A 'pataphysical investigation
2 Pédale, 143, E.P.
From Rhumb Line to Conga Line
A loxodrome, also known as a rhumb line, is an imaginary curve inscribed on a Portolan chart, map or globe, using the greatest of care to cross all meridians of longitude at the same angle. The use of this geographical device was developed in the year 336 B.E.P. (1537, vulg.) by the Judeo-Portuguese mathematician, Pedro Nunes. His technique of drawing lines on charts and globes aided navigation significantly, and thus he stands at least partially responsible for the regrettable proliferation of bananas in Europe. Setting a course by common loxodromes, once used by piously avaricious Iberian explorers, was already found wanting by the time of the imaginary discourse between Doctor Faustroll and René Daumal in 1938 (vulg.).[1] Poor Nunes could not have foreseen the arrival of the era of topology.[2]
Despite its topological obsolescence, the work of Pedro Nunes has not gone to waste; indeed it has taken on a dramatically new and exciting application, particularly focusing on benign perturbation, and the pigeage[3]of diplopic diplomacy. There are many ways to disturb the diplopic constant of human observation sufficiently to achieve the ‘pataphysical Absolute, whose natural derivative, among many other benefits, represents in this case a breakthrough in the advancement of world peace. Under the horribly horizontal clouds of error that this diplopic constant causes to apataphysical human perception, certain shapes, rituals and materials may be necessary for successful perturbation.
Coming forth by day, as Père Ubu, replete with the gidouille, or cosmic spiral, emblazoned on one’s corpulent belly has yielded innumerable benefits to the advancement of heliology in this and many other fields. Notwithstanding the ex-King of Poland’s abdominal gallantry, the present research focuses exclusively on the spiral’s application to imaginary diplomacy. Over the course of the past 25 years of research, our focus has not merely pointed to the shape of the gidouille, but to which rituals and materials prove to be most efficacious to affecting the desired result.
Beginning in the auspicious year 77 E.P. (1950, vulg.), a first attempt at rudimentary imaginary diplomacy began in the form of the conga line. Iterations of this experiment have been conducted from the 1950s (vulg.) through the latter 1980s (vulg.)., first by the noted Catalan innovator Xavier Cugat, and subsequently by the Chipmunks, the Chipettes, Barnetta Dafonseca, and Gloria Estefan, respectively.[4] None was able to overcome the diplopic constant for long enough to achieve measurable results. Later analysis attributes this failure to the evolution of each conga line into a circle, which disrupts the loxodromic effect necessary to (a.) transcend geopolitical problems, and (b.) properly entice the lower appetites to sufficiently pinpoint solutions to seemingly disassociated problems. Moreover, unless all participants dance along a constant path, as measured relative to true or magnetic north, the rhumb line would not be synonymous with the conga line.
Hot Meat Injection
Irrespective of ballroom dance steps, by 118 E.P. (1991, vulg.), a team of American, Dutch, and Portuguese alchemists and ‘pataphysicians, including the author, began a series of experiments in imaginary diplomacy during the boiling hot Lisbon summer. The Portuguese capital is home to an unusual number of armillary spheres, making it a prime location for experimentation in the field of imaginary diplomacy. Following the Fragment of the Dialogue upon the Erotic[5] by Ibicrates the Geometer, the team sought to know all things by means of lines drawn in different directions. Using fantastic amounts of Borba branco to retard our diplopic tendencies, a definitive breakthrough was made by our team with the accidental introduction of a flaming Portuguese sausage (chouriço) tactfully placed on a traditional armillary sphere. The sausage was linearly sufficient to trace a correspondence between Moscow and Lisbon, and the brass rings of the sphere incorporated the appropriate loxodrome. Although initial adverse reactions to the sausage’s lack of curvature apparently resulted in the August coup d’état in the USSR, we were able to recoup the losses using the more flexible and linearly advantageous saucisse de Toulouse.[6] By 21 August, a band of surly, capitalist Muscovites, led by Boris Yeltsin, had foiled the defenders of the Soviet republic. Toulouse had clearly not done its job for peace.
Thereafter, despite the enormous expenditure on white wine, the team continued to intensify its investigations of Loxodromic Sausage as Diplomatic Solution (LSDS). A number of preliminary findings established between 118 and 120 E.P. included:
· Identification of the primary means of divination through the curvature of the sausage when placed on a globe.
· Given enough meat and prophylactics, the loxodrome will traverse any sphere as a spiral. Best results were 99.425 percent achieved when utilizing the saucisse de Toulouse or its Sicilian sister, salsiccia alla pizzaiola.
· Fashioning a transcendent (and yet lower) appetite for ultimate harmony, these sausage-links between seemingly disassociated problems and solutions are well substantiated in Père Ubu’s exclamation: Cornegidouille!Par la puissance des appétits inférieurs![7]
Despite protestations from San Marino, Monaco, Malta and the Alentejo DOC, the Council of Europe partial agreement funding for our research eventually withered; giving us unmistakable evidence that our researches were not only effective, but becoming dangerous to the sinister sectors of civil society, government, and certain phenomenologists of the Frankfurt School.
