October 3, 2007

Rumi's 800th birthday

This past sunday was Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi's 800th birthday, and he refused to show up for his party, using the tired old excuse that he's dead. Lame. It's OK, we ate his cake for him, fuckin' no-show.

Born in 1207 in Afghanistan, back when that country was "kickin'", Rumi spoke about the awesome power of love as well as the spiritual applications of music, dancing and the wearing of those giant foam "number one" hands.

When Rumi was about 15 years old Genghis Khan came to town and busted the place up. Rumi and his family then moved to Turkey because they heard that everyday was Thanksgiving there. Once they got there they found out that not even Thanksgiving was Thanksgiving there, and very few stores even carried cranberry sauce. This resulted in Rumi's first hit song, "I brought the stuffing but there ain't no ass to stick it in."

On the way to Turkey Rumi met Attar, a famous Persian poet of that era who, in addition to being a poet, was also a mystic and a TV repairman but since TV still hadn't been invented yet, he focused mostly on being a poet, although he would occasionally include a reference to Baretta in his poems.

It was about this time that Rumi became involved in mysticism, often opening his eyes really wide and wiggling his fingers next to his face and saying, "Oooo, that's weird, isn't it?" 

His friends were not impressed. 

"Rumi, it's a toaster. It's not that weird."

"No, but check it out. I was white but now it's brown. Oooo.." (wiggle wiggle)

"Rumi, it's a fucking toaster."

In 1231 Rumi took over for his father as Professor of Religious Sciences at the University of Not Thanksgiving, and expanded the study of "ecstatic flight into the infinite", focusing on what he called "celestial frequent flier miles". Rumi believed that music, dancing and poems were the path to heaven, that if you sang enough and danced enough and recited enough poems God would let you into heaven just to shut you up.

Rumi died in 1273. Two years later Count Floris V issued Amsterdam its first charter and the following year the first Amsterdam coffeeshop opened featuring a Turkish hashish called "Rumi Polm", a smoke described as musical, mystical, lyrical and often the cause of people saying, "Oooo, that's weird, isn't it?"

Rumi is mostly remembered for his thoughts on love. His most famous quote is, "Love is like a jock strap on a really really fat guy. You can't see it but it's there, doing its job, holding the fragile parts in place while tons of excessive weight hover dangerously above. And it smells funny after extended use. Yeah, love smells funny, that's what I meant to say. Did you get that? Are you writing this stuff down, dude? I'm a famous mystic. People are going to want to read this shit someday. Oh, you are? You got it all? Even the love smelling funny part? Ok, cool."

copyright 2007 john bizarre

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