American Fez

The Existential Aquarium

Contrary to the suppositions of religion and science, I've always believed our Universe is contained in a murky fishbowl precariously perched on a rickety desk in the messy bedroom of an irresponsible manchild who exists in another dimension. 

Suffice it to say, this manchild neglects to feed the confused inhabitants swimming around inside the fishbowl. Nor does the manchild clean the fishbowl or even refresh the water. Perhaps the manchild taps on the glass from time to time but that is the limit of the attention the child provides to those submerged in the unclean water.

No doubt the fishbowl was a prize in some cosmic fairground, claimed by the simple feat of hitting a trio of dark-matter targets with three space coconuts, then forgotten about after a day or two in favor of more visceral and less boring distractions. 

And so the Universe subsists. After all, what is Oumuamua if not decorative fishbowl driftwood come loose from its moorings? Seems pretty obvious to me. Honestly, you don't need a billion dollar Large Hadron Collider to figure this stuff out. 

All Aboard, for the Sleeper Agents Are Abroad

Standing on the bridge, who can resist the urge to leap into an empty railroad car as it passes below? But will yours be a James Bond jump or a hobo nosedive? In other words, will you land on your feet in a king fu stance and ready for battle, or will you smack your head on the metal floor and emerge covered in coal dust? For some reason, the future always makes decisions about your life while you're in mid-air.

Liminality is a much over-used word these days, but with good reason: we seem to trundle through the course of our lives by repeatedly falling into a neverending succession of these empty railroad cars, creaking along an endless track with no determinable destination, watching other possible futures fall into the cracks between the sleepers then disappear into the churning ballast beneath, hoping the signalman directs your train into an appropriate siding. 

So Happy Hallowe'en. Apparently, I am dressing up as the Reverend Wilbert Awdry with a serious hangover if this post is anything to go by, and shall carve a pumpkin into the shape of the Fat Controller's head, for he is a relentless distributor of tricks and treats. 

Always Darkest Before The Yawn

Despite what the old farmer's almanac says, for me, there are really only two seasons: when I need to turn the kitchen light on to eat breakfast and when I don’t need to turn the kitchen light on to eat breakfast. 

It is currently the season of waking up, igniting the gaslamps to dispel the foggy gloom, then spooning mellow fruitfulness into my mouth until I feel alive enough to leave the house, to brave the cobbled streets beneath a sunless sky, to call a Hansom cab and wend my way to work.

At least that's what I like to pretend I'm doing. Actually, I'm slurping coffee and eating Greek yogurt in the kitchen with a parade of halogen bulbs illuminating my cup and bowl. But since the nature of reality is always ambiguous in the early morning who will deny me a caffeinated Victorian fantasy when the cock crows? 

Yet this nebulous, liminal, almost enchanted stage of my morning commute only lasts until I realize, with dawning horror, that I've forgotten my bus pass again. Once more I have romanticized drowsiness into whimsy but only ended up befuddled. Still, I'm doing it on a full stomach, even if I also forgot to flick the kitchen light switch off before I left.

Achtung Festmeister

"And we also have Brewster's Octoberfist," said the hesitant, English-as-a-second-language waitress when I asked her what beers were available on tap.

Octoberfist? Very interesting. Obviously the very strong and profoundly hoppy product of an artisanal cask, probably pushing eight percent alcohol by volume. The kind of beer to order if you're only having one at lunch.

Then I suddenly realized that she meant to say Oktoberfest, your average, vaguely German, reliably malty, seasonal beer. So I ordered a regular American pale ale instead. Octoberfest has never been my cup of tea, particularly when it expands from just a German drink into the simulacrum of an actual Germanic event. After all, I've never been a joiner, especially of anything described as a 'fest.' And who knows, it might erupt into a torchlight parade at any moment. 

Nevertheless, the ridiculously named foodstuffs prevalent at such events have always appealed to me, mostly because it seems like they exist purely to lampoon the German language. Milchbrotchen, Mohnkuchen, and Vollkornbrot, for instance. They sound like Colonel Klink's breakfast or a list of obscure organ stops in a complicated Bach fugue. It becomes impossible to resist the temptation to create and christen my own baked Bavarian delights in the privacy of my own kitchen.

Untergobble, Weaselkrappen, Skoff, Dized Karrot Kake, Zauzagerolle, Schwein Pfoof, and Kaiserbutt: just a few of the pastiche German pastries and sweetmeats I conjure up at this time of year. I call it Octoberguffaw.

 I just need to obtain one of those homebrewing beer kits and some powerful yeast to ferment my own Octoberfist to accompany my Octoberguffaw feast. Now that's what I call a fest, even if the only celebrant is me. 

Under The Heels Of Giants

I well remember the Presidential Debates between then-candidates Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton. She was a familiar irritant but I'd never paid much attention to him before.

Pacing back and forth, breathing heavily, eyes often closed in concentration, Trump resembled a clumsy sorcerer summoning a malignant djinn to do his bidding, be it to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curled clouds and bewitch the swing state voters. It was like watching Sauron versus Old Mother Hubbard as dramatized for the stage by Samuel Beckett. 

For his part, President Trump seems to view himself as a radiant Sun blazing at the center of an otherwise insignificant universe populated by feeble planets, the occasional annoying comet, dim stars, fragments of fatuous moons and other worthless space rocks; their only purpose being to reflect his munificent light or be burnt to a crisp by his powerful rays. Either or, it doesn't matter to the Sun. 

A paragon of both egoism and egotism, President Trump often reminds me of that privileged clique of capricious British aesthetes who considered everyone else to be mere ephemera. His is the kind of indomitable willpower that bore Julius Caesar across the Rubicon, that animated the arm of Alexander when cutting the Gordian knot, that provides road hogs with the mental carte blanche to cut you off at that busy intersection and cut in line at the checkout counter. Profound or petty, it's all the same to the one and only Number One because it's all about him.

And for that reason, I wouldn't believe anything he said to me except "You're fired."  

Feuille Morte

I went walking in woodland after a sudden October rainstorm (wishing I had worn different shoes). The sun finally emerged from behind a bank of thick cloud, illuminating damp, dense, shadowy undergrowth and apparently sending a signal to sheltering squirrels that its arrival, stronger and brighter than predicted by the local weatherman, was an excellent opportunity to play hide and seek with the echo of my footfall on fallen leaves.

For some reason, more than any other scene in nature, sunshine streaming across wet tree bark inspires me to try my hand at painting landscapes. I'm going to buy a set of watercolors, I decided as I stumbled through a thicket of gleaming oaks that looked particularly picturesque. It's a promise I've often made to the creative side of my brain during similar woodland walks, subsequently always broken by a potent blend of diffidence and apathy. 

But this time, just as I was envisioning my potential artistic future, a dripping leaf brushed against my forehead as I passed beneath the canopy of green and gold and russet red. It was as if I was being anointed by the tree itself, receiving a blessing from Gaia or the Oak Lord or whatever arboreal muse arranges such commissions. 

So I've put several boxes of watercolors and a selection of brushes in my Amazon shopping cart. Alas, I'm already in two or three minds. Sitting here in my office cubicle, warm and dry, lit by fluorescent tubes and computer screens, I can't help thinking that maybe oil is a more suitable medium for my work. Perhaps even Humbrol enamel like George Shaw. And what about spray can on a brick wall? Conceptual sculpture? Which all means I haven't purchased any paints yet. Again.

A fairly recent scientific study suggests frequent rambles in woodland will make you a happier, kinder, more balanced human being. I believe that's true, but the frequency of rambling needs to be pretty much all the time because the euphoric effects diminish quickly once you return to less bucolic environs.

In fact, the effects probably wear off almost instantaneously. For as I stood there admiring the canopy of trees and playing with the squirrels, feeling momentarily enchanted and content in the fresh country air, I couldn't help thinking how stupid my daily routine seemed by comparison.

This is why I envy the back-to-the-landers and Agrarians, however smelly, unkempt and grimy they may be. At least they make a heroic effort to find their peace of mind. I don't even have the courage of my own convictions to find the energy to paint a simple picture. All I can do is capture a picture with my stupid phone, that umbilical cord to modernity I brought with me into the natural world.

By The Hair Of My Chinny-Chin-Chin

"Prices slashed" claimed the pharmacy notice attached to a display of heavy-duty disposable razors featuring triple-bladed ultra cutting action for the closest of shaves.

