American Fez

Five Weekend Adventure Stories

The Last of the Neo-Cons:
Senator McShootagook struggles to escort his extremely boring presidential campaign to the White House against enormous public indifference.

The Imam in the Iron Mosque:
Ultra-fanatic Muslim cleric welds a mosque-shaped helmet to his own head and stumbles around accusing everyone of insulting Islam.

Gullible's Travels:
Credulous English spinster vainly searches the Aegean for the time-share villa she has purchased on a Greek island called Skamos.

The Cripps Family Robinson:
Inner city gang members called Robinson are marooned on Blood Island with inevitable consequences. Music by Mixmaster Crew So-so.

The Count of Monty Python:
Zany, madcap Count escapes from his remote prison cell by repeatedly repackaging all his old skits and songs in exhorbitantly priced boxed sets. Eventually the guards get so sick and tired of hearing them that they simply throw the dungeon doors open and force him to leave.

My Lunch Hour, As Retold To A Child

Apparently today is the day that the teddy bears have their accursed picnic. Frankly this is news to me, I can tell you. And it's not good news either. In fact, it's extremely inconvenient, since I was planning on going down to the woods myself. Now I shall have to take a rain-check or scrape together the makings of some sort of ludicrous disguise. Such a pain in the ass.
Fortunately I still have the latex head from last year's Baloo costume laying around. The inflatable Mowgli doll accessory has seen better days but I suppose it'll just have to do. Not that it really matters anyway. Those teddy bears are so inherently stupid that they'd be fooled by a fake beard and Walmart lederhosen. And besides, they'll all be too busy admiring each other's gingham neckerchiefs and inappropriate hats to bother with me.
Of course, there should be quite a crowd in the woods, too, because they all show up for this thing. And it's not just all the teddy bears there are, it's all the teddy bears that ever there were, which means you get some pretty ancient and mangy specimens lumbering around. The smell is absolutely disgusting, as you can probably imagine. And it's not just the matted hair, unwashed bums and omnivore breath that stink either. If you ask me this whole picnic thing is simply an excuse so that the bears can all take their famous shit in the woods at the same time. It's really quite bizarre.
So if you are also contemplating going down the woods today, I'd watch where I was stepping if I were you.

Eat Your Heart Out Condoleezza Rice

My plan for peace in the Middle East is both simple and foolproof.
The Middle East must be sub-divided into four new quadrants: North Middle East, the East Middle East, the South Middle East and the West Middle East.
Each new quadrant can then be halved into upper and lower zones: the Upper North Middle East and the Lower North Middle East; the Upper East Middle East and the Lower East Middle East; and so on.
These eight new Middle East sections should be further divided by threes into the Far Upper North Middle East, the Middle Upper North Middle East and the Near Upper North Middle East, etc.
Now we have created twenty-eight distinctly new territories that need to be surveyed and mapped before any strategic planning can be instigated. And why stop there? What about New Far Upper North Middle East and Old Far Upper North Middle East?
Disorientated, sick and tired of reporting increasingly labyrinthine positions, the Israeli and Palestinian armies would eventually abandon their weapons and all go home feeling dizzy. Therefore my plan equals peace. QED.

Death and Disaster

Oil crisis, food shortage, earthquake, credit crunch: this litany of current world calamities almost sounds like a child's hopscotch rhyme. But unfortunately they are the front page news; and that was only the shortlist; just this week's hit parade of problems.
Joe Orton's morose punchline, "God laughs and snaps his fingers," is perhaps the most spine-chilling sentence ever written, since it turns dear old cuddly God into a cruel and callous despot entertained by inventing fresh miseries for his own creations. But that's probably just how it is. The ancient Greeks certainly thought so, as did the Romans.
So don't worry. We are not living in the so-called End Times. It's just special event prime-time in Heaven right now.

This was public service announcement on behalf of the Jeremiah Party.

The Corinthian Shoe

"Nothing is written" remarks Lawrence of Arabia in response to some particularly pessimistic nomad mumbo-jumbo. But surely it is an timeless truth that the cobblers of the world will never again sew together an article of footwear as pleasing to Allah as the super-adaptable desert boot.
According to Eric Newby, British POWs would slice the tops off to imitate normal shoes as part of their civilian disguise when escaping into the Italian mountains. Mine were never put to that sort of rigorous test, but they have tramped through the ruins of Hadrian's Villa in a torrential downpour, hiked across the Yorkshire Dales in a blizzard, and been trampled upon by hooligans at the Santiago Bernabeu amongst other sole-destroying and stitch-stretching trials and tribulations. Yet they have survived, a little balder and a little creakier, to be worn again and again. Here is a photographic portrait of the heroic pair that I commissioned myself to take this afternoon.

Obviously they have grown old now, and will soon need to be retired in favor of fresher examples, but these are the kind of shoes that are burnt on a ceremonial Viking funeral pyre rather than simply thrown away. Even then I'm not entirely sure that these resiliently sueded paladins would be successfully consumed by the ritual flames. 

Readers and Writers: Part 74

Through A Webcam Darkly

Nano cinematographers with tiny video cameras have been installed on this weblog so that I can now observe you while you are reading this. And it's all in HD resolution too.
In fact, if you could just hunch down a little. I want to record your reactions not analyze your nasal passages. Although, I must say, they do quiver in a most entertaining way.
Now you seem skeptical. Don't look like that. It doesn't suit you. Quizzical works better for me if you can manage that ....
Hang on, you're scanning through this way too fast. You've skipped an entire bit out there. It was an extremely important explanatory paragraph as well.
Oh wait a minute. I see. I can see you dragging your little clicker up to the top of the page. You're just going to press "back" on your browser and return to whatever technically challenged blogspot piece of egomania you were reading before this.
Well that's fine with me. I don't care. I'm sure somebody else will log on in an hour or two. I'll just sit here filming nothing until then.
Christ, I wish I'd got into podcasting when I had the chance.

