American Fez

Help Wanted

I need your assistance in compiling my latest best-selling, but really annoying and trite little book of stupid maxims that will be conveniently available in piles next to the cash register at book stores and will probably get in your way when you are trying to buy a proper book. It is to be titled Stephenesque's Little "Yes You Can!" Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, and will contain assertive and supportive personal and spiritual growth entries with a "Yes You Can!" theme, such as:

1. People who live in glass houses CAN throw gravel and small bits of stone!

But that's all I've got so far. So please email more suggestions to Rolling Stone magazine with the subject line "Just Wasting Your Time ... As If You Didn't Waste Enough Of Your Own Already With The Crap You Write About"

The Poet's Complaynt

I have been so busy of late. In fact, my current schedule makes the busiest bee in the hive look like he is relaxing in the middle of an extended laze-about-athon vacation in the Seychelles.
I am working every hour God sends and at times it feels as though God is actually hurling the hours at me from a great height with unerring accuracy and maximum velocity, and that there is no shelter for me from these chronometric missiles, as if God were a particularly restless Zeus who has been inspired to new and greater feats of thunder-bolt throwing excellence by watching the finals of the javelin event during the recent Olympics.
And then on Friday - when I deserve to be knocking back more brandy than an alcoholic brandy addict - I must hop on a flight to Washington DC, where I shall be attending my sister's matrimonial festivities, in which I have an especially busy role to play.
Will I never be set free?

I Give the Desperate Gift

Maybe it was the Winslow Homer individual dinner place mats displayed in the window. Could it have been the "Life in a Medieval Village" themed barbecue chef's apron? Or perhaps it was the six-foot tall inflatable Celtic cross? At any rate, for some reason I found myself lured into the enchanted shopping grotto named something like "The Museum Store". Here you may purchase reproductions of the world's great art treasures manufactured in jigsaw form. Or a plastic replica of that Degas ballerina with the prim expression on her face.
Personally, I was searching for a birthday present for my Auntie Marjorie, and I had already egressed empty-handed and bagless from every other store in Copley Place Mall - so, as you might imagine, I was pretty bloody desperate by that point: what would The Museum Store have to offer someone buying a gift for a lady in her late sixties?
Perhaps Auntie Marjorie might like a ... a statue of Anubis!
No. On second thoughts I don't think so.
You know, Auntie would probably be a sucker for ... deluxe stationary sets decorated with designs inspired by the architectural ideas of the Bauhaus!
Mmmm. Probably not, come to think of it.
C'mon, c'mon, think, there must be something in here she would want ... such as a ... a ... of course! A Leaning Tower of Pisa paperweight! Yes! Yes! That's it! A Leaning Tower of Pisa paperweight! ... oh no, wait a minute. She's already got one. Damn.

Marathon Man

Unfortunately I was not watching the Olympic event during which a "defrocked Irish priest" from the crowd rugby tackled the leading competitor.
"Defrocked" seems like such an antiquated thing to happen to anyone; like a disgraced captain of some Baltic nation's Imperial Guard having the golden epaulettes ceremoniously ripped from his blue tunic by the ruddy-faced colonel with a handlebar moustache, and then swiftly slapped across the face several times with the gloves of the fellow officers in his regiment.
I must say, I always really enjoy stories concerning eccentric clergy; and who can forget the Greatest Of Them All
Michael Palin's film never did him justice, in my opinion (although there are apparently those who believe he never received justice of any kind).
And there was a good piece about him in the Spectator some time back, but since we are in the middle of a Draconian boycott (until the magazine is De-Liddled) I won't dig it out ....

The Iron Curtain

So. Now we can finally and officially declare the Cold War to be well and truly over - once and for all - since today I realized that I have actually forgotten how to spell "Ceaucesceau".

You see, I was going to compose one of my hallmark, long-winded, Boston-themed pieces about how the accordion player in the public gardens reminds me of the gypsies I saw in the Romania of Causcasc... no that's wrong... its' Ceucesc .. no, wait a minute: it must be Ceauces .. no, no, that doesn't look right ... damn! How do you spell the man's name? ... Caeuces? .. no, that's not it...