Prices wouldn't be the only thing slashed, I thought, if I shaved with those fearsome objects: my face, for instance, would surely be reduced to a bloody mess of red stripes. The image of a barbershop pole with two eyes and a nose stuck on came to mind; a bathroom sink overflowing with a scarlet tide of gory shaving foam.

Not for me, then. The purveyors of such medieval grooming supplies could keep their discount coupons, final reductions, and unbeatable value. I don't want to walk around town looking like I've just undergone a primitive tribal scarring ceremony or a Prussian duel with swords.

Normally, I use a fancy electric shaver on my face. It rubs a little at times but never rips hunks of flesh from my chin like an insatiable robot zombie. For something that's sole function is to cut, it's a lover, not a fighter. I think of it as a facial lawnmower languidly buzzing away on a summer morning, taking the occasional break for a sip of refreshing lemonade in the shade.

The problem is that replacement blades for my electric razor, although kind and gentle, are more expensive than simply buying an entirely brand new razor with a fresh blade already attached. Thus, despite boasting a lifetime warranty, my nonviolent electric shaver is, economically at least, as disposable as the vicious plastic razors sold in packs of three.

So I guess my options are prices slashed, face slashed, and commonsense slashed. Slash and burn. Apparently, everything must go if my five o'clock shadow is to go. This is why I contemplate growing a beard, it's the only sane response. 

See Hear

I've seen fire and I've seen rain sang James Taylor as if such mundane observations endow his relentlessly folksy mind with the wisdom of an ancient sage. Perhaps they do, for his visions of the elements and various weather patterns, however prosaic, inspired a song that continues to sell in surprisingly large quantities. So he must be on to something.

As for me, I've seen the impatient queue of customers in the coffee shop waiting behind an aggrieved hippy complaining about his guava smoothie while James Taylor's "Fire and Rain" reverberates through a cheap speaker hidden behind a dusty cactus on an otherwise empty shelf above the barista's head.

The coffee shop itself has seen better days, obviously. The impatient customers have probably seen longer lines. And the aggrieved hippy has apparently seen guava smoothies with a lot more chia seed in them. He's seen cheaper prices, too, which seems to be his point of contention. For her part, the barista has clearly seen the writing on the wall and must be thinking there are easier ways to make minimum wage than dealing with patronizing, middle-aged men wearing tie-dye t-shirts. I can see that in her eyes. 

Meanwhile, I've seen fire and I've seen rain, the plaintive, disembodied voice of James Taylor continues to declare, a boon to those of us in the coffee shop who'd rather listen to the ear-splitting screech of an espresso-maker at maximum volume than the aggrieved hippy's entitled whining and wheedling. Everyone would like to see the back of him, including, I have no doubt, the fidgeting woman next to him who appears to be his long-suffering companion. 

We all bear witness to life's ups and downs, the daily fires of ambition and the predictable rain that douses all expectation of success. James Taylor transforms his observations into toe-tappable, sing-a-long popular song. I write this rather diffident, somewhat facetious, and extremely obscure blog. He's rich and famous but I've never been depressed and hooked on heroin. Would I swap places with him? Well, I guess it depends on how you look at it. 

In Black and White

The first time I read the word "mulatto" in a book there was no obvious context enabling my pre-teen mind to correctly define the term. Since the character so described was a shipmate of protagonist Captain Bravo, I assumed being a mulatto was a specific job aboard ship. It sounded rather romantic in its way; a variant of matelot; a spy-glass toting occupant of the crow's nest; perhaps a type of pirate.

The book, whose title I do not recall, was a swashbuckling adventure yarn where aspects of the South Seas and the West Indies merged into one perilous, treasure-laden coastline. Consequently, it wasn't surprising that a character's parentage should combine DNA from the Straits of Gibraltar and far-off Afrique shore.

This misapprehension continued well into my teens. Fortunately, "mulatto" usage is rare in modern writing and speech, so opportunities for my exposure as an ignoramus were few and far between. At least I never enquired of the guides on a school trip to Monticello exactly when Sally Hemmings felt the call of the running tide. That would've confused us all.

No doubt that same callow mind of mine would fail to parse the contemporary term "mixed race" today, simply assuming the character was some sort of shipwrecked decathlete who had fallen in with a gang of salty desperados on a desert island the size of an Olympic running track. This is why I don't read science-fiction: the nomenclature of space-time, human-alien hybridization is surely too much for my tiny brain to cope with.

Small Plates Large Glasses

Celebrating my long-awaited wage increase, we dined at Le Awkward, one of those trendy restaurants that do "small plates"

Unusually for a small plate restaurant, Le Awkward serves enormous portions of food. Consequently, your dinner keeps falling off the small plates onto the table. You'd think the restaurant would figure that out and provide extra small plates to accommodate their ungainly gastronomic creations. But they don't.

Sometimes the food falls off the small plates before it even reaches your table, which is frustrating for both the waiter and the patron, especially if you've already been waiting a long time for your order like we had.

Le Awkward's busboys not only have to clear the tables but must also scrape spilled tapas sauces off the carpet. They use a repurposed pooper scooper for picking up cod cakes and pork empanadilla from the floor. 

Following the menu's suggestion, we ordered five small plates to split between two people, about twelve percent of which never actually made it to the table, a further sixteen percent fell onto the table, and the rest we managed to eat. 

Fortunately, we are both skilled at playing Pick-Up-Sticks and so were able to remove the maximum amount of food from our small plates with the minimum amount of waste. 

I don't think we'll be returning to Le Awkward, especially as it's likely to go out of business very soon. And why they poured my after-dinner dram of Scotch into a pint glass I'll never know.

Latin For The Judgin'

Sutor, ne ultra crepidam is by far my favorite Latin expression. It means "Shoemaker, not beyond the shoe."

Apparently, a Greek cobbler criticised the rendering of a shoe in a painting by the Greek artist Apelles of Kos. Apelles followed the cobbler's advice and repainted the shoe only to hear the cobbler extend his criticism into disparagement of sections of the painting having nothing to do with shoes. Consequently, Apelles told him to stick to his area of expertise when delivering subjective verdicts: Sutor ne ultra crepidam!

We are all the judgmental shoemaker to some extent. In fact, I probably spend more time criticising non-shoe subjects than I do making shoes. I spend all day looking at my equivalent of shoes. I'm bored of them so let me get my teeth into my equivalent of umbrellas, pince-nez, snowboards, and knee-high socks. 

Fortunately for me, there is a trend nowadays to believe experts in one particular area of expertise are oracles of wisdom on every other possible area of expertise also. Scientists expound upon Economics; Geologists expound upon Gender Equality; Astrophysicists expound upon Agriculture; Cobblers expound upon Painting; and so on. At times it seems like experts expound upon absolutely everything except their own area of expertise.

This entire blog has been and continues to be a record of a cobbler avoiding the subject of shoes in order to wax lyricallyish about everything else under the sun. 

Perhaps he should look down once in a while to make sure the sole isn't flapping off his own shoe. But I doubt he will.

A Hard Luck Story

Everyone knows the story of Johnny Appleseed, but few are perhaps familiar with the tale of Johnny's less successful sister, Hortense Guavaseed.

An early nineteenth-century evangelist of what would become contemporary Californian juicing culture, Hortense's attempt to introduce tropical fruit cultivation into the northern United States were obviously doomed from the start. Yet she was determined to outshine her famous brother's apple tree distribution accomplishments.

Perhaps one reason for Hortense Guavaseed's failure, despite the unsuitability guava in a non-tropical ecosystem, was that she, unlike brother Johnny Appleseed, was not a Swedenborgian and sang no inspiring hymns before dinner. 

Alas, we shall never know. Metaphysical speculations upon the subject of quixotic agricultural endeavor are beyond the scope of this blog, as indeed are most subjects. Nevertheless, I sang inspiring hymns to the Mandrake roots in my window box. They all withered and died.  

I guess the moral of the Appleseed and Guavaseed family rivalry is: farm to table is one thing if you want to cook a slice of apple with your pork chop, but tropical fruit plantation to five-speed blender for a refreshing smoothie is something else entirely, requiring state-of-the-art refrigeration and efficient, modern transport links which were unavailable in Hortense's time. 

She would die of heartbreak after bringing pineapples to Hawaii only to discover there were loads already there. Such is the fate of many dreamers whose stories are lost to history.

Plumbing Then And Now

Completely alone, at the witching hour, in the middle of nowhere, I might briefly consider dipping my toe into a sauna. 

