O-void

Spoiler alert : The action takes place in Paris. Not Paris Indiana, Virginia or Idaho but Paris, the city right next to Disneyland Paris.


The water is boiling and the bubbles are bubbling. I open the door of the fridge. I grab an egg. I enjoy the coolness of the shell. I close my fingers around it, and something tickles my palm. Are eggs “dead”? Ghosts of chickens that will never be born? Could this one be an oracle, trying to read my future by touching my palm? Fortune or chaos?

2013 : Annular solar eclipse in the South Pacific.

2214 : A new astrophysical theory is being proven : indeed the Universe is much smaller than we thought.

2221 : triple conjunction between Mars and Saturn.

There is something between my skin and the calcium skin of the shell. I take the egg with my right hand, revealing a feather in the palm of my left. An urgency roams under the skull that is my own shell.

Sacra Conversazione (Holy Conversation) 
by Piero della Francesca (1472)

2222 : The First Inuit Pope is elected. His original name is Pauloosie Qulitalik. He now becomes Peter II. By pushing the wrong button, he brings Catholicism to an end. Christians call it a pagan conspiracy. Pagans call it a “Pope art” miracle.

Sacra Conversazione detail

Perhaps the feather is simply a sign that the egg came from a real chicken. A feather somehow got stuck to the egg (with yolk from another, less fortunate egg?), and stayed with it all the way into the carton. In that case, I should take comfort in the knowledge that it doesn’t come from a laboratory.


2426 : Pluto’s second orbit, since its discovery. A Plutonian year lasts 248 terrestrial years. If there were trees on Pluto, flowers would not stop blossoming for 62 consecutive years. In Fall, the surface of the extra solar planet would disappear under a monumental carpet of dead leaves.


The chicken is a bird and a bird has just one orifice. Anal and genital united. Regarding chickens, French uses creepy expressions such as quand les poules auront des dents or avoir la chair de poule, literally meaning when chicken will have teeth and to have the chicken flesh, but more idiomatically translated as pigs might fly and goosebumps. So, if one wanted, one could say When pigs fly, I will have goosebumps, and in the saying, mention chicken twice.

Concetto spaziale, La fine di Dio 
(Spatial Concept, The End of God) 
by Lucio Fontana (1963)

The water is still boiling and the bubbles are still bubbling. I drop the egg in the water, forgetting to look at the expiration date printed in red on the orange shell.


2536 : The quantum super computer called Blue Hal calculates the last digit of Pi, the so-called irrational and transcendental number. Outraged, the scientific community calls it a miscreant mistake, a pale masquerade.


I ask the egg to go away. It comes back to me metamorphosed as a cosmical egg, a symbol of the origins, the past and the future united in one. A story of unity like the anal and the vaginal of the chicken united in one. As we do know the scientific-mythical Big Bang will end in a Big Crunch.


Good news and bad news:


2640 : The audience of St. Pennos Church is listening to the last note of the 639 year long performance of John Cage’s organ work entitled “As Slow As Possible” which began in 2001.


4444 : Man lands on Makemake, one of the largest dwarf planets of the Solar System, discovered in 2005. The first sentence pronounced is not “That’s one small step for (a) man; an even smaller leap for mankind”. Instead the astronaut quotes Marcel Duchamp: “There is no problem because there is no solution”.

Claes Oldenburg, "Fried egg in pan", 1961

6212 : Venus occults Regulus.


6970 : After 5000 years, the time capsule of the 1970 World Fair in Osaka Japan is opened. It was designed as a U.F.O., all curves, volutes, and chrome.


7054 : The year 7053 is skipped to allow the transformation of the Gregorian calendar into the more accurate Leonean calendar, created by Pope Leo LXIX in 2112.


8763 : Walt Disney is cryogenically thawed. He wakes up in a reality that is also a cartoon.