Funny really, back in the Communist day, I used to describe everything I didn't like as "Ceaucesceauian": the stony-faced man who smelled of cheap cologne at the local bakery used to sell "Ceaucesceauian bagels"; my landlord was a "little Ceaucesceau"; I'd say things like, "that ugly, drab suit you are buying is the kind of thing they are wearing in Ceaucesceau's Romania this year" ; or even, "she kissed like Ceaucesceau's mistress." ... etc.
You get the picture.
Anyway: Hello Freedom! Free at last!... Free at last! Good God almighty, free at last!

Pandemonia

The niblets have gone from Gibbetford until next Abbot's Fattening. Oh Lor! Oh crikey! Master Grinling be hungry and there's no gibbon left in the larder.
A quickening slick of joboba fat coagulates across the mill pond and frightens the ducks. If only we had a tube of hippo paste to quell the uprising! Alas, no. So send my love to the People of the Bow-legged Yak.

Moveable Feast

Pictures from a commute: crisp and bracing, clean morning air mixes with more powerful diesel fumes and those strange hints of sports deoderant that swirl around the train. Body odor takes its seat and and festers to itself. Thank God I'm not sitting over there. The rustle of paper bags and here come gallons of freshly brewed coffee everywhere and the lingering bakery scent of buttered croissant slathered with blackberry jam. Familiar faces here: the blonde-haired girl ahead of me wears a new perfume: a new lover, perhaps? But the guy who reads the Wall Street Journal has missed his connection. Maybe he's sick today. Not bowel cancer again, I hope ...
Oh boy. I've been working thirteen hour days all this week. By the time I get home it's time to go to bed. This is not good for the mind, the soul, or the body.

Ionospheric Thoughts

I have been listening to WGBH, my local NPR radio station in the mornings this week, and the broadcasts reminded me of the inaugural communication efforts of a teenage country boy who has recently built his first shortwave transmitter from a kit supplied by a disreputable mail-order electronics store: alas, I am referring to the content of the broadcasts, not the quality of the actual signal.
Most of the human interest stories are just plain boring, and apparently aimed at an audience of third-grade understanding of the world, although the pieces are delivered as if they are important and profound insights into weighty topics, no matter how inane or banal the theme usually is.
This morning some professor from Texas was wimpering about how we can learn from the ancient Greek attitude to war. It was sub-high school level, blatantly obvious, plain as the nose on your face stuff - people get hurt in war - the aforementioned teenage country boy could have put it together.
Why do people send money to NPR stations? For heaven's sake, buy a satellite radio instead.

The Human Body

The phrase "uncomfortable in his own skin" has always given me the shivers: an unwanted mental image of some red-faced, overweight fidgeter tightly zipped into an itchy, prickly, bright purple polyester and spandex blend jump-suit that is three sizes too small for him.
But then there are also those fabulous ladies of myth with the silken complexions, those fabled smooth, peachy satin cheeks that shimmer in the moonlight.
However, most of us, of course, are just plain cotton.
Unfortunately, I myself am so busy and rushed off my feet at the moment that my skin is, well, perhaps "stone-washed denim" might be an appropriate term for it.
And so I apologise if this site has not been updated as often as it usually is. As soon as I can drag my body out of the "warm rinse cycle" of the malfunctioning coin-op laundromat that it finds itself in at the moment, all will be neatly folded again.
Meanwhile, expect spotty postings and tough stains for the next couple of days.

