Fwd: People are strange. You are stranger.

[april_biccum@xxxxxxxxxxx]

The following was sent to me by a friend, not sure where he got it:


>Todd:  Hi, Jerry.
>
>Jerry (reading from card):  So, Todd, you're here to tell your girlfriend
>something.  What is it?
>
>Todd:  Well, Jerry, my girlfriend, Ursula, and I have been going out for
>three years now.  We did everything together.  We were really
>inseparable.  But then she discovered post-Marxist political and
>literary theory, and it's been nothing but fighting ever since.
>
>Jerry:  Why is that?
>
>Todd:  You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian rationalist.  I
>believe that the individual self, the "I" or ego, is the foundation of
>all metaphysics.  She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary
>self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the
>political and economic realities of late capitalist, consumerist discourse.
>
>Crowd:  Ooooohhhh!
>
>Todd:  I know!  I know!  Is that infantile, or what?
>
>Jerry:  So what do you want to tell her today?
>
>Todd:  I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism,
>we're through.  I just can't go on having a relationship with a woman
>who doesn't believe that I exist.
>
>Jerry:  Well, you're going to get your chance.  Here's Ursula!
>
>Ursula storms onstage and charges up to Todd.
>
>Ursula:  Patriarchal colonizer!
>
>She slaps him viciously.  Todd leaps up, but the security guys pull
>them apart before things can go any further.
>
>Ursula:  Don't listen to him!  Logic is a male hysteria!  Rationality
>equals oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices!
>
>Todd:  The classical methodology of rational dialectic is our only road to
>truth!  Don't try to deny it!
>
>Ursula:  You and your dialectic!  That's how it's been through our whole
>relationship, Jerry.  Mindless repetition of the post-Enlightenment
>meta-narrative.  "You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula."
>"Post-structuralism is just classical sceptical thought re-cast in the
>language of semiotics, Ursula."
>
>Crowd:  Booo!  Booo!
>
>Jerry:  Well, Ursula, come on.  Don't you agree that the roots of
>contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be sought in Enlightenment
>political philosophy?
>
>Ursula:  History is the discourse of powerful, centrally located voices,
>marginalizing and de-scribing the sub-altern!
>
>Todd:  See what I have to put up with?  Do you know what it's like
>living with someone who sees sex as a metaphoric demonstration of the
>anti-feminist violence implicit in the discourse of the dominant power
>structure?  It's terrible.  She just lies there and thinks of Andrea
>Dworkin.  That's why we never do it any more.
>
>Crowd:  Wooooo!
>
>Ursula:  You liar!  Why don't you tell them how you haven't been able to
>get it up for the past three months because you couldn't decide if your
>penis truly had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of Mind?
>
>Todd:  Wait a minute!  Wait a minute!
>
>Ursula:  It's true!
>
>Jerry:  Well, I don't think that we're going to solve this one right away.
>Our next guests are Louis and Tina.  And Tina has a little confession to
>make!
>
>Louis and Tina come onstage.  Todd and Ursula continue bickering in the
>background.
>
>Jerry:  Tina, you are... (reads cards) ... an existentialist; is that
>right?
>
>Tina:  That's right, Jerry.  And Louis is, too.
>
>Jerry:  And what did you want to tell Louis today?
>
>Tina:  Jerry, today I want to tell him...
>
>Jerry:  Talk to Louis.  Talk to him.
>
>Crowd hushes.
>
>Tina:  Louis... I've loved you for a long time...
>
>Louis:  I love you, too, Tina.
>
>Tina:  Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence,
>but...well, I just want to tell you that I've been reading Nietzsche
>lately, and I don't think I can agree with your egalitarian politics any
>more.
>
>Crowd:  Wooooo!  Woooooo!
>
>Louis (shocked and disbelieving):  Tina, this is crazy.  You know that
>Sartre clarified all this way back in the '40's.
>
>Tina:  But he didn't take into account Nietzsche's radical critique of
>democratic morality, Louis.  I'm sorry.  I can't ignore the contradiction
>any longer!
>
>Louis:  You got these ideas from Victor, didn't you?  Didn't you?
>
>Tina:  Don't you bring up Victor!  I turned to him only when I saw you
>were seeing that dominatrix!  I needed a real man!  An Uber-man!
>
>Louis (sobbing):  I couldn't help it.  It was my burden of freedom.  It was
>too much!
>
>Jerry:  We've got someone here who might have something to add.  Bring
>out...Victor!
>
>Victor enters.  He walks up to Louis and sticks a finger in his face.
>
>Victor:  Louis, you're a classic post-Christian intellectual -- weak to the
>core!
>
>Louis (through tears): You can kiss my Marxist ass, Reactionary Boy!
>
>Victor:  Herd animal!
>
>Louis:  Lackey!
>
>Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and wrestle.  The crowd
>goes wild.  After a long struggle, the security guys pry them apart.
>
>Jerry:  Okay, okay.  It's time for questions from the audience.  Go ahead,
>sir.
>
>Audience member:  Okay, this is for Tina.  Tina, I just wanna know how
>you can call yourself an existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche's
>doctrine of the Ubermensch.  Doesn't that imply a belief in intrinsic
>essences that is in direct contradiction with with the fundamental
>principles of existentialism?
>
>Tina:  No!  No!  It doesn't.  We can be equal in potential, without being
>equal in eventual personal quality.  It's a question of Becoming, not
>Being.
>
>Audience member:  That's just disguised essentialism!  You're no
>existentialist!
>
>Tina:  I am so!
>
>Audience member:  You're no existentialist!
>
>Tina:  I am so an existentialist, bitch!
>
>Ursula stands and interjects.
>
>Ursula:  What does it [bleep] matter?  Existentialism is just a cover
>for late capitalist anti-feminism!  Look at how Sartre treated Simone de
>Beauvoir!
>
>Women in the crowd cheer and stomp.
>
>Tina:  [Bleep]-you!  Fat-ass Foucaultian ho!
>
>Ursula:  You only wish you were smart enough to understand Foucault,
>bitch!
>
>Tina:  You the bitch!
>
>Ursula:  No, you the bitch!
>
>Tina:  Whatever!  Whatever!
>
>Jerry:  We'll be right back with a final thought!  Stay with us!
>
>Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT Technical Institute, and
>Psychic Alliance Hotline.
>
>Jerry:  Hi!  Welcome back.  I just want to thank all our guests for being
>here, and say that I hope that you're able to work through your
>differences and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from
>the dismal miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human
>relationship.
>
>(Jerry turns to the camera.)
>
>Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games.  Semiotics,
>deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis -- it all seems
>like good, clean fun.  But when the heart gets involved, all our
>painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and
>we're reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees.  It's not
>pretty.  If you're in a relationship, and differences over the
>fundamental principles of your respective subjectivities are making
>things difficult, maybe it's time to move on.  Find someone new, someone
>who will accept you and the way your laughably limited human intelligence
>chooses to codify and rationalize the chaos of existence.  After all, in
>the absence of a clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that's all
>we're all doing anyway.  So remember:  take care of yourselves -- and each
>other.
>
>Announcer:  Be sure to tune in next time, when KKK strippers battle
>it out with transvestite, omnisexual porn stars! Tomorrow on Springer!
>
>
>
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