8920 : The first hermaphrodite bisexual robot gives birth to a pseudo-genetically engineered baby. The creature is natural, oviparous, mammal and artificial. Techno-creationists call it the final proof of the Darwin Hoax. The baby’s first words are I don’t think, therefore I am.

9013 : In the cult Z movie The Living Dead from Outer Space (1959) directed by Brian Zardoz, this is the year when the first extraterrestrial message is received on Earth. It turns out that the actual first signal to be received was, coincidentally, pre-recorded and broadcasted from outer space the exact same year as the release of the movie. From 1959 to 9013, it took 7054 years for the radio wave to reach us. The message is short and irreparable like an apocalyptic koan. It simply says Checking to see if you’re not a robot. Please wait.


The more I go in the future, the more it becomes fictional, “metanormal” and “paraphilosophical”. And it reminds me the reason why the theory of the origin of the universe was nicknamed Big Bang as a mockery to such a misconception. The biggest mystery becomes the biggest joke. And a giant laugh both comical and cosmical resonates in the emptiness and infinity of the universe. And an egg filled with antimatter rises at the horizon of our galaxy, the Milky Way™, like an ovoid floating in the void.


The egg is almost ready. The water is still boiling and the bubbles are still bubbling.


Text previously published on Revolving Floor in August 2009
The topic at hand : How do you like your eggs?

Are you a leading man ?
No, he’s a misleading man !

Mais il y a un autre côté qui amusera là tous les gens qui m'écoutent,
c'est que justement, Auguste Comte, le grand philosophe français,
au moment d'inventer sa nouvelle religion positiviste, dit :
"Il faut que nous comptions avec les banquiers"
Ce qui prouve que sans banquiers il n'y a même pas de religion.
 Salvador Dali - L’apothéose du dollar - 1971

Ecouter L’apothéose du dollar 
Annonceur  : CCF

Agence  : Publicis
Année  : 1971
Support  : vinyle 45 tours 
Durée audio  : 4 m 17 s
Auteur  : Salvador Dali 

Infinity minus one second

“You’re a dreamer Lex Luthor,

a sick twisted dreamer.”

Superman

Jor-El was the father of the newborn Karl-El. They lived a long, long time ago in a far, far away galaxy, on a planet called Krypton. Krypton was cold. Its sun was dying. Soon, a collision would occur. Icy Krypton would melt then burn. Baked Alaska. In order to save his son, Jor-El placed his baby in a little star-cradle made out of crystals.

“You’ll carry me inside you all the days of your life, you’ll make my strength your own, see my life through your eyes as your life will be seen through mine… The son becomes the father and the father… the son,” says Jor-El to his son, says Marlon Brando to the audience. Looking straight at the camera through the eyes of his son, Jor-El is Marlon Brando and Marlon Brando plays nothing else than the father of Superman. If God made man to his own image, Marlon Brando made Superman to his own : “The son becomes the father and the father… the son.”

The crew on the movie set is amazed: Jor-El is talking from his heart but Marlon Brando is reading his lines as he refuses to learn the dialog by heart.

“It is wonderful not having to learn your lines. You gain time and nobody can tell the difference. It makes you more spontaneous, because you really have no idea about what you’re going to do. You have a vague idea of what you’re going to say, you say it and then you cannot remember what you really wanted to say,” says Marlon Brando in a January 1979 Playboy magazine interview about his conception of acting in Superman. 

Marlon Brando worked on set 13 days. He received for this time period a paycheck of $3,700,000. For being the father of Karl-El, the Holy Father of the most powerful man on earth, a.k.a. Superman, Marlon Brando worked at a rate of $8 a second. If we consider his financial contract allowing him to get 10% of the worldwide sales gross of the movie, we can raise his rate to thirty bucks a second. This can be considered a huge amount of money per second, but after all, as Andy Warhol once said, “Art is money”. Can we seriously imagine that Superman could have been Superman if his father had not been Marlon Brando? Could Superman have reached our planet from a far distant universe, could he have flown in his crystal spaceship if he had not sprung from the cosmic semen of this extraordinary extraterrestrial father? And so, young Karl-El lands on planet Earth and later becomes this superhero disguised in prêt-à-porter polyester who saves mankind and the population of Metropolis a whole lot of times.

