When I'm bored, and have no access to word processing, I play the Wikipedia game. I call it the Wikipedia game. I read entries and click on links to other topics. For instance, I read about Pompeii yesterday and the secret rooms of the Naples Museum--the erotic artwork they found in the city. People fucking in various positions, Priapus with a giant penis.
Under the "rediscovery" section of the Pompeii Wikipedia page there's a story about people in the 16th, 18th, and 19th centuries burying or hiding the erotic art of Pompeii and nearby Herculaneum--one is a statue of Venus called Venus Kallipygos--"Venus of the Beautiful Buttocks." On that particular page there's a story about the buttocks thing:
"The people of those days were so attached to their sensual pleasures that they even went so far as to dedicate a temple to Aphrodite of the Beautiful Buttocks, for the following reason. Once upon a time a farmer had two beautiful daughters. One day these girls, getting into a dispute as to which one had a more beautiful backside, went out onto the public street and by chance a young man was passing by, the son of a rich old man. They showed themselves to him, and when he saw them he voted in favor of the older girl. And in fact, falling in love with her, when he got back to town, he took to his bed and told his younger brother everything that had happened. And the younger brother also went to the country and saw the girls, and he fell in love with the other daughter. And so when the boys' father tried to get them to marry someone of the upper classes, he couldn't persuade his sons, and so he brought the girls in from the country, with their father's permission, and married them to his sons. And so these girls were called fair-buttocked by the citizens, as Cercidas of Megalopolis says in his Iambic Verses: "There was a pair of beautiful-buttocked girls in Syracuse." And so these girls, when they got wealthy and famous, founded a temple of Aphrodite and called the goddess the Fair-buttocked, as Archelaus of Chersonesus tells us in his Iambic Verses."
Hyperlinks in the text exist on the page.
My friend Brandon graduated from the Center of Cartoon Studies in Vermont this month. He has no real internet presence. His work can be found here and here and in a few other places if you google him. I sent him a link to the story and wrote an email about how it reminded me of a classic Hollywood film from 30's. Sans the buttocks. I say that this sounds like a film starring Gary Cooper and Miriam Hopkins and directed by Preston Sturges, or maybe King Vidor, because the story is about beautiful farm girls and rich city boys falling in love. "You should draw a story based on this, set it in Syracuse, Indiana," I wrote him.
Brandon hasn't read the story yet, but we talked about basketball some--like how the Cavaliers have melted down. How getting caught watching NBA D-League webcasts by other artists is worst than getting caught watching porn. Brandon's theory no one likes the NBA is that kids who draw/write/perform etc. don't appreciate role players like Anthony Johnson or Daniel Gibson. We all want to think we are auteurs. I agree with him, but I still fantasize my work sells in Brazil and Australia.
I wonder how many rejections I have received from journals since I have been in Dayton. My friend Robin has keys to my place, so she can water the plant. I hope she has. I don't think she checks my mail. I didn't ask her to do that anyway.
Jason and disagreed that the story re-telling of the Venus with the fair buttocks should take place in Indiana. "There's a Syracuse, New York, already." I said they don't get it, but I was drunk.
Joni is in Ireland with her friend Erica.