But at a city health club, surrounded by hairy strangers, there is not a hope in Hell I'm going anywhere near the steam room. I'd rather sit by myself in a freezing toilet.

If you ask me, communal bathing was the number one reason for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, despite what Edward Gibbon says; and Gibbon is exactly the sort of tiresome, sweaty, close-talking conversationalist you'd be stuck beside in a sauna. 

How can you expect to maintain Pax Romana while spending all day lounging around in other senators' old scummy water? I don't recall Gibbon's endless tome covering that aspect of Imperial decadence and languor. (Although, to be fair, I only read the lurid chapters of his endless book and skimmed the rest, so he might have)

Speaking of personal hygiene and antiquity, it has long been my contention, much disputed by conventional archaeologists, that the great stone monoliths of Stonehenge are actually a set of individual shower stalls. 

Alas, I have zero evidence for this assertion except for a small piece of calcified soap-on-a-rope I found near the site in 1973. "Look at this ancient artifact I've found," I said to my mother, who ordered me to throw it away immediately. Consequently, an important part of the Stonehenge mystery was lost forever. 

Nevertheless, I still hope to prove that Stonehenge was, in fact, an expensive spa reserved for the use of pampered Neolithic fashionistas. Until then the windows of history will remain fogged by the mainstream academy's sauna of orthodox hot air.

The Devil Finds Inspiration For Idle Cooks

Compared to the infinite flavor varieties offered at today's artisanal bakeries, the eldritch ingredients flung into the cauldron stirred by the three witches from Macbeth seem rather dull and a little bit 'last week.'

After all, who hasn't munched wearily on their umpteenth eye of newt cupcake? Who hasn't rolled their eyes at yet another toe of frog donut? Who hasn't been let yearning for something different for once after being confronted by rows of stale wool of bat croissant? I know I have.

For crying out loud, I'd even be happy with plain old plain flavor: a stand-up donut with nothing in or on it that only tastes of dough. God knows that would be a pleasant change.

This manic culinary urge to transform the simple into the overwrought is also true of salads. I can't remember the last time I was served a traditional Caesar, Waldorf, or Caprese salad.

Shards of dry chicken instead of silvery anchovies scattered across your Caesar salad. Russian dressing splattered all over your Waldorf salad. A wad of iceberg lettuce rather than a lovely basil leaf disfiguring your Caprese salad.

And to add insult to injury, they'll even ask if you require grated cheese dumped over what is already a crime against what you thought you had ordered.

Double, double toil and trouble, indeed. I couldn't put it better myself. These terrible modern kitchen "inspirations" are enough to make you want to drown your sorrows in a glass of refreshing baboon's blood (please see our mixologist's mouthwatering list of creative craft cocktails)

Baedekeresque

I spent all of last week vacationing in Rhode Island, a state previously visited as a mere day tripper; a paying customer at the Newport mansions of the mega-rich from another Age; a fast ferry passenger to minuscule Block Island, cluttering up the harbor bars, cafes, and shops for an afternoon before returning to the mainland with only a lighthouse fridge magnet to show for his adventure. I have visited Providence, too, briefly, but the experience was not providential for me or the city.

This time I traveled to Narragansett, named after the tribe who lived there before the area was settled by colonial curmudgeon Roger Williams and his friends. For a coastal town, Narragansett has a distinctly suburban vibe, epitomized by the fee of ten dollars per person charged to walk on the town beach, meaning frugal vacationers drive to nearby Matunuck for their sunbathing. The facilities are excellent, as are the sand and the surf and the adjacent oyster bar. Wickford village is well worth visiting and the 'Rise' American pale ale offered by Whalers Brewing Company of Wakefield is perhaps a little too drinkable.

So that is my snapshot of Narragansett, make of it what you will, and an excuse for this blog's recent lack of updates. Regular readers, if there are any, should appreciate the factual tone of this particular post for next week will surely mark a return to nonsense and downright lies. So until then, probably Wednesday or Thursday, I bid you the traditional Rhode Island farewell of a quick wave of the hand accompanied by a raised eyebrow.

Looking On The Bright Side

Friday 13th, despite its widespread reputation for calamity, is considered lucky in my family as so many of us were born at this particular conjunction in the calendar. Not me, as it happens. I am obviously a Monday's child. Nevertheless, I am happy to join bask in the radiant glow of niche serendipity earned by those of my kin celebrating Friday 13th birthdays. 

Sunday 31st, conversely, is a frustrating day in my personal diary. But perhaps this has more to do with the fact that bills are due and I have to go to work in the morning rather than with any cosmically scheduled misfortune. I tend to keep an eye on the Ides of March, too. Mostly because I identify with Julius Caesar. That's between me and my long-suffering psychiatrist, however, so I'm not going to go into the details here. It's not easy being descended from Venus whatever you may think.

Anyway, it was Friday 13th yesterday and true to form I discovered twenty dollars in the back pocket of jeans I was preparing to be laundered. The stars had aligned on cue to shower me with gifts as usual. Of course, doing laundry on Friday night may not seem especially lucky to you, and a few found bucks not much compensation for a tedious evening at home doing chores, but we all need to count what blessings we can these days. 

So lucky me. I'm going to pull on a clean pair of socks and a newly pressed shirt, then spend my twenty dollars on two large ice creams for me and my beautiful wife. And there will even be just enough change for a twin pack of extra strength Lactaid. Isn't it great how things always work out when you think positively?

Forthright of July

Never, the nutritionists advise, eat anything your grandparents wouldn't recognize as food.

Wise counsel, to which I'd add: never wear anything Steve McQueen wouldn't recognize as clothes; never settle down with a book that George Orwell wouldn't recognize as literature; never hang a picture on your wall that Picasso wouldn't recognize as art; never lend an ear to anything Hildegard of Bingen wouldn't recognize as music.

The last of these prescriptions might be considered a trifle severe, obviously. But cacophonous contemporary music is one of the most undesirable blights of the modern world, especially in the summer months when toe-tapping, head-nodding ingrates feel free to unleash their mind-numbing "beats" in public parks and beaches at maximum volume. Which is why I order a strict diet of liturgical monophony for all and sundry as soon as the weather warms up.

So, to sum up, this summer I suggest eating Caprese salads (Campari soda optional but recommended) with a lightweight Baracuta jacket slung around your shoulders, P. G Wodehouse novel bookmarked beside you (don't read at the table, please), Winslow Homer watercolor displayed prominently in your eye line, and a disc of monastic plainchant on the turntable (or, if you're feeling particularly summery, perhaps a little scholarly reproduction of festive Roman flute playing).

But above all, ignore any blog posts featuring a supercilious list of things to not do. It is summer, after all, and the livin' is supposed to be easy rather than loaded with loads of idiotic Draconian rules.

Just watch your frozen yogurt intake. Lots of sugar in those bad boys. I refer you back to the nutritionists quoted in my first sentence. 

Making The Best Of A Bad Situation

Despite my being obvious Emperor material in the Marcus Aurelius mold, if, and I stress if, I had been born into Roman slavery then the job of food taster slave would've been the best case scenario for me. 

I'm not really cut out for heavy manual labor with my bad back. And I wouldn't last more than two minutes in the Arena as they'd surely hand me that ineffective net and trident combination. Sampling a plate of lark's tongue in aspic, however, would not be a problem. Neither would gulping down a mouthful of Falernum or two.

Sure, you'd run the risk of being poisoned, I guess. But drinking from an actual honest-to-God poisoned chalice? What a way to go. If you're going to die in servitude, the drama of clasping your throat with bulging eyes while dropping a golden goblet which clatters to the marble floor is certainly a spectacular exit for a nobody.

And even if you're lucky enough to never be poisoned, you can always milk the moment of food and drink tasting for all it's worth. A dramatic pause and worried expression after swallowing no doubt provided a great deal of amusement for the slave in question. It's fun to be the center of attention, after all, even if you'll never see the wild woods of Gaul again.

At Picnic In The Fields Of The Lord

What if the peoples of antiquity were wise to include "grave goods" in the tombs of their loved ones? I'd hate to think of my dearly departed marooned on the Other Side without a bowl of wheat and a jug of wine to sustain them for all eternity. Yet that's distinctly possible. Heaven might be full of mendicant Americans, buried with nothing but a shroud, begging for crumbs from well-provided-for ancient Assyrians and Egyptians. I wonder what the cuneiform for "Buddy can you spare a dime" is?

