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After much deliberation, after pondering, both weak and weary, after tugging my beard like the retro-sage in a technical age that I fancy myself to be, after eating a couple of eggs boiled in spiced soy (oh, yeah, baby), I have come to the inescapable conclusion that ‘Uncle Fucka‘ is possibly the greatest song ever written.

A brief reminder of the powerful and affecting lyrics :

[Terrance:] Shut your f–king face uncle f–ka
You’re a cock sucking ass licking uncle f–ka
You’re an uncle f–ka, yes its true
Nobody f–ks uncles quite like you
[Phillip:] Shut your f–king face uncle f–ka
You’re the one that f–ked your uncle, uncle f–ka
You dont eat or sleep or mow the lawn,
You just f–k your uncle all day long
[farting noises]
[Terrance:] Hmm!
[farting noises]
[laughing]
[farting noises]
[Some Guy:] What’s going on here?
[farting noises]
[Man 1:] That’s garbage!
[Man 2: ]Well, what do you expect — they’re Canadian.
[People:] OOOoooooooooooooh
f–ker f–ker uncle f–ka uncle f–ka f–ka f–ka f–ka
[T & P:] Shut your f–king face uncle f–ka
[Terrance:] uncle f–ka
[Terrance:] You’re a boner biting bastard uncle f–ka
[Phillip:] You’re an uncle f–ka I must say
[Terrance:] Well you f–ked your uncle yesterday
[Everyone: (laughing)]
[People:] Uncle f–ka… thats
[Everyone:] U-N-C-L-E f–k you Uncle
f–kaaaaaa…
[Phillip:] Suck my balls!

From the opening strains to the final testicular injunction, this piece of music speaks of humankind’s chthonic impetus to understand its place in the world, to rend the veils that separate us from a direct apprehension of the divine. Perhaps Terrance and Phillip are telling us that through the f–king of uncles, a sacred understanding may be achieved. William Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, said :

The road of excess is the road upon which Terrance and Phillip gambol and fart prodigiously, boner-biting their way to the palace of wisdom. Uncle f–kers, yes indeed, they embrace all within the scope of their gaze, with both love and scorn. Their joyous farts and caustic abuse remind us of the Rabelaisian island of Ruach,

and point with gleeful loathing thereby at our folly and failings. They f–ked their uncles yesterday, our hyperkinetic flatulent Canadian duo, reminding us of the gloomy conclusion of Ivan Karamazov: “If God is dead, all is permitted.”

Is there a god who would allow uncle-f–king? Is the god who would have prevented such things indeed dead, and is all, in fact, permitted? Terrance and Phillip have no answers for us, as they caper and cut the cheese, only questions, questions with which the great minds of our civilization have wrestled for centuries, fruitlessly.

In the end, perhaps, like Neitzche, they hail the dionysian, as the true source of art, and as deliberate affront to the illusory appollonian order imposed by our minds on a chaotic universe.

Either way, as Walter Kaufmann said of Neitzche, so can we say of Terrance and Phillip, our foul-mouthed flatulent flip-top-headed Canadian friends :

Suck my balls.