Economies of Scale

How well I recall in rosy-hued, fond nostalgic reverie, the beatific enchantment of my first renumerated occupation: for within an expensive, plush, and exclusive Grand Hotel perched 'pon a chalky coastal cliff did I pass my professional juvenalia, purveying to hotel guests a fine collection of golden croissants, gourmet coffee drinks, Belgian chocolate, imported cigarettes, and crisply folded newspapers printed in the furthest corners of the globe, all sold by me clad in white linen shirt, black waistcoat and silk bowtie from my charming little kiosk just inside the marbled lobby entrance.
So, in short, a typical summer job. But here I learnt the dark mysteries of the espresso machine, which tobacco was Turkish and which Virginian, which Italian soccer team was best, and how to microwave stale pastries so they appeared to be freshly baked.
Actually, I did not have very many taks to perform. Few hotel guests ever visited the kiosk since they generally ordered whatever they wanted from room service. Consequently I spent most of the mornings drinking so much of the coffee I had brewed that I often thought my heart would explode; then, with shaking arms, I would try and concentrate on the London Times while stuffing my face with most of the croissants (especially the apple-filled variety). When I clocked off work I would line my pockets with packets of Dunhills and Gitanes and head for the quayside bars where I made instant friends, courtesy of my smoking largesse. And this silly job also provided me with enough money to go out every night, afford to have multiple girlfriends, and purchase whatever trinket or bauble caught my eye on my days off without having to check the contents of my wallet first: I simply knew the money was there and that I could spend it without concern. Oh happy, glorious days of yore!
But now, sitting here in my austere gray-black office, sifting through all my endless responsibilities, worrying if I can pay all these relentless bills, I ask myself where all the good times have disappeared to. Have the day-to-day logistics and circumstances of living my life really changed that much over the ensuing years that, although I make much more money, I have much, much less to throw around?

Demos Kratia

If the 2004 Presidential Race may be likened to the choice between two nasty looking dolls unceremoniously tossed into the "prices slashed, everything must go" section of your local discount toy shop - and I'm pretty sure it can - then the decision is between a Curious George whose stitching is coming apart, and a Little Johnny Fartpants that is stained with some mysterious gooey substance.
Personally, I thought we were supposed to be electing a National leader - not some shoddily constructed wooden spinning top with a bit chipped off so that it doesn't work properly.
I seem to be mistaken. My fault, I am sure.

Whey of the Dagon

I shall be gone most of today and tomorrow, being annointed with iols and powders in preparation for my inauguaration as High Chief Hierophant of the Hula People, so new psychic messages from The Dead and Hierophantine edicts may not appear here until Sunday.
In the mean time, I leave with this thought: Why did the wizened Alchemists of yore always use "base" metals when trying to conjure golden nuggets with their Renascence bunsun burners? Perhaps they would have met with greater success by using more refined metal, such as that used in the manufacture of individual toaster ovens of the kind available from the local Target store.

The Music You Are Listening To, Timothy, Is German Music ..

I own five recordings of Richard Strauss' I-voss-only-following-orders-lieder, usually known as the Four Last Songs by those music lovers who don't speak German.
Two of them are sung by former Nazi Party member and "belle of the bierkeller", the ravishingly beautiful General Elizabeth Schwarzkopf (and she has a nice voice too).
I recently bought a second version of an Elizabeth "I voss a very jung frau at ze time, and Hitler voss very charismatic" Schwarzkopf Four Last Songs recording I already have because this newer CD was packaged with a free DVD of Schwarzkopf singing the finale of act one of Der Rosenkavalier, filmed at some point during the 1960s for the benefit of BBC viewers of the time.

Anyway, the reason I am writing this is to boast about my record collection because I can't think of anything else to write. It's been a bad week for blogs, this week has.

Anti-Pedant Note: I am joking about the Strauss/Schwarzkopf Nazi connection, although they should both feel slightly ashamed.

What Might Have Been

Simulacrum: during my first year at college I would have decided that the professors were really just a gaggle of ostentatious popinjays, ludicrous to behold and intellectually beneath contempt. Few of them would have been able to conduct a reasonable conversation in English, and generally they would have been content to lecture in some pompous sounding, wordy gibberish of their own devising.
Of course, the Sorbonne may be very different now. But I doubt it.
Ah yes, Paris in the middle eighties: “Excuse me, are you a mime? …No? …Oh I see, you are merely dressed like one ….and you’ve done your face up too. I see. So those are actually your normal clothes, are they? Takes all sorts, doesn’t it. Yes. Thank you. Yes. Merci. That’s right. Goodbye now. Yes. Thank you. Bon soir. Thank you. Yes. Goodbye.”
I would have majored in Andre Malraux Studies – at least that’s what it would have seemed like to me, I would never have been entirely quite sure what was going on – the French equivalent of Political Science with a minor in Sociology.
La Condition Humaine: “bloody bored!”- that would have been my big joke. So I would have left and gone to Geneva for eight months.
Out of the cheese platter, into the fondue, you might say. That’s what might have been, according to Blanchot at any rate.