We don't even bother to offer a few coins for Charon the ferryman these days, either, which seems rather shortsighted and tightfisted considering the consequences. Apparently, those poor souls who cannot pay the boat fare are doomed to wander the desolate shores for one hundred years. So I hope the Lord of the Underworld has built an untolled bridge across the rivers of Hades by now. God knows trying to swim across the Styx and Acheron must be worse than snorkeling through a third world sewer.

This is why my Will contains instructions to bury me with a can of cashew nuts, a chunk of Gouda, three bottles of Margaux, freshly ground coffee, my favorite books, and an army of GI Joe action figures in case I need to defend my grave goods from mournful shades foolish enough to be laid to rest without a picnic basket. Obviously, I will gladly share my Elysian bounty with readers of this blog, although I assume you will all be equipped with your own afterlife goody bags anyway if you've read this post. Cheers! 

Split Personalities

Jeff Twaddle has rightfully been called a hero for saving that child's life. He richly deserves such public acclaim for his courageous and selfless actions in the face of almost insurmountable odds. But the same Jeff Twaddle also left a really snide two-star review of my rustic cottage Beach Getaway listing, so he's not all that great. 

Jeff Twaddle is obviously a Jekyll and Hyde character. On the one hand, he's a daredevil humanitarian willingly risking his own life for the sake of the others. On the other hand, he's a deeply flawed and immensely petty Internet troll who will write downright lies and nonsense to destroy my small vacation rental business.

I was reminded of reading the revelatory and extremely depressing biography of my favorite clown, Mr. Bungle. Here was a red-nosed entertainer who had brought pleasure to millions, especially me, beneath the Big Top. Yet in private he was a heavy drinker, an insatiable polyamorist, a serial bankrupt, and a member of at least three Satanic covens where he would exchange his big circus shoes and frizzy orange wig for cloven hooves and a pair of goat horns. And it was not only his nose that was red when celebrating these unholy black Sabbaths, as he would paint his entire face and body red to play the role of Satan, a dark, unhappy role he coveted more than that of lovable Mr. Bungle it seems.

Still, Satanic play-acting in your spare time is not as bad Jeff Twaddle's loathsome public deception. I tried to "out" the sneaky rat at the ticker tape parade that was held in Twaddle's honor downtown. So what if he ran into a burning building to save some crybaby kid's life? I yelled. He also complains about finding a little bit of moldy grout in the bathroom even though most normal people wouldn't be bothered by it. That's who Jeff Twaddle really is most of the time. He's only Batman once in a blue moon.

Alas, my protestations of Twaddle truth fell on deaf ears. I guess people want their heroes. I can only hope that Jeff Twaddle has been built up only to be knocked down at a future date. He will go on vacation again and leave another bad review on Beach Getaway. Then that will be two of us who know the real Jeff Twaddle. No doubt there are others our there already. Our voices will be heard one day.

Lost Wisdom of the Ho-Hums

Browsers in the esoterica aisles of their local bookstores will be well aware of the surfeit of so-called lost wisdom available in paperback form. The covers of these books are often decorated with illuminated crystal skulls or Stonehenge silhouetted against an especially vivid sunrise, covers so garish and ostentatious that the secret wisdom contained therein is unlikely to be mislaid again.

Which raises the question: if the original possessors of this lost wisdom were so wise how did they manage to lose their wisdom in the first place? I can only imagine they must have been antiquity's equivalent of the proverbial absent-minded professors of our own time. Imagine priests and sages well versed in the arcane knowledge of the Gods but easily distracted by flute-players and dancing maidens.

Imagine you're studying wisdom in the desert, pause for a second to locate the source of a pretty tune floating on the breeze, then return your attention to the wisdom only to discover it's been irretrievably buried by the Sands of Time while you were listening to the music. If only the ancient world had been equipped with mass-market printing presses and a group of mercenary graphic designers instead of papyrus and overworked scribes.

Tit Fer Tat

As with most men, there is a corner of my mind that is forever sophomoric. Here dwells the ineradicable prediction to snigger at fart noises, to appreciate practical jokes, and to wallow in bad puns like a blissful pig in an especially mucky mud bath.

This is why I always guffaw whenever anyone uses the word "titular," a fussy adjective I have defined as meaning "breast-shaped" since my early teens. In my defense, I present the similar sounding word "tubular," which I initially encountered around about the same time as my first hearing of titular.

Furthermore, I don't think I've ever heard any speaker say titular without a slight hint of risque frisson in their voice, so how I can be expected to respond with anything but a, er, well, a little titter.

Such, Such Were The Joys (And The Concerns)

When I was a small boy, my Sunday school teacher told me that all pets went to Heaven, where, no longer needing a leash or collar, they could frolic happily in the fields of the Lord.

This piece of doctrinal information bothered me at the time as I was in possession of an ant farm, technically conferring upon its creepy-crawly denizens the preferred status of being “pets” rather than pests.

Would all those little ants go to Heaven? One or two would be fine but I didn’t want all my former pets invading Gabriel’s celestial picnics and marching across the angelic sandwiches when I passed through the Pearly Gates. 

“Sorry, those are mine.” I would have to admit as some winged and appalled harpist hit a wrong note. After all, I guess it’s bad form to deny old friends in the world of Jesus.

Poetical Kryptonite

If Autumn is, as John Keats claimed, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, then Summer is the season of heatwaves and thinner socks. And perhaps no socks at all on carefree, humid weekends.

Which is why Summer is also the season of adhesive Band-Aid strips plastered all over much-abused feet. The painful season of lesions, blisters, red bumps, and abrasions on your heels, ankles, and toes from too casually worn boat shoes, unbroken-in canvas sneakers, and ill-fitting espadrilles.

And let's not forget that unsightly armpit rash from vigorous over-application of antiperspirant. Nor should we ignore bruised knees from absentmindedly walking into the sharp corner of a charcoal grill when wearing shorts.

Then there's raging sunburn seared across all those parts of your body you never need worry about in colder seasons: the back of the legs, the tops of your ears, the tip of your nose. Woe betide the raccoon caught in headlights who wore sunglasses but no SPF 30. 

And Summer is also the season of alarming entomology: the wasp divebombing the picnic table, the wasp harassing the child's ice cream, the wasp ambushing the baseball fan as he drops his hotdog wrapper into the garbage can; the ants that have invaded every nook and cranny of everywhere; a drowned fly found floating in your unfinished gin and tonic. And, of course, the slimy grub with countless legs blithely crawling across the uncomfortably low beach hut ceiling while you're getting changed.

 John Keats didn't write an Ode about any of that. Who would? It's not particularly inspiring stuff. He dashed off a few lines about so-called "Lydian airs" on a Summer's evening, I believe, but never reached the lyrical heights he achieved when writing about Autumn. In fact, all poets encounter problems evoking Summer in verse, myself included, as evidenced by this rather depressing blog post. 

Pushing The Manila Envelope

In this gender-neutral age of trans this and bi that, I suppose being simply gay has become the new being straight. My gay co-worker, Andrew, for example, no longer seems as outré as he was twenty years ago, although he's not changed one iota. These days, dressed in bright red skinny jeans, sandals, and mildly provocative t-shirt, he's nothing more than a regular metrosexual man. Just one of the guys, in fact.

Janine, a dyed-in-the-wool lesbian client of ours, appears equally conventional to contemporary eyes. When she's being especially demanding we might even describe her as dowdy. I guess women in crewcuts and cowboy shirts don't cut the alternative lifestyle mustard anymore.

Yesterday's peacock has become today's ostrich, apparently, which I suppose makes me dangerously close to being a dodo. God knows I'm going to accidentally say something misguided and hurtful when we do hire our first trans-whatever employee. I'll just be trying to be jocular and friendly in my own old-fashioned way. But no doubt I'll get it wrong and cause a commotion.

Fortunately, we have enough unclaimed offices full of obsolete technology that it will be easy to transform one of them into a "safe space" when the law demands that all businesses install such zones.

Chez Omega Man

Considering the serious health scares and other assorted scrapes with death I have survived over the years, I'm sure that like the proverbial cockroach I will emerge intact from the rubble of a nuclear holocaust, merely shaking the dust of civilization from my clothes as the eviscerated remains of my neighbors disappear into mushroom cloudy nothingness. 

