Notes to/on the plagiarist

“It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form….” ~ “The Solar Anus,” George Bataille

The senator takes to the floor and makes another speech. The birds must know something: they tremble the branches of all the trees, and ripples move through the entire assembly. What is that nervous tittering in the gallery?

If, as Bataille says, the world is all parody and copulation is the principle of all things, then the senator is fucking with himself, his mother, your mother, our mothers, the president’s mother who was also a president, his father who was also a senator, also assassinated like Robert F. Kennedy though in different circumstances and in another part of the world.

You know of course that this is not just word-play. In more than a hundred tongues the world over, this is the most grievous insult a man might give and/or receive.

Which is not the same as saying women cannot find a suitable equivalent.

But, returning to the topic at hand: what is the punishment for the crime of extended plagiarism by copulation or related means?

It is at the very least bemusing (which is very different from “amusing”— though not at all surprising) that a man violently opposed to the idea of women exercising sovereignty over their bodies and reproductive health, could have been so ignorant about where women bloggers write about that sort of thing.

We all think we’re so cool, taking those long silver skewers and spearing chunks of bread, chunks of meat, dipping them into the gooey communal fondue pot that is the internet.

Here is the text I am reading tonight. The lesson is to differentiate the paraphrase from the precis and to write an example of each. The next lesson is proper citation, using page references within parentheses. There is an appendix which tells you how to do this for electronic sources.

One passage reads: “…lead is the parody of gold. Air is the parody of water. The brain is the parody of the equator.”

Which is to say, no amount of alchemical manipulation can change the outcome when you have made a colossal fool of yourself.

The man in the mountains playing a bamboo kubing in the fading light could tell the senator as much.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.