A Christian Saint-Superman ?

The Miracle of the Child Falling from the Balcony by Simone Martini (c. 1324)

Of course who could believe such a story? A Metropolis television news broadcast does not hesitate to describe the unbelievable event as a sort of fantastic hoax. So far, Superman doesn’t even have a name yet; the Metropolis Post carries the headline: “It flies.” The Daily News writes: “Look Ma — No Wires!” and the Daily Planet : “Caped Wonder Stuns City”.

Journalism is a leitmotif throughout the whole Superman franchise. As everybody knows Clark Kent is the human body double of the yet-to-be-named Superman. “Clark Kent” is a nerdy cover, Clark Kent is a pretender, a fraud, a journalist. Clark Kent offers a kind of journalistic legitimacy to the mythological tale of Superman. Factual journalism is the flip side of imaginary fiction and you can turn one over and get the other in less than a second. Such is the transformation of Clark Kent into Karl-El: quick, slick and insidious like a subliminal advertising message. 

If Superman does not endorse any product on his clothes, if you don’t see any brand named on his cape, any Coca-Cola logo flying through the clouds, that doesn’t mean the producers have avoided the principle of product placement: Superman grows up on earth eating Cheerios. Here lies within the movie an explicit twenty seconds, minimalistic yet at the same time brashly commercial, a twenty seconds consecrated to the glory of Young Superman eating his oat cereal The scene is shot at …sunrise. What solar light of ambrosia, what a shining star it is that powers the iridescent O, oh Cheerios, what cheer you bring us! If mead be the nectar of Gods, Cheerios is the delight of simple mortals – sweet, and not at all sour like Popeye’s green spinach. 
Later at night, later in the movie, Superman saves a white cat named Frisky. Hmm. It possibly reminds you of…Friskies cat food?

A failing Pagan Superman ?

The Sun or the Fall of Icarus by M.-J. Blondel (1819) 

The extraordinary extraterrestrial sells well; the press loves him, so do advertisers and advertising agencies. The Flying Newcomer is a sexual icon, a man turned into a luminous entity of desire. But the superhero does not have a name yet. Like any fantasy or product for sale, the creature needs a name and it shall be named by a woman. The chief editor of the Daily Planet wants an exclusive interview with the superhero because as he says :

It could be the single most important interview
since God talked to Moses.

Here are some excerpts from Lois Lane’s 1978 interview with Superman – not published, like Marlon Brando’s interview, in Playboy magazine, but rather in the Daily Planet, established in 1775:

- Let’s start with your vital statistics. Are you married ?
- Huh, no I’m not.
- Do you have a girlfriend ?
- No, I don’t but if I did Miss Lane, you would be the first to know about it.
- How old are you ?
- Over 21.
- How tall are you ?
- About 6’4.
- And how much do you weight ?
- Oh, around 225.
- 225?
- Well I assume then that the rest of your bodily functions are normal ?
- Sorry, I beg your pardon ?
- Well, putting it delicately… do you… eat ?
- Yes, yes I do when I’m hungry.
- You do, of course you do, well, then is it true that can see through anything?
- Yes I can, pretty much.
- What color are the panties I’m wearing?... Oh, I’m sorry I embarrassed you, didn’t I ?
- Oh, no, Miss Lane, it’s just…
- Pink.
- What…?

Their mouths are closed so here is what their eyes said :

- Your panties are pink…
- Do you like Pink ?
- I like pink very much, Lois.

Pink is the color and we can almost hear the two characters whispering over virtual sensual silk lingerie. Superman is of course wearing red and tight briefs which display with grace his male attributes. And Lois looses herself in endless fantasies of instantaneous orgasms, permanent voluptuousity. As their lips almost touch…

- Why are you?
- I’m sorry?
- I mean, “Why are you here ?”.There must be a reason for you to be here.
- Yes, I’m here to fight for truth and justice and the American way.