Alas, I am not the ideal rebuilder of a devastated society. I'm more likely to reinvent the espresso machine before getting around to the wheel. In fact, as a bona fide homebody I probably wouldn't bother with the wheel. I'd be quite happy to simply loaf about in whatever ash-strewn ruin I'd be calling home. What's more, I'd spend more time cultivating my vineyard than tending my vegetable patch. As for animal husbandry, I don't see that happening. I'm certainly not slaughtering anything and unless my wife volunteers to do the milking there's going to be no dairy in the post-apocalyptic future. If you're going to survive also I hope you're more responsible than I am, for both our sakes.

Mother Nature's fury, on the other hand, would definitely assure personal my destruction. Even the feeblest of waves is enough to knock me into the undertow when I'm paddling at the beach, so I'm not waving but drowning if there's a tsunami while I'm sprawled on a sunlounger at the water's edge. I couldn't outrun the lava flow if Vesuvius erupted as I was touring Pompeii and an earthquake is going to swallow me whole and spit out the crushed bones afterward. 

So for selfish reasons, I hope the end of the world is manmade. I can see myself as owner-operator of Omega Man Coffee and Wine Bar: a little taste of Armageddon in the desolate wasteland under where the sun used to be. Management reserves the right to refuse admittance. No bare feet, no weeping sores, no mutated heads or eyeballs hanging out of sockets. Service with an ironic smile.

This. Means. War

Today I'm wearing office camouflage: a charcoal suit with a light blue shirt instead of the jungle motley worn by soldiers in combat. There will be no policy of appeasement practiced by me this week. 

I shall conceal myself in the conference room, invisible to my foes, then leap out and ambush their new business ideas. Then machine gun the last pockets of resistance with a highlighted bullet list on a PowerPoint chart.

Perhaps I'll even paint my face in corporate beige to blend in with the furniture and walls.

Honestly, I wanted to avoid such guerrilla warfare with interdepartmental memorandum diplomacy and new server password sanctions. Alas, that tinpot Kim Jong-un in the enemy cubicle continues to pursue with his dangerous workflow program.

Whatever happened to tenth-floor hegemony? I can already hear the fife and drums of a pinstriped army echoing through the inter-office paging system. The shadow of war has fallen across the water cooler. But don't worry, it will all be over by rush hour.

Three Day Weekend

This week I've been busier than a frantic bee with an eleventh-hour honey collection deadline to meet. Suffice it to say, after all that effort my honeycomb remains threadbare and uninspiring.

Everything always happens at once, for some reason, requiring my presence in two places at the same time, juggling multiple tasks while seated on a unicycle with a flat tire. Clown makeup is mandatory, of course. A simple pie in the face is the best outcome I can hope for; to be bereft of a completed to-do list beneath the Big Top, slowly wiping clotted cream and smashed crust from my weary eyes. The alternative is being the naive fool who sticks his head in the lion's mouth.

But that's modern life in the workplace, I suppose.  To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge yet again: the business of America is pointing an accusatory finger at another business when your own business can't deliver.

At least there's a three day weekend on the horizon here in Massachusetts. It's Patriot's Day, which commemorates the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord. 

Perhaps one day there will be a Project Manager day, celebrating the completion of confusing and ill-scheduled work modules, for that is a battle also, albeit one that kills with heart attacks instead of cannon fire.

Only Connect

A phone call at work inviting me to attend an all-day "Digital Marketing Strategy" seminar. I explained that my digital marketing strategy is the same as my analog marketing strategy: would the seminar address digi-anal issues for those of us who are so inclined?

A reasonable question considering the sum being charged to doze off in the basement of a Marriot while "industry leaders" regurgitated cliches and platitudes at a podium for eight hours. 

But my query was met with awkward silence as the agent on the phone audibly searched for an appropriate bullet point from the seminar promotional brochure with which to restart their sales pitch, eventually settling upon reading potted biographies of the key speakers, none of whom boasted any qualifications or experience valued by me. 

When the agent concluded this recitation of profoundly uninteresting information, I pointed out how ironic it was that such an ancient instrument as the telephone was being used to sell a seminar about digital marketing. Could it be, by any chance, because all the spam emails the seminar's organizers previously bombarded me with had all been simply and swiftly deleted? 

No doubt it could. Which is why my digital marketing strategy is the same as my analog marketing strategy. Only connect, as E. M. Forster advised, even if you need to use two plastic cups attached to each other by a length of old string.

Easter Fool's Day

If I were Donald Trump's agent, after his Presidential term is complete, I would direct him towards performance in the theater of Samuel Beckett, rather than a revival of his reality television career. He would be excellent, I think, in a male version of Not I, redefining the drama for a new age. Krapp's Last Tape would be another killer role for the former President if you ask me. And perhaps Trump an Kim Jong Un could even stage a triumphant Broadway production of Waiting For Godot when their days of nuclear brinkmanship are behind them.

Today happens to be April Fool's Day. In the past, a news report of eminent politicians engaged in the sort of theatrical shenanigans outlined above would have made an amusing front-page prank. But it's almost believable in today's world; a world "beyond parody" as they say; a world in which Goerge Orwell would need to retitle Animal Farm as CCTV Recording Of Cloned Meat Distribution Center On Mars and 1984 could be simply retitled Enter Password.

But today also happens to be Easter Sunday, a time of renewal, although mostly a time when the prefix 'ex' is replaced by its dissonant homophone 'egg,' as in 'eggceedingly tedious.' Nevertheless, we must cling to Easter's message of hope; Spring's promise that things will get better as soon as the supermarkets denude themselves of pastel bunnies and oval-shaped chocolate. Meanwhile, I await President Trump's imminent guest cameo on the new Roseanne TV show reboot because such a 'beyond parody' event will surely come to pass.

Vanitas

Many, many years ago, an attractive woman at work, slightly senior to me, just happened to mention that I looked good in warm tones: an offhand remark that I took to heart and have lived by ever since.

Of course, she had no qualifications for making such a statement other than being an attractive woman slightly senior to me, but as far as I was concerned it was Claudia Cardinale channeling the wisdom of Solomon. In fact, I immediately embarked upon a warm tone shopping spree at the nearest Mall the very next day. The result was a wardrobe crammed with shirts and sweaters in shades of red and gold and laundry loads of unseparated colors that assumed a distinct roseate hue during the washing cycle.

Despite this domestic setback, I persevered with my warm tone sartorial color scheme and opening my closet door was like walking into a cotton sunset. Even my dress shirts were described as "cream" rather than pure white.

However, I recently had cause to wear a neutral grey golf shirt for a professional event demanding such attire. I spent the entire day avoiding the pools of light in our exhibit booth, concerned that my complexion looked too pink or too pale or whatever hideously fleshy truths were betrayed by a lack of warm-toned fabric on my body. But as the event was drawing to a close, a gay male colleague suggested I should dress in cool grey more often as it really suited me. No doubt I blushed and dark green suddenly became an appropriate shade for me also.

Of course, I don't really care about such nonsense. Vanity ceased being an issue for me when the first visible nose hairs claimed the previously vacant lot in my left nostril, swiftly followed their cousins in the nostril next door and their extended family camped out in my ears.

In fact, these days I go for multi-colored patterns to hide the food stains and drool. Hospital gown chic is another of my go-to outfits. I like to think the clinician blue sets off my eyes nicely. 

New Tempo

Seasonal and professional logistics mean adjustments to my body and time management clocks are required. This is not simply a matter of winding my watch's hour hand forward by one hour, for my internal pendulum does not run on digital information or even cogs and gears.

No, powerful sunbeams are needed because my biological chronology is apparently controlled by an old-fashioned sundial planted in the center of my head. 

My doctor talks about some sort of trendy ailment he calls "seasonal affective disorder." And perhaps I should immerse my face in a radiating pool of brilliant white light before leaving the house. But this will only improve my body clock; it won't help much with my time management problems at work.

God knows I can't keep waiting for my unreliable gnomon to cast its ponderous shadow before addressing other business. At least I still hear the trusty chimes of employment each day, despite my heliocentric, haphazard schedule.

Alas, I can only wish my body and time management clocks were as grand as a hallway of grandfather clocks, as impressive as a Rolex strapped to a muscular arm, or as quirky as a wall of cuckoo clocks. Instead, I am burdened with this stationary plinth of antique timekeeping. Maybe I should invest in a pair of working gong-shaped earrings? Perhaps later, in an hour or two.

Death (of a Thousand Cuts) And Taxes

Preparing my tax return each year, I feel like a half-drowned conquistador, kneedeep in the Amazon, fruitlessly searching for El Dorado, which in my case is the mythical "refund" I can claim from the IRS.

