American Fez

Vive La Revolution

Today is July 4th in the post-Julian calendar that we hang from our office walls, usually illustrated with photographs of places we'd much rather be. It's a public holiday, obviously, but the grim ghost of work still haunts your BBQ, manifesting as a cold, damp spot near the grill, then clanking its chains around the punch bowl and walking clean through the volleyball net. Sometimes it appears as a screaming skull in the sky during the fireworks, or the headless horseman with his head under one arm and a spectral manila folder under the other, galloping alongside the holiday traffic. No matter how much beer you drink, we can't escape this revenant of business-requiring-urgent attention, arising from the clammy tomb of last week's conference call. Jacob Marley in a pin-stripe suit materializing as a text on your phone instead of on a doorknocker. The restless spirit of job insecurity doomed to walk the Earth forever in search of the life it lost in life.

Which is why I like to think of July 4th in terms of the Revolutionary French calendar, where today happens to be quintidi 15 Messidor in the year of the Republic CCXXVII, celebrating the chamois, by which I assume they mean the shaggy goat and not the car cleaning cloth. Such a datebook trick doesn't entirely exorcise the ghost of work, of course, but it does help a little to think of tomorrow as sextidi 16 Messidor, celebrating tobacco, rather than just another crappy work day. My technique is not unpatriotic, either, because where would we be without the revolutionary French? Probably still hosting tea parties to honor the Queen's birthday on June 8th, with scones instead of hot dogs and hamburgers.

Penny Farthing For Your Thoughts

Apparently ignorant of the principles of kinetic energy and rudimentary mechanics, many adults fail to ride a bicycle efficiently. They pedal furiously along level surfaces in low gear. Their legs revolving at rates ten times faster than the wheels of the bike are actually moving. I'm reminded of the whirlwind feet of cartoon characters scrambling in thin air when the ground beneath them suddenly disappears. If it's possible to careen in slow-motion, that's how these floundering cyclists propel themselves forward, and I'm forced to cross my fingers they don't crash land like Daffy Duck always does. 

Of course, metaphorically speaking, wobbling uncertainly down the busy road is how most of us move through our daily lives. How foolish and decrepit we must appear to those A-type personality high-achievers on the fast track to success. 'Eat my dust loser!' You can see it in their eyes as they rush past. They are the winners who take all, including your pension. Whatever happened to the Tortoise and the Hare? Well, these days the tortoise gets kicked to the sidelines as soon as the starting pistol cracks, disqualified by his own prudence and sagacity. Don't think, just do it. There's no time for circumspection. And so we run as fast as we can in whatever direction we're told, sweating and grunting, trying to keep up with the pack, some of us capable of going through the gears, others not.

Poetic License

Reading an essay by Eliot Weinberger, I learn of numerous Plutarchs, (Plutarchi? Polyplutarch? Call this apparently Hydra-headed scribe from antiquity what you will), whereas before I'd only been aware of one.

There is the rather imperious-looking Greek Plutarch, who wrote engaging biographies of famous men and other, slightly less interesting books such as obviously tedious Moralia.

Then there is the faceless, so-called Pseudo Plutarch, author of many works originally attributed to the genuine Plutarch but later identified as the fabrications of mostly anonymous authors over a span of many centuries.

For some reason, probably innate facetiousness, I prefer the works of the Pseudo Plutarchs to those of the genuine Plutarch. On Rivers, for instance, and even Consolation to Apollonius, sound much more like my kind of read than the aforementioned Moralia, no matter how intellectually or artistically inferior the contents might be regarded after authorial reassignment.

In fact, I wish there was an equally prolific Pseudo Demosthenes, Pseudo Xenophon, Pseudo Hesiod, Pseudo Pliny, both elder and younger, Pseudo Catullus, Pseudo Suetonius, a Pseudo Cicero would be really nice, and so on.

There is a Polybius, of course, but alas I don't think his name means that there are many Biuses.

Anyway, I think I'm going to spend the next few days forging a text called On Actually Having Written What Scholars Don't Think I Did by Pseudo Juvenal. It's about time the Loeb Classical Library published some new material, don't you think?

Solstice Reflections

Consulting my calendar, I see it is the Summer Solstice. But looking out of my window at the weather, I'm surprised it's not the middle of March. Helios has apparently decided to leave his chariot at home, preferring to trudge across the sky instead, kicking the clouds around disconsolately as he goes. If Iracus had chosen an overcast, chilly day like today to fly close to the sun, the wax in his wings would not have melted, his cautionary tale would be unknown to mythology, and W. H. Auden's Collected Verse would be one poem shorter. It is the longest day and I am making it seem even longer with my idle, gloomy observations. So come on Helios, pick up the pace. Let's get that sun moving. I'll race you to Cocktail Hour along the Tropic Cancer. Loser has to buy the winner a Dark 'N' Stormy if the grey skies haven't turned blue.

The Team Meeting

Today, my colleagues and I are told to "keep the momentum going" yet also "find time to stop and smell the roses." Dueling directives issued by the same uninspired team leader during a pointless meeting of his apathetic team.

If we were landscape gardeners in the English style, I suppose this contradictory advice might make at least a little sense. But our labors occur exclusively indoors and involve the transportation of digital information from one place to another, an activity in which momentum depends entirely upon the capricious whim of networked computers. There is no odor of any kind, as far as I'm aware, floral or otherwise, unless there should be an electrical fire in the mainframe, and I very much doubt our boss would suggest we "stop and smell the burning data."

So we sit in the meeting wondering what to do. Maintain current workflow velocity, which certainly sounds like an acceptable management-speak agenda; or purchase a rose-scented air freshener for the office from the nearest pharmacy. Obviously, once an air freshener is successfully installed we can keep pace with required momentum while simultaneously inhaling its roseate bouquet. But the initial acquisition of an air freshener from the nearest pharmacy, a chore which will retard daily momentum by about twenty minutes assuming they have one in stock, leaves us in an existential quandary. Do we take the momentum hit now in order to smell roses today, or put off the rose smelling until tomorrow to maintain momentum today? Optimistically, I present a Venn diagram of concentric circles illustrating what I call "Work-Sniff Balance for the 21st century." Fortunately for me, no-one asks why no two circles intersect. 

The meeting ends with the team leader passing out a productivity chart displaying a prominent downward trend, the trajectory not dissimilar to that of a bird hit by a pellet in midflight and plummeting violently to earth. Apparently, our momentum, if we are to keep going in the same direction, will eventually see us fall so far vertically that we'll end up underground. And deep in the bowels of the planet, instead of roses, we can finally stop and smell the rotting core of all dead things.