The Sign of Four

No doubt Thomas Stearns would accuse me of profane thinking, but surely someone should establish a quality touring company to provide interested parties with guided excursions around those locations named in Eliot's Four Quartets:

"So. Got any trips planned for vacations this year, Mr Apollinax?"
"Sure thing, Archbishop, me and the wife are visiting Burnt Norton in September."
"That's sounds great, Mr. Apollinax. But hey, didn't you go to Little Gidding last year?"
"That's right, Archbishop, we sure did."
"So you're doing the tour out of order, Mr Apollinax."
"Yeah, that's right, Archbishop. Doris likes to mix it up a little on vacation."
"Oh absolutely, Mr Apollinax. My sister too: Ethel has always said the Quartets make more philosophical sense if East Coker is read before the Dry Salvages."
"Women, eh Archbishop! Haha"
"You said it, Mr Apollinax! Haha. But listen, hey, you have a great time y'hear."
"Well, we're sure hoping that 'all manner of things shall be well' as they say. Haha."
"Haha. But you might want to do something about that laugh Mr Apollinax beofre you go, sounds a little like an irresponsible foetus ... not very Four Quartet-ish."

Naturally such a sightseeing trip would include a packed lunch, a specially printed edition of the poems, a noted thespian who would accompany the tour and read extracts aloud at the appropriate moments, and, of course, a souvenir Eliot "bobblehead".
Maybe, in the area above the windshield where the destination of the tour bus is normally declared in illuminated letters, the phrase "in our beginning is our end" could be proclaimed instead.

Paneros

"Forget your years; so shall you forget your cares. Would you be young? Then live with the young, and flee the old with their aches and pains, fretfulness and valetudinarian makeshifts. Their minds are saturated with memories whereof they distil a doting, saccharine philosophy; nor shall you fail to detect in those exhortations a notable does of envy, the envy of those who would, but cannot. The lore of the aged is a bundle of dessicated nay-sayings; they are anaphrodisiacs; children upside down."

Norman Douglas, from Paneros

"Poetic" Nonsense

Unguents of Eventide

Hoary old Phoebus, doth thou stir the soup of youth within thy Alpine grot'
And tend to gardens ripe with Hellenic compost green and palsied daffodil
Yea behold! Exeunt the howling 'pards of summer with fevered, bow-legged trot
As knackered Chronos proclaims the cucumberie triumph of Priapus's will.
For Percy Bysshe tip-toes westward with his companion Lust, the leering sot.
"Ho nonny nonny ho!" cries yon curvaceous nymph from far Phoenician shore,
"Methinks the merry chocolatier is come a-slatherin' from ruby nip' to speckled bot'"
And the shackled unicorn twixt legs of supple power shalt whinney there once more.
So old Phoebus, answer why stir ye the soup of youth within thy Alpine grot'?

Note on the text:
Yeah. I'm not really too sure about this one, either.

The Good Word

Yesterday a spruce young man who bore the broadest grin in show business accosted me just as I wearily quit the grim interior of a subway station.
“Have you heard the news? He beamed sincerely.
“No, what?” I replied, taken slightly by surprise.
“Jesus Christ.” The spruce young man told me, nodding excitedly.
At first I thought he was expressing extreme amazement that I had not heard “the news”, but then it quickly dawned on me that – of course, a Born Again! – Jesus was the news to which he was referring.
Now I am quite willing to accept that the word of the Lord is important information – but news? With the most pious will in the world there is no chance it can be called news.
I mean, for Heaven’s sake, “Paul’s Sound Byte to the Ephesians” anyone?
Or how about “Late Breaking Psalms”? Or “Weekend Roundup with Leviticus"?

