Herodotus Parody

So over Thanksgiving break our Greek professor emailed us with a creative writing assignment: write a narrative about Thanksgiving in the style of Herodotus. At first I was angry that she would assign this, on short notice, over a holiday break, all the while we're supposed to be writing our research papers (due monday). So I finally sat down to do it the night before: and it was great. I never write creatively unless forced, but it turned to be quite fun, and it was quite a mind cleansing exercise. So, I'm posting my Herodotus parody below. For those of you not fimiliar with him, it may seem ridiculous (well, actually, it is ridiculous). But those who've at least read the opening of his histories or are at least familiar with his convoluted narrative chronology and ethnic stereotypes, you may get a kick or two. Enjoy!

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Hence is the inquiry of Jonathanasius of Minneapoleos regarding the cause of how both the Thanksgiving turkey became small, and the Americans became fat. The tradition of eating turkey every year in celebration of wealth came as a result of the American’s European heritage. Many Americans who emigrated from Europe, particularly those due west of the Ural mountains, were descendents of those people who warred with the Turks, who later became known as the Ottomans. They left the ruined and destitute cities of their homeland for the promised paradise of the Northern part of the Americas. Upon arriving, they were disappointed to find that North America was already populated with many who resembled the Turks in customs and skin color. Some, μεν, of the newly arrived were determined to live in peace with the natives of the land; others, δε, slaughtered them in vast numbers, and laid waste their civilization.
Now these Americans, as I have observed, practice the custom of preparing a turkey dinner yearly during their month called November. They call this custom ‘Thanksgiving,’ since everyone before taking part in the turkey feast must express their thanks to the gods for their two-fold blessedness – that they both escaped the Turks of Turkey, and defeated the Turks of America. After the thanks-giving they eat a bird which they named ‘turkey’ to commemorate their superiority over the Turks. This bird, once wild, they domesticated and kept on their farms.
The turkey, as everyone knows, is the only animal in the world that does not have ears. The Americans also thought the name appropriate since Turks never understood their language.
Long after the first Europeans settled in America, their lifestyles changed, much due to their economic practices. Every American, at first, farmed and labored for their food. Later, they made their livings while sitting in chairs. Before long, these Americans began to grow large: their activeness faded, while their appetites for turkey remained unchanged. Those in charge of America sent messengers, electronically into their television sets and painted on large billboards, with the following message: “If thou continuest to eat the turkey as thou art accustomed, but keep in thy slothful ways and do not pay heed to the Surgeon General’s prophecy, surely wilt thou suffer great malignity.”
Obstinate in their sloth, and unwilling to part with their commemoration of victory over the Turks, the Americans dismissed the warning. Many years later, the Americans suffered the outcome of their folly. For many years earlier, the Americans had a great civil war, during which there were many casualties, and thus a need for healing magicians, whom they call doctors. After the war many doctors were unemployed because, compared to the years during the war, people were relatively unafflicted in their health. Unemployed and disgruntled, the doctors decided to instill a fear of death in the Americans, since before this Americans were unabashedly optimistic and unmoved by death. So these doctors sent messengers to the Americans with the following speech: “You all are going to die mercilessly if you do not come visit us and take our elixirs.”
The Americans, being awoken to this fear of death visited the doctors in abundant numbers. The doctors, however, were so greedy that they raised the price of their consultation. The Americans, driven by their fear of death and desire for immortality, could not resist the doctors’ aid. And due to the rising prices, they became disgruntled at the state of health care in their country. They were thus punished, due to their unwillingness to give up their sacramental Turkey feast, and to their obsessive anxiety over the afterlife, to pay ridiculous prices to maintain their health, while simultaneously cursed to forever mar their health by consuming large amounts of turkey smothered with copious dosages of gravy.
The turkey, it is said, can be prepared in a variety of ways. The most common recipe is to set the oven at 350 degrees, but before baking the turkey…[ed. note: This recipe unfortunately has not survived the manuscripts. While some Jonathanasian scholars conjecture that the author intended the recipe retrieved from the manuscript of “Joy Christian Fellowship Church Cookbook,” others argue that he surely meant the sumptuous “Raisin-Stuffing Turkey” recipe in Folio B from “Betty Crocker’s Complete Kitchen Extravaganza.” I, however, think it is undoubtedly the recipe newly recovered from extant text “Martha Stewart Living.”]

post-Thanksgiving day

Well, I'm writing from my Grandpa's house in Sioux Falls, SD, still recuperating from a very pleasant thanksgiving day. Evidently I was tired since I went to bed last night at 12 and woke up at noon. I never used to sleep in that much, but these days I seem to be better at relenting when appropriate, and not pushing myself too hard. Good life lesson, I'm finding.