No-one mentions this, of course. We return to our desks as if we have renewed purpose: momentum-o-meters to be synchronized, purchase orders for air fresheners to be printed. But we must check our emails first. Perhaps some charitable client has thrown us a bone, however meatless it might be, while we were in the team meeting. We can only hope.

Face Value

Resorting to self-aggrandizing contemporary slang in a desperate effort to boost my personal brand, I claim to be "money." Perhaps only a crumpled dollar bill, sure, one that's been forgotten in a back pocket and sent through the wash several times, but still acceptable currency. A good old dependable greenback. Take me to a cocktail bar, wave me in the air, and I'll be sure to catch the bartender's attention.

Yet there exist a few unkind and judgmental cynics surprised I even valued myself as high as a dollar. They were inclined to think of me as about as useful as a Canadian quarter. I was out of circulation as far as they were concerned. At best, their highest estimate of me might have been as a disposable penny inserted into one of those souvenir machines at tourist attractions, which are then stamped with an illegible design or unreadable motto. At least it's something, I suppose, to be a keepsake, albeit a keepsake that nobody really wanted to keep in the first place. 

So this personification of myself as cold hard cash is how I hope to bribe my way to relevancy again. Either under the table or neatly folded and slipped from palm to palm, you know it's taken care of when I'm being counted. Of course, I don't want to push it too hard and end up turning into "filthy lucre," or God forbid "spondulicks," but I do have to put on the big bucks show. Hence, I am announcing that I'm now available as legal tender for all your debts, public and private. Novus ordo seclorum.

Bureau de Change

Much like white light contains all colors, my black wallet contains the multihued currencies of many countries (keepsakes from a lifetime of travel and tourism). But, alas, this variegation of paper money does not comprise a full spectrum of wealth. In fact, it's really just a disappointing array of faded reds and dull greenish tones, fading into an indeterminate shade of brown. Hardly a chromatic spectacle never mind a rainbow promising its pot of gold.

Poor old depreciating crumpled bills. Even the faces of the famous worthies printed on them seem vaguely dissatisfied with their own valuation. For were I to exchange all the assorted euros, pounds sterling, Swiss francs, Carribean dollars, forints, and so on into a single currency, the total amount collected might be enough to buy me a small sandwich and perhaps a beer with which to wash it down.

Still, I enjoy admiring my little cache of cash from time to time. My foreign monies, crumpled though they may be, are far more inspiring than those crude plastic rectangles called credit cards; more romantic than whatever digital payment apps I could download to my phone. Behold the 200 forint note featuring the head of Robert Karoly and weep because the world of bitcoin is here. Oh to fill my pockets with a kaleidoscopic wad of tens and twenties from around the world instead of storing my bank account on a computer; to crack my nest-egg into a rainbow of legal tender rather than keep it in the digital cloud as mindnumbing ones and forgettable zeroes. 

A Pot Calling The Percolator Black.

Returning to the US after two weeks in Italy, the experience of waking up in America once more confronts me with that most pressing of questions: why is our Yankee coffee of such poor quality compared to their Neopolitan brew? An enigma which fittingly requires a great deal of caffeine to unravel. Some of us need a double espresso to address it, at any rate. 

I mean, it's not like American and Italy import beans from different countries: there is no hillside in Campania famous for its superb coffee crop; no state of the union that can only cultivate an inferior bean. The raw material comes from Brazil or Africa and Indonesia and is shipped to us and them. So why am I drinking less flavorful coffee at my local Starbucks than I do at the Gran Caffe Gambrinus?

No doubt the class of vessel into which the espresso is poured matters, as does the ambiance within which it is consumed. And the uniformed Marcello Mastroianni at Gambrinus is a coffee career professional versus the minimum-wage "barista" struggling with the Gaggia at the cafe around the corner from my house. But still. 

I could decant their respective espressos out into two plastic cups, blind taste-test them, and I'd instantly know which was American and which Italian. There is no contest: one is rich, dark and redolent of La Doce Vita; the other is, well, it is what it is, I suppose, and that's the best we can say of the substance. Come on, my fellow Americans, there is no excuse for this self-defeating state of affairs. We surely cannot make America great again without a decent shot of coffee to get us going.

Exchange Rate

When preparing to venture abroad to distant lands where foreign currency is required, I always feel a pang of nostalgia for the good old American Express Traveler's Check, that doughty companion of yesteryear. 

But once this rose-tinted, dewy-eyed moment has passed, I recall with a groan how it was necessary to provide about six forms of identification and a robotically exact signature before the wretched things could finally be exchanged for actual money. I often spent more time in the Bureau de Change trying to cash my traveler's checks than I did exploring the tourist sites I wished to visit.

Thank God for the modern convenience of plastic debit cards and automated banking machines, which make using traveler's checks seem about as practical as offering barrels of damp gunpowder and firewater to confused locals in exchange for information about the nearest Eldorado.

Of course, in these days of falling family incomes and ever-increasing household expenses, the biggest obstacle we face when exchanging our American dollars for Euros is actually having any American dollars to exchange in the first place, especially after we've already paid the extortionate transatlantic airfare to get to Europe, not to mention the price-gouging hotel room rate. 

So after thanking God for plastic debit cards, I pray He will also provide enough extra money in my bank account to get me around Italy, feed me, and even have a little left over to buy souvenirs. I call such supplication The Creator's Traveler's Check, and it's always easy to exchange anywhere at any time if you keep the faith.

The Unconsumed

Styrofoam cup tumbleweed careens through the city, colliding briefly with a carton containing the last quarter of a MacDonald's quarter-pounder, then gambols away again along the gutter where a half-eaten pizza slice is draped over the curbside like a melting Dali clock.

On the sidewalk, fragments of abandoned black bean and rice burrito filling form an intriguing trail for an urban Hansel and Gretl to follow, provided they don't slip on those discarded grease paper wrappers and snap their ankles. 

Come nightfall, you might expect the infamously ravenous city rats to gorge themselves on this improperly-disposed-of, all-you-can-eat buffet of fast food leftovers. But they don't. And neither do the squirrels, skunks or pigeons. Apparently, even the vermin regard such deep-fried and processed garbage as inedible poison to be avoided. It must await removal by the weekly street sweepers, or occasionally a concerned citizen might pick it up cautiously between finger and thumb and toss it in the roadside trash can if there is one.

Meanwhile, the Styrofoam cup tumbleweed rolls on down toward the river, either to drift out to sea or float off upstream to suburbia and beyond. So we bid 'bon voyage' to the non-biodegradable thing. No doubt we shall see it again, bobbing around amid the plastic bottles in the oil slick and silt in the polluted harbor of some distant land.

Ah, this waste is your waste, this waste is my waste, from the Dominoes Pizza to the Burger King, from the Waffle House drive-thru to the Taco Bell, this waste was made for you and me.

