In a kinder, gentler age, C.S. Lewis pointed out that sex was unlike other appetites.
The biological purpose of sex is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to repair the body. Now if we eat whenever we feel inclined and just as much as we want, it is quite true that most of us will eat too much: but not terrifically too much. One man may eat enough for two, but he does not eat enough for ten. The appetite goes a little beyond its biological purpose, but not enormously. But if a healthy young man indulged his sexual appetite whenever he felt inclined, and if each act produced a baby, then in ten years he might easily populate a small village. This appetite is in ludicrous and preposterous excess of its function.
You can get a large audience together for a strip-tease act—that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you came to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food?
But that was then. This is now.
I got home from Vespers tonight to find, as if our wont, my better half tuned into the Food Channel as she cooked. But the show finishing up was new to us, Ginormous Food, which concluded with a donut roughly 24″ in diameter and 6″ tall, followed by another new one, Incredible Edible America with the Dunhams, which started with a $777 Las Vegas burger, which was definitely large, but really “justified” the cost by tricks like including paté from the livers of vestal virgins (or something like that).
I didn’t know whether to laugh at the happenstance, or marvel at the cheek of the music editor, when the $777 burger was introduced with the unmistakeable strains of the Dies Irae from Verdi’s Requiem.
Chorus:
The day of wrath, that day will
dissolve the world in ashes,
as David and the Sibyl prophesied.How great will be the terror,
when the Judge comes
who will smash everything completely!The trumpet, scattering a marvelous sound
through the tombs of every land,
will gather all before the throne.Bass:
Death and Nature shall stand amazed,
when all Creation rises again
to answer to the Judge.Mezzo-soprano and Chorus:
A written book will be brought forth,
which contains everything
for which the world will be judged.Therefore when the Judge takes His seat,
whatever is hidden will be revealed:
nothing shall remain unavenged.The day of wrath, that day will
dissolve the world in ashes,
as David and the Sibyl prophesied.Soprano, Mezzo-soprano and Tenor:
What can a wretch like me say?
Whom shall I ask to intercede for me,
when even the just ones are unsafe?
Food porn: the latest wretched excess from a culture where wretched excess personified now sits in the oval office.
I think I need to go shower now. There’s sure not much to watch on TV anyway.
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“Liberal education is concerned with the souls of men, and therefore has little or no use for machines … [it] consists in learning to listen to still and small voices and therefore in becoming deaf to loudspeakers.” (Leo Strauss)
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 