Of course we could go the whole hog here … imagine a TV monitor cut into a stone tablet:

Visual: A shadow marking 10pm falls across a spinning, multi-colored sundial accompanied by the fast-paced music.

Voice: Live from Studio 5 - the Biblical News at Ten!

SFX: Dramatic music

Anchorman: Tonight: what is actually in the Ten Commandments? We’ll have the whole story later.

SFX: Dramatic chord

Anchorwoman: A man claiming to be a Messiah is crucified and Pontius Pilate says he washes his hands of the whole affair…

SFX: Dramatic chord

Weatherman: …Commuters in the East may need to plan for a plague of frogs and massive floods early tomorrow morning which could cause havoc on the roads.

SFX: Dramatic chord

Sportscaster: …And I’ll be looking forward to Saturday’s match between David and Goliath.

SFX, Big swoosh of music.

Anchorman: There will be all that and more on tonight’s Biblical News at Ten!

Anchorwoman: Thanks Jesophat. But first, the creation of Heaven and Earth. It started with a word ….

Jack O'Lantern

The Angel of the Mons? Unidentified Flying Objects? Will O' the Wisp? The Woman in White?
Pah! These spine-chilling mysterious transluscent phantoms cannot hold a candle to the strange and eerie lights that appear in the Boston sky!
For at certain crossroads and junctions of the streets, the fiery word "Walk" appears emblazoned amongst the clouds, and so this blithe command cruelly tempts the unwary traveler to proceed in such a fashion across the treacherous highways of old Boston town. But, alas, this ghostly signal light never remains illuminated long enough for the unlucky pedestrian who encounters it to cross the street safely in the manner prescribed, and before his journey across is even halfway completed it is extinguished, replaced, as if by magic, with the ominous and equally fiery edict "Don't Walk".
And so many a doomed wayfarer has met his untimely death amid the ensuing and relentless traffic.

Perhaps Arthur C Clarke can explain these weird and disturbing events?

Product of India

At the Boston Public Library you can enjoy high tea in a lovely room with old world charm and white linen tablecloths. A silvery pot of delicious tea, including delicate, bookish sandwiches and a tray of guilty-looking cakes for only $19.95.
Then you can order a coffee to go and drink it in the library's Italianate courtyard while dreamily gazing at pretty much the only public fountain in Boston that actually works.
You could also borrow a few novels, too, if you so desire.
Too bad the weather is so wretchedly muggy. Indian weather for your Indian tea! Still, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

In The Cellar

As I get older, one of my great pleasures is becoming an experience increasing hard to come by - stop sniggering at the back! - I am talking about drinking vintages that are older than me. It is always interesting to think that you are introducing to your innards a liquid that has been on Earth longer than you have. Last night it was the forty year old port. It is all that is left to me now, since anything older is cost prohibitive in these ancient days.

The Drama

I am currently writing a stage play in the style of Harold Pinter's early work, such as The Birthday Party and The Room. My effort is tentatively called "The Pause".
Anyway, here is what I have written so far:

The Pause

Act One. Scene One.

The stage is bare except for Barton sitting on a chair. He is a man in his thirties who has seen better days. Down stage is an overstuffed couch on which is slumped the sleeping form of an elderly woman. There is also a drinks cabinet. Griper, a younger man, enters from the left.

Griper: What's going on here?

(pause)

Griper: Who's the fat tart on the couch stinking the place out?

(Barton pushes his chair back, rises slowly but steadily to his feet)

Barton: Her Grace, the Dowager Duchess of Grimsby.

(pause)

Griper: I've been around the bins again. Found a stuffed marsupial in one of the drainage tanks.

(pause)

Griper (aggressively): I said I found a stuffed marsupial. What do you think about that?

Duchess: Ronald? ... Ron? Is that you Ron?

(Barton pours himself a drink)

Barton: I had a tour of Grimbsy Castle on open day. Had a good look round. Very nice. Got my shillings worth. Must have been the winter of '57. No. Tell a lie. It was the Spring of 1952. I remember there was this old woman got sick in the Whispering Gallery. Did I tell you I found a marsupial round by the bins? The sheer size of the thing was astounding.