Only Happy When It's Seventy Degrees

In the bleak, dark depths of midwinter, I dream of high summer: lazy days beneath a tropical sun, lounging by the ocean, listening to the crash of the surf, slurping a Mai Tai in the shade of the palm trees. It's a paradise of the mind with poolside drinks. Fly me there, oh Helios, on the back of flamingo wings.

Of course, I've forgotten how uncomfortable summer can be. There is no heatstroke or sunburn in my reverie, for instance, no suffocating humidity, no sticky streams of sweat pouring down my spine and definitely no rough grains of beach residue sandpapering my private parts, and I'll suddenly remember that I start to feel sick from all the sugar of more than two Mai Tais.

Then there are all the ugly people: the crowds of camera-toting daytrippers, the hordes of heavyweight tourists, those barbarians at the gates of wherever it is you came to find peace and quiet ... and the sobering realization that I am someone else's barbarian (although I at least don't wear flip flops).

So come mid-August I'll be sick of summer's inconveniences and be dreaming about relaxing by a December fireside with mulled cider, having forgotten all about the intolerable winter weather with its wet snow and freezing winds, itchy woolens and coughs and colds. Fly me there, oh Jack Frost, on the back of robin redbreast wings. 

Which is why I'm only truly content during that short week of seventy-degree weather we used to call Spring, an ever decreasing, finger-countable number of blissfully temperate days sandwiched between Arctic Winter and Equatorial Summer. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what bird's wings would transport me there as Spring is more of a rabbit thing.

Survival of the Cutest

Wild rabbits, those proverbially indiscriminate progenitors, are appearing in ever increasing numbers in my neighborhood. They compete for backyard hideaways with the gymnastic squirrels, vicious turkeys, rodents of various sizes, and the smelled but rarely spotted skunks that already inhabit the area, much to the annoyance of my dog who is driven to distraction by all four-legged interlopers. Soon I'll be able to conduct safaris of the street in a Land Rover decorated with urban jungle camouflage.

It is Spring, of course, the season of bunnies and hares, long-eared hijinks and all things pastel. Nevertheless, it still seems as if I've been cast in a live-action version of Watership Down or become a character in a story by Beatrix Potter.

Born into a superstitious family, I was taught to recite the folk charm "rabbits rabbit rabbits" on the first day of every month to bring good luck into my life. This effortless magic spell has worked for the most part so I've continued reciting rabbits in triplicate to the present day, often afraid that I might forget and incur disaster. Fortunately, this current proliferation of rabbits provides an instant reminder of any such oversight as soon as I step outside.

I suppose I could say the same about the skunks should I neglect to apply deodorant to my underarms, but personal hygiene regimens are much easier to remember than the repetition of amateur enchantments in this modern world of ours. So the skunks can go extinct for all I care. Ditto the rats who recall nothing to mind. And as for the turkeys, well, I'm hardly likely to overlook ordering that club sandwich lunch, am I?

Mail Room Ghost Tour

Our company has no office dress code, so the contemporary grey flannel suit for junior employees is often just a sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. Tim from Shipping and Receiving, for example, wears a hoodie all the time with the hood obscuring his acne-riddled face.

He shuffles around the cubicles with his burden of packages like some gloomy hooded specter doomed to stalk the Earth until he rediscovers the reason he was ever alive in the first place. God knows I'd be more than willing to fetch my own mail if we could exorcize his lugubrious presence from the building forever. "The power of Christ compels you ... and no stopping by the water cooler complaining to your fellow malcontents on your way out."

Honestly, Tim being sent to his eternal rest would be the best thing for all concerned. He surely belongs in Happy Valley where he can play videogames and Facebook with other lethargic souls, instead of being chained to this physical world of responsibilities and endeavor and boring stuff like that.

Sacre Bleu

One of the recurring difficulties of learning to speak various romance languages is the complicated issue of gendered words. My new revolutionary language course solves this problem by introducing the concept of Transgendered Vocabulary For Tourists (TVFT). It is available as a conveniently pocket-sized and lightweight paperback you can bring on your vacations to foreign parts.

For example, when you are dining at a Parisian restaurant and the sanctimonious, reactionary French waiter smugly corrects your use of the masculine when the feminine was required, my handy woke phrasebook suggests many outraged en français insults you can hurl at the bigoted, right-wing garcon. 

Also, listed in most European languages in non-binary format is the protestation "Boycott This Anti-LGBT Restaurant," which you can copy out and post in the lobby of your hotel for other guests to read, regardless of their nationality (or gender). 

Obviously, I suppose you could just carefully employ the gender-neutral French or Italian words for 'they' or 'them'' instead of 'he' or 'she,' but where is the fun in that when you can be snarling reprovingly ad self-righteously with colorful epithets from my phrasebook? Besides, I wouldn't actually sell any books if my fellow travelers were so cautious and considerate with their language choices when abroad. And my sales are the important thing in all this, after all.

A Bridge Between Worlds

There is a poor soul who barely subsists on the banks of the river beneath the Boston University Bridge, sharing his makeshift bivouac with wild geese and water rats like some picaresque village idiot, or a modern-day Saint Francis preaching to his feathered and sadly uncomprehending congregation. Maybe he's a method actor preparing for his role as Troll in a theatrical production of Three Billy Goats Gruff, or an obsessive author researching a dystopian rewrite of The Wind In The Willows: the Piper at the Gates of Dawn become a police siren in the middle of a freezing night.

But he is none of these things, of course; just another have-not sleeping in the mud a short walk away from where well-heeled students pay upwards of seventy thousand dollars per annum to learn about the liberal arts. Their derelict neighbor, this keeper of the collegiate geese, must be praying he won't flunk out of Survival 101.

Walking over the bridge, I always look down to check that his camp is still extant. It always is. Life repeatedly renews his lease on the riverbank. The geese come and go, those students graduate to be replaced by another flock of freshmen, that shopping cart crammed with who knows what may even get swapped out for a less rusty model, but the homeless man remains with us as surely as the river keeps flowing. Yet somehow I forget all about him once I reach the other side of the bridge where the busy rat race traffic suddenly demands my attention. 

St Patrick's Day

Walking past the entrance to the Centering Center on St Patrick's Day, I was forced to check my stride by a distinctly off-centered patron charging through the doors like a snake being expelled from the land with extreme prejudice. So lightning fast and violent was this departure that I was almost sent tumbling into the gutter. Clearly, the Centering Center's numerous meditation classes had failed to ground this particular client in any kind of spiritual connectivity or just plain old peace of mind. In fact, I was reminded of William ButlerYeats' famous lines "Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world." 

