St. Hungry Hungry of Hippo

"I answer that true religion is the golden mean between the ham and the bread; and how can it be otherwise? For we are to eat of our Lord's flesh; is it a base cookie that we ought to munch it bare and without chocolate chips? And therefore why withhold garnishings from the Eucharist? The delicious mustards of Düsseldorf will bear out my argument."

Of all the great theologians, none was ever so erudite, so catholically wide-ranging, and so obese as St. Tubbert de Gourmandise. St. Pointdexter said that "the man never uttered a sentence that didn't contradict itself by the time his stomach ceased to wobble". Indeed, it was St. Tubbert who brought all the differing flavours of Catholocism into a single mammoth system, the great Summa Neapolitana, named after the triple ice-cream which Tubbert took to be the symbol of his entire work. Bringing together Aristotleian logic and metaphysics with the haut cuisine of his home-town, Tubbert toiled night and day for 40 years on his great work, refuting and counter-refuting, scribbling and counter-scribbling, and all the while digesting and counter-digesting. In an effort to rekindle interest in this misunderstood and oft-maligned school of philosophy, the Name Dropper's Book of the Month club has selected some choice cutlets from the great man's magnum opus, for your immediate consumption and hyper-emesis.

From Contra Haereses Gobbledigoocorum (Against the Gobbledigook Heresy)

"... For this reason, we must ask not only if, but how the Gobbledigooks, and indeed all heretics, come to err. St. Tittles was ever wont to ascribe their wayward path to the perversion of the intellect. Contrariwise, St. Gossamer-Pimbsly-Jones-on-the-Fern says it is a question of the will, that they have allowed peversion and sin to enter into their very hearts. Yet I respond that heresy is neither brought about by a peversion of the intellect nor a corruption of the heart, but because of an unsatisfied belly. How can one accept the trinity if one has not tasted the sumptuous triple layered pies of Gourmandise, or the three-flavour cakes of Gascon's Tongue? It is the tummy which must digest the Trinity. It is the stomach which must lead one to faith. Charity and hope are to be found only in the munching of cherries and the sipping of ale; for these turn the mind to right reason, and the heart to right willing, and by the grace of God, turn the bowels to right churning. Amen."

From the Summa Neapolitana

Quaestio 2.2.76) Whether the Albigensian Vegeterianism is truly virtuous?

Objection: It has been said that vegetables are a tasty, nourishing foodstuff that promote healthy body and healthy mind. As cited in the Book of Qualms, "Eat your carrots, oh child of Israel, or thou shalt be denied the toffee of the LORD."

On the contrary: Vegetables grow in the dirt and are the food of lower beasts such as cattle, kine, and Scotchmen. The Philosopher saith: "Where's the beef?"

I answer that: Allegorically the consumption of vegetables is representative of the mortification of the flesh and all that we are to become after our material body passes away. Nevertheless, it is not incumbent to actually eat them, for they are truly gross.

Quaestio 2.4.84) Whether Onion Dip doth surpass Sour Cream?

Objection: It seems as though Onion Dip is superior to Sour Cream, for Augustine says that "bits of Onion remind us of our sins, and garlicky admixture of the ever-abiding presence of God in our inner-selves."

On the contrary: The Philosopher saith: "what is simple is purer in substance, and therefore more perfect in all its parts. God is the purest and simplest substance." Whereat we might determine that Sour Cream is the better dip.

I answer that: For the daily dipping of bread, meat, and fried turnip, Onion Dip, due to its multi-varied substance, is superior fourfold; for allegorically it bespeaks the variety of God's creation, typologically it shows Christ to be purely God (dip) and purely man (onion), morally it instructs us to suffer as Job the chunky and the creamy, and literally, it promotes virtue by making the breath so unsurpassingly foul that sin avoids us, instead of vice versa.

From the Life of St. Tubbert de Gourmandise. 

"...And it happened that Tubbert was not inclined to fight for his father's land, nor to wench with his brothers, but was content to gorge himself on sweetmeats, and thereafter wrote in his ecstacy tracts of a most rapturous devotion. One day his father, thinking to bring his son to vice, prepared for him a mighty cake, wherein was cunningly placed a whore, to coax Tubbert to manhood. And after a while, Tubbert came contentedly to his father and thanked him greatly for the cake. Neither hide nor hair was seen of the whore thereafter...

And they say that, in his prime years, Tubbert had his library made especially to suit his habits. Between every volume was a loaf of bread, "to keep the bindings straight", and likewise, between each page and parchment of his books was placed everyday a thin wafer, "to encourage me in my devotions and readings". He had fashioned a writing desk that, by means of hinges, could expand indefinitely to match his ever widening girth. Likewise longer and longer quills were needed forthat Tubbert might reach the page with of his writing, until he had grown so large with the love of God that he would merely spit the ink at the page (for he was an expert in all emissions). And this was one of his miracles, that the entire third part of the Summa was dribbled from his jowels..."

Heine on Kant

Heine on the influence of Kant on Germany:

"Kant gave a great impulse to their minds, less by the depth of his writings than by the critical spirit which reigned over them, that came to be introduced in all the arts and sciences...Schiller, for example, was a powerful Kantian, and his artistic writings are impregnated with the spirit of Kant's philosophy. Belles-lettres and the fine arts were replete with the abstract dryness of this philosophy.

Happily, it never caught on in cooking."

