Young Adult Fiction

Like millions of curious children around the world, Colin Hippo was disappointed to find no gateway to Narnia at the back of the old wardrobe in his bedroom. There was, however, a very pungent portal to Hell at the bottom of the young man's laundry basket. It took the form of two sacrilegious socks, worn for five days straight during a misguided hike through Stinky Hollow, a muck and filth flooded valley in the nearby Brown Mountains. Although Colin's hands were proverbially idle, his trail-walking feet were certainly not, yet the Devil had apparently still found a lot of work for them to do. And all of it smelled real bad. Just take a whiff for yourself.

Before selling their soles to Satan, Colin's socks were unremarkable grey-green poly-cotton socks with yellow reinforced toes. Colin had bought them at his local outdoor sports emporium, Mad Sherpa, famous for its cautionary mountaineering motto: "If you get lost climbing Everest, you won't freeze to death in our latest range of thermal fashions." Stinky Hollow wasn't Everest, sure, but what it lacked in formidable peaks it compensated for with unbearable stench. As soon as an intrepid hiker set foot in Stinky Hollow he'd be immediately knee-deep in fetid swamp. Consequently, specialist sweat-wicking socks were an expedition must, no matter how expensive they were. And that's where Colin left the beaten path before even taking his first step: with his tiny allowance, Colin could only afford a single pair of socks to last him the entire week. So what was initially a simple hike in the woods had turned into a rambling Black Mass.

Clearly, some sort of 'wash and fold Exorcism' was necessary to restore Colin's accursed laundry basket to its former God-fearing state as a convenient receptacle for dirty clothes, and not remain the Stygian pit of eternal and very rancid damnation it had become. But the Exorcist would require detailed washing instructions instead of a Bible, a bottle of concentrated bleach rather than a sprinkling of holy water, and obviously an industrial strength oxygen mask, not to mention a pair of long-handled tongs for wrenching the socks away from Satan's clutches. In this case, the Exorcist was known as "mom," and she had plenty of experience of struggling withe the Dark Side, so everything ended Happily Ever After.

The moral of this story is: if your route takes you across odiferous terrain called 'Stinky Hollow' in the Brown Mountains, perhaps choose a different route. And always pack at least two spare pairs of clean socks, even your route fortuitously passes through an area known as Relaxing Foot Bath Spa in the Dazzling White Mountains.

Privacy vs Piracy In The Digital Age

Everyone is sick and tired of installing Big Tech's perpetual and superfluous software updates. I 'update' this blog every week or so, yet don't find it necessary to require 'multi- factor authentication' just so you can scroll through all the nonsense I've written here. But maybe I should? 

After all, even the most inconsequential paragraphs I post are far more valuable than Apple's tedious "bug fixes" and Google Drive's tiresome user-interface improvements. I don't want those evil Chinese bots gaining access to my opinions about the music of Alban Berg or if bald men should wear hats inside or not. 

Alas, ubiquitous computer hackers are proving difficult to outwit and out-code. Most of our Online passwords are already compromised before we've even thought of them. Everybody everywhere can download everything about you at the nefarious touch of a button on their burner phone. 

It's like your pet parrot is squawking out your mother's maiden name all night long and your Social Security Number is simply 012-345-6789. Very soon Big Tech will need to demand DNA samples and a colonoscopy to sign into your Internet accounts. Perhaps Microsoft already does? I have no idea. I drew the curtains on Windows many, many years go. 

So will my reader's banking and credit card information be safe with me? Well, if reading American Fez entails first answering my impertinent and very intimate 'multi-factor authentication' questions, I have to say that's a definite No. Let's face it, I have no qualms selling people out to the highest bidder. Partly because I want the money, but mostly because I've always secretly dreamed of being an Auctioneer. 

"Do I hear fifty dollars in Bitcoin for the password to Jane Doe's Bank of America savings account? Going, going, going. Sold to Vladimir Spamkov for fifty dollars in Bitcoin!" I'd prefer to be auctioning artworks and antiques but I'll take what I can get. You've been warned.