Yeats, of course, is a popular poet with New Age groups on account of his interest in esoteric mumbo jumbo; the kind where Egyptology and Celtic fairy lore rub shoulders with Pre-Raphaelite fancy dress; Horus traipsing around an English country garden in the rain while Tinkerbell flies face first into a Chinoise birdbath. Imagine the Masons letting their hair down and sneaking a puff from a hookah pipe when the other brothers are not looking.

Despite being the sort of person who refuses to sit on the floor in any circumstances, I have always felt naturally quite centered. I certainly don't need to take Centered Center classes to learn how not to lose my temper. For example, It didn't even occur to me to hurl abuse at the inner child of the multicolored mass of neuroses that nearly knocked me down. I merely suggested in a moderate tone that it demand its money back. Yeats, on the other hand, would probably have cracked the yahoo's oblivious skull with a shillelagh carved with magic symbols. So whatever misfortune befell them inside the Centering Center, the person concerned should consider themselves fortunate they encountered me outside and not the Irish bard when exiting the building at such velocity without due care and attention. 

Joy No Longer Brought

Idly rummaging through the second-rate contents of a local junk store, an astonishing assortment of dusty ephemera stacked on crooked bookshelves and top-heavy antique tables, I came across a plaster cast death mask of some long forgotten Edwardian personality. Could it be Augustus Plumb? Or possibly Sunderland F. Twaddleforth?  Hard to tell in the poorly-lit conditions at the back of the shop. Who is this? I enquired of the gnomic, pince-nezzed proprietor.

It's my great uncle Fortinbras, he replied. Fortinbras died of complications of the spleen, a painful conclusion to life as can clearly be seen from the final configuration of his mouth and eyes. That record of his passing is yours for only twenty-five dollars. I won't accept less or may I suffer the same end as he. I've reduced the price before and the guilt occasioned by that devaluation has haunted me ever since. Death masks exhibiting facial features racked by complications of the spleen are very rare. A collector's item, in fact. 

Really? It looks like he's winking.

Yes. According to family lore, at the moment of expiration, Fortinbras was informing a second cousin of the existence of a second will, hidden midway inside a narrow and very dirty chimney, detailing the second cousin's sole claim to his vast fortune. This information proved to be his idea of a joke. When the second cousin climbed up the chimney in question, at great discomfort to himself, there was nothing to be found except a small parchment scroll with the phrase "Ha Ha" written on the surface in purple ink. 

So who did inherit Fortinbras' fortune?

Nobody. There was no fortune left to claim. That was part of the joke, apparently. Fortinbras had spent it all on cheap baubles and other worthless fripperies, all of which can be found within this store, unwanted and unsold over the countless decades that have followed their original purchase. And I have to say, Fortinbras' shaggy dog story sense of humor and wastefully rampant consumerism are not remembered with any great affection, especially by your present interlocutor who is forced to make living by trying to flog the rotten fruits of such an eccentric lifestyle.

Hmm. Twenty-five bucks for the mask, you say? Let me think about it and maybe I'll be back later. 

Of course, I never did return. In fact, that month's junk budget was spent on a 45rpm vinyl recording of My Favorite Things performed by The Pack Rats, an artifact that no longer brings me joy and which I recently advertised for sale in the classified pages of 'Novelty Song' magazine. Eight dollars including shipping is a bargain for such a slab musical of musical history, even if the sound quality is poor. No takers so far but it's only been in there for a single issue. Someone will want it, I'm sure.

The Clocks Go Forward

After Thursday night's storm, the Tumnus Street sidewalk was reduced to a narrow, icy path between two banks of freshly shoveled snow. Pedestrians were advised to navigate this frozen, rough-hewn avenue at their own risk. Some of them tiptoed along with exaggerated care, arms flung out wide for balance, like nervous children stepping onto an ice rink for the first time in borrowed skates. Others, clad in knee-high, clown-sized winter boots, stomped determinedly across the hazardous terrain, either late for an audience with the White Witch or maybe just wishing to express their contempt for her attendant weather.

Whatever the approach, progress, limited to single-file perambulation, was difficult. At one point, I became stuck behind an especially slow-moving, shapeless mass of hooded puffa coat and pantaloonish ski pants. It waddled down the street, head bowed and shoulders hunched, obviously staring at its stupid phone instead of looking where it was going. How rude. What an annoyance. Summoning my inner Baryshnikov, I scissor leaped past this phone-engrossed obstruction as soon as such a daredevil move was feasible, fortunately managing to land upright with one foot on the sidewalk and the other in a mound of snow.

Once safely ahead, I shook the snow from my shoe and turned around to deliver a withering and accusatory glance to the source of my irritation, only to discover it wasn't staring at its phone after all. The shapeless mass, identity still hidden by a massive hood, was actually obsessively shaking and gazing at a Magic 8 Ball toy, apparently demanding a specific response to a question that the plastic soothsayer repeatedly refused to provide. Whatever clairvoyant mechanism resided within the Magic 8 Ball probably felt the frigid cold as much as the human who consulted it. The runways of the Astral Plane being frozen over, surely celestial wisdom summoned from Beyond is equally as prone to bad weather delays as any Earthly courier service? In fact, the shapeless mass might just as well have resorted to its phone apps instead, requesting a Paypal fortune cookie text from some scam artist psychic hotline based in Las Vegas or Salem, MA.

The ancient Romans famously made their prognostications by studying the flight of birds. Alas, the sky is empty in early March as those telltale birds have not yet returned from the South, so that's no help. The only object that disturbs the clouds above is a passenger jet heading towards the Atlantic, which prompts me to predict I'll be flying to Italy in May: a prediction I know will come true because I've already booked the tickets. Fortune telling is easy if you take matters into your own hands. You don't need a Magic 8 Ball, a crystal one, or even a wizened crone with a deck of Tarot cards. Just declare your intentions loudly and purposefully into the void and you will hear the echoes of tomorrow. Meanwhile, and I use the word advisedly, the Future will immediately be here when we put the clocks forward on Saturday night, time-traveling towards the promised Spring with a simple adjustment of cogs and dials. Hurrah for green shoots, gamboling lambs, and freedom of movement along the sidewalk so that one can walk at one's own pace.

And the shapeless mass will have an answer to its question when the thaw comes also. I know this to be true because I actually stopped to ask what response the Magic 8 Ball displayed that required constant questioning. Its head still hooded and bowed, the shapeless mass silently held the ball out for my inspection like a sullen monk surrendering a sheet of illuminated manuscript ruined by numerous ink blots. Better not tell you now, I read in the black, opaque surface. 'It's waiting for the right moment, which is coming soon.' I told the shapeless mass. 'So put it away for now and concentrate on what's happening in the present. Have faith that truth will be revealed in time.'  Then feeling re-energized by my own wise inscrutability, I hopped over a snow bank and crossed the road to where there was less annoying foot traffic. 

