This is the online component of the humor section of the Argus, the Wesleyan University newspaper.

10/12/10

Gendering the “Other” in the Butthole Tree Diaspora: A Senior Thesis

If a tree falls in the Butthole and no one is there to deconstruct its performatively enacted de-ontological teleological construction, does it make a sound?

Let me rephrase. I propose that the recently fallen perennial wooden entity (hence referred to as“Arnold”) manifests its phallic symbolism by positing a hyper-eroticized Other to the flaccid foundation of Summerfields (hence referred to as “Frank”). I propose further that this grotesque sociopolitical foliage-troll—“Arnold”—renders its post-linguistic meta-discourse by forging a grueling post-ideological dialogue with beloved grey-haired “Frank” cashier Susan.

“I knew that damn thing was gonna fall,” Susan tells me, her baby blue eyes alight with the anarchistic byproduct of de-systemized normative construction. “It glared at me, all ugly and ready to crack.” She scowls, her brow furrowed in neo-pedagogical instability. “Points or meal, hon?”

How poetic, then, that our nutrient-sucking phallic friend engendered its own gruesome demise— what I term its “meta-ontological collapse,” of body and of spirit, of bark and of biomass—in the etymologically charged public sphere that is the Butterfields Courtyard. How telling that its homonormative de-edification of the self manifested an ugly ideological counterpart in the seedy throng of frothy, foaming Public Safety officers reporting to the scene.

And, finally, how fitting that its veiny, throbbing, forest-dwelling member blocked Butterfield
access just as its sordid, infective, post-normative meta-presence blocked access to a perceived sort of ideological homeostasis between “Frank” (hereby referred to as “Summerfields”) and “Arnold (hereby referred to as “that goddamn tree”).

This, I propose, is no ordinary tree disaster. This is fierce socio-erotic sabotage.

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