Duchess: Ron. Give us a cuddle, Ron.

(pause)

Barton: Is it still raining outside?

Griper: I don't remember you, though. Who are you?

Barton: It's me, Petey ... you remember me: Barton. I played Antonio to your Marcuccio on the pier. Barton. Gool old Barton you called me. The best Antonio you'd ever seen ... Petey?

(pause)

Barton: (desolate) ... Petey?

Griper: This marsupial. It was just a rotting corpse. But I could tell it was a marsupial. Probably came over from Australia on one of those pleasure cruises they run from Sydney to Liverpool via Tahiti and the Straits of Magellen. You know the route. The old route. It's dead now, though, they just slung the corpse out by the bins.

Barton: I'll get the tea, shall I, Petey? Two lumps was it?

(an author suddenly appears stage right)

Author: Harold Pinter became famous writing stuff like this. Amazing isn't it.

(Curtain)

The Stephenesque Chord

Of course, as everybody knows, the world's music critics have yet to produce the definitive account of Richard Wagner's debt to Gilbert and Sullivan.
Maximillian Seventiate - the esteemed editor of Phonograph Contra Compact Disc and acclaimed Wagner scholar - told me that such an enormous and important work on this fascinating subject would take about forty years to complete, and that would be just the first volume, covering only the early operas!
Most people know that the Mikado song "Here's a how-de-do!" had a major influence on the theme of Tristan und Isolde, forcing Wagner to rethink his entire dramatic strategy, but what of the tonal heritage that begins with HMS Pinafore and leads to The Flying Dutchman?
Can it be pure co-incidence that the "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla" from Das Rheingold so insistantly echoes Iolanthe's parade of peers into the House of Lords?
And what of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg's direct quotations from The Gondoliers?

So come on Alex Ross, Terry Teachout, and others: isn't it about time you got cracking on this?

Note to pedants: yes, I know. It must be really dreadful living with such literal minds.

The Drop

This afternoon I found myself in the unusual position - literally - of being measured for a new suit of clothes.
Odd to think that the next person to approach my body with a tape measure will be probably be an undertaker (brilliantly called an "impresario" in Italy): "and what size of pine overcoat does sir take?"
Anyway - shockingly - it seems that my neck has increased by half an inch since last time I was fitted up. This means that I having buying shirts with too small collars for the past God-knows-how-long. No wonder I had Eastern-style curly collar problems recently (sorry, can't find the link to that post).
Fortunately, however, I can still lay claim to a thirty inch waist: eat yer hearts out, girls, bet you can't fit into my pants! ... and "you're very broad shouldered" the tailor said, with a slight hint of lisp. Still, at least he did not - thank Heaven! - exhale hot breath on to the metal end of his tape measure before application to my inner leg. That might have been too much awfulness for one afternoon.
Meanwhile, in cloudy New Mexico, the cloudless Tonya challenges all comers for the title of "John Constable of the Digital Age."

On the Isle of Capri

As threatened earlier, I am herewith providing a rather brief - yet also characteristically discursive - account of the sundry impressions left upon me by my recent persusal of Norman Douglas' books and novels: as the old Caprisian pederast himself wrote, "There is in us a lyric germ or nucleus which deserves respect; it bids a man to ponder or create; and in this dim corner of himself he can take refuge and find consolations which the society of his fellow creatures does not provide."
Indeed, readers of certain New York based cultural journals -and especially the staff of such periodicals - might be interested to know that Douglas authored a small erotic treatise called Paneros: Some words on aphrodisiacs and the like, although I was unfortunately unable to find a copy of this unusually themed piece of literature, and therefore can neither vouch for its instructive qualities nor readability.
And of Douglas himself, suffice it to say that of all people - although somehow appropriately - Brian Howard, the legendary failure, was unable to complete his biography of the great man, despite traipsing around in the Douglas' footsteps all over southern Italy.
Anyway, you are probably wondering about the books. Well, if you enjoy sumptuously written and airbrushed prose that thinly disguises louche living and rackety goings-on in Capri (called Nepenthe here), then South Wind is the book for you.
As for the accounts of his travels, reading this books is like being an extremely overweight German tourist desperately trying to clamber over rocks and wade through rushing rivers as your incessantly gossiping and spritely guide disappears into the distance, leaving you stranded on some anonymous island amidst savages and strange beasts, only for him to suddenly re-appear again bearing a flask of finest brandy and a platter of the juiciest fruits. Highly recommended are the famous trio of Siren Land, Fountains in the Sand, and Old Calabria.
Not really worth bothering with are his autobiographical works, Late Harvest is the one I struggled with.

