Ham of God
In today's news, the legendary Diego Maradona has apparently forsaken his Marlon Brando-like slide into grotesquery, opting instead to become the Al Roker of world football. Maradona -- the coke-addled midfielder whose norotious "hand of God" goal helped bring the 1986 World Cup to Argentina -- had his stomach stapled after becoming "almost unrecognizably fat" during seven years of lethargic snacking following his 1997 retirement.
Why have I chosen this inspiring tale to smack my blog on the ass and welcome it to the world? Is it because I care about football? Not really, or at least only to the degree that I refuse to call it "soccer," thus deferring to the nomenclaturial wisdom of eye-gouging, tooth-punching hooligans everywhere. No, I begin with Diego because Diego represents the sort of person I only wish I had the courage to become: coked-up and gigantic beyond reason. He's had what Michel Foucault called as a "limit-experience." He went to the edge of human possibility -- bringing glory to a nation soon to be eviscerated by neoliberal economics, accumulating girth for maximum possible irrelevance, pounding his mighty heart into a brittle tube of meat, grinding his once-nimble joints to the gristle -- and now he's ready to return from the mountaintop, doubtless bearing unspeakable wisdom in his thick, jittery hands.
I could do it, too. The Baby Jesus knows that I've tried . And as a university professor living the life of the mind and working at home three days a week, there's really no excuse for not -- oh, I don't know -- blowing a few lines and eating a French silk pie once in a while. As Diego wastes away, his stomach constricted to the size of a wee kitten's head, I could be picking up the slack somehow. WWDD?
So Diego, as the Romans once said, "Snortituri similis Mary-Kate Olsen te salutant" -- or, roughly translated, "Those who are about to snort up like Mary-Kate Olsen salute you." And so we do.
May the hand of God guide you. May the hand of God bless and keep you. May the hand of God bring me a fucking sandwich.
Why have I chosen this inspiring tale to smack my blog on the ass and welcome it to the world? Is it because I care about football? Not really, or at least only to the degree that I refuse to call it "soccer," thus deferring to the nomenclaturial wisdom of eye-gouging, tooth-punching hooligans everywhere. No, I begin with Diego because Diego represents the sort of person I only wish I had the courage to become: coked-up and gigantic beyond reason. He's had what Michel Foucault called as a "limit-experience." He went to the edge of human possibility -- bringing glory to a nation soon to be eviscerated by neoliberal economics, accumulating girth for maximum possible irrelevance, pounding his mighty heart into a brittle tube of meat, grinding his once-nimble joints to the gristle -- and now he's ready to return from the mountaintop, doubtless bearing unspeakable wisdom in his thick, jittery hands.
I could do it, too. The Baby Jesus knows that I've tried . And as a university professor living the life of the mind and working at home three days a week, there's really no excuse for not -- oh, I don't know -- blowing a few lines and eating a French silk pie once in a while. As Diego wastes away, his stomach constricted to the size of a wee kitten's head, I could be picking up the slack somehow. WWDD?
So Diego, as the Romans once said, "Snortituri similis Mary-Kate Olsen te salutant" -- or, roughly translated, "Those who are about to snort up like Mary-Kate Olsen salute you." And so we do.
May the hand of God guide you. May the hand of God bless and keep you. May the hand of God bring me a fucking sandwich.
