It was 20 years ago today not that Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play but that I received a vision. Like any normal sadoo, I’ve had visions of everything from braless angels descending countless ladders in fluttery bliss from heaven onto my priapic bed … to vermiculous apocalypses so horrific the very retelling of them would kill you. But on January 25 1990, shortly before my final son was born, three de-wombed children sweetly farting in their sleep, in the happy desolate hours of the night, after an evening of far too many Brussels sprouts, I received a vision that united time, myth, nature, technology, humanity, art, and god; in the morning, over a breakfast of vast toddler demands and oatmeal, I determined that the vision was conceptually sound and imaginatively potent.
It was, I confess, a taxonomic vision. Which sounds less healthy than it should.
The sadoo—a human type I do not advocate but only describe in a shadowy attempt to name what I seem to be—is, among other things, a competent taxonomist. There are those, naturally, who despise taxonomists. Back in the days I mingled with the named, I met with Eric McLuhan—one of Marshall’s many Catholic-spawned children. More ignorant than I should have been about the politics of such a statement, I referred to Northrop Frye in a vaguely positive way; this provoked a terse dismissive response, of which academics seem to be particularly fond.
Frye, McLuhan said with religious and contemptuous finality, was a taxonomist.
What a vile tribe I belong to! I thought, pained and bleeding. How despised and rejected of men, men of sorrows and acquainted with grief, are we taxonomists! I went home and built Lego fairies with my children to escape the horror of the new knowledge of what I was.
Even now, recalling that trauma, I find myself slightly weepy and realize I may not have the strength today to share my taxonomic vision with you. Please believe me: I so want to tell you what makes a beautiful taxonomy—one so magnificent politicians become poets and the Fortune 500 forget how to count. I so very very much want to tell you … when I’m ready for it, when you’re ready for it, when the world’s ready for it … what my perfect taxonomic vision is. But I must wait, Dearly Beloved, until the proper time.
It’s all about waiting. It’s all about the proper time.
In the meantime … to wet your pants … here’s what’s coming next in The Secular Sadoo … something you need, something you’ve been waiting for—a desperate lacuna in the very miasmic fabric of language: group names for groups that don’t have names. That is: if a bunch of crows is called a murder and a bunch of waterfowl is called a knob, what should a bunch of lawyers be called? A bunch of administrative assistants? Pimps? Desperados? Should they all be called a bunch? No. Oh no no no.
I have been given the names for such bunches, people. In another vision. And I shall share these names with you. I shall share them with you soon. And your lives shall be changed.
I had wanted to comment on Sadoo Pipher's first blog but am of the mind that First Blogs are sacred and, anyway, I felt that it was somehow wrong. That Sadoo Pipher's concept of the sadoo or at the very least his conceptualizing of himself as a sadoo was wrong.
ReplyDeleteAs my mother always used to say, never make up taxonomies because boys will see your underwear in their shiny surfaces.
ReplyDeleteI'm not the least bit sure what's being said here. But my main objection is to the spelling. Sadoo, like Sadhu, looks too foreign. Sadeu gives a French look to your name and thus fits well with the flaneurism you're trying to portray. Sad-doo is even more ridiculous--almost Scooby-doosih--but thus would be more fitting for the sadhu in the Americas. Sadue alters the accent potentially but is aligned with your impecuniousness and even, though stretched, with vileness, through Sade. My point is--I think you can do better.
ReplyDeleteThis blog was good enough to distract me from doing my taxes, but not good enough to make me take my pants off.
ReplyDeleteDoo better Sadoo.
Helen
Taxonomist!? Depraved tribe indeed. Though there is some pity to be had as your people have been persecuted throughout history, from Plato through to Darwin, despite your benefactions. I didn't realize there were still some of you from-the-top-down, arborescent bastards still kicking around after the fall of fascism and the introduction of lateral thinking and rhizomatics. Must be a Lazarus taxon.
ReplyDeleteHelen: this is because I was writing about me. Next time I'll write about you. In due course, the Trojan War.
ReplyDeleteMr. Venken: I'm afraid your relationship to taxonomies is too taxonomic for me. The taxonomy has, classically, been a monument. But the beautiful taxonomy, the one that does not descend from homogeneous heaven but rather rises from multifarious earth, begins in a fart ... with all the attendant digested broccoli, lentils, cabbage, beer, and sweet olfactory lust.
ReplyDeleteThe other day I was sitting on a mirror and thought, "Not only am I beautiful but I get to be a living breathing growing healthy happy member of a blog like this." It was truly a precious moment.
ReplyDeleteMy pants are definitely off.
ReplyDeleteBut your pants are always off. Your pants are always the pants with nobody inside them.
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ReplyDeleteI am thrilled to see citations enter The Secular Sadoo's comments. This raises its academic credibility by 14 yottaparsecs. I was particularly excited when reading the "often" in "An undergarment worn by men or women that covers the genitals and often the buttocks and the neighbouring parts of the body."
ReplyDeleteThurza rightly points to the self-serving hypocritical nature of the human. The strategist exploits these weaknesses for his own end.
ReplyDeleteI am hoping you will delve into the issue of pants further, Sadoo. I very much like where this is going. Particularly when we consider the trans-atlantic implications of the word.
ReplyDeleteI view Sadoo fashion as one of the primary reasons I am following this blog.
Can you share your thoughts on why Sadoos look so darn cool?
And also - yoga pants. Why do yoga pants exist and why do so many of us care?
So the score is ...
ReplyDeletePants 3, Plato 1, Fooco and Derriere 0, Garf Venken -17
Didn't you mean Play-Doh, Fritz?
ReplyDeleteAs my many ignoble detractors have pointed out, I'm all about pants. And I'm excited by all this talk about pants. While I take the time to get over my excitement, let me briefly say that yoga pants exist to contain the endless flatulence of yoga practitioners. Which means, of course, they should be wearing pants on their mouths too. The perfectly designed yoga-pant, which would balloon according to the soulfulness and authenticity of the earnest student's fart, particularly in Downward Dog, has not yet been designed and I am working with various guru-moguls from Varanasi and Palo Alto to rectify this.
ReplyDeleteAh, but the fart itself (kingdom), before it sprays into its fetid multiplicity (species), descends from the singular anus (domain or life). Classical or beautiful, abstraction remains your calling, you've merely turned God into an asshole.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean, "turned"? God's always been an asshole.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I don't know about you, but Sadoos have 4 anuses, each performing a different function. Which is why we fart so well and often don't need pants. But that's another blog.
Venken
ReplyDeleteyou make my heart sing.
Well, there is a very satisfying illustration of Sadoo being chastised by St. Peter, for yet again forgetting his pants, at http://thatispriceless.blogspot.com/2010/01/masterpiece-86.html. (Just thought you could use yet another highbrow academic citation.)
ReplyDeleteSadoo is well pleased with the picture of St. Peter and him; he had not realized it had been incarcerated on film. Note the slightly priapic rise of Sadoo's skirt as he realizes that, once again, his pants have been forgotten. Sadoo is almost beside himself with sadooity concerning the comprehensive and expansive pant scholarship that's emerging so early in the history of this Blog and the associated interest in the Reading Public which, frankly, can't help but make pant scholars everywhere a little shocked and vain.
ReplyDelete