Alas, I am forced to abandon my expedition: bedeviled by the darts of invisible foes, afflicted with malignant diseases, lost and bewildered in a dense, inhospitable and impenetrable jungle of American tax law. Eventually, I succumb to despair.

My wife's tax return, on the hand, reminds me of the work of Herodotus: a detailed exposition of the government's war against small business. Thermopylae has become the home office deduction, the last, ever-shrinking, and ultimately doomed bastion of defense against the income pillaging oppressor. 

"The business of America is business," Calvin Coolidge famously belched prior to the Great Depression. But in modern times, the business of America has become taxing business into unrecognizable rubble, observe the long lines of self-employed refugees trudging from the smoking ruins of once profitable ventures towards the wage slavery of the so-called Gig Economy.This process is euphemistically known as entrepreneurship.

But I should quit complaining. Our health insurance premium increased by thirty percent again this year and will do so again for 2018. Soon we'll make so little money I hope to qualify for no tax status and you won't have to read my ranting on the subject anymore.

High Deductible

These days, my doctor's office, hereafter known as "the point of sale," reminds me of an upscale boutique stocked with luxurious merchandise betraying no visible price tag. If you need to ask what it costs then you can't afford it, as they say: a dictum we can now apply to bloodwork, CAT scans, and cholesterol testing.

Like children outside a candy store, our noses are pressed against the clinic window as we gaze longingly at the mouthwatering medical procedures available inside. Then we get a crick in our necks from gazing, which is ironic because our new health plan doesn't cover chiropractors anymore.

But even if we were so callow as to ask what treatments cost at "the point of sale," the white-coated sales clerks wouldn't know. They'd twiddle their stethoscopes while mumbling something about it not being possible to put a price on health and wellbeing.

We live in an age of super fast networked computers. I can't see why insurance information can't be entered into a database and a reasonable estimation of charges can't be made while you wait. But no. Instead, we must wait for an indecipherable bill to arrive three months later for outrageous sums of money for tests we've forgotten we had done.

Honestly, I've experienced more transparent transactions at the black market bazaar in Cairo than at my doctor's office. 

When The Final Trumpet Blows

Before you are called to the Last Judgment, there will be a Penultimate Judgment to be faced. This is a preliminary trial adjudicated by all the wise men whose advice you heard but didn't follow, all the authors whose books you held but didn't read, all the freedom fighters whose struggle you witnessed but ignored. They might be prejudiced against you. Take care.

Imagine Cicero examining your unread copy of the Penguin Portable Cicero, your bookmark still wedged between pages one and two: Exhibit A in the case against. Let's hope John Bunyan doesn't show up with all those Bibles from motel bedside drawers that you always scoffed at. It will be like arriving for a job interview only to discover that a member of the panel is the road hog you aggressively flipped off a mere twenty minutes earlier.

The courtroom of the Penultimate Judgement is decorated with the works of Hieronymous Bosch, a painter who infamous Garden of Earthly Delights depicting the tortures of the damned you gazed at for a bare two minutes when visiting the Prado. Sure, there was an impatient line of people behind you. But that's no excuse for spending so small amount of time with such a masterpiece. Admit it, you were anxious to move on Bosch's tiny triptych and see that large dramatic painting of Saturn devouring his son by that artist whose name you can never remember. Which might be a problem because there's a man like Goya could be a member of the jury.

So I think you're going to have to throw yourself upon the mercy of the court. Plead guilty to being a philistine and an ignoramus. It's your only hope. After all, Jesus is always a sucker for a sad face and I'm sure Plato will take pity on you. They will give you a 'Pass,' or at least what medieval minds called an 'Indulgence.' 

But if found guilty and condemned you should lodge an appeal. Similar to Earth law, the Heavenly process takes an eternity, so buy yourself some time in the celestial waiting room. Just you and a grubby seven-year-old issue of National Geographic until the final trumpet blows. Oh, come on. It's not so bad. And it's not like you would read anything else anyway. You wouldn't be there otherwise. 

Travel Broadens The Mind

My carry-on travel bag features an exterior side pocket that I almost never use. Too insecure for important documents, too flimsy for mobile devices, too small for a book, the pocket has no discernible purpose. It seems like an afterthought the designer stitched on after discovering a sliver of fabric remaining on their workbench. 

I do recall slipping a pair of expensive sunglasses into the pocket when boarding a flight, which were subsequently cracked in half when I accidentally stepped on them clambering back into my seat after visiting the bathroom. And I once stuffed a granola bar in the pocket, apparently, although I have no recollection of that action or purchasing the granola bar. In fact, the only reason I know about the granola bar is that I've just found it in there. 

God knows how long it's been lurking in such secret seclusion. Did I buy it when we went to Italy last year? Or London the year before that? Vegas for work? New Mexico? Spain? The incident with the sunglasses was six years ago, so at least I can be sure the granola bar is no older than that.Fortunately, it was in good shape, too, with no signs of bulbous, fuzzy fungus straining to break through the still intact wrapper. So a Hazmat suit and robotic pincer arms were not required to remove it from the bag. Such are the advantages of artificial nourishment.

I often find amounts of paper money in my trouser pockets when sorting laundry but this is the first time I've come across food, and I have to say its discovery is nowhere near as exciting as pulling out a handful of surprise cash. I guess I'd feel differently if I were hungry, stranded in a deserted airport in the middle of the night. After all, such a desperate contingency is the only reason I can imagine for buying a granola bar, especially one that is yogurt coated. 

Which means I must have been paranoid at the moment of acquisition, which means I must have been flying US Air, which means I was on my way to New Mexico, which means the granola bar is approximately three years old and has traveled to four different countries as a stowaway in my luggage. Which means I'm starting to feel closer to the granola bar than I did at first, almost as if it's a faithful companion, a bosom buddy with whom to share our timeless memories of thrilling adventures in distant lands. Good old granola bar, my chewy St Christopher. 

And so I drop the granola bar back into the side pocket of my carry-on travel bag, the pocket that I always use even if I was unaware of such utility until today. The plan is Florida in May, then Portugal in September. Perhaps we'll take a selfie in Sintra. Unless, of course, there's some new draconian TSA law against transporting out-of-date snacks across international borders. You never know these days.

The Darling Beads of Creation

"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration," according to haughty inventor Thomas Edison. While this may be true of aligning cogs, greasing gears and screwing experimental light bulbs into position, I fail to see how it applies to other fields of creative endeavor.

It is hard to imagine, for example, Shakespeare's balding brow breaking into rivulets of pouring sweat while seated at his desk, quill in hand, thinking of a rhyme for his latest couplet. Blank verse is not easy to master, but its composition does not usually dampen the armpits of the poet. 

In fact, I'd say that the completion of Hamlet required one hundred percent inspiration and zero percent perspiration — unless, of course, it was written on a particularly hot summer afternoon when the windows of Anne Hathaway's cottage were painted shut. 

Not that such inescapable logic prevents me from marketing my own brand of "Genius" deodorant designed for inventors desirous of getting things done while maintaining a fresh scent about their persons. I even sell a pink version for the stay-at-home "maker" mom demographic. 

If you're interested in numbers, I guess my deodorant was a fifty-fifty inspiration-perspiration requiring invention. The inspiration came at midnight while trying to fall asleep by watching an episode of the execrable Shark Tank. The perspiration was mostly a pool in the small of my back.

All The Fun Of The Unfair

The financial services euphemism "wealth management" never fails to crack a wry smile on my tense, economically insecure face, when what most of us really need, of course, is a crash course in basic hand-to-mouth management. I swear my checking account never used to require such eternal vigilance. There were always a fair number of dollars remaining in the credit column between pay periods, enough that I could even transfer those dollars into a savings account. Lately, alas, as prices rise and income falls, I often find myself running that transaction in reverse. Balancing a household budget these days has become like a high-wire act, a slim tightrope strung through a labyrinth of tax withholdings, insurance premiums, food bills, utility payments, and an affordable mortgage if you're lucky. There are highwaymen lurking around every corner and the safety net appears full of holes.

