Friday, February 18, 2011

WUMP

I call it the Wump.

Pull the chords from the song "Fascination Street" by The Cure and sculpt them in the form of a sleeping cat; drop the cat on a young man's head, and Viola! Wump.

I first encountered the Wump while watching Labyrinth with my cousins, a jealous-making clan owning everything that my parents--still reading the directions to the microwave--lacked the consumer empathy to purchase: a VCR, Giga Pets, Cool Ranch Doritos. Ensconced in a paradise of Lunchables and bean bag chairs, I watched David Bowie's glorious Wump glide across the flat screen TV.



Since then I've purchased a DVD player, half of Barnes and Noble, and enough music to crash a coffee shop of Mac Books. Sifting through my cultural capital, i recognized common themes in what attracted me as an audience:

1. Socially inept geniuses
2. Bob Dylan
3. Wumps


The Wump is as ubiquitous as the Fresca cans trashing my apartment (socially inept, i hide in the campus library and bid on Dylan bootlegs while my room rots; i haven't changed my sheets since moving in) :


Robert Smith of The Cure

Edward Scissorhands

Dream from Gaiman's Sandman


Where did the Wump come from? To what strange history do we owe this frazzled scalp?

Why do i find it attractive?

The explanation for the last question is simple: i eat more Tim Burton movies than carbohydrates. The earlier question concerning Wump evolution is more complex, and would require a full examination of fossil records and the application of carbon dating to give a satisfactory answer.

Luckily, i am everything but satisfactory.

My theory:

you splice this
with this


WUMP


The Wump inspired me to experiment.

How come when they do it, it looks cool, but when i do it,
i look like something that crawled out of the exhaust pipe of the Mystery Machine?

GIVE ME SCOOBY SNACKS

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