After a romantic flying session hand in hand through the skyline of Metropolis, Lois falls even more under the spell of the superhero, the Nietzschean shaved or hairless queer Übermensch.

Lois goes linguistic:
- What a super man…
(She pauses.)
- Superman!

The harder they fall.
The Fall of Phaëton, engraving by Hendrick Goltzius (1588)

The next morning the Daily Planet front page headline is: “I spent the night with Superman”.

Karl-El the extraterrestrial creature, Clark Kent the terrestrial journalist finally gets a name and becomes Superman. But one main question has not been answered yet:

- How fast do you fly ?
- Oh, I don’t know, I have never actually bothered to time myself.

If Metropolis television stations follow the exploits of Superman in real time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, the superhero seems to have the power of ubiquity. He can be here and there and now – in no time. In his crystalline and icy fortress of solitude, Jor-El and Karl-El talk about the nature of time:

- First you cannot save humanity 28 hours a day.
- 24.
- or 24 as it is in Earth time.

On earth, it is both day and night at the same time, Summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere. Yes, this is an earthling contradiction, as Superman is Clark Kent and Clark Kent is Superman. Earth rotates on itself. And, also, earth orbits the sun. And on this pale blue dot, one day Lois dies in her red car during a giant earthquake. Superman thunders his sorrow and despair. He soars up toward the sky, the white clouds, crosses the atmosphere and reaches the dark stellar night. According to physics, one needs to attain escape velocity – the speed of at least 11 kilometers per second – in order to break free from earth’s gravity. Confronted with such pain, Jor-El’s voice echoes in orbit around the blue planet. Here is the father’s commandment :

“It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history”.

As if the Holy Spirit told his son Jesus not to interfere with human business! Groaning with pain but possessing God-like power, Superman flies around the earth, in the opposite direction of its rotation, covering the distance of the equatorial circumference in less than half a second at a staggering 22 kilometers per second. But Superman is still slower than the earth, because the earth flies around the sun at an incredible 30 kilometers a second. Were Marlon Brando’s thirty bucks per second worth the 22 kilometers per second of Superman? Time is precious, time is money, time is running – running out. Isn’t the dead Lois, pale Ophelia, already crossing the dark water of the Styx to the Underworld? Superman ain’t no Orpheus so ya better hurry! Dazed but energized, the superhero accelerates to the point where he stops the earth which begins spinning backwards, rewinding the course of time. Ah-hah, that’s how it shall be done!

Always on time, Superman saves Lois before the catastrophe ever happened. This action, the power of it… is magnificent. It’s comparable, on more than a conceptual level, to absolute speed – you know, 300,000 kilometers per second – in other words, the speed of light. Well, folks, as Jor-El says at the beginning of the movie:

“This is no fantasy, no careless product of wild imagination”.

Onfray, Sade et Sarkozy

Le bon, l’obscène et le vulgaire

L’ironie c’est l’excipient dans le suppositoire,

c’est ce qui permet de faire passer la médication en faisant rire.

Michel Onfray, Ce soir ou jamais, France 3, 2006

Effectivement, Sénèque était dans l'entourage de Néron et trouvait quelques vertus dans cet abominable type qui couchait avec sa mère et se vautrait dans des orgies sanguinaires…

Nicolas Sarkozy, Philosophie Magazine,

entretien avec Michel Onfray, 2007

Quelle est cette chimère impuissante et stérile,

Cette divinité que prêche à l'imbécile

Un ramas odieux de prêtres imposteurs ?

Sade, La Vérité, 1787

Point d’ironie dans Le Point. On peut y lire ces propos de Michel Onfray, “notre philosophe national” ⁽¹⁾,selon Franz-Olivier Giesbert, natif du Delaware, issu du français de la Guerre, De La Warr, Delaware, vert paradis fiscal étatsunien.