Hauntology

A specter haunts contemporary culture - the specter of modern French philosophy. Indeed, the main purpose of modern French philosophy is to provide experimental artists with convoluted justifications for their tedious tape loops, unwatchable films and dreary color splodge collages, and it has been an unedifying, ignominious descent from salon and Sorbonne to sweaty, feedback-filled subterranean art space ever since. Yet no modern French philosopher, no matter how creatively obtuse he may be, has ever furnished us with a theory explaining why experimental musicians, filmmakers and painters have continued conducting the same dismal experiment for so many, many years despite the obvious fact that the experiment has already been proven to be a dismal failure by all those experimental artists who have experimented with it before them. Fortunately, like fraudulent psychics summoning their inscrutable Indian spirit guides, experimental artists can always contact the Ouija Board of modern French philosophy to find a suitably obfuscating excuse for their self-important projects.
The dubious authority most often cited is Jacques 'Deconstruction' Derrida, whose work strikes me as an unassailable fortress of nonsense hidden inside a dense fog of waffle at the best of times. His 'Specters of Marx,' for example, positions Karl Marx firmly on the battlements of Shakespeare's Elsinore when the ghost of Hamlet's father appears, and equates the author of 'The Communist Manifesto' with the author of the play that will catch the conscience of the king. But surely Richard III's haunted tent on Bosworth Field is a more fittingly supernatural Shakespearian environment for Marx, with all the spectral victims of Mao and Stalin disturbing his concentration as he labors over the ideas that will ultimately lead to their deaths. Alas, although modern French philosophy takes itself very seriously, it doesn't want to get that serious.
As time goes by, of course, more ghosts gather in the studio seances of the art world, doomed to wander the Earth in search of the perfect simulacrum of a reference of a meaning of a hypothesis.

Orchardonics

Since seventy-percent of the human body is made of water, I am having all the water that is "me" drained and replaced by that artificially-flavored and vitamin-enriched fruit water that is so popular nowadays. This means that every time I swallow it will taste like Tropical Paradise. Unfortunately, when I get excited, I'll probably froth at the mouth like an overflowing fruit smoothie, too. And what about the whole perspiration issue? I don't want to be running around with sweaty, grape stained armpits all summer and smelling like a rotten pomegranate.
Hmm. Maybe I'll just go the simple, sparkling water route instead. Then I'll be able to offer women fizzy kisses at Christmas.

Madam Medusa

Desperate vote-cougar Hillary Clinton has vowed to continue lusting after the Democratic nomination despite increasing public indifference to her much vaunted "experience."
And so nightmare visions of this Gorgon-faced Obliterator will continue to haunt the dreams of Iranian children for a few more fearful weeks.
Hillary must have thought she was appearing tough on terror when she promised to incinerate Iran if those nuclear neophytes launched one of their hypothetical missiles at Israel. But in fact she merely came across like a cold-blooded Hag of Death capable of committing any atrocity if would boost her election chances.
"It takes a village," she once wrote. Apparently it also takes the coordinated annihilation of millions of people in a different village.

Mysteries of the Self

There are two kinds of inquisitive children: those who will butt heads with their reflection when trying to walk straight through a mirror, and those who will attempt to investigate whatever mechanism their bewildered brain must believe lies behind the glass. I've never been able to decide which of these reactions is the most naive, or which is a more scientific response to the Doppelgänger's first inscrutable wink.
In fact, I've just been staring at my Doppelgänger in the bathroom cabinet mirror while re-straightening nose. But I'll get into that reflection and catch the bastard one of these days; then he'll be sorry; then he'll be laughing on the other side of his face  ... er, which I suppose he always does anyway, obviously, but you know what I mean.

Five Reasons Why I Am Greener Than Thou

1. I recycle everything. Including my own urine. I pour the urine into gallon-size recyclable plastic containers and leave it on the kerbside. It's not my fault the stupid recycling people don't collect the stuff. It's their bloody job! My fascist neighbors can complain all they like, but at least I'm saving the planet.

2. I only wear shoes made out of hemp. When a particular pair gets worn out I simply roll them into cigarettes and smoke them, thus saving on the plastic bags I used to have to buy my marijuana in.

3. I have reduced my carbon footprint by limiting my travel to only absolutely necessary journeys, such as my annual trips to the Climate Change conferences in Peru, Switzerland, Fiji and Nigeria, and whatever World Bank protests are happening around the world at any given time. And even then I literally cry for the entire duration of all my flights.

4. My house consumes absolutely no electricity or gas whatsoever. All our domestic appliances are powered by a enormous treadmill operated by my wife and children. I have sole responsibility for the wind turbine, which is constantly activated by the vast amount of whole grains and root vegetables I eat.

5. Because the mere fact of human existence is so damaging to the environment, I have taken the only ethically responsible course of action open to me: I am committing suicide by eating too much killer red meat and lots of unhealthy puddings every day. It is a very slow and lingering death as punishment for all my past crimes against Middle Earth. Whoops! I mean Mother Earth, of course.

Old MacDonald's Advice Bureau

Attention corn growers. According to the Old Farmer's Almanac, you should wait to plant your corn until "the oak leaf is as big as a squirrel's ear." Consequently, since this particular course of agricultural action obviously seems to require such an inconvenient and tiresome comparison, I would suggest that you don't bother planting corn at all, but simply obtain the quantity you need from a nearby grocery store instead because it is so relatively cheap to buy. Let some other damn fool farmer waste his valuable time measuring squirrel's ears!
For you and I, we are more concerned with moonlight and its invigorating turnips. And they take a lot of work.

