Conversations

[porphyry]

1. Mme. Malkhos generally makes espresso in the afternoon in a little coffee pot that she originally bought in Italy and replaces periodically via the miracle of the internet. The other day, however, we had eaten out and it had grown late, so we decided to stop at the drive through at Starbucks. Mme. Malkhos orders cappuccino for me. We hear back from the speaker, “Are you sure? Do you know what that is? It's hot coffee with a lot of foam on top. You don’t want to burn yourself.”

I think if I had been driving I just would have pulled out of line and driven off, though our more patient half persevered in line. But upon reflection I don’t think he was insulting us, implying that we were the kind of bumpkins who had just fallen off the hay wain on our first trip into the big city of Collinsville. Rather it must have been projection. He must have been the kind of bumpkin who had just learned what cappuccino is for the first time and found the information so amazing and contrary to expectation that he couldn’t believe anyone else would know it. In my infrequent visits there before, I have been met with blank stares upon trying to order an Italian soda and actually had to get something else.

2. Having Madeline at the park today, a grandmother there improved upon the habit of talking incessantly on the cell-phone. She set hers to speaker phone so I could hear both halves of the conversation. After consoling her interlocutor on her husband’s infidelity ("He don’t deserve no trust!”), they discussed a mutual acquaintance who was named Juliette; not an uncommon name, I suppose, but this Juliette had a daughter, 7, who already back-talks and was prophesied for an unpleasant puberty. The girl’s name was Justine. I suppose the name was chosen to alliterate with the mother’s rather than to make a literary reference.

Comments

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, the employee at Starbucks was rather young--a mere child, he looked to me. We must forgive him his ignorance.

Somehow I doubt the grandmother at the park, the person to whom she was speaking, and the people whom they were speaking about have ever heard of the French pervert. :) I think it must be projection on your part.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Or an outrageously amusing coincidence.

[stefanie-bean.livejournal.com]

Ha, Justine! Cute.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Juliette and Justine, that's great! - Though both books are quite tedious in my humble opinion. I read parts of them, because Juliette as well as the Odyssey are treated by Horkheimer and Adorno in their "Dialektik der Aufklärung", a book I've read years ago, mostly while lying on a plank-bed, donating my plasm for money as a poor student.

(Well, Horkheimer/Adorno were one thing, and then that was the time when I was still interested in this "sex" people - not least Freud and the Surrealists - talk about. So there were other boring books as well, as of course the slightly more interesting Sacher-Masoch and Krafft-Ebing.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Yes. I agree. I found the Marquis de Sade excruciatingly tedious rather than titillating and abandoned my first attempt to read classic erotica after about thirty pages. I guess it was the lack of character development ;)

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

I don't even think I was looking for titillation, I just wanted to know what it was all about to understand the allusions (e.g. "The 120 Days of Sodom" in the final scene of the surrealist movie "L'age d'or").

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I ahad already read the 120 days when I saw that film, and I have to say that, in that context, I have never seen anything nearly so funny as the moment the Duc de Blangis emerges from the chateau. I can't say anything more about it here since I don't want to spoil the surprise for Mme. Malkhos who fell asleep the one time I tried to show it to her. We have to get that DVD someday

But you're right, it is hard to believe that anyone ever reads the full texts of Juliette or Justine.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Youtube has got the whole movie: in one go, see below, and somebody else uploaded it in handy 10 minute slices as well. Of course it's the visual quality is deplorable. (I've initially seen it in a cinema.)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Obviously, I'm morally inferior, ha ha. :)

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Hahaha!

[majolika.livejournal.com]

For me that's actually the main point in de Sade - being so absurdly, tediously obsessive-compulsive. I wrote a collage once, only using passages where he's counting something or listing something - it came out as some sort of twisted adult maths textbook. (I liked it, but nobody else did...)

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Now that you mention it, I can see that now, though I didn't then. That must have taken some patience!

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

Coffee can be hot? To think that I've been risking life and limb all these years by recklessly ordering it in bars, cafés and restaurants. I might sue.

I ate lamb chops in a restaurant tonight. Next thing you'll be telling me that they are heated up on a fire and then, without caution of any kind, thrown on a plate for people to consume without stringent safety measures being in put in place (asbestos gloves, face-mask & goggles, heat resistant clothing). As if!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Some years past, a woman ordered coffee from one of the fast food chains at the drive through and spilled it on herself. She did sue, actually, and won millions. I think the award was later reduced on appeal, but still--it was a lot of money for her own clumsiness. This is why all coffees here in the States now have a warning label on the cup--can you imagine anything more absurd than a coffee cup's exterior cautioning you that it's hot? It could make me believe the whole world's gone crazy.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

And it is the whole world, not just the USA. At the building I used to work in there is, now that I think about it, aabove the taps at each sink a small sign that says "CAUTION - WATER CAN BE HOT". The thought process that produced that particular piece of absurdity is something that quite frightens me.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I know. I console myself about such things by telling myself that warnings like that are the result of a conversation that must go like this as companies prepare literature for customers:

"How stupid can people be? We have to write instructions for use while talking to the lowest level of ignorance we can imagine to avoid litigation."

"What's litigation?"

"Ah--lawsuits."

"Oh. Well, I can only speak for myself, but people can be pretty stupid, I guess. We'd better warn them not to use this toaster in the bathtub."

"Oh, come now! Surely people know that water is a conductor for electricity!"

"Just a suggestion."

"Maybe you're right. Maybe I assume too much. In a class I once took, the professor asked the class, 'What was the single most monumental event of the twentieth century? That is to say, what caused a major shift in how people looked at the world?' The answer, of course, was World War I, but someone in the class thought it was Elvis Presley's death and that same person wasn't entirely clear on when the Great War occurred, who was involved, and why it was so monumental."

"Write the warning, then."

[Note: The above reference to WWI actually happened in my classroom once. Even worse, apart from the fact I got answers like that, no one knew! It's a miracle I haven't started keeping a flask hidden in my desk.]