Tasty
Today is the Feast of the Assumption. On this day, people will set about consuming copious mounds of food, whilst drawing conclusions based on little and flimsy evidence.
In the Christian calendar there is, however, no Feast of the Presumption. Nor is there a Feast of Good Lord, You Gullible Twit.
In 1795, the suggestion was made by one Horace Evans that just such a day should be inserted into the yearly line-up of festivities. The suggestion was quickly overruled and Evans, oddly enough, was never heard from again.
To lift the veil on this opposition, we might turn to Dr. Gerald Fipps’s seminal work, I’m OK, you’re an idiot: The presumptions of power throughout the ages.
Without the ability to ensure that, amongst the masses, widespread credence is given to ludicrous assumptions regarding their individual and collective influence, the ruling body’s capacity to wage war at will, and maintain a system of social inequality would be severely undermined, so as not to say impossible.
Had Evans’s outlandish vision become reality, on such a feast day the grub would be equally plentiful – if somewhat lacking in saturated fats – but we would find ourselves in the thoroughly untenable position of having to take sizeable quantities of readily available evidence under consideration, making the process of drawing conclusions an unspeakably dull and arduous affair.
And hardly one that warrants hauling out the baked ham and Baby Duck.
So I should like to extend my very best wishes, especially to all those for whom every day is Assumption Day – giddy as a schoolgirl that, once a year, your impediment to social evolution is reason to celebrate.
Party on!
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Comment
- The Feast of the Consumption.
But then it would have to stop for at least a minute or so, wouldn’t it? To be marked out distinctly.
Then we could have the Feast of The Resumption, of The Consumption.
What is Baby Duck?
— vernaculo Aug 16, 1:15am # - Ironically, given the frequent focus of this blog, the Assumption of the BVM might also be referred to as her translation.
— John Hudson Aug 16, 11:06pm # - Fipps makes the common error of assuming that the ruling body needs to ensure widespread credence among the masses, i.e. that stupidity is a state into which the masses are forced or tricked by wiley rulers. There is plenty of evidence—even more than the negative evidence for the Assumption of the BVM (well, have you ever seen her body? her grave?)—that masses of people require no assistance in their stupidity, and will delude themselves as quickly or more quickly than even the most efficient ruler could manage. As I think I’ve mentioned before in these comments, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds should be required reading.
— John Hudson Aug 16, 11:15pm # - All well and good as long as you’re on the bench. But on the field it’s a pretty urgent thing. Do you just strip away the illusions, and let the newly-hatched rationalists, with no compass and no map, find their own way home? Where’s home?
Here? Where’s that?
Is it really preferable to be void of delusion with no conviction either?
Just saying you don’t know, is that enough?
We’re blobs of protoplastic oomph. That’s all we’ll ever be.
Why are those guys here is my question. And that gets closer to the edge than even most agnostics/atheists are comfortable with being.
You don’t want the whole stripped bare, just the parts that bother you.
You might want to start with the most reverend father of them all at present – “Moon, Sun Moon” – if you’re going to do yeoman’s work at myth-busting iconoclasticism.
Not because it’s more egregious, though it is, but because it’s more directly the product of human intent. A laboratory-bred religious organization that is highly successful – for exactly that reason, it’s not an organic expression of the mish-mash of human recension and occult manipulation, just straight-up shuck and jive.
Elmer Gantry without the self-deluding greed. Elmer Gantry without even the barest glimmer of a human soul. Behaviorism’s Church of the Now. This is a man moving affluently amongst us claiming to have walked and talked with the Lord, claiming to be the Messiah. He has millions of followers and dollars.
A bunch of Mediterranean peasants who get bad knees from praying to an incarnation of the earth-mother goddess that had her p.r. hi-jacked by gluttonous sodomites is a serious misuse of human time and attention, I’ll grant you, but it’s always about priorities isn’t it?
My premise is what we are, what we really are, is more directly threatened by Rev. Moon and his compadres in the Black Hive than the most fundamental Marianist devotees. So we should start there.
Once we’ve gotten all the jive out of our own world-views.
— Lance Boyle Aug 17, 4:20pm # - Baby Duck is probably no more. It was a thoroughly vile sweet, pink sparkling Canadian wine that, for some unfathomable reason, was once a best-seller.
More info
— gail Aug 18, 1:13am # - American Catholics have celebrated a similar feast day for many years. It occurs on the Friday after the last Thursday in November, and is called the Feast of the Gumption of conspicuous consumption.
Tradition dictates that people with lots of assertiveness and spunk fling themselves furiously at malls everywhere, worshipping Saint Mammon with passionate intensity. It ends on Christmas Eve. It has become so widespread that even non-Catholics participate, largely for the sake of their children.
And then of course, the Feast of the Compunction, the feast of the Disfunction, have I forgotten any?
— wizmo Aug 18, 1:47am # - Never heared of that before…i think ill just stick to the present celebrations thank you muchly.
— itil Aug 18, 7:12am # - Sadly, Baby Duck is still available, at least in Ontario liquor stores. I noticed it recently while I was standing in line to buy some non-Baby Duck wine.
A 1.5 litre bottle costs $11.95, according to the most recent LCBO price book. Their description: “Bright purple colour, nice fizz; sweet concord grape flavour.” Yikes.
— terimo Aug 19, 3:24pm # - The Fall of Baby Duck.
The Transubstantiation of Baby Duck.
The Apotheosis of Baby Duck.
Baby Duck Unbound.
Songs of Innocence and Baby Duck.
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Baby Duck.
Les Trois Canards Infants.
The Baby Duck Archipelago.
Love In The Time of Baby Duck.
— vernaculo Aug 19, 4:59pm # - Any relation? I remember something vile called Cold Duck in California, many moons ago. The ever-improving wine market there might have knocked it on the head by now.
— Ruth Aug 26, 6:29am #
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