Language Warning: Large Cheese Coming Through
 

Here is McIntyre's deliciously mature and creamy
“Ode on the Mammoth Cheese Weighing over 7,000 Pounds”.

We have seen thee, queen of cheese,
Lying quietly at your ease,
Gently fanned by evening breeze,
Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go
To the great Provincial Show,
To be admired by many a beau
In the city of Toronto.

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees,
Or as the leaves upon the trees,
It did require to make thee please,
And stand unrivalled, queen of cheese.

May you not receive a scar as
We have heard that Mr. Harris
Intends to send you off as far as
The great World's show at Paris.

Of the youth beware of these,
For some of them might rudely squeeze
And bite your cheek, then songs or glees
We could not sing, oh! queen of cheese.

We'rt thou suspended from balloon,
You'd cast a shade even at noon,
Folks would think it was the moon
About to fall and crush them soon.

A couple of New Statesman columnists have different views on this matter:

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/...igger-warnings

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/...rigger-warning

Oh God, Laurie Penny. Sarah Ditum is a new one on me. When will the Staggers ever surprise me with its offerings? It did once when the chap who writes for them who was once an England cricketer (!) said he liked the High Speed Train line from Margate in Kent to Saint Pancras in London, and opined that te new one from London to THE NORTH might also be a good thing. Wow! They probably set Laurie Penny on him.

Laurie Penny is full of shit. She writes:

The objection seems to be that since so much classic literature involves violent misogyny, racism and brutality towards minorities, whining leftists should pipe down and read without questioning, analysing (sic) or reacting to the canon.

No. The objection is that warning triggers will prevent whining leftists from questioning, analyzing, or reacting to the canon. It will prejudice them and assign them a reaction. It will give them an excuse to dismiss works in the canon. And it is a gateway to politically correcting texts, removing offensive words, and other forms of censorship. The news reports on TV which come with warnings are not as important to preserve for posterity.

Jeez.
RM

If and when I ever write a memoir, I think I'll title it Trigger Warning. Then if it doesn't sell, I will emerge with ego intact, since I'll be able to blame the hypersensitive for being too timid to read it, the heartless for having no interest in my sob story, and the haters of warning labels for avoiding it on principle.

Mine will be titled Stignatz. Nobody will touch it.

When applicable, I would appreciate a warning if a book I am about to read does not present any material that will shock, surprise, offend or challenge me in any manner.

Just for the record, "analysing" is the correct British spelling. Sic that somewhere.

[l know, Chris. Kidding.]

I'd still like to know what film was shown in this class. I'd bet my left leg it was absolute trash. And I do sympathize with a rape victim being forced to watch a "film" including a rape scene. I haven't been raped, and it would be sheer idiocy of me to act cavalier about it.

Not that I agree with her campaign, or with warnings against any piece of trash/art.

I'm reminded of the young lady who made her way into the erstwhile all male military academy (The Citadel I believe), and then protested having to get her head shaved. Now that's pure idiocy.

If I was in one of those classes where they were teaching that Beethoven's music was somehow about rape, I'd tell the professor to stick it up his/her** tailpipe.

**his/her included so as to avoid offending anyone...

*Nevermind.* I made a bad joke.

And to call this woman's expression, in her photo, "evil" or some such, is fucked up. Misguided, naive, self-indulgent, ignorant, stupid, silly, whatever, but evil? Of course not! Let's reserve that word for monsters like Mengele or the Goebbels (or your average knuckle-dragging rapist), not for mixed-up college kids!

Laurie Penny is full of shit? Oh Rick, and she with an Oxford degree.

Well, Mr Tice, sir, you may avoid racism, sexism, and ageism, but you sure as hell are guilty of piggism. Before writing that, did you stop to wonder how hurtful and humiliating it would be to those of the porcine species who have the misfortune to suffer from flatulence? And how do you think your own digestive system would cope with standing all day with your snout in a trough full of mush?

