THE PELMET DILEMMA  

Some of my readers (notably Gregory Hall of Suffolk in his various disguises such as Trudy Lynch the militant embryologist & the Rev. Augustus Steelforthwittle) have asked me to discuss the Pelmet Dilemma as outlined by Heinrich Gotcheschleim in his celebrated pamphlet "Do curtains hang, or are we mere projections inverted into the fabric thereof?" addressed to the German Philosophical Society 1968.

 The Pelmet Dilemma can be summarised as follows:

A person looks up at a pelmet. The pelmet speaks to him. He addresses the pelmet. The pelmet is silent. He relates this incident to a friend who addresses a nearby pelmet. The pelmet is silent. Is the pelmet first spoken of animate or inanimate?

 At first sight the dilemma is one of veracity. Do we believe the pelmet actually spoke? But what if the pelmet were actually a person behaving as a pelmet? - then of course it might speak. But should we call someone acting as a pelmet a pelmet? Should we not call him a person behaving as a pelmet? Can a person be a pelmet? Why not? He can be an Engineer or an Artist; he can be a model for a mannequin by remaining immobile whilst submerged in a rubber solution - is he not then effectively a mannequin in the most profound sense, and if a mannequin then why not a pelmet?

 The problem arises when we confuse inanimate non-human artefacts with animate human. A man could be an ashtray but hardly a practical one. But a man could for a time make an effective pelmet if adequately supported and nourished; personal ablutions could be awkward but attainable. Slaves in olden times used to fulfil many degrading roles such as foot supports and handy fish rests; sometimes people were eaten as a delicacy. I myself have carried out experiments such as placing rodents in a long clear plastic tube and using this as a temporary pelmet. At a certain point the stench became unbearable, but until then it did make an adequate and somewhat visually dynamic pelmet that drew interested spectators from far beyond the outskirts of Accrington.

 My conclusion is this:

A pelmet is a pelmet. A human is a human. Neither of these statements are incongruous.