Bachelor Parties: A Qualitative Case Study in Particle Physics

You might say that the recent discovery of the Higgs-Boson particle has given new weight to old matter. Nor is this limited strictly to the domain of the physical sciences; it has spread equally  to the realms of cultural and romantic practices. Consider the following:

It may have occurred to some of you male readers aged 22-39, perhaps on some casual sit on a park bench, or, in the dusk of a beautiful evening along the canal, that you not only have a female companion at your side, but, what’s more shocking, you suddenly perceive that she is a mass giving object, or at least in league with such pernicious particles that are, even as I write this, compelling your limbs to contort, and to produce from your knapsack unbeknownst to yourself a fantastically expensive piece of jewelry, at which you can only gape in horror as you offer it TO her, like an electron drawn irresistibly to its cash-spending opposite, whereupon it may, as I have hinted, occur to you, as she joyfully screams “I DO!” that you are getting married.

Yes, like the impending explosion of the Sun, your nuptials are approaching.

Thankfully there is ONE aspect of your wedding that you will be not be either responsible or indirectly castratable for. That is of course your own farewell to the masculine first person singular, i.e. your bachelor party.

Having myself recently conducted several rigorous experiments on the subject of bachelor parties, and what is more, put them into theoretical indisputability in my thesis entitled The Higgs-Bosonovabitch Principle – Particle Physics and Androfutility of the Marriageable in the Information Age, I have established myself as the sole expert in the ditch. I have furthermore condensed for popular consumption a practical addendum to the aforementioned work, which I encourage all soon-to-be-groomed’smen to read, entitled:

A Case Study for Putting on an Empirically "Awesome" Bachelor Party

Operative or Thematic? This first axiom was given to me by a philosopher, citing Eugene Fink, at the above-mentioned bachelor party in-between mouthfuls of peanut-butter ice-cream and blue-berry pie. The gist of the matter is that one must pre-determine which elements of the party will be thematic, and which operative.

 A thematic element refers to topical clusters around which the party will gravitate, i.e. "self-overcoming", "the conviction to marry", "why are you such a goddamn wuss" etc. The operative elements are the philosophical and scientific questions addressed inexplicitly in the engagement with the thematic, i.e. the ethics of canoe jousting, the violence inherent in the game of horse-shoes, or the consequences of using multiple pool-noodles to simulate octopode combat scenarios.

Destroy His Lust With Allegory. The Higgs-Boson particle, inexplicable as it is, has only been made current in the media through a variety of metaphors, whether it be compared to a force-field, a jar of peanut butter, or a gigantic shriek-inducing dock spider. The same principle applies on a larger scale to the Higgs-Boson's older cousin, that is, the bachelor himself.

At our party, we ran the groom through a variety of experimento-metaphorical trials, and, to make them more amenable to the comprehension of the layman, took for our model the “deadly sins” of the middle ages.

For example, the LUST trial had the hero take shot with bow and arrow at a target representative of scantily clad pin-up girls. WRATH was the war of all against all made nautical in via a canoe sea-battle. GLUTTONY was the all-meat and booze diet made tantalizingly manifest throughout the day, and for ENVY, a pantomime was put on displaying the past loves and dalliances of to test his resolve, entitled The Lusty Bachelor of Orleans.

For PRIDE, taking the classical Symposium as our model, we each of us gave forth with an ex-tempore speech as to why he should remain single, the gists of which were broadly:

1) Freedom in toto
2) The particular liberty of the single man, viz the laws of motion, resistance, inertia etc.
3) Women are all ****s
4) Women are lovely, it’s the groom who’s a ****
5) The groom is too skinny
6) Dinosaurs
7) Determined amoral mechanism of the universe renders love and beauty meaningless
8) The groom’s fiancé is stronger than he is
9) The groom’s fiancé’s twin brother fancies him more than she does

Candy Strippers. The question of strippers is a hotly debated topic, or a topic debated hotly, depending on the tip. This traditional element is not strictly speaking a necessity, since the redundancy factor grows rather quickly. Scientifically speaking, a comparison chart shows the particle mass of two parallel clusters and the gyrations necessary to set off a reaction, while interesting for educational purposes, hardly need occupy the Hadron (or is it Hardon?) Collider.

Don’t Fuck With Dock Spiders. Another empirically proven fact. These ginormous things are the children of Cthulhu, and if your bachelor party takes place anywhere near a dock, do NOT awaken this particular Old God. Speaking strictly as a scientist, I can honestly say that I have never observed adult males of any species emit, in unison, such a high pitched squeal, nor have I seen a herd of deer prance away so skittishly from a single object.

Presumably nothing comparably pathetic happened at the bachelorette party.

The Aristeia Factor. One phenomenon that modern science has yet to properly account for, and which nevertheless ought to be leveraged at all truly superb bachelor parties. Suffice it to say that the entirety of masculine awesomeness and excellence can be encompassed in a single episodic event in which the particles of dark matter and light itself fuse into a clustered super-particle, increasing the power level of the principle agent to over 9000. If you can, with sufficient goading, alchohol, and BBQ ribs, induce the groom into this state, he will feel like an insurmountable god, and will thereupon totally be up to doing any stupid ass shit you ask him to. 

Ali Bey

Ali Bey

 the faith’s defender

Happy lay in

maidens’ arms;

Of paradise         a semi- preview

Allah

grants him

here on Earth

Odalisques pretty

as Huris

And

 as supple as

 gazelles-

One

is combing 

out

 his

 mustache

And another

 presses at his temples.

And a third

 plucks on a lute

sings,

dances,

kisses him 

on the heart

 where

the fires

of all

piety kindle.

But outside

all of a sudden

Sound the

 trumpets-swords-and-clatter

Weapon’s crash 

and flint

lock-shots

“Lord, the Franks are on the attack!”

The defender mounts                                  

his warhorse

Flies    

                    like a dream

 towards the battle;

He’s still in mind

 of when he lay there 

among the maidens’ arms.

All the while that

he is chopping

here

 and there

 at

Frankish heads

he is lauging

       like a lover

Yes,

softly 

       he chuckles .