It's not just the insults; we pigs have been shamefully neglected in litterature, too. Did Pope write "I am his Highness' pig at Kew"? Did Smart write "For I will consider my pig Jeoffry"? Did Shelley write "Hail to thee, blithe spirit/Pig thou never wert"? No, they did not, and it is deeply wounding.

So in future, if you intend to continue to mock and deride us pigs, please include a "Pigger warning".

Pigger Orgasm Warning
 

Looks like someone hasn't read the Pugna Porcorum.

I can't read any of that, Chris, which is surprising since I thought I was pretty good at Pig Latin.

You must have neglected your education, Bob. You know what they say - you reap what you sow.

Let this be a bacon for cloudy nights.
 

Brian, you misjudge me. Carmination is the question, not the verdict! There is a gender issue here, too (pig ladies take note if you will, silently) : Boars may be long-winded in speech, and carminative while legislating if, alas, they are gifted and mindful to sing, yet I have actually known not one authorized distaff pig to own the delicatest breeze, bless them. Even far down-wind from me.

We must take a vote : Do, actually, some (few) actual pigs (occasionally) fire (an ill) (or good) wind?

I merely set the relevant hams out for thought. You, on the other trotter, oink loudly, as if standing up for all swine, infering (furless though you may want to seem) that I accuse anypig of airy indifference to the proper opinions of mankind, womankind, and those in Texas.

Trottermore, you forget Napoleon il Porcubeno in "Animal Farm," Mlle Piggé (who lusts on Kermit Thefrog), and the Three Attoporks of Wolf Hall. A bacon rasher than thou beest, I cannot find.

Thanks, Chris, that is a precious poem.

I am composing an epicurean and Horatian ode on this topic.

Jokes about bacon are all very well, Mr Tice, sir, but among the plethora of chick lit, gay lit, and so forth, where (outside of Winnie the Pooh) is pig lit?

Still, at least we have the consolation of knowing that we wrote Shakespeare.

Redacted. Just realised I'd contravened regulations and am removing references to my own work before anyone says anything. I was never here...

Well, your Oblateness knows more about your literary souvlakiographic than a student like me. I oink (I am polite --- when in Stye, be Stylish), so I oink you know that the Odyssey was spoken first in a metrical trotameter that just bristled with feminine insight by Circe, a leader of an island thiasus of schoolboys. So there !

And you will udderstand that this one farrow of her scholars
[μια φαρροω in Mod Greek] loved her for her fine lunches, but she loved a Wanderswine sailor and had to disguise her authorship.

As for waterbears, Festus Porcius, and aureate Marcus Porcius Cato Major Domo, pooh !

Shakespigg to you, anyway. Do you play Scrapple? I play a lean game.

Moving to music and l'Orchstre Suidae Romande,
where are the melodic swine? And how should one fit a square pig into a round of applause?

Squeal !!
 

Well, Mr Tice, sir, there is also, of course, our beloved Poet Laureate, James Hogg. And in foreign parts, we are proud of Federico Garcia Porca. We still mourn his fate under General Franco, the man who gave swine everywhere a bad name.

Musically, it is true that we pigs - sus scrofa - have been comparatively undistinguished, although it should never be forgotten that we owe the completion of Mozart's Requiem to his pupil Franz Xaver Sussmayr, nor should we overlook Leoncavallo's opera I Pigliacci. Above all, there is Puccini's tragic opera about a wild boar, Tusker.

But perhaps our proudest moment was the vital role we played in the creation of Woman. As you are doubtless aware, Eve was assembled from a spare rib.

And so was your Brittanic lyricster, Algernon Charles Swineborn. By now I've shown I am no piggist, I θink.

Allen, Brian,

Did you also know that Bacon cooks at six degrees? One must separate, of course.

Ah, if only I had that sort of reasoned eloquence at my command.

The thing is, of course, that she's not. She's a smart, thoughtful commentator with whom I don't see eye-to-eye on this issue.

http://www.newversenews.com/

All good fart jokes aside, this is not necessarily an easy subject.