Pour ceux qui l’ignorent, Michel Onfray est ce preux chevalier qui sut instiller quelques gouttes d’hédonisme à défaut d’hydromel dans le sacré Graal de la pudibonderie philosophique. Tel Eole, Onfray est celui par qui un vent joyeux de liberté souffle sur l’âme et l’esprit, le vin, la chair et la vérité. Mais on ne le répètera jamais assez, les muses sont corrompues, les fleurs vénéneuses et les tâches de vin profondes… profondes… profonde comme la vérité, cette splendeur, qui attire l’homme comme les papillons de nuit sont attirés par la lumière. Puis le jour se lève, et au travers du chemin glorieux qui mène à l’éternelle vérité, on trébuche sur un clochard honteusement vautré, qui délire et marmonne :

“Ah, qu'il est beau ce temps des concepts éthérés, évanescents et alanguis! Des concepts quasi-endormis, enivrés de rêve à l'ammoniac pour mieux dissoudre le sens des mots."

   

 Max Ernst (1891-1976) - Collage tiré de Une semaine de bonté. 

La cour du dragon 4 - 1933

© Isidore Ducasse Fine Arts - © Photo Peter Ertl. © ADAGP, Paris 2009

Certains regardent le lointain, les étoiles, d’autres l’abysse au fond du caniveau. Et de quel trou noir nous revient la parole d’Onfray ? Au loin une lueur brille. Est-ce une étoile ? Non, c’est une procession d’êtres venus d’ailleurs. On les appelle les Elohim. Ce sont des créatures extraterrestres, les créateurs de l’humanité, les représentants interstellaires de Raël. Raël est le chef d’entreprise d’une organisation basée dans les verts pâturages fiscaux suisses. Raël est raëlien, chef de secte, adepte de la méditation sensuelle et inventeur de logos dont la fameuse “Croix de David sertie d’une Svastika”. Apôtre du cosmos athée, Raël, en pamoison devant l’œuvre du philosophe, le nomme prêtre honoraire. A Miami, du français Miamioua, sur les berges du Coconut Grove, palmeraie de noix de coco, le service de presse raélien s’exclame : “La vision philosophique de Michel Onfray, telle que décrite dans ses nombreux ouvrages et ses exposés, est très proche de celle enseignée par le Prophète Raël. Prônant hédonisme, sensualité, mieux-vivre, révolte contre dogmatisme, conformisme et tout conservatisme, il affiche en outre un athéisme sans concession et dénonce les méfaits de tous les monothéismes.” ⁽²⁾

 Max Ernst  - Collage tiré de Une semaine de bonté.

La cour du dragon 7 - 1933

© Isidore Ducasse Fine Arts - © Photo Peter Ertl. © ADAGP, Paris 2009

La réponse d’Onfray - on le comprend - ne se fait pas attendre : “crétin sidéral… soucoupes volantes… clonage de science fiction… partouzes mystiques…” ⁽³⁾

Quoi de plus étranger à la divine philosophie que les propos irrationnels et manipulateurs d’une secte ? Quoi de plus étranger à la philosophie que le mensonge, l’insensé, la fraude, la mascarade, et l’imposture ? Il y a des antres dans lesquels il vaut mieux ne pas s’aventurer. Dedans c’est humide, obscur et glissant comme un toboggan, une grotte aux miroirs déformants. Au fond de la caverne se cache une créature abjecte, immonde, un mauvais génie, rusé et trompeur  qui “n'ayant point de mains, point d'yeux, point de chair, point de sang, comme n'ayant aucun sens, mais croyant faussement avoir toutes ces choses.” ⁽⁴⁾ vous saisit d’effroi. Descartes, une bougie à la main, s’éloigne puis disparait dans l’obscurité. Cette grotte est l’image inversée de la caverne de Platon, revanche des apparences sur le Bien philosophique, la vérité. Il y fait noir, on n’y voit rien. Telle est la tache aveugle de la philosophie, ce qu’elle ne peut voir, ce qui lui est étranger : le mensonge, la fraude et l’imposture. Le charlatan, le faussaire et l’imposteur sont, dit-on, des personnages, des thèmes propres à la littérature et non à la philosophie. La philosophie ne serait-elle qu'un genre littéraire qui s’ignore, et le philosophe un écrivain ? Non, car les concepts, eux, n’ont pas le droit de mentir. Et deux fois non, car selon le philosophe, un écrivain n’a pas seulement des droits, il a aussi des devoirs.

