American Fez

Nature's Bounty

"It really sucks that I've got to buy two seats," Fat John said as we waited to board our flight to Obesiana.
"I agree." I told him. "But unfortunately that's all they have available. You'd be much more comfortable in a row of three."
Poor old Fat John. If only he'd followed my recipe for healthy living by eating less he wouldn't have to pay more to sit at the back of the plane.
"At this time we'd like to begin boarding all those passengers who require special assistance because they need to be squeezed into the fuselage," the attendant announced.
"That's me." Fat John said. "I'll see you in there."
Luckily for Fat John, airlines don't serve free snacks during the journey these days, so Fat John would not be tempted by any high-flying calories or supersonic carbohydrates. Instead, I'd invited him to partake of my packed lunch: a nourishing meal made from Mother Nature's most mouthwatering fruits and vegetables. And it's a recipe I'd like to share with you today.

Paella de Gaia

One sniff of cheesed fut de carbon
Two teaspoons of wobbled lesbianberry
A stretch of well-addled algore
One gallon premium brand colon cleanser
A grimoire of crushed heart of nazi to taste

Later, when luxuriating in the comfort of my first-class seat, shortly after Fat John had been sick and both stewardesses reduced to tears, I reflected on man's pathetic inability to swallow a dose of what's bloody good for him.

Northern Weather

A Brief Pome about the Rains

Waterlogged bums taking shelter
Inside a street-side automated teller
Ponder mugging Mary Poppins
For her unbelievable umbrella

He's Spartacus! He's Spartacus!

Collective responsibility and I are uneasy bedfellows, especially since I am liable to hide under the covers when the cock crows and culprits are being sought. I have no desire to indulge myself in orgies of guilt and contrition for crimes in which I was merely a tiny satellite tentatively orbiting a pulsing planet of infraction. Instead, I believe in pointing the finger at the ringleader, the mastermind; and I don't believe in just pointing the finger, either, oh no, I believe in prodding the finger at them, preferably into the middle of their delinquent forehead. Furthermore, I don't believe it should be simply a regular bare finger that is prodded, but a huge and colorful foam hand featuring an extended finger, similar to the ones employed by fans at sports events, with "guilty person" written on it. Then we can let the world know exactly who the miscreant was who decided to swap Mellow Colombian for Deep French Roast beans in the office coffee machine.

Why I Should Stick to Doodling

As there was no "business" to discuss at our morning meeting, some overbearing busybody with nothing better to do brought up the tedious topic of office etiquette. "I wish the guys among us would remember to put the seat down in the bathroom," she bleated.
A reasonable enough request, no doubt, in normal circumstances, and normally I would have left the matter there, but the speaker was a grotesque and miserable cow whom I detest, so I didn't.
"That seems a pretty old-fashioned and sexist code of conduct to me." I said. "Since we are all equal in the work place these days maybe we should make an effort to be equal in the toilet also."
I could almost hear the eyes-rolling in my colleagues' heads, but bravely forged ahead with my argument anyway.
"Of course, I'm not suggesting that ladies should leave the seat up every other day on some kind of rota system," I explained. "But if both men and women left the seat at a forty-five degree diagonal twixt bowl and the cistern, well, perhaps then we can achieve some sort of bathroomological gender parity on this issue."
Unfortunately everybody ignored me.
"I was thinking it would be a simple matter of tightening the toilet seat hinges themselves, so that the seat can remain immovably elevated at the correct angle when the toilet isn't in use." I added to a quickly emptying conference room.

My Doctor and I

My doctor and I are experiencing fundamental disagreements regarding the nature of our relationship. For instance, he prefers to employ newfangled medical terms such as cancer, AIDS and influenza, whereas I only use traditional expressions like ague, plague and "cursed by the Gods for I hath violated the Temple covenant." Unfortunately I tend to suffer this last complaint rather a lot, and so our consultations are fraught with frequent mis-communications and diagnostical stalemates that hinder my treatment, thus:
"And what exactly are the symptoms of this so-called curse, Mr Fez?"
"Well, 'tis as if all the horned toads from Jacob's fiery pond had palsied widdershins upon the cleft palate of the triple-uddered gryphon of Bastardy."
"I see. So your knee is still bothering you, then?"
"Nay. The Devil's mark be imprinted upon my poor soul in a most wretched and obscene manner."
"You have a headache, perhaps?"
"Begone foolish, stethoscoped knave. That which ails me cannot be cure with thy simple pills and nutritional recommendations. Mine is a special case and requireth the application of mystic balms and the unearthly incantations of ancient wizards."
"So why have you been sitting in our waiting room for the last three hours then?"
"Because the Wise Woman is too expensive and my insurance doesn't cover it."

No More Perc Perks

I have finally decided to expel the psychoactive stimulant caffeine from my daily diet. The expensive, stainless-steel espresso machine in my kitchen now stands idle where once it steamed and gurgled a cheery greeting: four-hundred dollars poured down the drain along with the last dregs of my last cup of morning coffee. I suppose I could always drink the decaffeinated version, but that is rather like reading L'Etranger without any Albert Camus in it. Fortunately I quit reading L'Etranger many years ago, about the same time I switched from French Roast to Lavazza and from short pants to long, and so I don't have to worry about existential literature withdrawal anymore. But my current coffee abstention, now that's another matter altogether. I imagine lethargically pursuing my personal and professional business across a foggy no-man's-land of mental sludge, and then collapsing to the floor from the effort of producing jaw-cracking yawns like some cartoon sloth suddenly bereft of animation. In fact, I can barely sustain the key-tapping energy required to finish typing this blog post, but there is one more vital piece of information I must impart to you: when using most espresso machines, it is important that ... er, don't use ....er ..... digestion, black stuff ... some kind of bean, I forget ... ugggh.