Sonny Twistleton And Me

Sonny Twistleton sounds like he might be a second-rank alto-saxophonist from the fifties, perhaps best remembered for an especially wistful version of Blackberry Winter, or a witty, slightly self-mocking take on They All Laughed, somehow looking out of place anywhere except in mid-century monochrome on a Blue Note album cover.

Alas, the Sonny Twistleton I know cuts a very different figure. He's more of an out-of-tune and out-of-step sousaphone player in the country's most disorganized marching band, except this Sonny is so unfit and overweight he couldn't march very far without gasping for air and needing to stop. You are what you eat, they say, and Sonny's face betrays a sallow, greasy pallor not dissimilar to the appearance of packaged cheese.

His parents must have been overly optimistic when they named him Sonny. Windy or Podgy would be more appropriate. Even that surname, Twistleton, seems too lightweight and sprightly for the clumsy and obese being whom it identifies. It is a blue sky weather forecast sort of name that belies the disappointing gray clouds and oppressive humidity the day actually brings. At least that was my experience of meeting Sonny for the first time at my sister's wedding.

One of my social anxieties is a deep-rooted fear of being marooned for hours amongst a group of people I'd normally regard as a particularly contagious colony of lepers. So I was relieved when I saw "Sonny Twistlerton" printed in flowing script on the place setting that established his presence at our table. 'I'm going to get along with someone called Sonny Twistleton,' I said to my wife. Then he sat down and I immediately heard the ringing bells and began to imagine chunks of my flesh falling off.

For the sake of accuracy and fair warning, Sonny's name card should really have been printed in Comic Sans instead of a flowing script. Maybe even one of those unlettered, symbolic fonts that are composed of bold-face rhomboids and pineapple shapes. As the night progressed he proceeded to spill a glass of red wine all over the white linen tablecloth, demolish a tier of wedding cake with the elbow of his ill-fitting suit, and belch explosively during a sentimental and tender moment in my father's speech. I'm not going to mention his soul-crushing conversation, most of which concerned his many personal problems described in grotesque, too-much-information detail.

I thought I'd never see him again after the wedding but I was wrong. There is a large photograph of me making a toast to the happy couple prominently displayed on my parent's mantelpiece. Just to the left of my dapper frame, the unmistakable face of Sonny Twistleton emerges from the background, bleached by a flashbulb, resembling more the dulled off-white color of a dead fish belly than the packaged cheese of actuality.

Of course, it turned out that "Sonny" printed on his place setting was an egregious typo. It should have been "Sammy," a name that although carrying no unfavorable connotations for me is obviously not as ultra-cool sounding as Sonny. In fact, it is a name that could go either way if you ask me: oaf or fine fellow depending on geographical origin and upbringing. Whatever, suffice it to say, I would not be as surprised by a Sammy Twistleton with the personality of a flatulent baboon as I was by a Sonny Twistleton exhibiting the same alarming mannerisms. 

You might be thinking it a trifle ironic that a Stephen should be such a snob about names. It is, I must admit, quite a common name in all meanings of the word "common." The proximity of anyone happy to be called Steve must surely be considered a viable threat to the stability of Western civilization, as all sane people will agree, no matter what their names are. So I am thankful for the 'ph' in my spelling of Stephen. It adds that touch of class, the hint of quality that the 'v' spelling obliterates. And you know you'd much rather be reading the thoughts of Stephenesque than the ramblings of Stevenesque.

 

Transcendental Medication

Since the ever-increasing price of cholesterol medication nearly gives me a heart attack every time I visit my local pharmacy to pick up the wretched prescription, I've decided to switch to a cheaper pill. It's called Placebo and is manufactured by myself; a drug company I can trust.

I'm not sure what the Placebo's active ingredient will be yet, but I'm thinking it's probably going to be cheese. If so, it's going to be a very large pill indeed, best taken every evening with a glass of wine and a cracker.

Despite its high saturated fat content, regular cheese consumption, roughly an ounce of aged gouda per night, has zero effect on my cholesterol levels. Lots of sugar and carbohydrates do push the needle into the red, but not fat. In fact, I'd almost go as far as to say that my LDL and triglycerides and whatnot have dropped significantly since I started eating cheese again. That is the opposite of what is supposed to happen according to my cardiologist.

Perhaps if I ate even more cheese these results would further improve? But I'm not greedy and I don't want to turn my kitchen into a laboratory. And I've seen Dream Of A Rarebit Fiend and I'm not excited about experiencing that sort of melodramatic night's sleep.

Of course, I'm not advocating that other sufferers from heart disease should embark upon a pseudo-homeopathic cheese regimen like mine. What works for me may not work for them. It might even be a fatal mistake. We are all different, after all, and no doubt Big Dairy is just as insidious as Big Pharma. But we do know that Placebos are effective. Indeed, placebos are probably the most successful medical treatments of all time if clinical test results are anything to go by.

Which is good news because pretty soon Placebos will be the only pills the average person can afford. So start thinking about what yours will be and choose a substance that you enjoy and that lifts your spirits. A healthy body means a healthy mind, as the saying goes, and vice-versa, which is the part they usually forget to mention. Mind over matter will one day be the only alternative to over-the-counter extortion. 

Important note because there are many stupid people in the world. Obviously, I don't take a cheese placebo. I'm being facetious, as is the nature of this blog. I'd advise you to listen to your doctors, no matter how predictable and underwhelming their prognoses often are.

An American Abroad

I speak decent conversational Italian ... just as long as my interlocutors do not speak it back to me. If they do, I'm reduced to blank stares, inaudible gibbering, and wild gesticulation with my hands. In other words (English words, thank God) my Italian can just about be understood but I cannot understand other people's.

Consequently, my definition of "conversational" is clearly open to debate; a debate best conducted in German since only the Germans have a word for my peculiarly double-Dutch approach to defining the meaning of words: Schittenfraze. At least that's what I think the word is. To be honest, I've never heard any Germans actually say "schittenfraze," but then I don't claim to speak conversational German so it's unlikely that I would. 

My conversational Spanish is also poor. In fact, the only Spanish I know is the Spanish for "tilting at windmills," an expression that will get you absolutely nowhere at a hotel, restaurant, sightseeing attraction, or beach. It might get you a loan copy of Don Quixote from Biblioteca Pública Municipal Iván de Vargas in Madrid, but that great novel won't be particularly useful if what you really want is directions to the Prado.

All of which generally leaves me speaking conversational English when I travel abroad. Not only can I be understood, but thanks to the excellent linguistic skill of most Europeans in service positions, I can also understand.

