Ten Tips for Going on a Picnic

If you nickname Warden Fermat “The Fermi Paradox” in an act of half-hearted praxis, he will throw a picnic to celebrate your parole.

One: Attending flagellants will scourge with leather thongs. If many flagellants indulge a “convulsion which in the most extraordinary manner infuriate[s] the human frame […] called the dance of St. John or St. Vitus, on account of [its] bacchantic leaps” 94 recall from your study of history that bubonic plague tends to be followed by the Dancing Sickness.

Two: If Fermi P., as the nickname evolves, wonders if this Dancing Sickness might jive with his personal model of restorative justice, nod and reply, “Gee, would you look at those bold and fine breasts adjacent the splash pad. This Dancing Sickness may be just the ticket after my years spent in the grey and homonormative walls of your Serpent River Penitentiary, sir. ” If 94 (Hecker, 1888) the Warden bristles at the word homonormative, divert him with Nietzsche’s vindication of the dancing sick: [W]e recognize in these St. John’s and St. Vitus’ dancers the Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, who had their precursors in Asia Minor and as far back as Babylon and the orgiastic Sacaea. There are people who, either from lack of experience or out of sheer stupidity, turn away from such phenomena, and, strong in the sense of their own sanity, label them either mockingly or pityingly “endemic diseases. ” These benighted souls have no idea how cadaverous and ghostly their “sanity” appears as the intense throng of Dionysian revelers sweeps past them.95

Three: If Posturepedic Ferm and yourself aren’t yet Dancing Sick, but wish to be, so as to appear less cadaverous and ghostly, but also to approach nearer the bold and proudlyconvulsive breasts—again cite historical precedent: Above a hundred unmarried women were seen raving about in consecrated and unconsecrated places, and the consequences were soon perceived. Gangs of idle vagabonds, who understood how to imitate to the life the gestures and convulsions of those really affected, roved from place to place seeking maintenance and adventures, and 95 (Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 1872) thus, wherever they went, spreading this disgusting spasmodic disease like a plague; for in maladies of this kind the susceptible are infected as easily by the appearance as by the reality.96

Four: Steady nerves with F.P. Serva’s apple brandy much as you steadied them with thirteen Coors Lights before high school dances with the old gang. Thrust wildly. Seek maintenance. If even comradeship of spirit goes against the flagellator’s ethos, heed the Warden’s request to no longer indulge him with cool nicknames.

Five: If a three-pronged leather flagellator is handed to you, don’t be rude, flagellate.

Six: Do not “bathe in fire” as the genuinely-afflicted Dancing Sick are inclined.

Seven: If a bold-breasted woman asks, “What’s your angle?” respond as the idle vagabond you are, “Agitated by the same tympanic inflammation of the bowels that inflame your bowels, young lady. ”

Eight: Invite the best-looking Dancing Sick onto the Warden’s yacht. Feel called to be a nomadic yachtsman. Pop bottles. Partake of the Warden’s cocaine. Laugh without certainty at all Majthenyi’s manifested evils. Give Warden Fermat an awesome high-five.

Nine: Smoke a fine cigar with the Warden. Spit bubonic blood upon his larder, eternally rude but what’s to be done about it? State, “Warden, this is truly a hoot, but why not harness this Dancing Mania, weed out any idler vagabonds, and 96 (Hecker, 1888) bring this roadshow town to town, Rolling Thunder Revuestyle, call it Compassion on the Run or something urgent. We’ll spread cheer among northern Ontarians, a population long in need of cheer. We’ll spread the good news. In a fun way. With the bold breasts. The good news of a benevolence transcendent, of a spiritual force supra to the creator of this ongoing sustain, Ronald Majthenyi, mentors my son in atemporal transcendental information structures, goddamn one-trick pony in the grand scheme. Imminently defeatable. Just the Genesis of a stumbling block between today’s gory imposthumes and a golden tomorrow. ”

Ten: If the Warden’s concerned inquiry of “Malevolent god eh?” omens of millennium, find your early gnostic blogbased instincts once again in Bloom.