Extracts from a Boring Novella

After a light salad, Edna and I returned to the parsonage. She looked very respectable in her brown dress, and I felt like the ideal platonic companion in my sensible shoes. The road was very even and we walked at a steady pace. "I'm thinking of becoming a nun," Edna mumbled. "Because I am so plain and homely looking."

The family has gathered in father's study to play our regular Saturday night game of Monopoly. My counter is the small dog; Edna's is the old boot. Nobody has bought anything yet because we all prefer to save our funny colored dollars. Edna receives a "Go To Jail" card, but mother tells her that she doesn't have to penalized because she's really such a sweet and gentle person, and deserves to continue around the board and pass Go and collect whatever monetary rewards accrue from accomplishing that feat.

Edna darns socks all morning while I practice the popular art of spoon-bending without success. "I am told that the technique you employ only works with good silver," Edna informs me. "But we don't have any because we are but simple, unassuming folk."

Our barometer is broken and as a result I caught a slight chill after making a brief excursion to observe the laborers who are digging a hole at the end of the street. Edna concocts a non-alcoholic Hot Toddy to sooth my sniffles and I retire to bed. Despite feeling so wheezy I reflect that I do not have it so bad, comparing my relatively comfortable lot with those poor souls who suffered from chronic diarrhea in the days before indoor plumbing, especially in wintertime.

Edna confesses to me that she has been engaged in a lesbian affair for the past twelve years with old Mrs. Sappho from next door. But I have no interest in so-called "woman-on-woman action" and so I let the matter drop.

Curse of the Camp Counselor

My first few days at Archeology Summer Camp have been a huge disappointment, culminating with last night's disagreeable situation in which I was forced to refuse the filthy spade offered to me by the course instructor. I told him, quite bluntly, that I was under the impression that real archaeologists hired native laborers to do all the strenuous digging, and that I would spend my working day in a comfortably furnished tent, interpreting five-thousand year-old hieroglyphics, piecing together fragments of shattered antiquities, and mocking the fez-wearing local mystic who claims that it is a grave mistake to excavate in that sacred area.
Evenings on the site are also extremely tedious. Despite wandering around by myself I have yet to be attacked by the mummified remains of some re-animated Egyptian Pharaoh, and since the course instructor apparently doesn't have a daughter, nor have I been able to acquire a love-interest whom I can rescue from being sacrificed on a crumbling altar by evil priests. I'm seriously beginning to doubt that I will even be clubbed on the back of the head during our field trip to the museum.
I don't know. Perhaps I should just leave and ask for my money back?

Dumb Bells

While humbled at the gym, brought to my knees by M C Esher's idea of a treadmill, a Rio Grande of perspiration cascading down my spine to its confluence with the vast sea of sweat forming around my feet, some booming, adrenalin-addled voice asked me what my favorite workout music was. This inquisitive interlocutor looked rather like Superman with a sports towel slung around his neck instead of a cape, a behemoth prepared to crush my iPod headphones and my head into smithereens with his bare hands should he find my answer insufficiently uptempo.
"The Song of the Volga Boatmen," I managed to reply, between desperate pants and gasps for breath, causing a brief yet terrible frown to pass darkly across his great facial edifice as various permutations of half-remembered track-listings and musicians tried to coalesce themselves into recognizable order in his brain.
"Is that Radiohead?" he said eventually, after much mental struggle.
"It might be." I told him. "It might be."

"So Long" at the Fair

Unplugged and unloved, about as useless as a Speak-Your-Weight machine in zero gravity, Zoltan stares deeply and despondently into his giant plastic cue ball as the future remains resolutely unrevealed.

But the past is also veiled here, since it is unclear to me whether, in his heyday, Zoltan mechanically intoned his recorded predictions into the penny arcade air via a hidden speaker system, or merely dispensed a pre-printed fortune-cookie style slip of paper from a slot into his client's grubby hands. Like the faux Uncle fester below, Zoltan can still be visited in-situ at the Fun-o-Rama in York, Maine, but I wouldn't expect a tall, dark, handsome maintenance engineer to fix him anytime soon.

Effing Broken

The freaky face of a faux Uncle Fester/Frankenstein photographed with my phone at a funfair in York Beach, Maine. Alas, the museum-quality amusement in question appeared to be no longer operational.