All is H.G. Wells and All Manner of Things Shall be H.G. Wells

Careless, remedial little Billy. He got his sea monkeys mixed up with his ant farm and all these horrid, slithery mutant worm things with red antennae started crawling through the holes in his Chia pet and infesting the Lego people. It was like a miniature version of that scene in 'Seed of Azaroth' when the evil sperms are chasing Gloria Perkins across the twisting iron horizons of Cthlonia, the steampunk city.
In the end Debbie got down on her hands and knees and patiently scraped them all up with an old spatula before flushing the whole lot down the toilet.
I don't think that was such a good idea, I told her. Slimy, crime-against-nature type lifeforms like that always thrive in sewers. They will mate with the old rusting soda cans and grow to be thirty feet long with sharp, pointy aluminum teeth. And when the seven sacred squid teats give succor to the Creepy Crawly King then these foul abominations shall emerge from their Stygian breeding grounds to reclaim their ancient Playskool legacy.
Well, Billy's not getting a dog anytime soon, she replied, if he can't even be trusted to look after an ant farm and some sea monkeys.
And so the gates of the messy laboratory of childhood are locked and bolted once again until the pre-pubescent professor can learn to put his test tubes away and clean up after himself.

(This is my response to a quick re-read of Wells' novel 'The Island of Doctor Moreau.' I think I've covered most of major points quite adequately.)

The Bouillabaisse of Life

Since I was forced to play the part of Monsieur le Turbot in last year's Human Aquarium Showcase production of 'La recherche de Nemo,' I have recently embarked upon an extensive and punishing exercise regimen, as I don't want be cast in the same comic relief bottom-feeder role again this year.
Auditions are scheduled for early June, so it is imperative that I have an elusive "six pack" by then. Fortunately my body can already boast the outline of one of those convenient cardboard carrying cases that six-packs are packaged in, including the easy-grip handle, so I won't have much more work to do before my abs are just sheer, sleek, gleaming stand-alone cans of powerful muscle.
And once I possess the kind of lethally streamlined physique that a tiger shark can only dream of, well then I can confidently read for a leading role in 2008's play, 'The Three Swordfishkateers.'
I am hoping to land the part of king of that submerged, seaweed-covered castle thing that all the best aquariums are decorated with.

Monkey Business

On a faux Gallic whim - is there any other kind? - I swaggered into the Boston Public Library to liberate a copy of The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert from that moldering, Bastille of books where it languished amongst lesser works.
Alas, the Paperback Pimpernel was too late: Joubert's published thoughts had already acquired dog-eared pages, extraneous ballpointed marginalia and a yellowy patina of highlighter pen.
Morons, obviously, don't understand that library books should not be written in, but you would assume that any reader literate enough to read Joubert would possess better manners. Apparently not.
And besides, what is the point of making notes about somebody else's notebook in that same notebook?
Frankly, I think that these reprobates who deface library books should have their hands covered in peanut butter, and then be forced to watch as each of their fingers is devoured by a different ravenous monkey.
As Joubert himself remarks: "Lions, bulls; images of strength are everywhere, whereas images of wisdom are nowhere."

Auld Acquaintence Brought To Mind

Frankly, I'm a little bit worried about Good King Wenceslas. I haven't heard a peep out of him since Christmas. It's like he's completely fallen off the radar. He was everybody's new best friend during the Yuletide celebrations but now he's become a total recluse.
His blog hasn't been updated in a while either; and Wenceslasesque-dot-com was a daily "must read" during the winter months with its fascinating updates about how deep and crisp and even the snow round about was. The Good King had even put a Paypal button in the sidebar so that readers could donate fire wood to disadvantaged winter fuel gatherers. Alas, there have been no new posts since that long one about the Feast of Stephen in late December with the embedded You Tube video of the moon shining brightly.
I guess I must blame myself. I should never have left that drunken comment on the Feast post. You know, the one where I wrote: "Actually, Wenceslas, the snow just looks like a heap of sludgy brown shit, if you ask me."

The Five Biggest American Sit-Com Lies

If children's impressionable minds can be adversely affected by watching too much violence on television, is it also possible that they may be negatively influenced by watching too much happy-ever-after comedy? Below I have listed five deadly sit-com lies that could convince your kids to waste their lives lounging around in trendy coffee shops conducting inane conversations with equally vacuous stereotypes. So if your child seems to expect rapturous applause every time he walks into a room, you may want to address the following dangerous yet deceptively amusing untruths:

1. Anyone can afford a spacious and luxuriously furnished penthouse apartment in the city even though if they can never seem to hold down a proper job.

2. Morons are adorable

3. A short coda of laconic, horn-based jazz-blues fusion is the soundtrack of life, especially when you are looking at the exterior of your home or office.

4. Everyone has a loud and obnoxiously shrewish Jewish/Italian mother who, no matter how unsophisticated and gauche she may appear be, will later discreetly reveal herself to possess the practical wisdom of a domestic Socrates mixed with Dr Ruth.

5. There is an invisible studio audience that actually thinks such worthless dreck is funny.

The Gold, Silver and Bronze Peril

Considering recent media coverage, you might be forgiven for thinking that the evil doctor Fu Manchu was organizing the upcoming Olympic Games: "You have qualified for the two-thousand meter hurdles and it will be the most exquisite pain. Daughter, fetch the spiked running shoes. Chop, chop."
This devious Oriental has infamously polluted Peking's atmosphere as part of his fiendish plot to win the Decathalon gold medal. Meanwhile, millions of his Tibetan slaves toil ceaselessly in their mountain top prisons, making shoddy shot-put knock-offs.
China is hardly the most benign country in the world, but if we are going to point at its dirty laundry we really should check the backside of our own industrial-strength underwear first. Of course, if we really wanted to protest Chinese policy we could always stop borrowing their money and buying goods made in their factories. Somehow I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. After all, it is far more politically and economically expedient to resurrect the yellow peril and beat it over the head with a relay baton.