Oddly enough, I still remember my horror upon seeing a fellow freshman floormate (adorned in blue jeans and university issued t-shirt, who had signed up for Philosophy 101, in 1980, at the top of the stairs of Schramm 2) tearing to shreds his assigned textbook at the start of week two, stating "who is Hugly (our philosophy 101 teacher, one Phillip Hugly) to question the existence of God."

Kids (and Aquinas) be warned. Life is hard.

Pigger warning:

The Peg-leg Pig

A farmer’s daughter keeps a hog
who sports a wooden leg.
“Tell me about that peg-leg pig,”
travelling salesmen beg.

“He saved me from a rabid skunk.
He stomped it with his peg.”
Suspiciously a seed man squints:
“How did he lose the leg?”

“He found me when a whiteout hit
and led me through the snow.”
“You called the vet to amputate?
A case of frostbite?” “No.

“He pulled me from a flaming barn
before the rafters fell.”
“Enough to put me off my corn.
It must have hurt like hell.”

“Who said my peg-leg pig was lamed?
He never got a scratch.”
“That leg is missing all the same.
Sister, what’s the catch?

“Was it chomped on by a bigger pig
or torn off by a plow,
squashed beneath a threshing rig
or trampled by a cow?

“Was the porker born to walk on wood
or crippled in his prime?”
“Mister, you eat a pig this good
one leg at a time.”

--Tim Murphy

Well, is this poem a metaphor for a larger religious concept? The latent cruelty dressed as humor needs grounding in the world of experience : of warfare, of something. Is it actually humorous?

This seems to call for a little fiddle with a steady tapping there on the hi-hat. That, and the snare. Hog of the Forsaken, by Michael Hurley, going out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3YxlbYiLhA

Then I suggest a note to that effect at the top of the poem, along with a recommendation as to the best alcoholic drink. Perhaps we will attend different venues. You may visit "The Lamé Duck".

Most of what has been said here will have no effect on the labeling of anything except Eratosphere threads, so I fear that a lot of what we read and write here is what social care-givers call "ventilating" and on-line display behavior. I am guilty. If putative divinity didn't see fit to correct either the student or Hugly, who am I to get involved?

My own words earlier were a discreet allusion to the kiting airborne peccaries of Lewis Carroll :

"Thinking again?" the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin.
"I've a right to think," said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried.
"Just about as much right," said the Duchess, "as pigs have to fly...." — Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 9.

There are other examples of capable pigs.
"Koga se pokači svinja s z´´lti čehli na krusa! (when the pig in yellow slippers climbs the pear tree)" -- Bulgarian proverb.

By the way, the ham actor Gregory Peccary played Bolognius in the Royal Bacon Company's "Hamlet", as well as important roles in the Hollywood back-lot blockbusters "The Big Sty" and "So Pig".

Allen,
Re Peg-Leg Pig: That was my favorite joke for 30+ years before I ever ran into that poem. Imagine my surprise and delight! The joke may have come through my father-in-law from his father, who taught animal husbandry at Madison, and bore a scar for his pains, like Odysseus. In prose, the punchline goes, "Pig like that, you gonna eat it all at once?" So yes, it is funny to many.

Different farmers husband different charmers.
Did you ever see John Hamm in the advertising world melodrama-series "Mudmen"? It's in its last season on cable TV now.

The wind bloweth on the just and those in the other general direction.

Indeed, Allen. I missed that particular wallow in favor of that old classic, "Sounder," remade by Will Farrow. Do you smoke it? The gilt be on your barrow if you can't tell a hog from a handsow in a pig's eye.

Seasoned it (divers kinds, including smoked), tinned it, canned it, labeled it, sold it, shipped it. Unfortunately, the plant fell into the hands of alien corn.

Give it up, Allen. You've hijacked another thread - about three times over on this one - and you've played your usual games. Let it sink.

PS, My own POV? Trigger warnings? HELL, YES !!



Not a problem. I applaud your patience.