Friday, January 19, 2007

Flying Claw Meets Fourteen Dragons



Enlarge this, if you will, and contemplate for a few moments the worlds most elaborately decorated ceiling.
Michelangelo Buonarotti wrote of his efforts:

"I've grown a goiter by dwelling in this den-
as cats from stagnant streams in Lombardy,
or in what other land they hap to be-
which drives the belly close beneath the chin:
my beard turns up to heaven;
my nape falls in,
fixed on my spine: my breastbone visibly
grows like a harp: a rich embroidery
bedews my face from brush-drops thick and thin.
My loins into my paunch like levers grind:
my buttock like a crupper bears my weight;
my feet unguided wander to and fro;
in front my skins grows loose and long; behind,
by bending it becomes more taut and strait;
crosswise I strain me like a Syrian bow:
whence false and quaint, I know,
must be the fruit of squinting brain and eye;
for ill can aim the gun that bends awry..."

Michelangelo's Poem: On the Painting of the Sistine Chapel


None of this passed through my mind as I sat in the ladies room toilet at Albertsons' supermarket yesterday and contemplated the meteoric decoration splashed across the acoustical tiles above me.

Oh yes. 'Ill can aim the gun that bends awry" indeed.

The method was at once apparent. I could picture this woman in my minds' eye as she slowly toppled from her seat atop the lavatory bowl, easing inexorably forward with hippopotamaic grace.
Midsection met knees and pressed. Forehead met floor tiles and rested there.
A huge and energetic noise like the last trump of doom must have burst forth then, one which by all appearances instantly liquefied her liver.
Above the plumbing, midway up the tile wall began what resolved into a vast and busy swath, a brown ululation of leaping ocher ichor bourne on high, comet trails of foul chunky soup, describing in the hectic loops of some secret postgastric cryptography a tragic tale of luncheon and loss.

Remember that one Andy Warhol movie?
Yeah.
Michelangelo and Warhol meet at last.

16 comments:

  1. Anonymous4:12 PM

    Now see I am confused now , was it a top or bottom end emission....just so I know how disgusted to be

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  2. This is brilliant - you're too clever!

    This also reminds me that I heard a quote recently that if Michaelangelo had been straight, the Sistine chapel would have been painted off-white with a roller.

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  3. Anonymous5:21 AM

    oh dear god. that's just genius. you write the things that make me think, "christ i wish i could come up with that crap."


    photos of His Roundness at my place. be there.

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  4. yeuch - but oh so so graphic - you definitely should be more widely published, just not illustrated!

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  5. He should have gone on worker's comp.
    I can't wait to see what you'll say about the other Teenage Ninja Turtles. Kowabunga!

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  6. Anonymous1:45 PM

    Cripes, it'll be Caravaggio next.

    Whip off a masterpiece or six and then go out a'stabbing.

    Nice work.

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  7. everybody so far except PF:
    here's what happened: i was at the grocery store yesterday, and in the ladies room? some nasty broad aimed her rusty hine and blew shit up on the CEILING.

    i hope this clears up any confusion. although to tell the truth this encounter only increased mine.

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  8. ..whoops, except pf AND cb:
    yeah. what i just said.
    thank you.

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  9. Anonymous5:12 PM

    you wield a brilliant pen, but don't you think you should change your grocer?

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  10. Anonymous5:19 PM

    Goodness....The Unknown Crapper must have had some power behind that eruption.

    I ...must....not.....get....a.... visual....

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  11. Nng... Curse my graphic imagination...

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  12. Eugh. This has only increased my need to attempt to use public toilets as little as possible, and my sympathy for people who have to clean them.

    The one thing I can remember about the Sistine Chapel is that I don't remember much about it. I'd been walking around the Vatican Museum for hours and hours to the point where I was aching everywhere. I couldn't actually look up at the ceiling for more than a few seconds because I was in pain, and I had sciatica for a fortnight afterwards! Big letdown for that reason.

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  13. Anonymous2:58 AM

    Oh god, I really feel ill. Now I remember why I carry hand sanitizer. I am so gonna turn in to Howard Hughes, I just know it.

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  14. You just sent my hyper germaphobia avoidance syndrome to DefCon 5!..
    ah ah ah don't you even think of making any 'Defecation Control' jokes...
    I'm already scrubbing my brain, keyboard,monitor and hard drive because of this story...wiping it from my memory..eeewww!!!
    No Mas Por Favor!

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  15. Anonymous12:01 PM

    我的卧室天花板看起来象那! 我绘了它我自己! 只需要了一个下午!
    My bedroom ceiling looks like likely that! I have drawn its I! Has only needed for an afternoon!

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