Forced To Endure "Entertainment"

Local rock bands are generally confined to the smelly cellars of neighborhood nightclubs during the winter months, much like medieval lepers were contained inside their quarantined colonies.
However, with the arrival of warm weather, much as a Chaucerian pilgrim might hear the dread approach of clanging hand-bells and a cry of "unclean!", so a twenty-first century stroller's spring afternoon reverie is often shattered by the deafening, electric roar of live music from a nearby park. It comes from an inescapably loud outdoor event promoting some overbearing radio station or youth action initiative by unleashing a torrent of rock and rap sludge into the atmosphere, not to mention an entire fleet of decapitating frisbees and fried dough fumes.
The event organizers couldn't afford a famous group so anyone within a five mile radius is forced to endure the Skid Marx or whomever instead: four or five local kids in skinny jeans and ironic t-shirts. The dull drone of the local band echoes around the park, bouncing off trees, disturbing a bum's slumbers and frightening the squirrels. A student trying to read under the shade of a tree is forced to give up and the street hawker selling sunglasses can't hear himself pitch his products.
It was once the first cuckoo of spring that heralded winter's end. Nowadays it is noise pollution from the first outdoor festival. Times change, literally and figuratively.

Adventure Cocktail Party

I got stuck talking to that lugubrious old grump Gulliver at the Swiss Family Robinson's barbecue last night. If you ask me, "travels" seems a rather deceptively grand and euphemistic term to describe all his shipwrecks and mishaps, but I wasn't going to say that to his face.
As usual, he denounced all the other guests as Yahoos and kept droning on and on about how horses are more intelligent than humans. It's really embarrassing and anti-social, and from the corner of my eye I could see all the available Amazons giving us an extremely wide berth. Eventually I made an excuse and went over to speak with the Last of the Mohicans.
The funny thing is, I always expect Gulliver to be either very tall or very tiny, and it's surprising to realize that he is actually just normal size when you meet him in person. Perhaps that's what makes him seem more boring than he really is. I mean, Quasimodo's hump is much smaller than you expect it to be, but then he can speak eloquently and movingly about his problems. And more importantly, he knows when to shut up.

Strip Strop

Las Vegas is obviously the future of America: from the cut-price service economy to the neon celebrity dinosaur decor. Endless miles of all-you-can-eat buffets and all-you-can-charge shopping surrounded by a bleak sprawl of identically soulless housing developments; no different, really, than those factory encircling slums back in the days of American manufacturing and production. There are a million ways to get nickel-and-dimed here. A million non-stop ways to super-size your personal debt consuming junk food and junk culture.
An Italian restaurant is decorated with classical Greek plaster-casts. The castellations of Excalibur are noticeably Ruritanian. The Sahara looks like a giant pack of Camel cigarettes. Even Bellagio, a sleek vector of "taste" on the Strip, merely reminds me of a luxury car commercial.
Meanwhile, a short drive away, is the natural wonder of Red Rock Canyon. Authentically ancient Indian glyphs can be seen carved into some of the rock faces. I imagine they probably say: "What on Earth have you done to that part of the desert?"

Sporadicism

The two cities I visit most are Rome, the eternal city, and Last Vegas, the ephemeral city: the capital of the ancient world for pleasure, and the electricity bill capital of the world for work. Two more diverse destinations could hardly be imagined.
Tomorrow, unfortunately, I am being dragged to Vegas and laboring in a dreary, soulless convention center until the conventioneers have gathered as many freebies as they can stuff into their suitcases and fled. I've written about Vegas before: here, here and here
Anyway, the upshot of all this is that posts here may be sporadic over the next few days while I recover from the flight and adjust to the plastic sidewalks.

In Defence of Doing Nothing

Models of industry and motivation often speak of their desire to embark upon annual, sun-drenched beach vacations in order to "recharge their batteries." Not me. I find beach conditions activities are so exasperating that sprawling about in sandy coves only serves to further deplete whatever energy reserves I may possess. And besides, my own personal batteries exhibit such low operating standards of durability that they require recharging at least once a week, never mind once per year. High achievers may dismiss this poor performance as an innate infestation of pure laziness, if they so please, but I prefer to regard my weekly downtime as "Philosphicus Horizontalum."
Socrates was right when he claimed that an unexamined life was not worth living, and I sometimes wish that movers and shakers who only ever examine business productivity levels would simply walk into the waves and drown themselves, rather than rejuvenating their robotically overworked limbs under the wretched Cancun sun. The world would be a much better place if all these desperate do-er personalities met a permanent deadline with death, because then the rest of us wouldn't have to bother with their inconvenient schedules and ridiculous timetables. We could spend our precious hours of life acquiring wisdom and writing ten volume critiques of our own navels instead. It might take us a while to get anything actually down on paper but, hey, what's the rush?

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at Breakfast

War flosses his teeth with human sinew while Death burns his bone toast. Pestilence pours sour milk over a bowl of pancreatic cancer. Famine has forgotten to feed the horses again. Then all four of them watch Good Morning America on ABC, of which they are enormous fans.