Comme le dit Michel Onfray au Point ⁽⁵⁾ :

“Avec Sade, on subit le diktat d'une littérature qui aurait tous les droits alors que je suis convaincu qu'être écrivain, c'est surtout avoir des devoirs.”

Apprenez qu’il existe des pensées coupables et mauvaises dont il faut savoir rougir ou en avoir la nausée.

“(il faut) Relire aussi sa manière de désigner la chair des femmes comme une putréfaction totale. Moi, je ne suis pas client.”

  Max Ernst - Collage tiré de Une semaine de bonté. 

Le rire du coq 5 - 1933

© Isidore Ducasse Fine Arts - © Photo Peter Ertl. © ADAGP, Paris 2009

La parole philosophique pourra-t’elle un jour s’élever par delà le bien et le mal ou bien à jamais l’homme ne sera-t’il voué qu’à être cette créature douée de conscience, de bonne conscience, roseau bien-pensant ? N’y aurait-il pas plus à apprendre du mensonge que de la vérité ? Le mensonge saurait revêtir les apparences du vrai là où la vérité serait dénuée de toute ambiguïté. Au royaume des Idées, la philosophie dégouline d’un amour platonique pour le juste, le bien, le beau, le vrai. Sade s’interroge : Quelle est cette chimère impuissante et stérile (…) ⁽⁶⁾ Qu’elle cette chimère ? Un monstre mythologique, une illusion, la religion, ou bien la simple et resplendissante vérité ?

Lors d’un entretien ⁽⁷⁾  avec Michel Onfray, Nicolas Sarkozy s’exclame : (…) Vous me demandez qui je suis, pourquoi j'agis comme je le fais. Mais si je pouvais vous répondre… Savez-vous qui vous êtes, vous ?

Michel Onfray, le philosophe, lui répond : Oui. Je crois au « connais-toi toi-même ».

Nicolas Sarkozy, le président, de réagir : Fort heureusement, une telle connaissance est impossible, elle est même presque absurde !

Et Ovide, le poète de conclure : Consulté pour savoir si cet enfant connaîtrait les temps lointains d'une vieillesse épanouie,

le devin prophète déclara : « S'il ne se connaît pas ».

Longtemps la parole de l'augure parut infondée ; l'issue de l'histoire, le genre de mort et l'étrange folie de Narcisse prouvent sa véracité. ⁽⁸⁾

 Max Ernst - Collage tiré de Une semaine de bonté. 

La clé des chants 1- 1933

© Isidore Ducasse Fine Arts - © Photo Peter Ertl. © ADAGP, Paris 2009

(1) Franz-Olivier Giesbert - Michel Onfray se lance dans la guerre du goût - Le Point (13 août 2009)

(2) Jean Yves Nau - Michel Onfray, raélien malgré lui - Le Monde (jeudi 16 mars 2006)

(3) Michel Onfray - Raël, crétin sidéral ou la mauvaise odeur des journalistes - site officiel (jeudi 16 mars 2006)

(4) René Descartes - Méditations métaphysiques (1641)

(5) Michel Onfray -  Entretien - Le Point (23 juillet 2009)

(6) Nicolas Sarkozy & Michel Onfray - Confidences entre ennemis - Philosophie Magazine (avril 2007)

(7) Sade - La Vérité (1787)

(8) Ovide -  Les Métamorphoses (l’an 1)