Food Dolorous Food

Have you been to a Daft Wally's Burger Factory before? No? Well I'm Wally Junior and I'll be your server today and there's just a few things about our amazing menu I need to tell you about. The menu is split into six mouthwatering international sections featuring twelve burger selections each called Mexicali Microwave, BBQ Conundrummers, Neptune's Bucket, As-Seen-On-TV, Jungle Veggies, and Euro Smorgasboard. Diners may make two choices from the Mexicali Microwave, BBQ Conundrummers and Neptune's Bucket Sections, but only one choice from the As-Seen-On-TV, Jungle Veggies, and Euro Smorgasboard Sections unless they substitute three choices from the Mexicali Microwave, BBQ Conundrummers and Neptune's Bucket Sections or only one choice from the As-Seen-On-TV, Jungle Veggies, and Euro Smorgasboard Sections. Dessert is not included but may be chosen instead of one choice from the Mexicali Microwave, BBQ Conundrummers and Neptune's Bucket Sections or a half-size portion of Jungle Veggies. There are a few additional specials of the day I need to tell you about. These are the Sizzler Dribbler and "Who's-The-Chef?" sections and can be found on the addendum to our menu on the pages marked Sections 7 and 8. Diners can order one item from the Specials menu as a substitute for two choices from the As-Seen-On-TV, Jungle Veggies, and Euro Smorgasboard Sections or all their choices from the Mexicali Microwave, BBQ Conundrummers and Neptune's Bucket Sections. If you want something to nibble before the main courses arrive, our delicious range of appetizers are listed on the Roly-Poly Rolls section of the menu located in the Appetizers Reading Room to the left of the bathrooms and are listed in alphabetical order from one to three-thousand. Now can I get you started with some drinks?

Heaven on Trip Advisor

My wife and I recently died and so made the trip to Heaven we'd been planning ever since our baptism at the First Church of Christ Traveler. Unfortunately, our experience of everlasting joy at play in the fields of the Lord turned out to be very different than the Five-Star Afterlife advertised in the brochure. My personal misgivings began as soon as we arrived at the entrance to this over-hyped celestial resort, an extremely gaudy set of pearly-look gates that were guarded by an arrogant and supercilious saint who couldn't find our reservation in his ridiculous book. However, after much haggling and argument he finally let us in and we were shown to a very shabby edge of a rain cloud overlooking a gasworks in New Jersey. My wife asked if we would each be given a pair of wings and a harp or trumpet, like we'd see in the brochure photos, but she was told that these were extra and required an upgrade to archangel class. Altogether it was an extremely annoying and rather unholy experience for both of us. Suffice it say, next time we die I think we'll give Nirvana a try. Mrs Bodhisattva from across the road says she loves it there because you don't have to think about anything since it's all done for you.

Trip Advisor: Blueberry Hill

Unlike previous Trip Advisor reviewers, my wife and I completely failed to find any thrill whatsoever on Blueberry Hill, and I find it hard to believe that we were even staying on the same hill as F Domino from New Orleans. Not only did the moon not stand still, it moved about a lot in a haphazard and extremely annoying way. And the wind in the willows didn't play Love's Sweet Melody as we had been promised either, but seemed to be stuck on an especially dreary version of Mood Indigo at a funeral march tempo.
In fact, my heart sank as soon as we arrived as the foot of the so-called "hill." Pictures on Blueberry Hill's web page had portrayed a beautiful green mesa covered with sparkling blueberries and elderly bluesmen dozing off in old-fashioned rocking chairs. Unfortunately the truth turned out to be rather different. After the uncomfortable and unpleasant two-hour jalopy journey from Jeremiah Bullfrog Airport, we pulled up at what can only be described as a muddy mound with clumps of weeds and stinging nettles growing out of it. I assumed there had been some sort of mistake, but our surly driver assured us that this unattractive wasteland was indeed Blueberry Hill. Then, on exiting the jalopy, I immediately stubbed my toe on an old rusty banjo that was just laying around on the ground and spent the rest of my vacation in the Saint James Infirmary. Needless to say, we will not be returning to Blueberry Hill. 

Venice For Dentists

Of all routine dental procedures performed in modern surgeries throught the developed world, the so-called Root Canal is perhaps the most feared, especially when the problem tooth requires that little bit of extra-special attention that dentists call a Grand Root Canal, or The Venetian Operation as it is sometimes known, which employs a gondolier-shaped and particularly gruesome example of endodontic equipment nicknamed "The Doge's Drill."
Of purely cosmetic dental procedures, meanwhile, the ever-popular The Bridgework of Sighs often produces the most disappointing results ...

We All Fall Down

Bird flu and pig flu: air and earth based influenzas. Perhaps some deadly strain of aquatic fish flu is next? Perhaps spread by diseased jellyfish surfacing on the shores of popular coastal resorts this summer? Whale watching excursions and scuba-diving with dolphins could become hazardous activities. If an unlucky human fell victim to both swine and piscine flu, would medical science refer to this combination of influenzas as "Surf 'n' Turf Flu?" Or "Revenge of the Disease Carriers Formerly Known As Dinner?"

Chairman of the Baudrillard

At the old-fashioned end of Las Vegas Boulevard, where even plastic is a cheap reproduction of itself, the elderly and the infirm ask for the autographs of Sinatra and Streisand impersonators: "I have always been such a big fan of yours." Of whose? Of the real Frank, or of his grinning simulacrum? Alas, answering such a question would give even Jean Baudrillard an aneurysm.
Perhaps these doddering, super-annuated bobby-soxers, by means of some mystically mixed martini, really have been flown to an entertainment moon where the second-coming of the once and future King of Swing can be witnessed. Or maybe they simply return year after year because the enjoy the act of ersatz Frank.
Personally, I do not bother tackling these enormous psychological imponderables. After a day spent wandering around the Convention Center I just hide in my room and read the wonderful works of H. G Wells. I have always been a fan of his.