Toulouse-Pizzaiola Effect vs. Frankfurter Phenomenology
Since the team’s early years of experimentation in Lisbon, the Toulouse-Pizzaiola Effect (T-PE) has become a high form of imaginary diplomacy which can only be learned through (a.) hundreds of sausage-making sessions; (b.) infiltration of the upper echelons of the diplomatic corps and International Organizations, and (c.) a firm grip on affordable and reliable white wine production. T-PE’s fantastic outcomes in hotbeds of intrigue such as the Ukraine, Georgia, Cambridge (USA), Azerbaijan and Armenia, have dazzled the meaty heads of career diplomats from across the planet.
Under constant attack from the halitosis-stricken Frankfurt School phenomenologists and their deviant rhesus monkeys, our research team withdrew to a snow-sledding retreat at Champ du Feu near Strasbourg in 135 E.P. (2008, vulg.) Things never being exactly as they seem, we prognosticated that the big mean Germans of logic would likely think first to wage their war of rationality over the skies of our precious Toulouse. We would therefore hold the XVII Annual T-PE Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Congress (AT-PEEPCON) safely in the land of the short and chubby knackwurst.
It was at AT-PEEPCON XVII that the People’s Organization for Order and Peace through Loxodromic Sausage as Diplomatic Solution (POOP-LSDS) was consecrated to the promulgation of a ‘pataphysical meat map to world peace. From the POOP-LSDS secret headquarters in the Vosges, our team worked tirelessly to enhance the efficiency and colour of the T-PE process. The POOP-LSDS T-PE Process training programme was fully operational by June of the same year, and trial runs began at POOP encampments in the French departments of Bas Rhin, Côte d’Or, and in Baden-Württemberg.
General Observations of the POOP-LSDS T-PE Process Training
After several months of sausage-making, the student of diplomacy begins to shuffle off his or her initial state of sexual stimulation, to experience the apophatic climax of the so-called Toulouse-Pizzaiola Effect. This phenomenon occurs when, after the T-PE operator has imbibed sufficient quantities of white wine, he or she affixes the long, curving, cylindrical meat on a globe or armillary sphere. The first point of contact should be the location of the diplomatic problem. After making initial sausage-locus contact, the second end should be worked along a random loxodromic line whose endpoint is unknown to the operator during the T-PE operation. Group work from sessions 10, 13 and 57 waxed upon our considerable ball of evidence, illustrating the psycho-spiritual state of the operator as most akin to a combination of classical Chinese calligrapher and murderously famished infant.
So long as the sausage is of the appropriate type (at least spiral, if not either specifically Toulouse or Pizzaiola) it will point even the most pedantic chef de cabinet to a corresponding location on the earth where the solution to the diplomatic conundrum can be found. Thus far, experiments are inconclusive as to whether cooked or raw sausages are most accurate, though we do not recommend eating uncooked sausage after any T-PE operation. Strikingly, the length of the sausage is pivotal to the provision of optimal solutions. In short, size matters. T-PE puts the inhabitants–– and even more so –– the natives of Toulouse and Sicily at a considerable advantage. Consequently, the effect also calls into serious question the ‘pataphysical viability of headquartering the European institutions in Strasbourg and Brussels, and the United Nations Organization in New York and Geneva, when these diplomatic organs would do better with intimate proximity to the great sausage centres of Toulouse and Palermo. Surprisingly, however, the Dutch spiral braadworst, seems to be auspiciously purveyed at ‘s-Gravenhage, home to the International Court of Justice.
Philosophical Andouillette
Shortly before AT-PEEPCON XXIII, several members of the POOP research team received a telepathic communiqué from the Association Amicale des Amateurs d'Andouillette Authentique (AAAAA). “The Friendly Club of Lovers of Authentic Andouillette” had been made aware of significant otherworldly advancements in the POOP-LSDS T-PE training process among some producers of high-quality andouillettes. At the interim report stage of our team’s investigations, it seems that the extraordinary number of curves, spirals and other lines contained within a high-quality andouillette accelerated 90 percent of all T-PE operators’ apprehension of apophatic climax.
More tests are necessary to determine what, if any, effects the POOP team encounter with the imaginary diplomatic outcomes of philosophical andouillettes. An imaginary report is expected by Merdre of 143 E.P. (18 May – 14 June, 2016, vulg.).
Respectfully submitted to the Collège de ‘Pataphysique
by
Donald DONATO
for the
POOP-LSDS T-PE Research Team
***
Notes:
[1] René Daumal. ‘Pataphysical Essays (Thomas Vosteen, trans.), (Cambridge, MA: Wakefield Press, 2012), 76 [2] Topology was defined by Dr. Faustroll as a kind of ‘patageometry. (See above citation) [3]Pigeage is the technical term for “punching-down the cap”. [4] For further details on this research, listen to We No Speak Americano with Conga Lyrics. [5] Translated and brought to light by Doctor Faustroll. [6] This thanks to our Dutch colleague’s indefatigable enthusiasm for holding an elaborate worstfest. Similar but more volatile results have also been gleaned from a cassoulet festival in Castelnaudary some years later. [7]The gidouille is primarily a symbol of the physical swelling of the belly of Père Ubu; it emphasizes roundness and enormity. "Cornegidouille", the favorite expletive of Ubu, means "by the power of the lower appetites." The spiral is the perfect symbol of his voracious appetite, but it is also a moral symbol.