Sent by a friend, don't know where he got it:
>
>Todd: Hi, Jerry.
>
>Jerry (reading from card): So, Todd, you're here to tell your girlfriend
>something. What is it?
>
>Todd: Well, Jerry, my girlfriend, Ursula, and I have been going out for
>three years now. We did everything together. We were really
>inseparable. But then she discovered post-Marxist political and
>literary theory, and it's been nothing but fighting ever since.
>
>Jerry: Why is that?
>
>Todd: You see, Jerry, I'm a traditional Cartesian rationalist. I
>believe that the individual self, the "I" or ego, is the foundation of
>all metaphysics. She, on the other hand, believes that the contemporary
>self is a socially constructed, multi-faceted subjectivity reflecting the
>political and economic realities of late capitalist, consumerist discourse.
>
>Crowd: Ooooohhhh!
>
>Todd: I know! I know! Is that infantile, or what?
>
>Jerry: So what do you want to tell her today?
>
>Todd: I want to tell her that unless she ditches the post-modernism,
>we're through. I just can't go on having a relationship with a woman
>who doesn't believe that I exist.
>
>Jerry: Well, you're going to get your chance. Here's Ursula!
>
>Ursula storms onstage and charges up to Todd.
>
>Ursula: Patriarchal colonizer!
>
>She slaps him viciously. Todd leaps up, but the security guys pull
>them apart before things can go any further.
>
>Ursula: Don't listen to him! Logic is a male hysteria! Rationality
>equals oppression and the silencing of marginalized voices!
>
>Todd: The classical methodology of rational dialectic is our only road to
>truth! Don't try to deny it!
>
>Ursula: You and your dialectic! That's how it's been through our whole
>relationship, Jerry. Mindless repetition of the post-Enlightenment
>meta-narrative. "You have to start with radical doubt, Ursula."
>"Post-structuralism is just classical sceptical thought re-cast in the
>language of semiotics, Ursula."
>
>Crowd: Booo! Booo!
>
>Jerry: Well, Ursula, come on. Don't you agree that the roots of
>contemporary neo-Leftism simply have to be sought in Enlightenment
>political philosophy?
>
>Ursula: History is the discourse of powerful, centrally located voices,
>marginalizing and de-scribing the sub-altern!
>
>Todd: See what I have to put up with? Do you know what it's like
>living with someone who sees sex as a metaphoric demonstration of the
>anti-feminist violence implicit in the discourse of the dominant power
>structure? It's terrible. She just lies there and thinks of Andrea
>Dworkin. That's why we never do it any more.
>
>Crowd: Wooooo!
>
>Ursula: You liar! Why don't you tell them how you haven't been able to
>get it up for the past three months because you couldn't decide if your
>penis truly had essential Being, or was simply a manifestation of Mind?
>
>Todd: Wait a minute! Wait a minute!
>
>Ursula: It's true!
>
>Jerry: Well, I don't think that we're going to solve this one right away.
>Our next guests are Louis and Tina. And Tina has a little confession to
>make!
>
>Louis and Tina come onstage. Todd and Ursula continue bickering in the
>background.
>
>Jerry: Tina, you are... (reads cards) ... an existentialist; is that
>right?
>
>Tina: That's right, Jerry. And Louis is, too.
>
>Jerry: And what did you want to tell Louis today?
>
>Tina: Jerry, today I want to tell him...
>
>Jerry: Talk to Louis. Talk to him.
>
>Crowd hushes.
>
>Tina: Louis... I've loved you for a long time...
>
>Louis: I love you, too, Tina.
>
>Tina: Louis, you know I agree with you that existence precedes essence,
>but...well, I just want to tell you that I've been reading Nietzsche
>lately, and I don't think I can agree with your egalitarian politics any
>more.
>
>Crowd: Wooooo! Woooooo!
>
>Louis (shocked and disbelieving): Tina, this is crazy. You know that
>Sartre clarified all this way back in the '40's.
>
>Tina: But he didn't take into account Nietzsche's radical critique of
>democratic morality, Louis. I'm sorry. I can't ignore the contradiction
>any longer!
>
>Louis: You got these ideas from Victor, didn't you? Didn't you?
>
>Tina: Don't you bring up Victor! I turned to him only when I saw you
>were seeing that dominatrix! I needed a real man! An Uber-man!
>
>Louis (sobbing): I couldn't help it. It was my burden of freedom. It was
>too much!
>
>Jerry: We've got someone here who might have something to add. Bring
>out...Victor!
>
>Victor enters. He walks up to Louis and sticks a finger in his face.
>
>Victor: Louis, you're a classic post-Christian intellectual -- weak to the
>core!
>
>Louis (through tears): You can kiss my Marxist ass, Reactionary Boy!
>
>Victor: Herd animal!
>
>Louis: Lackey!
>
>Louis throws a chair at Victor; they lock horns and wrestle. The crowd
>goes wild. After a long struggle, the security guys pry them apart.
>
>Jerry: Okay, okay. It's time for questions from the audience. Go ahead,
>sir.
>
>Audience member: Okay, this is for Tina. Tina, I just wanna know how
>you can call yourself an existentialist, and still agree with Nietzsche's
>doctrine of the Ubermensch. Doesn't that imply a belief in intrinsic
>essences that is in direct contradiction with with the fundamental
>principles of existentialism?
>
>Tina: No! No! It doesn't. We can be equal in potential, without being
>equal in eventual personal quality. It's a question of Becoming, not
>Being.
>
>Audience member: That's just disguised essentialism! You're no
>existentialist!
>
>Tina: I am so!
>
>Audience member: You're no existentialist!
>
>Tina: I am so an existentialist, bitch!
>
>Ursula stands and interjects.
>
>Ursula: What does it [bleep] matter? Existentialism is just a cover
>for late capitalist anti-feminism! Look at how Sartre treated Simone de
>Beauvoir!
>
>Women in the crowd cheer and stomp.
>
>Tina: [Bleep]-you! Fat-ass Foucaultian ho!
>
>Ursula: You only wish you were smart enough to understand Foucault,
>bitch!
>
>Tina: You the bitch!
>
>Ursula: No, you the bitch!
>
>Tina: Whatever! Whatever!
>
>Jerry: We'll be right back with a final thought! Stay with us!
>
>Commercial break for debt-consolidation loans, ITT Technical Institute, and
>Psychic Alliance Hotline.
>
>Jerry: Hi! Welcome back. I just want to thank all our guests for being
>here, and say that I hope that you're able to work through your
>differences and find happiness, if indeed happiness can be extracted from
>the dismal miasma of warring primal hormonal impulses we call human
>relationship.
>
>(Jerry turns to the camera.)
>
>Well, we all think philosophy is just fun and games. Semiotics,
>deconstruction, Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis -- it all seems
>like good, clean fun. But when the heart gets involved, all our
>painfully acquired metaphysical insights go right out the window, and
>we're reduced to battling it out like rutting chimpanzees. It's not
>pretty. If you're in a relationship, and differences over the
>fundamental principles of your respective subjectivities are making
>things difficult, maybe it's time to move on. Find someone new, someone
>who will accept you and the way your laughably limited human intelligence
>chooses to codify and rationalize the chaos of existence. After all, in
>the absence of a clear, unquestionable revelation from God, that's all
>we're all doing anyway. So remember: take care of yourselves -- and each
>other.
>
>Announcer: Be sure to tune in next time, when KKK strippers battle
>it out with transvestite, omnisexual porn stars! Tomorrow on Springer!
>
>
>
>______________________________________________________
>Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com