The Consumer

On a tropical whim, I purchased a shimmering bottle of 'Hawaiian Wave' scented body wash, imagining that my morning shower would be transformed into a sparkling luau of leaping dolphins, fresh island fragrances, and giggling hula girls sponging me down with coconut loofahs.
Alas, upon releasing this Tiki genie from its plastic bottle, my tropical dream became a tremendous typhoon of sickly synthetic odors, as if some greedy ogre had spent the entire night belching grape soda fumes and fruity bubblegum and into my bathroom. The leaping dolphins turned into sullen, inky squids, and the hula girls withered into scratchy, cackling crones. Consequently my shower was a terrible torture to endure rather than an invigorating vacation to enjoy. 
"Who farted in the whore's boudoir," someone remarked when I arrived at work. You know, sometimes Old Spice just doesn't seem so bad.

Bathroom Sink Drama

Trimming one's toenails should be a solemn, solitary, almost surgical affair. But there are ritual and religious aspects, too: the naked supplicant holds his gleaming clippers aloft like a sacred chalice as the dying nail is sacrificed so that the new crowned keratin shalt flourish.
Recently I experienced a rather aboriginal moment while cutting my own toenails. A particularly tenacious, half-moon shaped nail suddenly sprang forward off my big toe as I sliced through it and went spinning across the bathroom at great speed. It somehow looped the loop in mid-air before slamming into the tiles, boomeranging itself back around behind me and scoring a direct hit on my posterior. Personally I found the whole episode rather disconcerting, so I decided to incinerate all the clipping on the spot just in case the Voodoo Priestess next door was getting up to her old tricks again.

Real Life Bob the Builders

Once upon a time, and I employ the phrase advisedly, Sunday was the "day of rest," and pre-noon Sunday in particular was a silent, incubatory period of soothing non-activity. But, alas, our modern Sunday has become the day of incessant power sawing and rampant hammerdom. It is the Lord's Day no longer, but the day of over zealous maniacs who rise with the sabbath dawn, wriggle themselves into crusty dungarees, and then immediately run outside to commence the construction of immense geodesic domes in their backyards. The earlier the days begins, apparently, the better,: I reckon even Louisiana State Penitentiary chain-gangs, breaking rocks at gunpoint, were forced to struggle through their hard labors at more convenient hours than these weekend handymen eagerly choose to start work at.
Sunday mornings should surely be spent trying to remember where your slippers are, rather than consulting complicated blueprints, pounding nails into creaking timber frames, and loudly declaiming your views on the consistency of concrete.
Unfortunately, I believe I'm in the minority here.

Weekend Contrarianism

In egg terms, I have absolutely no doubt that Robert Mugabe is a thoroughly rotten example. And yet, in African terms, his Zimbabwe has been a relatively stable country. For although the Zimbabwean people are surely oppressed by Mugabe's self-serving style of government, at least they haven't fallen victim to those systematized machete-wielding, genocidal bloodbaths that the Darfurian and Rwandan populations have recently experienced.
It seems to me, unfortunately, that there are parts of the world where only megalomaniac dictators can maintain public order. After all, which would you prefer: oppressive measures or mass murder and chaos?

A note on the text: I know next to nothing about Africa politics. But this seems like a pretty rational assessment of the situation if you ask me. Obviously nobody did ask me, but then this is a blog so you should expect some pretty irresponsible posts from time to time.

Lights, Camera, Cue Coffin

The bereaved of Jackson, Mississippi are extremely concerned that the urned ashes they received from an incompetent crematorium may not actually be the remains of their dear departed.
To ensure that no such unfortunate mix-ups occur in the future, next time there is a death in the family they would be well advised to ship the deceased's corpse to Southampton, England where an enterprising funeral home offers live, pay-per-view video funerals featuring suitable musical accompaniment and DVD recording of the tear-stained farewell. This way grieving relatives will be able to maintain a closer and more critical watch on the fiery proceedings.

The Gripe of Spring

Rather than the "green, green grass of home," for most of this past winter my garden has resembled the far less celebrated brown, brown badlands of home.
But now the busy season of Spring is suddenly here again, and so backyard chores are sprouting up everywhere once more. This means the laborious, laborious lawnmower of home must be oiled and prepared for battle, not to mention the wearisome, wearisome weed-whacker of home, which requires an enormous amount of effort, too. And then there is the horrible, horrible hedge-trimmer of home as well. All of these tiresome, tiresome tools of home must be dragged up from the black, black basement of home to ruin my wistful, wistful weekends at home.
Worse still are the finicky, finicky flowerbeds of home. They are covered with the crappy, crappy compost of home, which is full of the wriggly, wriggly worms of home and the slimy, slimy slugs of home, and ... oh I could go on.

Bubblegum Mythology

Pantheon for Good Girls

Princess Bubblegum: Princess of the Gods who created the world by untying the frilly pink bow on a pretty box she got for her birthday. Inside was a shiny new Earth that she could play with. Most images of Princess Bubblegum depict her as a lovely ballerina with a very sparkly tiara.

Tiffany: Goddess of sugar and spice and all things nice. Usually shown helping mom bake cakes in the kitchen. The ancient texts are rather vague about the place of "mom" in the pantheon, but most scholars believe mom to represent a primordial force or totem that wears an apron.

Ken: God of not being mean. Always depicted without a penis, sometimes with chocolate smeared on his face.

Little Debbie: Patron saint of sad and happy clowns and kids with freckles. She is often depicted riding a pony or on roller-skates. Bubblegum priests regularly twist colored balloons into amusing shapes to honor Little Debbie.

Anus: Oh no! It's the Dark Lord come to spoil the fun.

More Mysteriously Boring Britain

The Sludgebury Dunce is a conical stone structure dating from the late neolithic period, conveniently located a mere ninety minutes brisk walk from Sludgebury train station.
According to local legend, if a chaste maiden straddles the Dunce on Midsummer Eve she will dream of someone who is extremely stupid. Some antiquarians, however, claim that it is actually the other way round, and if an extremely stupid person straddles the Dunce then he will dream of a chaste maiden. Alas, since there obviously aren't any chaste maidens in Sludgebury anymore most scholars wisely ignore this ancient custom and the tediously carved stone that inspired it.