Killing Time

I have been bidding for cheap Roman antiquities on eBay: battered bronze rings found in a field near Bratislava that once belonged to shortsighted ethnic archers from Legion MMXVI.V recurring. You can usually buy a reasonably roundish example for about one hundred and fifty bucks or so.
I often wonder who the Roman God of bric-a-brac was. They must have worshipped such a deity; the Romans invented special Gods for everything. We do, too, but we call them Shops.

All Shapes and Sizes

I have always preferred the word "oblong" to its tediously geometric sounding alter-ego: "rectangle." An oblong is obviously more mysterious, somehow opaque. You might get lost in an oblong, not knowing where its slide-rule measurements will take you. A rectangle, on the other hand, just seems like a gloomy and unnecessarily stretched-out quadrilateral that a boring mathematician has drawn on graph paper with his retractable pencil. Similarly, I feel that "lozenge" seems like an almost exclusively European shape, perhaps a former KGB agent in the world of set-square spies.

Oceayawnia

Wandering around the ethnography section of a local museum today, I realize that I have absolutely no interest in the culture of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia. All their artifacts seem to be so, well, beside the point, somehow superfluous to the general run of human creative endeavor. I guess I am rather anti-Oceania.
But then later, these unkind thoughts are punished in the gift shop, where I purchase a coffee table book of Western art that costs more than the coffee table I will display it upon.

Reasonably Okay Friday

After overhearing some bearded Good Friday heretic abuse the concept of "organised religion," I enquired of this Ishmael if he then favored the alternative: disorganised religion. You can just imagine what a terrible state the poor old monks would find themselves in:
"What the Hell did I do with that bloody Letter To The Ephesians? It's probably fallen down the back of the altar, I'll be bound! You know, somebody really ought to give this Sacristy the once over with a vacuum one of these days, it's like the Catacombs of Saint Detritus in here, Patron Saint of Toxic Waste. What? What's that Brother Magoo? The Veil of the Temple hath been wrent in twain again? Well can't you just nail it back together for now. Jesus Christ! Do I have to do everything around here? And can one of you find a 'caution wet floor' sign, please? Some graceless fool has spilled the holy water and we don't want the faithful slipping and sliding in the aisles and breaking their necks. Oh god, Father Felix will crucify me for this bloody mess."
If you ask me, if we are going to be forced to live with religion, perhaps it is all for the best that there are diverse churches to keep all their specific credos under control?

Two Halves of Berkshire Art Country

This picture of rain clouds and a highway guard rail, taken through the car window on my camera phone as we drove back to Boston along the Mohawk Trail, seems a fairly representative, if somewhat colorless, amalgamation of John Constable's classical cloud studies on display at the Clark Institute, and the modern, geometric wall drawings of Sol LeWitt that we'd wandered around at Mass MoCA.

But the Berkshire image that endures most in my mind is of two abandoned shopping carts whitewater rafting down the Hoosic River, observed from the windows of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams city center when I'd grown bored of gawping at the wavy colored lines and confabulations of oil and steel exhibited there. Tourists like us, visiting the converted industrial plant that is now Mass MoCA, must bring a bundle of much needed money into North Adams, a former factory town turned into a rather awkward art mecca, and people talk of a "downtown renaissance," but I found it hard to tell what buildings were being renovated and which were shutting up shop for good. There is a cool restaurant called the Gramercy Bistro, cute coffee shops, and a trendy hotel named The Porches, both rubbing concrete shoulders with a Family Dollar store and shambolic triple-deckers. Unfortunately, I feel that Mass MoCA has done North Adams no favors in this regard by installing LeWitt's enormous work on its walls for twenty-five years.
The Clark Institute, in contrast, can be found amid the elegant collegiate architecture, quaint little shops and well-groomed lawns of Williamstown. Viewing the paintings there was like greeting old friends; well-known canvases by Degas, Remington, Winslow Homer, Gauguin, Monet, Toulouse Lautrec and many others. Here was a collection of pictures I would want to return to, perhaps even by the souvenir baseball hat of.

Voila

Sunday will be spent wandering around the Clark Institute museum, oggling their collection of Toulouse Lautrec's lurid visions of short men and can-can girls rendered in shades of absinthe and cointreau.

Life in the Naked Office

In such times as these, every working day is like waking up in a strange hotel room with a dead hooker: I don't understand how I came to be here. I didn't hire this person. I've never even seen them before.This is my desktop but I swear that these are not my desktop icons. I'm obviously been framed for something I haven't done. Surely somebody, somewhere, must know what's really going on? You've got to find them before it's too late.

Four Chairmen of the Econolypse

At the Gee Whiz Summit this week: Chancellor Humbug of Germany; Mr Balderdash the Prime Minister of Great Britain; and Presidents Poppycock of France and Hogwash of the United States. Each will put forward his or her proposal to decide which brand of crazy glue is the best type of adhesive to use when trying to stick the world's pink piggy-bank back together again.