Of course, our meager savings are rightly considered "wealth" by third world standards, but it sure doesn't seem like it compared to the cash stuffed in the pockets of those fat cats in the city who require a fleet of container ships to ferry their vast amount of gold from one tax haven to another. It wouldn't be so bad if we weren't dragged out to the dock every day and forced to watch. Jealous? Yes, I am. And also perplexed. You see, I had the brains to make it as a fat cat in my youth, but for some reason decided to pursue the career of a mouse wearing a beret instead. It seems a strange decision now; as if my life and prospects decided to run away and join the circus when I wasn't paying attention. So I shouldn't be surprised to be walking the financial high-wire tightrope every day, waiting for a clown car to pick me up each evening and drop me back at the beginning again.

Olfactory Observations

When I was much younger, albeit, with a predilection for appearing to be much older, I decided the scent of Bay Rum cologne suited my particular sense of style. I say "style" but of course it was really adolescent affectation born of daydreaming an urbane existence with undefined tropical dimensions. Something along the lines of Andre Malraux vacationing in the Caribbean, sipping pastis in a rumpled linen jacket beneath palm trees and a stormy sky. It worked for me at the time, as far as I can recall. 

Later, even my callow nose became aware that no two brands of Bay Rum cologne smelled alike. Not just slightly dissimilar, they were so different they might as well be the odoriferous equivalent of chalk and cheese. Some I liked and some I definitely did not. Imagine the bottled stench of boiling cabbage and the aroma of sizzling bacon both confusingly being called Eau de Kitchenette. Sometimes such various strains of Bay Rum weren't even spelled the same, as you could buy 'Bay Rhum,' an archaic conceit too much even for me to consider.

These days, having finally reached the age I once impersonated, I no longer buy Bay Rum cologne, finding contentment with the cheaper aftershave varieties whose weak scent dissipates within a trice of application. And whatever affectations I entertain evaporate in similar instantaneous fashion, losing their pretentious appeal mere seconds after being brought to mind. In fact, I can barely remember to buff my armpits with sports stick deodorant. But that's probably too much information.

Clean Money

Money reminds me of a bar of soap. Like soap, money is slippery and hard to keep hold of. A satisfying amount held in your hand shrinks to almost nothing very quickly. Watch it literally slip through your fingers. And in times of desperate need, that little sliver of money you were saving simply cannot be found. Furthermore, the process of earning money is like intimidating men dropping soap on the shower room floor then asking you to pick it up.

Rich men never buy soap, collecting sachets of designer soaps, sandalwood and Presidential musk, supplied for free at boutique hotels. Poor men, on the other hand, must spend precious dollars on family-size blocks of soap, antibacterial and deodorizing, from the supermarket. A good lather is free for those that can afford one and very expensive for those that can't. But whatever your financial situation, when it comes to soap, neither a borrower nor a lender be, as Polonius said. You don't want to be walking around town stinking of bad credit. 

Intimations of the Thurberesque

I often think of myself as a cartoonist who can't draw and this blog as a series of single panel scenarios, sketched in words, concluding with a pithy punchline in the last paragraph.

If were a clever man, I could transform all my written cartoons into a collection of enlightening aphorisms. What are La Rochefoucauld's maxims, after all, if not a book of po-faced comic strips? Who is Seneca, if not Charles Schulz wrapped in a blood-stained toga?

But I'm not a clever man, unfortunately. If only I'd paid more attention during the weekly art lessons in high school I might be drawing for the New Yorker.

Our teacher once asked the class to paint a picture on the theme of The Rummage Sale. So using the biggest brush available, I covered my paper entirely with yellow acrylic, which I then emblazoned with the memorable statement "Rummage Sale This Saturday 10 am" in blue letters. I claimed to be a conceptualist but still only received a F grade. 

They kicked me out of art class eventually and I was banished to the library. This was rather embarrassing as I was already forced to spend the duration of French class in the library, having refused to answer to the name 'Etienne,' which is what the French teacher decided I would be called for that hour.

Describing that bookish exile now, I recall myself as a morose, sailor-suited child, helpless and alone, like a character drawn by Charles Addams or Edward Gorey who doesn't need a caption to explain his amusing plight.

The Case of the Recycling Bins

I am always waiting for the big recycling scandal to break, when concerned citizens will be shocked to learn their municipalities don't actually salvage paper and glass but merely dump it in the same landfills as the regular waste.The sinister Department of Public Work's time, money, and labor saving equivalent of sweeping inconvenient refuse under the couch instead of disposing of it properly. 

My local recycling center certainly seems more like a distracting pantomime of green-fingered effort rather than the serious environmental operation it claims to be. Hence my suspicions that it's all an elaborate ruse by City Hall to keep the ecofriendly voters happy. The employees even dress in a uniform of brightly colored overalls and jaunty baseball caps, as if they were cartoon characters in a child's storybook about sharing the world responsibly with tree spirits and talking squirrels. I just want to drop off my empty bottles and cardboard boxes, not take a tour of a rainforest theme park.

But I suppose it's a dirty job and somebody's got to do it. At least, it would be a dirty job if I didn't have to rinse out those empty bottles before handing them over, and crush the voluminous square cardboard boxes into flat brown oblongs that can be sandwiched together. So I'll be thrice annoyed if it's discovered they surreptitiously bury this stuff when my back is turned: once for poor old planet Earth, once for my property taxes, and once for my aching bones.

Save The Aisle Seat For Somebody Else

If you mix up the titles of current movies, they actually sound like something you might consider leaving your home to watch ....

Black Tonya
I, Paddington
Jumanji: Welcome to the Darkest Hour
All The Commuters In The World
The Shape of Ferdinand
The Greatest Mary
Star Wars; the Phantom Thread

But that's just me: thinking outside the Box Office as usual. Surely it's about time the Hollywood studio bosses got smart and put me on retainer? I think I could revolutionize the industry with my irresistible titling prowess.

Inequality of the Future

My latest meal kit has arrived from sunny California. All the ingredients plus instructions (oven not included) for making Moroccan mint stuffed mushrooms. And that's just Tuesday's vegan theme dinner. Wednesday is chicken, couscous and cauliflower. Thursday is the full carnivorous bloodbath of beef borguignon and bacon browned broccoli. This fantastic gourmet service is only $120 per week with free dry-iced shipping. From farm to table via supersonic jet and diesel powered truck(wine pairing recommendations sent separately to your smart phone upon request). 

Ah, the wonders of modern life. Soon we won't need to leave our houses at all because anything we desire will be sent to us by drone or robotic courier. James from HR, an unmarried colleague of mine, recently boasted that the mail order bride company to which he subscribes are offering overnight delivery and unlimited free returns for unsatisfactory matches. He has already dispatched three women back to Thailand. Apparently his third wife was found wanting because she made poor meal kit choices.

Technological innovations in the workplace mean that James can work from home, too, so he has not left his house since last June. Yesterday he texted me a photograph of the new Amazon Alexa he has installed in his bathroom, explaining that he can now verbally re-order his favorite roll-on deodorant the moment he scrapes his armpit on the empty applicator. Now that's what I call space-age living.

Of course, such technological progress also illuminates the problem of inequality. There is economic inequality, racial inequality, gender inequality and all the combinations thereof. But the the type of inequality that almost everyone will eventually suffer from, regardless of sex or age or color, is what I call "inequality of the future." It's the idea that most people won't be able to afford the same future as the rich folks who live in the climate-controlled bio-dome city on the hill. Will we still think it's great not to need to leave our houses when the super-wealthy are escaping the toxic, frozen Earth in their private rocket ships? Maybe, as long as the latest meal kit recipe is something hot and spicy and we can binge watch Game of Thrones while we eat. 

Winter Blues b/w Stir Crazy

Perhaps you are familiar with the old Eskimo jazz standard, Inuit Or Inu-ain't My Baby, made famous in the mid-forties by Frankie Nanook And His Shivering Greenlanders. It's not the most romantic of ballads. The vocalist regales his lover with vivid descriptions of how she must skin and gut an entire sperm whale, making use of almost every part of the unfortunate mammal. Meanwhile, he will build an igloo suitable beneath the light of the midnight sun. Apparently, the lyrics also contain fifty different words that mean "blubber," although these words might also be a kind of Eskimo scat singing. It's hard to tell from the ancient, scratchy 78 RPM recording ....

Apologies for the culturally insensitive whimsy above. I've been a snow and icebound recluse for several days now.

Nevertheless, my shut-in rambling recalls to mind those high street record and CD stores specializing in what aficionados once called "World Beat," a catch-all category encompassing practically any genre of music originating outside the Anglo-American melodic sphere. Chansons danced cheek to cheek with bagpipes and African drumming within such environs. If the soundtrack to a Maori coming of age ceremony was required, then inspiration could be found in the stacks. You might arrive seeking a CD of German drinking songs but leave with vinyl album of Venezuelan wedding anthems. It was like the Age of Discovery, except in a retail space rather than a sailing ship.

