Silly Sunday, and a Visual Meme-

A few days ago Cissy Strutt wrote a post featuring Manet's 1863 painting "Le déjeuner sur l’herbe" ('Luncheon on the Grass'). I used the image myself in a post last year, and suddenly had the thought -what if we could do an image meme? See how many of us can use the image in a post within, say, a week? Play along if you wish! For my contribution, and because it's Silly Sunday, I dug out an email that was making the rounds a while ago-



FRENCH INTELLECTUALS TO BE DEPLOYED TO AFGHANISTAN TO CONVINCE AL-QUAEDA OF NON-EXISTENCE OF GOD

The ground war in Afghanistan heated up yesterday when the Allies revealed plans to airdrop a platoon of crack French existentialist philosophers into the country to destroy the morale of al-Queda zealots by proving the non-existence of God.

Elements from the feared Jean-Paul Sartre Brigade, or "Black Berets", will be parachuted into the combat zones to spread doubt, despondency and existential anomie among the enemy. Hardened by numerous intellectual battles fought during their long occupation of Paris' Left Bank, their first action will be to establish a number of pavement Cafes at strategic points near the front lines. There they will drink coffee and talk animatedly about the absurd nature of life and man's lonely isolation in the Universe.

They will be accompanied by a number of heartbreakingly beautiful girlfriends who will further spread dismay by sticking their tongues in the philosophers' ears every five minutes and looking remote and unattainable to everyone else.

Their leader, Colonel Marc-Ange Belmondo, spoke yesterday of his confidence in the success of their mission. Sorbonne graduate Belmondo, a very intense and unshaven young man in a black pullover, gesticulated wildly and said,

"The al-Queda are caught in a logical fallacy of the most ridiculous kind. There is no God and I can prove it. Take your tongue out of my ear, Juliet, I am talking."

Marc-Ange plans to deliver an impassioned thesis on man's nauseating freedom of action with special reference to the work of Foucault and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. However, humanitarian agencies have been quick to condemn the operation as inhumane, pointing out that the effects of passive smoking from the Frenchmen's endless Gitanes could wreak a terrible toll on civilians in the area.

Speculation was mounting last night that Britain may also contribute to the effort by dropping Professor Stephen Hawking into Afghanistan to propagate his non-deistic theory of the creation of the universe. Other tactics to demonstrate the non-existence of God will include the dropping of leaflets pointing out the fact that Britney Spears has a new album out and Jesse Helms has not died yet. This is only one of several Psy-Ops operations to be mounted by the Allies.