The Hunting Party

Figuring Shit Out

It's a simple fact of life that because we eat, we shit. The act of consumption and the act of defecation are indelibly linked to the whole (no pun intended) of any living organism. In the normal context, we humans are corpse eaters. We digest the dead into its base components for sustenance, and once those base components have been stripped of any caloric/nutritional value whatsoever, those components are ejected from our bodies. In some cultures, the ritualistic eating of one's enemies was meant to give the eater that enemy's strength, both physically and spiritually. Christ was very aware of the practice of cannibalism, and, in an effort to avoid being consumed by his brethren, invented Communion (it wouldn't do to wind up in Heaven with bite marks, now would it?). Our bodies make shit out of the once living. Our bodies serve to create vulgar masterpieces, and there are only two senses required in the art. In the symbolic context, everything living consumes with all their functioning senses. Each sense, if functioning as designed, devours the raw material of everyday life and existence, digests it in the brain, and the end result is just a prettier form of shit delivered by thought, speech, pencil, keystroke, brush, hammer blow, or gesture; fertilizer for the observer, reader, sufferer, lover or patron on which to grow and survive. At this juncture shit becomes tolerable, manageable, palatable. It might even be referred to as "good shit," though in practice the term "good shit" would seem a contradiction of terms.

Now that's some hot shit... or is it?I've always had a problem with someone that says something "tastes like shit." I assume what the person saying the phrase really means is that something smells the way he/she imagines shit tastes. The reason humanity developed a sense of smell was to avoid eating something infested with the bacteria of rot and decay. Perhaps one of our distant ancestors ate a piece of bad fruit and got the shits, so the primordial brain wiring got together and said "You know, if we could sniff out the bad stuff we could avoid all that cramping and the green apple two-step, and we won't lose all that ass hair from the constant wiping," so it was in the organism's best interests to not only sharpen the olfactory sense, but hotwire it to the gag reflex. I reckon the reason human-kind managed to survive its early history was because of its ability to eat damned near anything, and damned near anything also included carrion as well as veggies. Thank God for gas grills and electric can openers, eh? Now, if I could only understand how farts figure into the scheme of life.