See also:

The Monglesham Oblong

St Verukka's Welly

East Chilblain Shithouse

New World Order

Although we live in what appears to be a free and democratic country, in reality there are many malign and influential secret societies at large in American government today. Yale's Skull and Crossbones, International Freemasonry, the American Salsa Dancing Association, Fraternal Order of Tassled Moccasin Wearers, Stephenesque, Facebook and the Mickey Mouse Club are just some of the nefarious and shadowy organizations whose Satanic rites and black arts are practiced in the White House green room.
"People" will claim that the Mickey Mouse Club is not a secret society. But do you know what goes on behind the locked doors of the Magic Castle? In fact, would you be surprised to learn that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden inside Walt Disney's frozen head by the Knights Templar disguised as Mouseketeers? George W. Bush wouldn't, because it was him that put it there.
When John McCain's plane was shot down over Rennes Le Chateau during the Vietnam War, many investigators thought it was no accident that he had flown so far off course. Exactly what is he mysterious connection that binds together McCain, the Holy Grail, Rasputin, the Pyramids, Batman and Campaign Finance Reform? I don't know. But that won't stop me writing a bestselling conspiracy theory about it.

A World Lit Only By Fire

Earth Hour must be a particularly ironic time of day for anyone whose electricity supply has been terminated by their utility company for non-payment. How can these poor souls demonstrate solidarity with such an environmental initiative when they have nothing to turn off?
And exactly how is the homeless community supposed to contribute? By only urinating in doorways of those stores that fail to switch their neon signage off at night? Apparently only the rich and socially well-adjusted are invited to this eco-friendly feel-good festival.
And then there's me. I am Baron Frankenstein and I have a monster I want to bring to life. I could suck zillions of volts from the central grid to animate my creation, but I have decided to harness the power of the heavens instead. Think about how much energy I shall save the world by using my own electro-magnetic charge. These Earth Hour people should give me a medal, but they'll just chase me around my castle with flaming torches like everybody else always does. One day, many years from now, the people of the future will embrace science and its achievements, and then these dark, dark ages will finally be over.

Per Aspera Ad Astra

Space Tourism has always fascinated me, and so I am thinking of taking an interplanetary star cruise sometime this summer. The Costa del Asteroid is very nice in early August according to the colorful brochure I received from NASA Travel Agents.
However, I am extremely confused about what time I should arrive at the launchpad before blast-off. Terrestrial airports usually recommend two hours for normal international departures, but Cape Canaveral is telling me two months for anti-gravity training and pressurization sessions. Needless to say, this is rather inconvenient since I only get three weeks vacation time every year, and so my holiday plans have been sucked into a black hole.
Of course, I could always go to Istria or Ljubljana like everybody else does, but I've already invested in special rocket boots with Dr. Scholl's Ejector insoles and two silver utility togas, one with a red flash insignia for gala functions and another with a insulation cape for moon landings. Then there is the Mars-Earth phrase book and dictionary that I've had implanted in my cerebral cortex. It is currently giving me so many terrible headaches that I can barely leave the house, never mind zoom through the galaxy at maximum velocity.
At least the store I bought my ray gun and laser javelin from has a decent return policy.

Multicultural Fare

The host ushered us inside with extravagantly mysterious gestures, as if we were entering a gypsy caravan to have our fortunes revealed by some wrinkled sage, rather than being seated for an early evening meal at an Indian restaurant we'd been told was "good."
Above the table hung a picture of a prancing, ruby-eyed elephant dressed in the sort of sequined body armor that Cher usually wears to the Oscars.
"I always get the same thing." I said, "Vegetable samosa, lamb saag, garlic nan bread, mango juice and a kingfisher beer."
Two somber waiters hovered silently over us like grim mourners anticipating throwing their handful of earth into a grave. One slid a saucer of chutney between my companion and I; the other followed suit with a plate of papadums.
I know next to nothing about the conventions of Indian cuisine. In fact, I always worry that my order is comparable to someone entering an American restaurant in New Delhi and demanding a plate oysters covered in ketchup, two boiled eggs in mint sauce, and a glass of chocolate milk with a stick of celery in it.
After deciphering our food requests the waiters scurried back to the steamy kitchen, an environment they apparently found more congenial, since they suddenly burst into life there, laughing and shouting and singing amongst themselves. When they returned to the dining room, however, tight-lipped and slump-shouldered, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the Taj Mahal had just collapsed.
At the end of dinner, when standing to leave, I hit my head against a clay tandoor suspended from the ceiling.

Pulp: Voila!

Long awaited by both serious scholars and the curious public, 'Dear Poopie,' a selection of the most revealing and gossipy letters from my voluminous and very private correspondence with Marie Antoinette will finally be published this Spring to great acclaim.
Obviously, this is rather one-sided correspondence since Madame had been dead for many years before I started writing to her, so most of the letters are addressed from me to her. In fact all of them are, but this in no way way detracts from the historical value of such important documents.
Indeed, I feel that any student of eighteenth-century French history, and just anyone looking for a cheap thrill, will find much of interest in this fascinating and frequently shockingly frank collection of scandalous billet-doux.
For instance, on page thirty-seven readers can discover the extremely controversial missive wherein I sagely advise Marie not to use the phrase, "Let them eat cake."
The critics will undoubtedly remark that the letter was sent a few hundred years too late, and that its composition, dispatch and subsequent publication were therefore completely pointless. However, I have seen the weary rubes with their discount coupons wandering aimlessly around Borders Bookstores and I'm pretty sure that they will buy absolutely anything.