It was great to see the whole dad's side of the family, many of whom I hadn't seen since last spring. We had a graveside service in memoriam of my grandmother, killed in a car accident 13 years ago. Through some strange mishap, her ashes were never scattered by the funeral home as they were supposed to. It must have been a very bizarre phone call for my grandpa to receive just months ago -- "Yes, Mr. Peasley, we are calling to inform you that your wife's ashes have not been scattered and are sitting in a box on our storage shelves." So we had a "second," informal service, partly for the sake of the 6 grand kids who hadn't been born when she died. The air was cold and crisp, the sky cloudless and bright.

I've made my attempts at completing my 12 source annotated bibliography on King Lear, though have found my mind replete with distractions, the most prominent being the prospect of going into the Peace Corps after graduation, and how that provokes me to scour every blog I can dig up on web about the stories of others. Strongly considering that puts a lot of things into perspective.

Its been a family tradition to drive around during the holiday season an 'ooh' and 'aah' at Christmas lights around town. I used to hate it and think it was boring. Tonight I can't wait to go.

Jonathan

Blog Justification and Art

So the thought of creating a blog has long been merely a fashionable one to me, until the musings of my two buddies (cf. Lew and Cloaks) have proven their communicative value. Plus, I've experienced (not just viewed or read) some great art this weekend, and I've taken the authoritative stance that my thoughts are bloggable (cf. "blog-worthy" -Merriam Webster). My blog will not follow MLA guidlines, however I do plan on attributing everything wonderful I post to other people.

Last night I sojourned to the cities to see the Coen Bros. new film "No country for Old Men," adapted to the screen from Cormac McCarthy's (my favorite living author, cf. future post) second most recent novel. There was a huge line outside the Uptown Theatre, and my first thought was that these people obviously didn't know what they were in for (cf. Peasley's pessimistic disposition). The film/book is about a young working class vietnam vet who stumbles onto a drug deal gone wrong in the desert, finds a bag of bills, and takes it for his own. Only too late does he realize the stupidity of his on-a-whim decision. The drug lord sends a host of men to retrieve it - including a homocidal stoic who flips coins to decide who he shoots in the face and who he lets alone. The main character with the least screen time, though in my opinion the character who fills out the real meaning of the film (cf. Film title and Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium"), is Sheriff Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, whose philanthropic motives of being a law man are shattered and he becomes disilusioned at the kind of violence and genus of criminals he is dealing with. The movie offers no poetic justice, only ruthless killings and the conclusion that even people's hopes are more than often too mortal. The crazy-killer-man rolls his eyes at those who think their fates could be otherwise. And, metatheatrically speaking, he (and McCarthy) roll their eyes at those of us who are discomforted by lack of positive resolution in our lives (or in the plots of our art). The movie, however, ends on an amazing note -- with Sheriff Bell's narrative of the dream of he has of his father, walking ahead of him on horseback, silent, carrying a fire in a horn, communicating a steadfastness of human meaning via the symbolic love implicit in familial relationships.

The hope this last scene gives is too mysterious for me to venture that people en masse will find it redemptive of the film as meaningless blood-bath. However, McCarthy seems to be showing us something entirely realistic: that here on earth justice is always delayed if not absent in our sufferings and the cruelty we witness in the world. He refuses to give a false hope that everything will be fine and dandy on this side of death. And he also neglects to give us any good reason to believe that there's better things on the other side. However, he shows us what truly is good about life, and the mystery of this in spite of the utterly ruthless nature of the universe. McCarthy like many good artists (Dostoevsky, Melville, Shakespeare) and biblical literature (cf. Job, Ecclesiastes, the book of Mark) refuses to allow us the notion that everything will be nice and fine when we most want them to be.

Art piece 2: I finished reading Shakespeare's King Lear just a few hours ago. It was my first read through, and I'm going to need some time to really process it. But I was so excited to read it since I'd read so much about it before hand. King Lear is selfish in the beginning, giving favor to his two wicked daughters and condemning to exile his one honest one. Shortly his two daughters turn on him, leaving him almost completely naked in the rain, and they vie with eachother and their husbands over power for the rest of the play. I don't really feel up for supplying the details right now (cf. I should reading Cicero's Pro Caelio this minute), but let us say he endures a terrible exile through which an inner-transformation seems to take place, which is exhibited explicitly in the final scene when he weeps over his dead daughter.

All this to say: I have long been quite disillusioned at how superficially Christians view and appreciate art. Too often the good books, movies and music have little to do with the actual Christian vision, and more to do with feeling comfortable. I will call this the Disney-ification of Christianity. As was reminded me earlier reading Kim Paffenroth (a great Catholic literature critic), the book of Mark originally did not end with the resurrection, only with the crucifixion. I assume the Church Fathers included this at a later point, and understandably so for the sake of unity of mind, or that the ending was tacked on through text transmission (which is common even as late as in Shakespeare manuscripts). However, imagine that this was so.

Thought experiment: Now imagine what Mark (who got much of his account from Peter and therefore knew of the resurrection) was thinking if he did not include the resurrection in his gospel.

Blogwell,
Peasley