Ah, such were the joys of brick and mortar shopping for physical objects, provided the weather was warm enough to go outside, of course. Which it isn't today, unless you're an Eskimo. 

The Lazy Lamborghini

I want to be a man of accomplishments. I believe I possess the potential but for some reason I can't get started. If I was a sports car, I'd do zero to sixty in about, oh I don't know, probably in about an hour or two, give or take.

You see, my engine requires at least twenty minutes of idling time while I'm checking the mirrors, adjusting the seat belts, and fiddling with the GPS before finally deciding that it's been revved enough and I can grasp the steering wheel with both hands and reluctantly toe the accelerator. 

Even then I'm backing out of the driveway in reverse rather than just shooting off straight down the highway. And once in the flow of traffic, my impatient aspirations and enthusiasms are riding my tail, bumper to bumper, horns blaring, but I'm one of life's Sunday drivers hogging the fast lane, going nowhere in particular at no great speed. 

Horsepower? I prefer to measure my energy output in terms of tortoise-ambles. Suffice it say, the number of tortoise-ambles I expend in a day is not high. But 'slow and steady wins the race' as the fable says. That's what I tell myself at any rate.

Although it often seems like the races I enter these days are the ones nobody else is bothered to run. I wear the laurels of the Obsolete 500, the Head-On Imbroglio, the Impostor's Rally, the Superannuated Grand Prix, and, of course, the Demolition Derby.

Perhaps with a little more ignition I could have been a contender, the pride of the gleaming Lamborghini showroom. Instead I've allowed myself to be shunted out to the back lot, propped up on blocks and soon to be stripped for parts. 

Still, you never know. Even after all this time, with a fancy fresh paint job, new high-performance tires, an oil change, and the installation of satellite radio and Wi-Fi, maybe my engine can make a go of it again. A second chance to rip up the road and tear down the tarmac. A New Years beckons, after all, and I still have a chassis to build a dream on.

Once. Twice. Three Times In Royal David's City

Considering the Nativity of Jesus surely symbolizes new beginnings, it's remarkable that our celebrations of Christmas are so heavily swaddled in an almost neurotic nostalgia for the past.

A snowbound Victorian village, wooden Edwardian toys, mid-century decorations and trimmings, fireside songs and medieval carols, roast beasts and mince pie puddings, the 'White Christmas' just like the ones we used to know.

Frankly, I can't think of a single contemporary representation of Christmas that anyone cares about. 

Except ... I just glanced out of my window and noticed the enormous inflatable Santa Claus my neighbor has erected in his front yard. I suppose such ostentatious seasonal spirit is fairly modern. 

Anyway, however you celebrate the holidays, I wish anyone who has kindly stuck with this blog over the years a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Downloadable Library

These days, when "left to our own devices" we are literally being left to our own devices: the iPhones, laptops, and tablets connecting us to a world where interpersonal human communication is not required.

Unless there's no wi-fi, of course. In which case we are abandoned to the entertainment provided by twiddling our thumbs and staring at the wall. 

This is why I download many of the books I would not normally read to the Kindle application on my phone. Now, when "left to my own devices," I can read these books I would not normally read to relieve the tedium. The complete works of Sabine Baring Gould, for instance, which can be obtained for a single dollar in digital form.

I often wonder why we don't refer to e-books as "digitalback" as we do with books in hard or soft covers. Or "deviceback," for that matter.

In fact, I must admit, unless I consider a book can hold its own with Shakespeare and the Bible I will not buy a physical copy anymore. E-books are easier on my aging eyes; they do not need to be spine-crackingly wedged into already overcrowded bookshelves; and their pages don't get smudged by fingers that are idly conveying chocolate truffles to the reader's mouth during the reading process – fingers, you could argue, that have been "left to their own devices" in the original, non-digital meaning of the phrase.

There is a major drawback to e-books, of course, and that is the tedious non-occasion inherent when e-books are given as a gift. Your loved ones can't "open" a gift that is delivered wirelessly via the Internet. You can't tie a big, red bow around digital text or wrap it up in fancy paper.

Consequently, anyone who who requested for e-books from Santa Claus will find their Christmas morning is not particularly special. In fact, while other family members are ripping apart presents beneath the tree, they will be "left to their own devices," both literally and figuratively.

The One That Got Away

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Except, of course, the man will be assigned the most polluted stretch of river, where there are zero fish to be caught. This is modern capitalism's confidence trick; a bait and switch scam, literally.

Not that I advocate socialist fishing, by any means. Thousands of listless anglers sharing the same rusty hook and half-dead worm while sitting on the bank of a stagnant pond is no answer, either. 

Fortunately, the future beckons with its promise of cloned meats. Hooray for science featuring James Watson and Francis Crick in chef's hats.

The man shall no longer need to learn how to fish to supply his dinner table with salmon filets. He is merely required to maintain and operate a salmon cloning laboratory in his kitchen. The man pours the contents of his salmon DNA sachet into the pull-out tray provided, adds water, sets the cloning switch to "grilled" or "smoked" and, hey presto, the man's gourmet salmon entree is served.

But can it really be that simple? God knows we still haven't discovered how to make a normal paper printer that doesn't constantly jam and break. You have to think that a meat cloning device in the home is going to be even more temperamental and unreliable. So much for technology.

I can make a carrot and stick argument for vegetarianism here, albeit rather elitist and convoluted: Give a man a truffle and you feed him for half an hour. Give a man truffle-hunting pigs and he can create a blog about his agricultural exploits and rural lifestyle, becoming an Online influencer selling advertising on his lucrative web site and able to afford whatever he wants to buy at Whole Foods Market. 

Alas, I obviously have no solutions for economic inequality and the food crisis. But clearly neither does anyone else. Just give us the bloody fish already and get it over with. I guess we'll just have to make do with the frozen tilapia from Mexico.

Goblin Market, Online

Apparently I can be an "influencer" by promoting products and services on American Fez in exchange for financial reward. It's an especially insidious form of advertising; fake enthusiasm, in today's Presidential parlance. There is no 'and now a word from a sponsor,' just cloak and dagger commercialism inserted between the lines.

This soap is beautifully soft and fragrant, I might write, for example, in praise of a minuscule bar of industrial-strength cleansing agent, illustrating my opinion with an ancient photograph of myself from when my skin was baby backside smooth. Meanwhile, like some marketing version of Dorian Gray, my actual face is festooned with blotches and rampant acne.

Perhaps I wouldn't even use the soap. I'd merely post a gushingly positive evaluation as if I had washed with the wretched substance. But my faithful readers would be unaware of my deception as they order a year's supply and I grow rich from their gullibility.

Alas, I have scruples; the poor man's curse. Come buy, come buy, the goblins cry, but I refuse to peddle plastic Chinese junk from beside the virtual brookside rushes.

Unfortunately for me, however, it's particularly self-defeating to maintain scruples in this day and age. Soon, as traditional vocations and categories of employment disappear, being an influencer will be our sole means of making a living as Social Media becomes the new factory floor. Not limited to promoting mere products and services, online influencers will also trade their political and religious beliefs for instant cash, or Bitcoin, whatever the Hell that is.

Of course, such disreputable wheeler-dealing is already happening as I type. We live in a time when standing ovations are shamelessly received after successful exhibitions of duplicity and misrepresentation in the public sphere. People even vote for the prime movers of such displays: All in favor of your own exploitation say aye. There is not only a Goblin Market on the Internet but a Troll market as well.

Oh well, modern dogma dictates we must all embrace change however annihilating it may be. But what kind of misanthrope with money to burn will buy anything boasting a rave notice from the idiosyncratic American Fez? What types of unfashionable merchandize can I buzz-market on this dusty, cobwebbed corner of the web? There isn't very much for sale in the world that I hold in high regard. God knows I'll need to think of something and hope the manufacturer's salesmen will be content with, at most, a modest three-star review.

What about groundbreaking medicinal tinctures, home-away-from-home nursing homes, scenic burial plots, discreet mediumship and seance solutions? Perhaps all of these essential requirements for American Fez readers can provide grist for my online influencing mill. And since I can't stomach the cynical fraudulence of being a Goblin or Troll, I promise to promote whatever service I write about as a simple, honest Pixie.