Household Chaucers

In the Middle Ages, an ancient ancestor of mine, an itinerant stick-bundler named Stephyn Stickbundler, purchased a piece of the true cross from a certain Friar Swaggert, a ruddy-faced cleric who wandered the countryside selling Pope-approved indulgences and other ineffable ephemera. 
This holy artifact has remained in my family's possession ever since, safely stored in an old eyeglass case along with our other heirlooms: miscellaneous plastic buttons and a yellowed instruction booklet describing how to operate a tabletop pencil sharpener. Obviously, I've always been keen to know exactly how precious this inheritance is, so I took the eyeglass case and its contents along with me to 'The Antiques Roadshow' when that show came to Boston recently. Unfortunately, the experience was rather chastening.
"You have some very, very interesting items here," the appraiser told me. "These buttons, for instance. I would guess that they were mass produced by a machine in a Hong Kong factory somewhere between 1972 and 1978."
"Yes I think they probably were," I agreed. "They fell off an old brown polyester raincoat that my dad used to wear around that time."
"Well, isn't that fascinating," he said. "But it's too bad you don't have the rest of the coat with you because then you could donate it to the Salvation Army. As it is, I'm afraid the buttons by themselves are probably worth somewhere in the region of absolutely nothing at all."
"Oh dear." I mumbled, somewhat disappointed.
"But not to worry," he said encouragingly. "You do have this fabulous tabletop pencil sharpener instruction booklet, printed by Herbert Greaves in 1968. But again, I notice that you don't have the actual pencil sharpener itself."
"Yes that's quite correct. My uncle Tom threw it away when the glass bit that collected all the pencil shavings got cracked."
"And again I'm afraid that that's really too bad, because without the pencil sharpener the instruction booklet really serves no purpose and therefore has zero market value. Still, the booklet does have a small coffee stain in the lower right hand corner, probably created by your uncle when he was learning how to sharpen his pencils and was drinking a cup of coffee at the same time, which makes for a nice little family memento of your obviously rather sloppy and apparently mechanically challenged uncle, which you can either keep for future generations to laugh at or you can burn in the incinerator. It's entirely up to you. I have no opinion on the matter."
"Oh." 
"Yes indeed: put a dollar sign in front of that last 'oh' and you have the approximate value of your heirlooms so far ... but moving swiftly along, we now come to the major item in your collection, a piece of the true cross on which Jesus was supposedly crucified."
"Yes. It's been in the family for nearly seven hundred years."
"So has a history of insanity by the sound of things. But never mind. I would conservatively estimate the value at auction of this tiny old bit of rotting wood at nine million dollars."
"Wow. I'm flabbergasted. That's amazing. Gosh. Do you really think so?"
"No. Not really." the appraiser sniggered. "What I just said what a piece of the true bullshit."
"Oh. I see"
"Yes. Now bugger off, take these boring objects with you, and don't come back."
As the audience laughed and pointed, I quietly gathered up my possessions and walked out of the studio with as much dignity as I could muster.

And the moral of this story is: Family trees, we all have our cross to bear.

The Auld Nick Sentinel

As a self-proclaimed Witch-Craze Denier, someone who believes that the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries weren't as bad as modern feminists have made them out to be, controversial historian David Disgustine is refused entry to Salem and many parts of northern Europe. "I'm not saying that no witches were burned," he says. "Just that they weren't burned all that badly. Perhaps a slight crisping around the edges and a bit of an irritating ruddiness in the face."
Miss Elsie Nobrah of the The Old Crone Memory Project disagrees. "Millions of lonely old women were condemned in kangaroo courts and then executed by crazy old men," she argues. "You'd have to be a crazy old man yourself to believe that these crazy events never took place."
"Whatever," replies Disgustine. "The United Nations established a permanent home for witches in Cambridge, Massachusetts after the Revolutionary War. What more do these wretched women want?"

From the Xanadu Daily Free Press

Despite much local opposition, plans are going ahead for the construction of a new Pleasure Dome near the sacred Alph river.
The site developer, Kubla Khan Inc, have promised area residents that the Pleasure Dome will provide much needed gardens bright with sinuous rills, where blossom many an incense-bearing tree. But opponents claim that the dome takes up twice five miles of fertile ground, and will create deep, romantic chasm in a once beloved parklands, become a savage place where wild-eyed women will wail for their demon lovers at all hours of the night.
"It's always the same," said one. "Someone builds a Pleasure Dome and next thing you know there's a string of honey-dew fast food restaurants and boozy milk-of-paradise bars blighting the neighborhood and the streets are full of loud ancestral voices prophesying war."

At Chez Zombie's

"Hello. My name's Nadine and I'll be your server tonight. Have either of you been to a Pete's BBQ Shack before?"
"Yes, I have. In the olden times, before the flood."
"Great. Well we have a few new items on the menu I need to tell you about."
"So you don't have the pteradactyl wings in hot sauce anymore?"
"Er ..."

Summer On Mars

Like many moody, pale children, my favorite beach days were spent stumbling around rock pools, stubbing my sunburned toes on pink limpet shells and shaking clinging seaweed from my legs while trying to balance a plastic bucket on a bed of blue-black mussel clusters. I would drag these salty, shallow puddles with a nylon net attached to a bamboo pole, seeking tiny crabs, little fishes and other unidentifiable aquatic lifeforms had been deposited there by a receding tide.
Consequently, recent news that Mars might boast "briny pools" beneath its dusty surface made me think that exile to that red planet may not be so bad, should our own atmosphere fail to maintain conditions necessary for minimum human subsistence. Indeed, what ice-cream dribbling child would not enjoy hunting those little green Martian crabs scuttling around sideways amongst the purple rocks and orange seaweed?