The Centurion

"... and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it."

But yesterday I say unto the mailman, Deliver, but he does not delivereth; in fact he loseth it and not know what hath becometh of it.
So I say to my client, It is lost; and my client replieth, It shalt cost thee.
Faith was a much easier concept to grasp back in the days of decimation.

Vestiges of Childhood

Even now, in my thirties, I still expect something to happen whenever I look out of a window.
As though the previously still and silent world beyond the panes of glass should suddenly erupt into spontaneous activity for my own benefit, like a slumbering marionette suddenly jerked to life by the twitch of a curtain.
But, of course, there is nothing, nothing but the humdrum parade of the everyday.
No lightning flash and burst of thunder followed by remorseless arrows of teeming rain.
No protean, de Chirico shadows slip-slide and swiftly re-align themselves as if their movements were determined by a silent and unseen mechanism.
No faceless, moonlit figures scurrying across the road when disturbed by the fall of light from my window.
Not even an ungainly, grinning dinosaur demolishing my neighbor’s house.

A Touch of Romance

When bad covers happen to good books

Sentences In Need of a Home

A few random sentences from my soon to be unfinished mystery novel, Congreve and the Case of the Scarlet Face

1. Wearing his frock coat and nothing else, Congreve exhibited all the dashing Hobbesian glamour of a Benthamite playing parlour games in a townhouse of palladian design built in a Whig constituency.

2. Mme Chylde de Maintenance had once been a Parisian Frondeur, so the Englishman knew she would provide good value for money in the bedroom.

3. "No! No! No! No!" Congreve screamed, "No! No! No! No! Not that! Anything but that!"
"Ha ha ha ha ha!" The old crone cackled in reply. "Ha ha ha ha ha! Come 'ere my lovely!"

4. Poor Penelope, pale as a porcelain pansy, she found no love in the world, except for that profane and lurid type of love that slashed out at her youthful and delicate body from deep within the darkling, saturnine eyes of Mr. Roughentumble, her master and her lover. Only Congreve could save her from a fate worse than being tossed out into the street with the rest of the privy slops.

Note to pedants: Yes I know some of these characters are anachronistic. Have you never heard of Time's Slide Rule?

Entomologification

His species, of which he was the sole specimen, I first recorded during sophomoric, uncharitable days at school, when, with the object of amusing my friends, I named him
“Insect”. This unkind appellation was inspired by the magnifying eyeglasses he wore, his bony frame, and a disconcerting habit of pacing in circles while rubbing his hands together beneath his chin when deep in thought; a performance, reminiscent of the common housefly, that might occur in line for a bus, for instance, or, say, in the middle of busy city square.
And buzzing around in his own little insect world, he seemed to take no notice of other people whatsoever, as though he had landed on an especially grand and scrumptious fillet of zebra turd laid out in some deserted savannah. Even in class he seemed oblivious to the presence of his peers.
He still crosses my horizon from time to time – randomly, on the subway or in a bookstore - still unconsciously adhering very much to his Insect persona, like a fly who from out of nowhere suddenly alights on your picnic roll, and then just as quickly darts off again. Sadly, Insect must have taken a job outside his major because, although he has obviously remained in the town in which he attended college, I never encounter him at industry functions or any of the other myriad types of professional gathering, which is not surprising, I suppose, considering his asocial habits.
The odd thing is, though, the last time I saw him, Insect was standing outside a hip hop record store having completed what appeared to be a substantial amount of shopping therein, and he was conversing with a trio of serious looking rapper-types. He was still dressed in the familiar Insect uniform I recalled from school: brown slacks to short for his legs combined with an old ratty polo shirt buttoned to the neck and tan moccasins with white socks … and yet his ultra fashion victim hip hop interlocutors apparently hung upon Insect’s every word, as if this spindly creature from the most gloomily suburban of polyester cobwebs could teach them a thing or two about urban rhythms.