Hard Boiled Art Fraud Detectives

Suitable For Framing
A Sir Samuel Spade, R.A. mystery

It had been a long time since I'd been back in the Big Easel, so I hailed a hay wain from a passing constable and headed up east to the Goblin Market.
She was sprawled on the divan like some kind of Persian fantasy by Frederic Leighton. Her full-on Oriental splendour caught me smack dab right in the old Jamie Whistlers. But I had to admit, the Garden of the Hesperides never looked so good and I have always been a sucker for significant form.
"So what's it to be, Babe?" I demanded, "Venus Disrobing For Her Bath or Truth Revealed By Time? I've counted six Pre-Raphaelites in this town in the past twenty-four hours, and I'm going to find out what the whole Helen Of Troy has been going on."
She shook her garland of daisies scornfully: "This ain't no ordinary Blue Rider Group, Sam," she spat. "Pack up your paint tubes and go home before your sienna gets burnt."
"I don't like your exaggerated perspective, sweetheart. We're mixing from different palettes and we always have."
"What do you know about Pablo 'Pick' Picasso?" I asked her. ''They tell me he's some big shot Cubist from over the water who can really put a man's nose out of joint."
She just sat there smiling enigmatically like a cheap Chinese reproduction of the Mona Lisa, so I gave her a swift brush-stroke across the face.
She bristled: "You sure know how to make a bad first post-impression on a girl, Sam."

The Easter Story

Easter, as you probably know, is when Christians celebrate their myth of a dark-skinned Middle Eastern man emerging from his tomb looking like a very white, neatly-bearded Mid-Western Bible salesman wearing a dressing gown and sandals.
Imagine being provided with an alternative ethnicity by a bunch of hymn-singing, tambourine-rattling maniacs from North Dakota? Talk about having a cross to bear!
Coming back from the dead, of course, is a trick previous Spring deities have been performing for centuries, but Jesus was a little different. And so, to prove that he was truly risen from the grave, Jesus appeared to his rather doubtful disciples in a series of early church fresco equivalents of a photo opportunity. In these attractive tableaux he can be seen commanding his followers to spread the good word of his resurrection in distant lands, which they did, and consequently the desert religion of Christianity made its way to our green and fertile shores where it doesn't really belong.
This is why representations of the messiah in our churches look more like a crucified Toby of Boston, or Donald of Wisconsin, rather than a similarly tortured Jesus of Nazareth. We can maintain faith in quite a lot, but we can accept only so much.

Food Glorious Fraud

Food seldom tastes like what it actually is these days, especially when consumed in a chain restaurant. Regular mashed potato flavor, for instance, is either obliterated by enough garlic to make a Frenchman sick, or has been transformed into a new variety of cheese.
Almost all chain restaurants list garlic mashed potatoes on their menus these days. And although they have become more common than ketchup, waiters still announce them with such enthusiasm that you assume it must be some especially lucky day when garlic mashed potatoes are finally available again after an interminable absence.
Last night, to complement my garlic mashed potatoes, I ordered a herb-encrusted salmon from one of these establishments. Alas, the herb was encrusted so very thickly that I would never have guessed that there was a salmon steak involved in the meal.
Indeed, a more accurate description might have been "crusted herb with a bit of salmon stuck underneath." A six-man road gang could not have tarred a highway more effectively. I could imagine the chef standing over the salmon while surrounded by orange traffic cones, turning the handle of a tiny herb-encrusting cement mixer as a policeman directs waiters along some alternate route through the kitchen.
Frankly I think I could have done better at home, even though I have difficulty frying an egg. And it wouldn't have cost me thirty bucks either.

The Chic of Araby

The most successful method of monitoring terrorist activity, it seems to me, would be to track the movements of anyone making bulk camouflage jacket purchases from Army and Navy Stores, since terrorists obviously shop at these establishments more than most people do. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Osama Bin Laden owns one of those chunky sweatshirts with a moonlit timber wolf silk-screened on the front, or perhaps even a shiny black POW/MIA bandana.

But as the photograph above clearly illustrates, Osama mostly prefers to combine a gleaming white turban with his camouflage jacket. You would think such resplendently inappropriate  headgear for hiding-out would make him easily spottable in the black, subterranean caves he apparently inhabits, and therefore much easier for US agents to apprehend.
However, this does not appear to be the case. Perhaps Osama, with all his perfidious brilliance, has painted the inside of the caves white to match his turban. At any rate, there is absolutely no need for him to be wearing green camouflage in the desert, except to announce poseurishly to the world "Hey! Look at me! I'm a terrorist!"

The Serious Historian's Girlfriend

Despite the majestic palaces, romantic waterways and priceless art works, the truly Serious Historian understands that there is only one good reason for visiting Venice: to examine "The Leads," the forbidding prison from which Casanova escaped by clambering across the roof in his frock-coat and knee-breeches.
Of course, the Serious Historian will encounter many difficulties while attempting to conduct his important research. Most notably, the Serious Historian's girlfriend will demand that they actually spend their time touring those aforementioned palaces, canals and museums, perhaps even doing a little shopping, rather than tramping around a gloomy dungeon all day long. She will also undoubtedly ask the penetrating and insightful question, "Why are you so interested in this  Casanova guy anyway?"
At this point, with his studies in such great peril, the Serious Historian will reply: "It was the same thing when we went to Greece and you couldn't be bothered to climb up the hill to see the Acropolis. There I was on the verge making new and valuable discoveries about classical society and you kept going on and on about island hopping the whole time."
Alas, it is the Serious Historian's girlfriend who will finally triumph in this battle of wills since ultimately it is she who "hands out the grants," as they say in academia

Heads Or Tails?

