TRUE FACT: “The University of Virginia will ban food and drink from sports events and other school and student activities to keep people in attendance from removing their masks” (The Daily Progress, January 14th online). The policy will be in effect until February 4th.
While some might view this prohibition as a serious inconvenience, the UVA chapter of the Zen-Foucault Society does not. As chapter President Willow Ravenshire put it, “what we call ‘food’ and ‘drink’ are simply mental images that reflect a failed attempt on our part to fill the gaping hole in our soul generated by the meaninglessness of life in the dystopian patriarchy of 21st-century American society.”
Ravenshire, a junior majoring in semiotics, notes that “a hamburger or bottle of Bud Lite is not something ‘real’, in the sense that it exists independently of our conceptualization of it. We may think that we eat or drink physical substances, but we don’t — not really. Those ‘substances’ are just thought balloons. They don’t satisfy our deep hunger for an authentic existence, one in which we would feel free to fully express our animosity toward our zombified extended family at holiday gatherings. In fact, the University has probably done all of the UVA community a favor by hastening the day — February 4th, to be exact — when Michel Foucault and Bodhidharma will return in human form to Charlottesville to preside over the world’s first Post-Modernist Ideational Food Rapture, catered by Popeyes Imaginary Chicken.”
Mark your calendars now.