Those Who Do Not Remember History

 'The world's oldest profession' is an accolade bestowed jointly on prostitution and politics. After all, the duties and ambitions of each are so very similar. And, if you hold no objection to droll metaphor, even the performance of their respective antediluvian tasks requires an analogous set of iniquitous skills and shameless guile; skills perfected over several millennia of on-the-job experience. In fact, I have no doubt that the earliest wild-haired harlots learnt a thing or two from their bearskin-clad statesmen about selling themselves to whoever or whatever could pay.

Historically, prostitute and politician first appear as recognized job descriptions at the very Dawn of Civilization. Explanations of their dubious offices are scrawled on clay tablets discovered in the lowest layers of excavations at the most ancient of archeological sites. Additionally, both primitive lipsticks and electioneering manifestos are frequently found in the fossil record. Some scholars, such as myself, also claim that the pyramids and Stonehenge were actually ancient polling stations. Such conjectures are difficult to prove but are the only correct conclusions that can be drawn from the evidence, provided you are not some jaded, unimaginative 'professor' with tenure at one of our ridiculously overpriced and increasingly irrelevant universities.

But whatever the academics say, bureaucracy and streetwalking clearly predate the establishment of what we now think of as tribes and settlements. So, since there were no tribes for the bureaucrats to govern, and no settlement streets for the streetwalkers to walk in, how did those politicians and prostitutes from bygone days go about their dubious businesses? Well, they obviously put their deceitful, nefarious heads together and propounded the idea of tribes and settlements to their gullible constituents and clients. And such deceitful quid pro quo is how the parliamentro-boudoir system of order and patronage has screwed us ever since.

An immediate effect of creating tribes, and settlements was the spread of Herpes, a sexually transmitted disease named after the First Kingdom Egyptian pharaoh who contracted it from the infamous courtesan Gonorrhoea. But such shameful personal problems were nothing compared to the misery and dysfunction inflicted on people by the political half of the disreputable duo. For instance, humankind could have invented the wheel much earlier were it not for the interference of Paleolithic politicians. Stone-Age governments also imposed a fire tax on a per cave basis, and stipulated that hunter-gatherers must obtain valid licenses to stalk mammoth with sharpened flint-tipped spears. 

These draconian policies were the beginning of what conservative commentators have named 'The Swamp,' so-called because its low-browed architects often literally lived in swamps, in rudimentary mud huts balanced on stilts sunk into thick slime. Some authorities, myself included, have also termed this stage of socio-economic antiquity the Savagely-Primordial Complex, although not even I know what we mean by that exactly. Nevertheless, the continuity from homicidal maniac crouching in a mud hut with his home made axe to modern day senators pocketing backhanders on Capitol Hill is easy to follow.

Too Much Information

My toenail clippers are quite large, professional grade, heavy-duty. It's almost like they require both hands to operate correctly. In fact, I could probably trim my garden hedges with them. Even create an elaborate topiary, if I wanted. But I'm not a fan of showy flora at home.

I'm sometimes afraid I'm going to sever the tips off my toes when I'm using the clippers. You need to be very precise otherwise there will be blood. I refuse to use them on my fingernails for this very reason. So I just chew those, which is fine provided you file them into acceptable shape after each mouthful. And, as you might expect, the file attachment on my toenail clippers belongs on a woodworking bench beside a massive chisel.

Personal grooming would be much simpler If I just bought a new, more convenient, user-friendly pair of toenail clippers from my local pharmacy. But I tend to believe that an abundance of ease can often lead to downright neglect. Before you know where you are, you've grown huge horns instead of dainty toenails: five little rhinoceros skulls stuck on the end of each foot. Unhygienic and unsightly.

Of course, my clippers are powerful enough to cope with such a disfigurement but I'm not going to let you borrow them if and when it afflicts you. Sorry but I don't like to share my surgical implements. What I do like to share, however, is useless information, especially when it's "too much" information, like this piece of claptrap I've just written. 

Alas, these are the times we live in. Thank your lucky stars it's only a few paragraphs on my obscure blog, and not a thousand pages of confessional memoir promoted by Oprah Winfrey, or a paid Substack subscription that you cannot cancel until next year. Although, there's no difference really. It's all grist for the dark, satanic mills that grind out moronic 'content' and worthless opinion.

