A famous loincloth-wearing primitive guy wrote some things in the diary of Levi-Strauss, the even more famous anthropologist (not the, even more famous, jeans manufacturer).
‘Very confused, then suddenly very friendly, then quiet for long stretches – this is how our native colorblindness works, tracking popcorn behavior, the decadent silhouettes in particular.’
Popular culture – as introduced by Levi Strauss – was having certain nefarious outworkings on this native Nambikwaran’s mind. He had taken to waking Strauss in the middle of the night in his tent, making dumb grunting noises and obnoxious hand motions indicating the notebook wedged beneath Strauss’s pillow. Wearily, the anthropologist humored him, sitting upright and rubbing his eye with a knuckle while with the other eye observing the brown, muddy, loinclothed dude scribbling with out-thrust tongue and hunched shoulders and crossed legs in his notebook. He had a weird way of holding the pen, Strauss noticed.
‘Piano keys in particular make me cringe! They are teeth-killing! They look like teeth! They look like PVC teeth! They LOOK LIKE PVC VELOCIRAPTOR teeth!’ In a very tiny hand, the following night, the native man wrote, in ominous red ink, Strauss’s favorite color especially when it came to describing (perhaps dangerous?) idiosyncrasies of the native Amazonian tribes: ‘Pardon me for asking, but are you by any chance Bob?’
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