Since the value of our conventional American dollar has sunk lower than Eliot Spitzer's reputation, and because Wall Street is now officially the boulevard of broken brokers, my financial advisers and I have decided to invest what remains of my savings in Radio City Rockettes Silver Eagle Dollars instead of regular stocks and shares.

I could have purchased many ounces of fool's gold, I suppose, just like everyone else is doing, but where's the fun in that? And besides, Radio City Rockettes Silver Eagle Dollars are legal tender in any country you care to name, since everyone accepts that leggy broads are very stable currency.

Star of the West

Personally, I would rather boycott Tibetan Buddhism than the Beijing Olympics. At least the Olympics are exciting and inclusive; and furthermore, the athletes don't shake jangly bells in your face.
I tell you, until this dreary Dalek Llama and his equally fatuous followers stop filling the heads of impressionable middle-aged women with pseudo-spiritual, wind-chiming nonsense I will pay zero attention to their repetitive chanted protestations about "Chinese oppression."
If you want to know what oppression is, try squatting on the bare floorboards of an uncomfortable, incense-polluted community center while some cross-legged hippy has-been wearing a yellow hat searches for your chakras by cramming wads of rancid salad down your throat. Chinese, on the other hand, always provides a convenient, no hassle take-out option.

Sunday Jumble

As is well documented, I disagree with the Pope about many things. Witness our long running and very public dispute concerning the appropriate elasticity of Pontifical undergarments. Not for nothing did my gut instincts lead me to support an expansion of waistband allowances during heated deliberations at the Council of Fatima in 1873. Nor did I storm out of the chic dining room at Chez Fisherman's Shoes purely for the want of low-calorie puddings, as was reported at the time. In fact, the garlic mashed potatoes were whipped with excessive amounts of extremely heavy cream; a fact that has hitherto remained unrevealed (unlike the bulging stomachs of the other ecclesiastical diners who frequent that Vatican approved establishment).
Where am I going with all this? I don't know. It is Sunday and the relentless tailor tolling of bells from St. Igbert's has been annoying me all morning. And besides, I would rather write nonsense than sort through my paint cans to see which ones are still usable and which ones have gone all thick and weird. Hence this Sunday jumble.

Gnome News (Updated)

The headline boldly exclaimed: Creepy gnome terrorizes town. At first I thought it was just another tedious article about Senator McCain cobbling his way along the campaign trail, but I was very wrong.
According to Britain's vividly illustrated The Sun newspaper, a night-prowling gnome wearing a pointy hat is scaring the living guano out of locals in a South American town. The link provided above contains some excellent video footage of the gnome emerging from a shadowy shrubbery.
Oddly enough, many years ago, I myself observed a gnome waddling through the dark tunnels of Boston's subway system. Closer examination, however, revealed this wizened apparition to be merely former Governor and Presidential hopeful Mike Dukakis inspecting track improvements.

Politicians and Prostitutes

Of course, we've always known that the world's first and second oldest professions don't make strange bedfellows. I only hope more of them are caught in, er, one form of congress or another. Perhaps "I just like to talk" could then become the new "I didn't inhale."

Obituary Lost and Found

Sir Esmond Inarage Whyte-Knuckleby

Sir Esmond Inarage Whyte-Knuckleby was born at 11:15am on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 in a small office in Boston. He sadly passed away at 11:34am on the same day.
Throughout his very short but active life Sir Esmond suffered from a singular tragic malady that eventually killed him off for good; namely, the man who created him could think of nothing for Sir Esmond's character to do, although not for the want of trying.
Briefly, at about 11:21am, Sir Esmond tried to make his narrative way in a traditional haunted house ghost story. Unfortunately would prove to be a phantom hope. A minute later, it was believed that Sir Esmond might find his fictional feet in a spoof Victorian poem about India. Alas, this adventure was also doomed to failure.
Many theories have been put forward for Sir Esmond's failure as a character. Just moments prior to Sir Esmond's demise, his creator was heard to say, "I am not sure that silly names are all that funny, and the only justification for Sir Esmond's existence is as a silly name."
And so it seems probable that Sir Esmond Inarage Whyte-Knuckleby will only be remembered - if he is remembered at all - as a character who was born too late, perhaps sixty or seventy years too late. Ultimately, he was a man whose time had long since passed: "The future," as Sir Esmond's creator so rightly remarked at 11:35am, "belongs to characters with names like Andy Assworth."

Pope Blog

"In Nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus et damn this infernal wind to hell ... (inaudible) ... Why the Devil can't one of those good-for-nothing Swiss Guards erect a windbreak or something, instead of lazing about in their pajamas doing nothing all day? Would a small, suitably frescoed palisade be too much to ask, oh Lord?"

"Let him that hath understanding of the Beaufort Scale count the number of the Beast for his number is Gale Force six  .... hundred threescore and six."

Photo credit: Eliot Spitzer

Poseidon's Toothbrush

If you know where to look, as Leonard Cohen once crooned, "amongst the garbage and the seaweed," then you can often spot a toothbrush floating in the river; and with all the luck of an amateur photographer strolling besides the banks of Loch Ness, I was able to capture this example on film (it's that long aquamarine thing in the upper center of the frame that looks like a prehistoric plesiosaur with an easy grip handle).

When faced with such strange phenomena, one can't help but wonder if the toothbrush is perhaps a component of Poseidon's overnight bag. After all, when he wants to get close and intimate with Amphitrite, surely even the great sea God himself requires the fresh, minty confidence that only  Atlantis brand super soft bristles with extra whitening action can provide.
As for the other filthy pollutants evident in the picture, I'm afraid you're just going to have to come to your own conclusions about that.

Photograph credit: taken by me this morning on Boston's Charles River "Esplanade."