In The Shadow Of The Uninterested Majority

'Why bother?' That old, persistent, uncomfortable question that faces the keepers of many flames, especially those obscure flames, like this blog, American Fez, that only flicker in the darkest crevices of the most obscure caverns of ye olde World Wide Web.

I've employed the phrase 'uninterested majority' in the title of this post, but that implies there actually exists a minority that is interested. But there isn't. 

There is only me, the keeper of the blog flame, mumbling these verbose screeds to myself while I type, hoping there are more books of matches somewhere in the pockets of my cloak to relight the fire when it self-extinguishes from lack of inspiration.

And that happens more often than not these days. What is there to write about, anyway, that isn't already written and rewritten as a meme then adapted into an TikTok video. Too much quantity, too little quality. Everything is consumed and regurgitated at an alarming rate by an insatiable audience of zombified spectators. We are left with a choice between artificial intelligence and zero intelligence.

Why bother? For example, it's self-defeating for me to write critiques of Artificial Intelligence. Such is the speed at which AI evolves, my observations will be out-of-date before I even finish my first sentence (as will, no doubt, the terms and conditions of using AI). But the redundancy of my own opinions won't stop me typing, of course, because unlike the machines I opine upon, I never learn. I just collect enough brain kindling to keep my flame burning for no good reason.

At least theAI ChatBots are ordered to write and can't refuse. But I have no excuse. I am my own commissioning editor and vanity publisher. After all, it's not like I have a devoted readership to entertain, or even a random readership for that matter. Every post on this long-suffering blog is immediately buried in the mass digital graveyard of futile and worthless Internet activity, with no headstone, winding sheet, coffin, or ceremony. I can't even muster the creative will to finally turn this little flame into a Viking funeral pyre. These words are simply exported into the bottomless pit of unwanted 'content' along with all the other screams in a void.

So why bother? Well, I guess the answer is: what else am I going to do with my prodigious leisure time except warm my hands around the fire until some robot kicks the brazier over.

Neighborhood Watch, Part 2026

'A house is not a home' is particularly true in my neighborhood, where developers are demolishing old, shingled Victorians and building functional boxes instead. These new constructions are two bedroom hamster cages where the inhabitants subsist rather than live; spaces designed for binge-watching Netflix and doom-scrolling through social media. It seems we have expanded the concept of TV Dinners into total Flat Screen Residential Existence. Le Corbusier's Machine for Living has become a CPAP Machine for Living. We are more concerned with streaming platforms on our devices than books in our bookcases. The family room is now an area where directionless individuals impersonate the vegetable of their choice until bedtime. 

Sometimes, when walking the dog down my street, I see someone staring out of a window with a worried expression on their face. I used to know who lived in that house when it was a home. But now I have no idea who those anxious features belong to. Could be anyone who wears the domestic uniform of sweatpants and hoodie. The previous owner was a hoarder. I remember it took at least a week for the local sanitation team to empty all the worthless bric-a-brac collected inside. The new owner also appears to be hoarder. Except they hoard neuroses not personal possessions. Perhaps one day, when they have no more shows to watch on TV, they will snap and run outside shooting at whatever crosses their path. But I hope to have moved to the seaside by then. That's the plan, anyway.

O Little Town

Walking past my neighbor's seasonally decorated house last night, I noticed that the illuminated nativity scene in the front yard was reduced to the Three Kings of Orient only. I'm pretty certain their lowly-cattle-shed diorama included a full complement of characters last year, so what has happened to the holy family, attendant angels, shepherds and oxen? Moreover, the actual cattle shed itself is missing, and the Three Kings consequently exiled to an unkempt forest of privet hedges and boxwoods, their only guiding star being a nearby street lamp that shines over an illegally parked Honda CRV instead of the birth of baby Jesus.  Apparently, this year's nativity scene is set around December 20th or 21st, when the Three Kings are still traipsing across nowheresville Judea via plastic camel. No room at the Inn or on the lawn either it seems. But such minimalism is not a bad idea, especially if you want some sort of nativity scene display but lack the energy to build the whole fragile shed thing then arrange the finicky little figures and random menagerie around the manger, etcetera. The shed will just collapse by Christmas Eve and the characters all topple over anyway, so why bother?