The Vitamin Alphabet

Like furious chord progressions in some insanely disjointed heavy-metal anthem, the many varieties of vitamin supplement bottles blur into a single, byzantine letter as my eyes survey them on the pharmacy shelf: A-B-C-D-E to Zinc via Fish Oil and Flax Seed.
Frankly, I think my system needs more Vitamin A, for that is how I've self-diagnosed myself on the internet. We seem best suited to each other. It is the first in line, the alpha dog of the health aisle, and so am I. 
Of course, I could attempt to acquire my Vitamin A from real food rather than once-per-day tablets taken with water, but then a diet of liver and carrots doesn't seem all that appealing. There is always the option of drinking a farmer's wife's weight in milk, obviously, although I really don't want to be walking around smelling like an overactive cow udder.
But, alas, for some reason, the supplement manufacturers don't make a stand-alone vial of Vitamin A, so I suppose I'll have to make do with the multi-format motherlode

Tomb It May Concern

A single engine plane nosedives into a Montana cemetery and a single brain-cell suicide bomber detonates his or her deadly ego at an Iraqi funeral. These twin graveyard calamities recalled to mind Thomas Hardy's great poem, Channel Firing, in which God is forced to inform his awakening dead that the noises disturbing their eternal sleep are not the trumpets of Judgment Day, as they had assumed, but merely cannon fire from warships out at sea. They can lay rest assured, he tells these trembling and confused corpses, that the Hour of Final Reckoning will be a much more pleasant experience altogether than what they have just heard.

Asleep in Woolf's Clothing

A dilettante needs a chateau of his own if he is to write blog posts, preferably in the Loire Valley. And he will require a cellar stocked with many vintage wines too. Plus an excellent cook, valet and French maid. And a secretary to whom he can dictate his reams and reams of self-interested purple prose.

Breakfast and its Discontents

This morning at work, when I bemoaned the absence of poppy-seed bagels in our staff breakfast basket, I was told "tough titty." An ugly and somewhat scheudenfraude-ish expression, "tough titty" never fails to conjure, in my mind at least, a mental image of Salvador Dali's memorable painting Premonition of Civil War.

Indeed, one wonders how many heads would have rolled if Franco or La Pasionaria had been denied their usual early morning repast during the Spanish conflict. Only the brave Buenaventura Durruti would have said "Here, my friend. Take half of my breakfast sandwich. It is only a stale blueberry muffin but I want you to have it." And that, of course, is the toughest tit of all.

Leprechaun Brain

That most dubious of very public holidays, Saint Patrick's Day: a festival of binge drinking and verdant cheesiness featuring celebrants who conclude their stout-sodden evenings looking rather green in addition to wearing it. Top o' the regurgitation to you.
The dour, proto-puritan Saint Patrick, of course, is famous for hounding pagans out of Ireland with his dreadful Christian proselytizing, and then later demonizing these peaceful folk as "snakes." He is the death-cult propagandist who laid waste to a formerly bountiful land with his dreadful desert religion, so how amusing it is that his feast day has become such a drunken, rollicking perversion of his miserable beliefs, lately typified by that weasel-faced Pope Benedict demanding that Africans be denied the use of rubber contraceptives.
Mine's a shamrock martini, by the way, if you're buying.

Obesity: Appeasement and Denial

A transcript of a speech broadcast to the House of Pancakes by Neville Tenderloin, former Prime Eater of Great Britain and Defender of "Big" Ben.

I am speaking to you from the cafeteria at number 10, Downing Street.
This morning the Fast Food Ambassador handed me a large cheeseburger with bacon and extra cheese and double fries, stating that if I ate it all by 11.00 a.m. and also sucked down the Super Size Fizzo Cola he gave me, a state of fulfillment would exist in my stomach. I have to tell you now that such an undertaking has indeed taken place, and I also ordered a chocolate cream pie for dessert. Consequently a state of gross and bloated satisfaction exists between me and my tummy-tum-tum.
Nevertheless, the claim has been made by certain skinny-minnies on the opposition benches that obesity is a massive problem of global proportions because many people in the free world are actually beginning to look like big fat orbs with little tiny arms and legs sticking out of them and equally round, double-chinned heads on top. But I fart in the face of these dietmongers and scrawny, no-assed, granola-faced whingers.
Indeed, I have in my hand a piece of paper from Chez Hitler. On it is written the menu for the superb range of smorgasboard treats available from this convenient eatery. And remember, receive a free giant soda with every bucket of fried chicken wings you order.
It is truly a "Feast in our Time". Enjoy!

More Shirt Stories

I spent perhaps twenty minutes observing a corpulent fellow straining the seams of his satiny white shirt. It was wrinkle-free but he was not. And I suppose it was drip-dry, too, but he was sweating more than a boil-in-the-bag meal. It reminded me of a pale dust sheet slung over an overstuffed armchair in an empty room, billowing and bunching every time the man moved, as if animated by some unsteady specter that hadn't learned how to haunt properly. Randomly, I thought of Satie's Gnossiennes played on a tuba.

100% Cotton and its Discontents

My clothes were once bespoke. They said: "It's not our fault we are a funny shape but at least we fit right." Now, alas, in this current economic crisis, when my old cufflinks are worth more than my retirement account, I am forced to shop at high street retailers for pre-packaged shirts with so many pins in them that they could be mistaken for voodoo doll attire.
All the usual suspects are represented in these racks: Klein, Claiborne, Karan, and the clownish Ted Baker and BCBG whose stripy, multi-colored creations look like the wallpaper in Oscar Wilde's downstairs lavatory. And what in the name of Savile Row does the designation modern fit mean? I suppose a literal translation would be something along the lines of "not for fat guys."
Fortunately I am a fellow of slender build, for whom banally fashionable tailoring, however vaguely constructed it may be, is no too-tight obstacle, and so, somehow, I leave the store clutching a button-up thing in a color described as "rhubarb," wondering what the Hell I'll wear it with.