Unless, of course, I happen to say "The towels provided feel like sandpaper," which concierges never understand for some reason, even though the sentence is said so often in European hotels you'd think it would be included in most hospitality phrasebooks.

Render Unto Caesar

Considering the meager amount of personal income I accumulate each year, a derisory sum that condemns my bank account to a form of financial manic-depression, I must conclude that my taxes are too high, too complicated to complete, and cost far too much to file even when employing the services of a virtual accountant on the Internet.

Declare this; deduct that; submit these; exempt those; claim them; complete worksheet 9a for schedule 21c and attach to form 1040a. Then enter your 1099-MISC, 1099-DIV, 1099-R, 1099-INT, 1099-H, and W-2's. What debased and unhinged mind has dreamt up all this nightmarish paperwork? The tales of Edgar Allen Poe are mere whimsy compared to the spine-chilling immersion in unimaginable horror authored by the Internal Revenue Service. I suppose there's a good reason why H.P. Lovecraft looks like an ersatz tax auditor. I am about halfway through my IRS return for 2018 and already quite willing to swap quests with Odysseus. I'd have no problem sailing my ship between Scylla and Charybdis but the Greek hero could never decide between itemizing or taking the standard deduction.

It's also that wearisome time of year when psychopaths start announcing they are running for President. Frankly speaking, I'd vote for absolutely anyone who pledged to simplify the American tax system, even if their only other blowhard policy was to incinerate Asia. At this point, I'm almost willing to exchange less Byzantine bookkeeping for one global disaster and its ensuing humanitarian crisis. As Orson Welles asks of Joseph Cotton in The Third Man when perched high above the ground and gesturing toward a crowd of Austrians below, "Would you care if one of those tiny dots stopped moving?" No, not if it only took five minutes to fill out a single tax form that processes my annual refund from Government, Inc.

Those are desperate measures to be sure. But these, as any rationalizing relativist will concur, are desperate times. Of course, I understand it's important to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's. But it increasingly seems like greedy Caesar is furtively sticking his name on lots of my stuff that doesn't actually belong to him. 

The Apathyville Horror

Suffering from a severe and seemingly endless bout of constipation, pinch-faced Aloysius Welch returned an unopened package of toilet paper to his local convenience store, EZ Mart, ostentatiously explaining to a bemused clerk that the four rolls of tissue in question were currently surplus to his requirements. Furthermore, he would prefer cash to store credit as his doctor had prescribed for his condition a powerful and surprisingly expensive laxative, Bowel Plumber Pro, that the EZ Mart convenience store chain inconveniently did not stock. And no, his case was extremely urgent, so it was inconceivable that he could survive the three day wait period necessary for EZ Mart to special order the laxative, assuming the special order would only take three days, which was laughably optimistic if his previous experience of special ordering pills and tablets at that particular EZ Mart was anything to go by. It certainly wasn't very easy, that was for damn certain. And yes, it hurt to laugh, even a hollow laugh was painful, so he would not even begin to contemplate such a course of stoic but ultimately doomed action with regard to his present predicament. Did Aloysius have a receipt for the item being returned? Of course not. Who in their right mind keeps a receipt for toilet paper? It's not like you can write it off against your taxes or anything like that, is it? Well, I suppose you could if your job entailed regularly testing toilet bowl capacity and flush velocity or something along those lines, but Aloysius refused to believe that was a real job anybody was actually employed doing. At least not in Apathyville USA or any of its neighboring conurbations, you could bet your bottom dollar on that.

It was at his point that the convenience store clerk, who had stopped listening to Aloysius long before, decided he would quit his own job when that day's shift came to an end. Only getting paid minimum wage for dealing with dickhead customers like this pinch-faced guy with the ass problem just wasn't worth the hassle. He would rather slouch around out back at a fast food restaurant, anonymously flipping burgers or filling tacos or whatever. Same money, no public. It was a win-win as far as he was concerned. Should have jumped ship sooner. He'd even dress up in a latex lobster costume or a full-body ear of corn suit, handing out flyers on the high street to people he knew, if that's what it took to get away from EZ Mart and the super-sized douchebags who shopped there. He was going to have to page the store manager to get off his fat, sweaty and probably equally constipated ass to approve the return because the dickhead customer didn't have a receipt. Manager to the register for a toilet paper return. Manager to the register for a toilet paper return. I can't believe this is my life right now. He just needed to get rid of this guy, suck it up until seven, hand in his notice and then he could go home and get high. Maybe he'd try to find out whereabouts in Apathyville the schmuck lived and toilet paper his house in the middle of the night. That would serve the asshole right. That's the kind of service with a smile he could get behind.

My Etiquette Tips For An Enjoyable Evening

Asked to bring either an appetizer or dessert to a friend's dinner party, alas, I find myself lacking sufficient time to cook or bake anything my hostess would deem an acceptable addition to her table. So I purchase six meal replacement bars from a nearby grocery store.

Full of protein and minerals but also chocolate flavored these convenient snacks can function as bite-size hors d'oeuvre, amuse bouche between salads, or even as a sweet accompaniment to a glass of port as the evening winds down. Such smart culinary solutions to perennial banqueting predicaments are why dependable guests like myself are always invited to the swankiest neighborhood events. 

But should I have brought an assortment of meal replacement bar flavors rather than chocolate flavor only? Having been forced to testily explain that the supermarket was a mere five-minute walk from where we were sitting when James, that triple-chinned buffoon, enquired about double fudge flavor, and that he could easily go there and buy his own, I can only conclude that yes, it might have been wise to bring two chocolate, two double fudge, and two strawberry yogurt instead of just the six chocolate bars.

Nevertheless, my six chocolate meal replacement bars, store-bought and lacking variety though they may be, were all devoured within an instant of their plating and presentation. The same cannot be said the diarrhea-inducing swamp of so-called "Moroccan dip" that James's equally fat wife, Hortense, made. It may have been Rachael Ray inspired but it was Death Ray cooked.

And to be perfectly frank, judging by the huge quantities of leftovers the hostess tried to foist upon us, I'm not sure anyone would have eaten anything at all if it wasn't for my handy meal replacement bars. They may not have paired particularly well with the bottles of chilled Gewürztraminer and India Pale Ale being passed around, but I can't be both dinner party savior and expert sommelier on short notice.

Dollar Dreams

Money is a strange substance. I often think it's more of a wispy cloud of vaporous gas rather than a tangible solid embedded "in the black."

Although it can be a liquid, of course, especially if you happen to be a ravenous, single-minded loan shark patrolling treacherous waters, or an avaricious Narcissus seeking your own reflection in a deep green pool of wealth.

