TODAY IS

(at Delphi)

Monday, March 2, 2009

Will Ferrell is the new Aristophanes

Ron Burgundy: Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diago, which of course in German means "a whale's vagina".
Veronica Corningstone: [pause] No, there's no way that's correct.

Our fine philologue Umumuntamku has talked a lot (though not necessarily on this blog) about how the Greek comic hero tends to combine two qualities that might seem contradictory:

  • he is utterly vile in almost every conceivable way
  • he nevertheless carries the play's moral message, by doing something the author wants everyone else to imitate

Umu tends to present this dichotomy as being a curious product of old Greek "shame culture", not necessarily comprehensible to a modern Western audience. I REFUTE HIM THUS.

At the start of the movie Ron Burgundy is obnoxious and stupid*. By the end of the movie he is still obnoxious and stupid, but he has also reversed his initial sexism and accepted a lady as co-anchor, giving the film its moral message.

Uh... so there!

* And hilarious!

9 comments:

umunmutamku said...

OR, gris, have you just proven by implicational necessity that ours, too, is a shame culture? Eh? Eh?

grisom said...

Dunno! What's a shame culture?

Tezcatlipoca said...

Are you wearing clothes -right now-? Therefore, ours is a shame culture. (Because, y'know, I assume you're either a) at work, or b) at school, as you read this... and I know* they don't allow nekkidness at work or school)

*don't ask.

Anonymous said...

let's not get too carried away -- the temperature is below zero right now. It's like, stuff white people like: Scarves! Well yeah sure but when the choice is not acting "white" or freezing, hmm.

Anyway, yes, we are a shame culture. Maybe not as much as japan, though.

grisom said...

I'm still hoping for a definition form the horse's mouth, as it seems to me the term was invented to describe an important difference between Greek culture and our own.

grisom said...

Also, I can never spell the word "from" right for some reason.

Tezcatlipoca said...

horses mouths are typically full of balls,*
this horse is no exception

*well, all the horses /I've/ seen, anyway

grisom said...

Tezzie, you really shouldn't be stuffing your balls into every horsemouth you see. That's how they created AIDS.

grisom said...

here!

Maxims and minims for the wise and the foolish

  • I think that historians are talking nonsense, because they don't write their essays in Coq. — Umunmutamku
  • LANGUAGE IS A HIERARCHICAL AUTHORITY
    A GOVERNMENT OF THE CONSCIOUSNESS — Tezcatlipoca
  • Whoever fights against the empire, becomes the empire. [or something along those lines] — Philip K. Dick [as told to Tezcatlipoca]
    • We’re not fighting the empire! We are the empire! Go away, or we'll smack you with this stick! — Tezcatlipoca
  • You don't have to be straight to shoot straight. — Barry Goldwater
    • Indeed, we must prevent life, which is frequently fatal. — Umunmutamku
      • There are also a number of legitimate scientific reasons for it as well (though I don't know what they are) — Tezcatlipoca
  • Instead of thinking of Scripture as a manual, I try to think of the Bible as ‘a boyfriend’. — punkrainbow
    • Your feelings are lying to you. — Jer 17:9
  • READ A BOOK, I'M SURE IT'S IN ONE OF THEM. — Tezcatlipoca
    • Books are full of bullshit and lies! — Tezcatlipoca
      • We will lie to you but we will lie to ourselves as well. You will, however, see through our lies and grasp the shining truth within. — The KLF
  • A Gnostic is by definition a knower, and since knowledge supersedes belief, a knower cannot very well be a believer. — Stephan A. Hoeller
    • talking about the great unknown is ridiculous. it’s THE GREAT UN-FUCKING-KNOWN — Anonymous
      • The enemy knows the system. — Claude Shannon

Qadutu: Militant Queer Calculus
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