Oh, Sasuke Suki

When, oh when, are we going to elect someone cool enough to wear a mask? I love the way that piece ends:

"Before you know it, prefectural civil servants will all be wearing masks too," said one council employee.

Apparently the Japanese fear the dreaded "Masked Wrestler" epidemic more than SARS. Or is SARS only a less evolved form of the "Masked Wrestler" virus? - after all, it seems everyones covering their faces already. Man, I can't believe I'm making SARS jokes. It must be a new low.

New low? I think that's premature. After all, did you know James Joyce wrote porn? It's some pretty graphic stuff, those letters to his wife, and definitely not safe for work. he was a bit different, that Joyce. Had a thing for bodily functions, particularly a fondness for flatulance:

I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.

I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. That is a strangely wonderful definition of knowing, of loving someone and all about them, of becoming and inhabiting, two bodies, one soul. And yet, unsettling...

Masked wrestler politicians and the gassy wives of modern masters. Well, it is Monday.