Said I ...

After much careful consideration of anachronistic modes of dialogue, not to mention unregulated circumlocution, always an Achilles' heel of mine, my inner-rhetorician and I have decided to become a sparkling 'said I' sort of witty raconteur, rather than the more modern and infinitely more tedious, plain-old 'I said' type of droning recollector of dreary conversations.
As in: "You have the armpits of a nineteenth-century Irish navvy," said I to the sweaty, polyester-shirted tax consultant who had the bald effrontery to deny my standard deduction for the cost of one pair of purple pantaloons (velvet) and razor-sharp rapier (cold steel) for professional purposes. "You, sir, are an absolute bounder of the blackest kind," said I in continuation. "And from this moment on I shall entrust preparation of my IRS returns to Messrs Turbo Tax & Co."

Stimulus Via Hot Airship

Credit-crunch relief, delivered by our dollar dirigible for those financially-strapped citizens who desperately need to buy new HD televisions. It both a blimp for bankrupts and a zillionaire's zeppelin, containing enough air-money to inflate all of Erewhon's white elephants and fly them to their famous graveyard. Hurrah, here it comes.

Like a total eclipse of Capitol Hill, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see this astonishing phenomenon, except for when it happened last year as well.

Igbert's Depression

Spare a thought for poor Igbert Twaddle if perchance you spy that slack-jawed wretch kneeling on the pavement begging for some thoughts. Igbert's head is a ghost head. There is nothing between his neglected ears except a dry desert of dullardisms and the occasional conventional wisdom cactus. In fact, you can hear Igbert's derelict cranium creaking on its rusty skull hinge and see his neurons crumbling into dust. Somewhere a weatherbeaten, tattered synapse is flapping in the breeze. Buddy, can you spare a thought for poor Igbert Twaddle?

The Mysterious Case of the Reddening Herbert

Although I am a sober fellow, one who normally shrinks from all manifestations of sensationalism, hyperbole and morbid observations of the ghoulish and bizarre, I must confess that the extraordinary series of events that later came to be known as the Mysterious Case of the Reddening Herbert, and their consequent effects upon the sanity of Mr Edward Herbert, the celebrated balloonist and weasel breeder, have forced me to retire to this exclusive clinic in the wooded environs of East Wobbleton with only a battered copy of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler and a restorative vial of magnesium tonic to soothe my troubled mind.
It had long been my custom, when holidaying at the Dwarf Inn at Handlebar Landing, and relaxing with a glowing pipe and medicinal tincture of port or brandy after devouring one of Madam O'Dwarf's deliciously famous eel-pie suppers, to entertain those agreeable companions seated nearby with the finer points of my days wat'ry adventures amongst the pike, tench, bream and whatever other be-finned denizen of stream or lake had mischanced upon my baited and submerged hook. During the late August of 1907, a particularly warm example of that sun-drenched month, such a companion and interlocutor was the aforementioned Mr Edward Herbert. As he perused his newspaper, I disclosed to him, by way of an amusing digression to the main tale of my heated battle with an especially stubborn chub, how a tiny particle of piscine scale and its attendant slime had besmirched my tweed coat, causing me no small amount of consternation as I was knee-deep in swirling eddies, far from the riverbank, and thus deprived of my box of monogrammed hanker-chiefs that I keep stowed in my wicker creel for just such occasions - I am fastidious regarding standards of personal hygiene and presentable appearance even when engaged in the field with rod and reel - when Mr Herbert suddenly became noticeably agitated and his face began to exhibit what can only be described as a ruddy hue: "Oh just get on with your ridiculous story you superannuated, boring little tit and leave us all in peace!" he suddenly exploded, spluttering minute fragments of horseradish and garden pea into the air.
Naturally, I fled from the room in abject terror, dislodging an antique elk's head trophy from its position on the wall as I sprang out of my armchair. Mayhap some brutish sprite or ill-mannered genie had taken possession of Mr Edwards' mind, forcing him to behave in such a brusque and uncivilized way? Alas I don't suppose we shall ever know what strange cataclysm of the brain caused Mr Edwards' impromptu rage, but readers will be glad to know the man himself appears to have recovered his senses. Just this very morning, for example, he bade me a crisp "good-day, sir" as I set out once more to pit my wits, like a wise old kingfisher or wily heron, against those silvery foes that lurk in the swirling currents 'neath the rustling branches of the willow tree, and so this alarming and unusual transformations at Dwarf Inn on that terrible summer night must remain forever the "Mysterious Case of the Reddening Herbert."

My Portfolio

"The re-extrapolation of sub-dividend percentages, when referenced as negative double-integers in terms of fully transparent and transferable liquidity, if cross-bartered, a priori, as estimated off-shore assets and ad-hoc scalable guarantees, should underwrite all extant promissory notes, modified transactions (yen only) and pending anti-dividends subject to hitherto undisclosed payments-in-kind as commissioned by active fund managers before lunch. All such pending balances and auto-reversible amounts can be viewed as the gray area in slice 2(b) of the pie chart on page forty-seven on your account statement."

