"The Tragic Tale of Feemus's Forehead," or "The Devil You Know"

Would you like to hear a story about my forehead? No?

Well, it's the only story I have today.

The story of my forehead begins in the mountains. It was a lovely summer hiking trip, and our hero (that's me, minus the heroics) was thrilled to be in the out-of-doors. Fresh air, vigorous exercise, pleasant companionship--what could be nicer?

It was very nice. Except for what happened to my forehead.

Now, I always wear lots of heavy-duty sunscreen and usually a hat and if I am outside when the sun is shining. Because I am a burner. I can burn through my clothes. I routinely burn despite 45 spf sunscreen.

After snorkling once, I discovered a series of tiny blisters along my arms at the water line. That was a funny looking burn--the half of me that was in the water was white and the half that was out was bright red (and slightly blistered). I saw lots of pretty fish, though. And I got slammed into a coral reef by a crazy riptide. Which was sort of fun. And sort of bloody.

Anyway, I take the whole sun thing pretty seriously.

But in the mountains in July, there's only so much one can do. The atmosphere is just so thin and the sun is so intense that sun damage happens. I didn't get too badly burned though. But something new happened: I spotted. I got these brown blotches on my forehead. I guess they're freckles, except they're not polka-dotty. They're solid. And fairly dark.

And....they are in the shape of horns.

No shit. They are almost entirely symmetrical, one on either side of my foreheard. And they look like horns.

I got home. I waited for them to fade. They didn't fade.

So I kind of just forgot about them. No one said anything, so I just figured that no one else could see them (this is one of the drawbacks of being single. There's no one to say, "Honey, I love you, but that Mark of Cain you're sporting on your mug is starting to creep people out."). I went on like this for months until I visited my family.

First thing out of my niece's mouth: "Uncle Feemus, you have HORNS."

"Oh that's nice, kid," I said. "Well, I didn't want to bring it up, but you're short. What are you, like four feet tall? I hate to break it to you, kiddo, but that's short. You notice I didn't bring it up, though? That's the polite thing to do. But you, you open with the horn thing. Real nice. And you know what? When I first met you, you were bald. Completely bald--total cue ball. And you couldn't even hold your own bald head up. But I didn't say a word. Polite thing to do."

She stared at me. "I know you're trying to be funny, Uncle Feemus," she said. "But you still have horns."

So I thought, well maybe it's just my niece who can see them. Maybe it's just the angle (she's short, after all). But then I see my Mom and she's all, "You got something on your face." And then she starts making for me with the dread bespittled thumb.

"Stay away from me with that thumb, you miserable harridan," I said.

"Oh sweetie, I know you're trying to be funny. But really, you've got something on your forehead."

Sigh.

I explained what it was. And my mother bought me some--get this--bleaching cream. For age spots. AGE SPOTS??

I am young enough to get attacked with spit-thumb, but old enough to have age spots? What the fuck?

Anyway, I am home now. And a little alarmed that I've been walking around with horns for six months and no one's said anything.

But I am a little reluctant to use the bleaching cream. It just seems so...I don't know...disturbing.

What's next? Calf implants?

Take Backsies

Can I take back what I said about Huckabee? He's crazy. How vigorous must one's bigotry be to want to reshape the Constitution to conform to it?

What is with all the candidates having to prove how aggressive they are? Whether it's the terrorists or the immigrants or each other, virtually every candidate is behaving as though the single most important quality in a president is willingness to spoil for a fight.

It's embarrassing to watch so many intelligent and educated people admitting that belligerence is all they they have to offer.

Vanity of Vanities

I've been thinking a lot lately about the book of Ecclesiates. It resonates so thoroughly in our culture that we don't always perceive it. It's like Shakespeare or Benjamin Franklin or Alexander Pope, where we quote it without realizing that we're quoting.

On the one hand, I find this phenomenon fascinating from a purely structural standpoint: when we say "Hope springs eternal" or "It's Greek to me" or "there's nothing new under the sun," what are the structural properties of the utterance? These phrases are so familiar and so well-worn that we typically don't think of them as citations.

It's a different situation (by degree, at least) from if we say something like: "Sound and fury signifying nothing." In this phrase, I think, we recognizing the phrase as citational. We might even know that it comes from Macbeth, or at least from Shakespeare. At the bare minimum, we recognize that it is a literary quotation; that it's different from ordinary discourse; and that someone, once upon a time, put those words together in that particular fashion.

I don't think we do recognize that with citations such as "It's Greek to me." Or at least I don't. Phrases like that just seem to get absorbed into what we apprehend as "ordinary" language.

The great linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure, said that lanugage is a "system of difference without positive terms." Which just means that linguistic sign only have meaning in relation to one another. Every word we choose (Saussure calls this process of word selection the "paradigmatic" axis of language) derives its meaning from the words we exclude. If I tell you that I think oak trees are beautiful, you understand my meaning by understanding everything I've excluded: aspens, beeches, Douglas firs, maples, larches, lampposts, kittens, etc. "Oak" has no meaning that is not relational.

Saussure also discusses what he calls the "syntagmatic" axis of language, which is the combinative work--how one orders those paradigmatically selected words.

But what goes on with a phrase like: "It's Greek to me"? Both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic processes precede utterance. So the selection happens at the level of syntagm, I guess. We choose to say, "It's Greek to me," rather than, "I find it incomprehensible" or something like that. What I find interesting though, is how these phrases get in under our "citation radar."

Certain theorist, such as Roland Barthes, argue that ALL language is citational. Which is, of course, right as far as it goes. All language is pre-owned, so to speak. Even neologisms use known parts of other words. Using language entails a submission to its forms.

But we forget this. We have to forget it, or we'd go a little mad. That's why, I think, it's a little unsettling to discover the "origin" of a phrase that we use without recognizing its citationality. I think I laughed the first time I read Julius Caesar and saw "It was Greek to me."

No point to this, really, just thinking some stuff through. What I'm really interested in is why Ecclesiastes has this kind of pervasiveness in our culture. More on that later.