This lumberjack gits a job in Alaska and he works for three
months and is about to go crazy from bein so horny. He asks the boss how everbody stands
it. The boss tells him to try the barrel outside the shower. He says everbody swears by
the barrel. Next day the lumberjack comes up to the boss and says, "That barrel is
great. I'm gonna use it ever day." The boss says, "You can use it ever day
except Friday." The old boy looks puzzled and says, "Why not Friday?"
"Friday's your day in the barrel."
–Mud Flap
* * *
21. The ear has its reasons the eye can never know. Which pretty
well sums up the 20th century's problems.
–Zig-zag Joy
* * *
22. Future historians, remember: Men in this century cinched their
waists and their necks, tight.
–Horny Teen
* * *
23. What fools Wasps be, making no connection at all between the
highly visible Jewish sense of humor and the Bible.
–Spark Plug
* * *
24. Peter de Vries proves, as no other American writer has, that
profundity can be only skin deep.
–Lorelei
* * *
25. Beware of Americans who make a life of venting their spleen.
We are to naivity born.
–New Adam
* * *
26. The redbud stubbornly resists my repeated wish that it not
grow.
–Celia Celia
* * *
27. Bored? Add a dash of Hermes to your life.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
28. We are all always home free.
–Wild Man
* * *
29. All is palimpsest.
–Jack Flash
* * *
30. Epiphany = spiritual masturbation.
–Preacher Man
* * *
31. The Greeks did the best P.R., the Jews, the worst. The Chinese
come in second in both categories. Which is why the Chinese are far more interesting than
the Greeks or the Jews.
–Horny Teen
* * *
32. This is a long statement.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
33. This is a short statement.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
34. This is not a long statement.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
35. This is not a short statement.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
36. This is neither a short nor a long statement.
–Orange Krishna
* * *
37. First the British shaped Shakespeare, then Shakespeare shaped
the British. Hence Harold Pinter... First the Germans shaped Bach, then Bach shaped the
Germans. Hence Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. Etc. (Praxiteles, Confucius, Descartes, Mather...
).
–Unit 639
* * *
38. Science? Come on. Lighten up.
–Mahalia
* * *
39. The only persons with cause to worry about repeating
themselves are persons who repeat themselves.
–All Bricked Up
* * *
40. The only persons with cause to worry about repeating
themselves are persons who repeat themselves.
–All Bricked Up
* * *
41. The ultimate banishment in a human age: Get thee to a...
–New Adam
* * *
42. This sweet young thing's bout to get married and she asks her
mother what it feels like to have a baby. Her mother says, "Just take hold of your
lower lip, sugar, and pinch it hard as you can." The girl pinches her lip and says,
"That's not so bad. I can stand that any day of the week." "Now," says
her mother, "hold your lip good and tight and stretch it all the way over your skull
and staple it to the nape of your neck!"
–.38 Special.
* * *
43. Honey, just because your breath smells like apeshit don't mean
you're Tarzan.
–North Wind.
* * *
44. Protective coloration is not what it appears to be.
–Jack Flash
* * *
45. The surf, trees, and the desert speak the same language. There
is no moment in life when one does not benefit from listening to the discourse.
–Mahalia
* * *
46. These two old geezers been prospecting for years in Arizona.
They figure they're gonna give it one more shot so they both go in to stock up. This time
the general store's got a new item, a love board. All it is is a pine plank with a hole in
it and a fur pocket tacked on the other side of the hole. They each buys one and they's on
their way. Next spring one of 'em turns up back at the store. "Where's your
pardner?" says the clerk. "Hell," the old geezer says, "I had to shoot
him. I caught the S.O.B. usin' my love board!"
–Sugar Britches.
* * *
Corpus Christi Notes
1John Fowles, The Magus.
2A play on the early
twentieth century avant-garde slogan, "épater la bourgeoisie," meaning
"shock the bourgeoisie." "Affamer", of course, means
"starve."
3Brecht dismissed
commercial theater as "culinary," that is, doing for the middle-class what a
good meal does, making it feel comfortable and secure.
4See Wilhelm Reich, The
Mass Pscyhology of Fascism.
5It is not clear here
whether Celia Celia is talking to the "Fritz" who can be heard on CB or is
speaking rhetorically to Friedrich Nietzsche, whose nickname was Fritz.
6Orange Krishna once
explained to me at length, over a cup of surprisingly good coffee in a truck stop outside
Cairo (Illinois) his theory of third-world telepathy, the heart of which was his belief
that third-worlders are closer to our tribal past and thus more sensitive to, as he put
it, "your finer class of vibrations."
7I call this the
"Werther" syndrome. This longing for a book, one book to define one's age really
began with Goethe's pubescent cri de couer, The Sorrows of Young Werther in 1770. Each
generation since has longed for a similar fictional mirror.
The Texas Tao
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