And there is the financial meaning of the word liquid, too, but that is rarely the average person's experience of money.

But for most of us the nature of money is gaseous: billowing on payday only to disperse by the end of the week. We try trapping it in bank accounts but it always seeps out through the cracks in our ledgers. Drifting in front of our faces today, occasionally fogging our brains with pecuniary consequences, before finally wafting away through our fingers tomorrow, leaving naught but the ghost of Mammon and a faint odor of affluence.

Of course, some people manage to inherit or amass huge storage tanks of the stuff; usually a heady mixture of fast-talking helium and maniacal laughter-inducing nitrous oxide. At least that's what I recall inhaling on the few occasions I've met a millionaire. 

I keep my money inside a half-inflated balloon attached to my pocket by a short piece of string. Please don't float away balloon, please don't float away. Turn yourself into a balloon animal, an elephant, a whole herd of balloon elephants so I can stampede into solvency.

Should Auld Acrylic Acquaintance Be Forgot?

Back from the Christmas break and intent on killing early New Year time at the photocopier, I pass by the grim, beige cubicle wherein the Acrylic Creep (see below) plies what is laughably known as "his trade." Besides his computer monitor with its greasy keyboard are propped three hardcover books: Webster's dictionary, a preposterously slim atlas of the world, and Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends And Influence People, all missing their dust jackets.

Judging by his monosyllabic conversation and equally semiliterate emails, I'm surely justified in my belief that the Acrylic Creep never consults his dictionary. The skimpy atlas is obviously useless as it's so thin it must confine itself to mapping an entire continent per single page. Besides which, ours is purely a local business so international reference materials serve no purpose anyway. As for How To Win Friends And Influence People, I can only assume, not having read the tome myself, that Carnegie fails to discuss the topic of manmade fibers in the workplace.

Does Dale Carnegie suggest that a good method of creating friendships and influence is to bore colleagues with interminable descriptions of your exceptionally tedious and decidedly unfestive holiday? For this seems to be the sole tactic the Acrylic Creep employs to enhance his reputation as a popular mover and shaker in the office and beyond.

Of course, the very fact that he exhibits How To Win Friends And Influence People in such a prominent place in his cubicle only proves the Acrylic Creep's failure to learn any of life's lessons, never mind successfully digest the contents of a self-help book. Why advertise your personal inefficiencies and problems to other people? It's rather like keeping hemorrhoid cream or anti-flatulence medication in the Inbox on your desk. Surely your Ninja attempts at pretending to be a normal, intelligent, and friendly human being should be transparent to those you wish to delude? 

2019 Year of the Cow Creamer

Happy New Year to all those readers misdirected here by Google searching for a subject I wrote nonsense about Venus Williams four years ago ...  Should auld blogge postyne be forgot and ne'er brought to mind, etc.

And a Happy Janus Face to regular readers, for whom I have one word: China. 

By that, I do not mean our erstwhile trade sparring partner; I refer merely to the products of the potter's art: decorative porcelain in all its forms but especially the decorative porcelain from which we drink fine imported teas (some of them, let's be frank, imported from our erstwhile trade sparring partner mentioned previously in this labyrinthine sentence; although, if I may parenthesize within parenthesis, I would not recommend Chinese teas as the soil in there is suspect so the leaf is possibly contaminated). 

But enough of such tangential Chinoiserie. Whether it be bagged or loose, hot or cold, green or black, my 2019 message to you is to steep your tea in a pleasing pot, a vessel designed for the purpose, leisurely and with ceremony, and not just dump it in some chipped mug for two minutes.

For if there is one thing I discovered last year, it's that life improves commensurably with the quality of decorative china you drink from every day. This is an effect not unlike the infamous Law of Attraction, except its life-changing power derives from the workshops of Meissen, Limoges, and Spode rather than from "the Universe."

Obviously, you'll need to obtain a matching set of cups and saucers at some point, too. Not to mention a sugar bowl, milk jug, silver spoons, and, if you're really serious about changing your fortunes in 2109, a three-tier cake stand is essential.

The Acrylic Creep

The Acrylic Creep at work is not comfortable in his own skin. It's obviously two sizes too small for him and doesn't fasten properly behind his neck; there's a big, red, hairy bulge there as if it won't zip up all the way or there's a button missing or something like that.

The material is pretty cheap too, definitely manmade, probably polyester but not the kind of polyester that's sporty or active. This is clingy, itchy, sweat-stained polyester that's pilling and seam-stretching into an early grave. The Acrylic Creep's skin is a skin you can't get the smell out of, no matter how many times you drown him in bleach and detergent.

I've recently suggested we should just cut the Acrylic Creep into strips and use him as a cleaning rag. He's not much good for anything else. We certainly can't have him interacting with clients with irritatable skin like his. Ours is a presentation business after all and he looks as though he's presenting a case for the joys of eczema and inflammation.

Surely there must be creams and ointments on the market? Or maybe he could shed his current skin like an average reptile and slip himself into a Snuggie or a pair of regular cotton pajamas, anything except his own uncomfortable skin. I'm frankly sick of feeling the urge to scratch myself everytime I pass by his desk.

Piano Prescription

The pianoforte is, without a doubt, the best musical instrument. It is surely the most resilient, as its keys can still produce reasonably pleasurable music when abused by the fingers of avant-garde composers or ridiculously coiffed pop artistes from the nineteen-eighties. Even modern iterations of the classical keyboard such as the Moog synthesizer and the Hammond organ rarely produce unlistenably offensive noises.

Piano sounds are also serviceably versatile. Piano moods inspired by summer months can equally be enjoyed in the depths of winter since it is easy to reimagine the tinkling of a stream rushing over rocks in July as January's swiftly spiraling snowfall. Listeners can't really do that with a strummed guitar or a bellowing trombone. 

Likewise, the same piece of piano music can provide suitable accompaniment for a romantic dinner for two or an evening spent alone examining a lifetime of failings and regrets. It can be either sentimental, melancholic, euphoric or seductive depending on the auditor's current state of mind. You can't say that of the banjo or the gong. 

Of course, hunch-shouldered advocates of the violin will probably take issue with my verdict. But what do you expect from malcontents who wallow anemically in the sniveling whine that results from dragging a so-called "bow" across four strings stretched from one end of a dwarf oboe to the other? The violin is nicknamed the fiddle and reputedly played by the Devil for a good reason. 

The Octopus In The Room

I often see stickers plastered around town claiming that 'Science Is Real.' They appear on lampposts and traffic light poles alongside other stickers promoting local rock bands, advertisements for moving companies, and cartoon meme images of Big Brothers commanding the passerby to Obey in block letters.

