Monday, December 05, 2005
Meine Freundin, Sharada, hat mir dein Fernsehen gibt[nicht recht... Scheisse...]. It has a thirteen-inch screen and its own remote control. Ausgezeichnet. Ich bin so glücklich.
The final project for my ancient gender and sexuality class consisted of a five-minute oral comparison of a modern song to any ancient text read in class. I used Bloodhound Gang's "Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny" with something Martial wrote about a prostitute named Thais.
Kiss Me Where It Smells Funny
And now ladies and gentlemen, here's the event you've all been waiting for
You came twice last year like a Sears catalogue
'Cause your last boyfriend makes love like Boss Hogg
Well now you're seeing me but soon I'll have you seein' God
'Cause girl I'll get you pantin' like you're Pavlov's dog
Like a DC-10 guaranteed to go down
But baby your black box is the one that I found
I'll give you the gift that keeps on givin' it won't cost ya any money
Then she grabbed me by the ears and said kiss me where it smells funny
So down I go like I'm 2000 Flushes
I can tell I'm doing something right by the way that she blushes
She's the one that's speechless I'm the one that's tongue-tied
She's thinkin' holy mackerel I'm thinkin' tuna on the side
There must be somethin' wrong with Al Pacino's nose
'Cause the "Scent of a Woman" is like rotten tomatoes
Yeah I'm snorkelin' for clams it doesn't matter if I wanna be
Don't come up for air until you kiss me where it smells funny
Drop my face below her waist and stay on third base
I can tell that cherry's ripe by the way it tastes
Yeah I could make a lot of wine with the yeast I find inside her panties
And then drink it while I'm eating out down at the Seafood Shanty
Thais Stinks
Thais gives off an odour, not only as bad as that which a miserly fuller's old piss-jar does, but one just now smashed in the middle of the street;
not even as bad as a he-goat fresh from rutting, nor even the mouth of a lion,
not even the pelt seized from a dog from across the Tiber,
not even as bad as a chicken when it putrefies in an aborted egg, nor even as an amphora befouled by rancid fish-sauce.
In order that this stench might seem to come from somewhere else, she alters it: whenever she makes for the baths, once her clothes are off,
she is green with depilatory, or hides herself covered by a clay steeped in vinegar, or is concealed under three or four layers of greasy bean mix.
When she thinks she is made completely safe by these thousand or so tricks, having done everything possible, Thais gives off the smell- of Thais.
I prepared a brief outline about an hour before class, which did no justice to the direction of analysis I took in my mind. I did maintain that the anonymity of the girl in the song made it less of a direct attack on her than to emphasize the weakness of the speaker of the song. Martial's "Thais", contrarywise, exists as an ironic reference to a well-known Greek courtesan (as everyone now understands the reference to Al Pacino). I noted that Al Pacino's name, rather than an identification for the girl, represents some statement about men in general, again rather than Martial's attack of the girl.
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 1:03 PM]