Futility Investments was an equal-opportunities employer ...but we've had to let everybody go because of the sub-prime screw-up and the credit crunch and everything.

Ash Wednesday

Remember, O man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return, unless thy body and soul art stuffed with sanctity, in which case you'll just turn a weird, waxy gray color, and then be transported to some godforsaken, rural Sicilian church and thy grimly incorruptible mortal remains shalt be crammed into a presentation glass coffin past which zillions of senile, doddery nuns will file before buying a souvenir strand of thy beatific hair that hath supposedly been cut from thy holy head but in fact hath actually been snipped from the mangy coat of the nearest rabid dog by the local gold-toothed Bishop. I don't know about thee, but I'm definitely giving up religion for Lent. Amen

Remember, O man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return

Some Day My Train Will Come

There was a busker at Park Street subway station this morning, enjoying the perfect acoustic possibilities provided by a distinct lack of locomotive activity. The tunnels were empty of trains but full of echoing music. As I stood gloomily on the platform, staring into the blackness beyond, I felt like asking the busker if he knew the tune to the popular sing-a-long Why Are We Waiting? Why-y-y Are We Waiting? But there were too many amplifier stacks and audio mixing consoles in the way, so I didn't. 
It seems that Boston's buskers haul more equipment around than Pink Floyd's entire road crew. Where once there was simply one man and his guitar, there is now a whole multimedia experience. Even the crumpled, old accordion player in the park has a light show and smoke machine. But perhaps that's just raw human aura emanating from his underclothes? Either way, his music is both evocative and compelling, and how I wish he would descend to Park Street's subterranean depths with his instrument, and there serenade we unhappy commuters with his creaky reels of pseudo-Parisian sounds. Instead we get these plaintive, yodeling strummers and their over-earnest versions of downbeat folksy classics. They are better than nothing, I suppose. Certainly better than the station's white-noise producing PA announcements. But still, I'd prefer the accordion any day of the week.

Page 2, Section 5, Line 3c

Imagine, for a moment, that your brain is a cheap, plastic kite attached to a kinked piece of grimy string tangled up in your skull. And it is a very blustery, overcast day with changeable winds. And you are not very good at flying kites, and so yours gets caught in the high branches of a diseased Dutch elm tree. And despite throwing heavy sticks at it, you can't dislodge your brain from its arboreal prison, and so it is claimed by a demented squirrel called Alphonso who nibbles away at the battered gray cells as if they were the last acorn nuts on the face of the Earth. This is me staring uncomprehendingly at a rogues gallery of tax forms.

Gazetteer of Places in Old Boston Towne

Number 4(a) - Mother Goose's Grave

Mother Goose: for some, a beloved author of timeless children's tales; but for others, a senile old bat who should have been locked up in a home for the terminally unhinged. Either way, her remains are reportedly interred in the Granary Burying Ground on Tremont Street. Her final resting-place is among those gray tombstones that look like they've shrunk; the ones with goofy, buck-toothed skulls carved onto the surface that have wings sprouting out of their ears. I guess such ridiculous decoration was de-rigueur back then. Frankly, the mind boggles.
A low-brow, bowdlerized version of the Brothers Grimm, this doddering Goose woman apparently believed that nursery rhymes should be twee little jingles that even a dull three-year-old could understand, remember and recite, rather than dark litanies of pseudo-sexual, proto-Nazi double-meanings and Nordic folklore. But I suppose that's dreary old Puritan New England for you.
Personally, I was reading Shakespeare, Dante and Balzac at birth, so I never bothered with kid's stuff like that.

Hamlet on Facebook

Fifteen Random Things About Me:

1. I believe in ghosts and have actually seen and spoken with one!

2. I ignored my uncle Claudius' friend request.

3. I often ask myself whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them.

4. I used to know a guy called Yorick.

5. I once appeared in Ophelia's room with my doublet all unbraced, no hat upon my head, my stockings fouled, ungartered and down-gyvèd to my ankle.

6. I don't like it when pompous theatrical types refer to me as "The Dane."

7. I think funeral baked meats do coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

8. I have knowingly sent two of my old schoolfellows to their deaths by employing the old "switcheroo" technique.

9.  I like to alter classical plays by inserting my own speeches into them in order to make other people feel guilty.

10. Sultry and hot weather is bad for my complexion

11. I sometimes enjoy concealing myself behind an arras and eavesdropping on other people's conversations, and then jumping out and killing whoever is talking.

12. I know not "seems."

13. I once mistook Polonius the Chamberlain for a fishmonger - on purpose!

14. There is method in my madness.

15. Or is there?

In this note: Fortinbras, Laertes

Spinstapundit

Why oh why is the government bailing out the Islamosexual marriages with Bernie Madoff's jewelry? I haven't seen any of Barack Obama's movies but if we are going to send free credit crunch 'n' munch to the victims of the Oscars then I say the money should come from A-Rod's retirement fund. Surely that's what it is there for? Do the Islamosexulists really think  that the treasury department can just grow tainted peanuts whenever it wants? How do they think we will be able to continue to pay for our half-time Super-Bowls in Iraq and Afghanistan if the auto industry's advertising budget must be spent on re-animating Bruce Springsteen every year? The mind boggles. Personally I blame Shepard Fairey and the other Jason Wu-wearing Wall Street graffiti traders. If they hadn't tagged all those foreclosed houses with a first coat of sub-primer we wouldn't be in this mess now.