Science Is Real? Until relatively recently scientists believed the world was contained within an invisible substance called the Aether. But it turns out the Aether isn't real. On a personal note, scientists told me a horse pill called Niaspan was good for my heart condition, then decided it wasn't after I'd been swallowing the damn things every day for six years.

Follow The Money, was a streetwise sticker you'd occasionally come across not so long ago. Not that I'm suggesting there's any insidious connection between cold hard cash and results from The Lab, of course. But dollar bills do look larger under a microscope, of that there can be no doubt.

A Fact, a Shibboleth, and an Agenda walk into a bar. They order three Flirtinis poured in the same highball glass with a slice of lemon and a cherry and the bartender says "Get real."

I believe man landed on the moon and that the Earth is roundish, but I also believe it's possible that octopuses came from outer space on the back of a meteorite. Mainstream science considers that last belief to be pseudoscience, the village idiot of hypotheses. Yet those self-same sanctimonious scientific sneerers waffle on about some equally unproven fudged concept called 'Dark Matter' like it's an incontrovertible truth.

Science Is Sometimes, sure, I decide, pondering the sticker while waiting to cross the road. It's about as real as the State Law that traffic should stop for pedestrians when the Walk sign is flashing. In other words, it may be real in theory but not always in practice.

Do You Hear What I Hear? Do You Pay What I Pay?

'Do they know it's Christmas?' an ensemble of preening and screeching entertainers from Britain called Band-Aid once inquired of listeners to their festive-themed, fund-raising sing-a-long. 

To which I would reply, also failing to hit the high notes: "By simply checking the fluctuating prices of plane flights and noting those days when prices quadruple, they would be left in absolutely no doubt when Christmas was."

A brief airborne puddle jump during the Christmas period costs about the same as an overnight long-haul schlep at any other time of year. Flying to Baltimore from Boston in coach suddenly costs the same as flying first-class from Boston to Brisbane at any other time of year.

A two-hour plane trip should not be a red-eye flight, but it is at Christmas when your eyes become bloodshot from vigorously rubbing them in disbelief at the astronomical sum printed on your credit card receipt. 

Borrowing a dubious leaf from the Bible, it would not surprise me if the airline lobbyists persuaded the government to enact a modern-day Census of Quirinius, requiring all citizens to be registered in the place of their birth by the end of December, thus entailing a mass purchase of plane tickets at hugely inflated Christmas prices, as it's difficult for a guy and his pregnant wife to get around on a donkey these days. 

So, for me, it's not just a question of do "they" know it's Christmas but do "I" even know it's Christmas, it being easy to confuse Tidings of Comfort and Joy with Declarations of Personal Bankruptcy at thirty-five thousand feet in the air.

There may be no snow in Africa this year, as the song goes, but there will certainly be an avalanche of travel bills to be paid.

Holiday Travel Woes

Travel broadens the mind, the old adage claims, which is as true today as it was yesterday. But today this broadening is mostly confined to the traveling mind's definition of food, especially when forced to seek sustenance in the nation's airports and railway stations, not to mention the unappetizing melange of manmade fats and industrial strength carbohydrates on offer aboard the planes and trains that depart from such nutritional wastelands. 

The term "restaurant car" on a modern American train, for example, must be one of the greatest misnomers of all time. There is no description more inaccurate, no appellation more inappropriate, than "restaurant" car. Chalk and cheese appear quite similar by comparison. At an actual restaurant, diners are served a meal that looks and tastes somewhat like real food, even if it isn't. Riders braving the restaurant car of an American train, on the other hand, will be confronted with an unrecognizable squishy substance encased in an equally unidentifiable solid substance that is loosely wrapped in grimy cellophane.

Real restaurants usually provide tables and chairs, also, whereas the restaurant car of a train requires its patrons to evacuate the tiny compartment as soon as their transaction is complete and their order is presented to them. The trick then becomes getting back to their carriage before the squishy stuff encased in solid stuff they've purchased gets cold. This is no mean feat as the barely edible thing in their hands has been reheated at the weakest setting possible, achieving a temperature roughly equivalent to that of a steaming turd. 

But at least passengers can get off a train if necessary. If you're flying on a plane and dying of hunger, however, you're stuck. Although domestic plane flights do boast a slightly more appetizing selection of morsels than trains, their menus still only approximate the starvation level bill of fare available in a medieval city under siege for six years. I'm constantly surprised passengers on a plane don't resort to cannibalism even if they haven't crash-landed in a barren and inaccessible mountain range.

Yes, travel does still broaden the mind. But it does not broaden the mind's appreciation of prepackaged sandwiches, microwavable pizzas, stale potato chips, lukewarm meat product pies, or chocolate flavored hunks of cornstarch. Ultimately, travel will not broaden your waistline as you won't be eating anything during the journey if your mind is still sane enough to overrule your stomach's demands.

Wile E. Coli

According to the news, E. coli is trying to kill us yet again, much like Wile E Coyote repeatedly tries to kill the roadrunner, although the murderous E.Coli conceals itself within the romaine lettuces we consume rather than ensnaring us within some deadly but excessively convoluted contraption.

This stop-press bulletin is of particular concern to me, as romaine lettuce is a standard component of my daily lunch. Indeed, it is the leafy foundation upon which my entire midday meal is built. What I believed to be a bedrock of vitamins and minerals is actually a slimy, writhing mass of homicidal bacteria. 

I well remember foraging and unwisely devouring wild mushrooms in my teens, being told the fungi I had found were probably poisonous, then curling up in an armchair for two days afterward expecting to be explosively sick at any moment. Nothing happened, however. In fact, I felt fine. 

God proverbially looks after fools and drunks, of course, and his assistant Mother Nature apparently casts a watchful eye over toadstool pickers too. But it seems no such divine dispensation exists for commercially farmed lettuce packaged in plastic and sold in supermarkets. Which, perhaps, is as it should be. Trust the homegrown fruits of the Earth and not the genetically modified products of Big Agriculture as far as you can. 

Death by lettuce must be a bewildering way to go. Queasy victims stagger away in the general direction of what they think is the bathroom, only to find themselves suddenly shuffling off this mortal coil instead. Alas, E. Coli is a far more successful bringer of doom than Wile E. Coyote this Thanksgiving.

You Could've Warned Me

The grass is always greener, an old adage cautions, on the other side. But I've never been beguiled by immersively verdant experiences, anyway, so such a pithy apothegm does not register with me. I prefer patchworks of sunlit meadow and brown plowed earth, a little churned reddish clay, sprinklings of sprouting mustard seed, and perhaps a tasteful arrangement of gravel or rocky outcrop. Yet such landscapes are not invoked as a deceptively appealing alternative to my current surroundings. I suppose it's too much of a mouthful.

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?