Dry Salters (Odd Mood)

At close of day, when the dripping fats have cooled and the steam from porking kettles must cease to enjoy the air and curl itself to sleep in shadowed corners of the abbatoir, and when the butcher man sheathes his cleaver after those melancholy re-incarnated meats have been re-slaughtered and re-hung in blue-white mottled shrouds for the morrow, and when the ghosts of chickens and turkeys have taken wing, and when the tides of blood recede beneath their pinky splattered moon and pig's trotters, smoothed like sea glass, rattle and scrape in the undertow against old skinner's scrimshaw fashioned from ancient thigh bones, then from the shallows the Sausage King sizzles to the surface with his sinewy sack o' bits and pieces.

South Wind

So. I have finally finished by re-read and first time read of all he Norman Douglas books I could lay my hands on, which, I think, was most of the major stuff he wrote.
If you are especially unlucky, I might just post my impressions of the Great Hedonist's olive scented oeuvre here.
Meanwhile, our good friend Outer Life has some amusing answers to a web quiz that are well worth reading, even if he does do easy crosswords.
And also, many thanks to the Hatemonger's Quarterly for not hating me. Surely theirs is one of the best blogs on the web, even if it does desperately need a "comments" section.

It's A Rich Man's World

Money. What is money like?
Money, it seems to me, is very much like a bar of soap - "where the Hell has that little sliver that I was saving got to?" - money, like soap, it is slippery and difficult to keep hold of, it erodes away to nothing very quickly, intimidating men drop it on the shower room floor and ask you pick it up. And, of course, it smells funny.
More to the point, if your local NPR station is anything like mine then they want you to donate your money to them. My local station, Boston's WBUR - even offer to give you a Grundig shortwave radio as an enticement if you send them $200: then you can listen to international radio "such as the BBC World Service" they claim.
Alas, this is false advertising, since the BBC World Service no longer broadcasts to North America on shortwave frequencies.
National Public Radio - just another bunch of scumbags who'll say anything to get their hands on the filthy lucre.

The Ennui of Frigga

Sorry. I cannot think of anything of interest to write today.
Except to note that, judging by the contents page, the New Criterion's Special Summer Issue is definitely one for the long winter nights.
I first started reading the New Criterion many years ago when it was available for free if you flew on the shuttle between Logan Airport and the Marine Terminal at LaGuardia. Now I buy the magazine every month and I am also a paid up member of the Friends of the New Criterion: "friends don't let friends read The Spectator."
During my shuttle-taking days I used to spend a great deal of time in New York but, alas, I'm lucky if I get down there once a year anymore, and consequently I can't really take advantage of "Tuesdays at Fitz" or any of the excellent "Friends of the New Criterion" events that are staged in the city throughout the year, which I could have done when I was getting the magazine for free.
Oh well.

The Killer

At those dread moments when evil thoughts creep into my darkling bosom like a 'crepe' of creeps creeping into a Creep Convention at the creepy Creep-o-rama in Creepsville, West Creeper, I often find myself rubbing my hands together and chuckling in a creepy way, thinking: wouldn't it be nice to be known to future generations as "Stephen Baldwin, the regicide."
Pictured in grainy monochrome whilst wearing a floppy black anarchist bomb-throwers hat, matching cloak and fake beard, I could stare out balefully from the illustrated pages of history books, and below this blurry image would be the caption, "Stephen Baldwin, the regicide, in a rare snapshot taken in the offices of banned revolutionary magazine, Narodnik Posture Monthly"
Naturally, even when these evil thoughts creep into my darkling bosom like a ... etc, I still don't really want to kill any royal personage (not many to choose from these days anyway), so I'm kinda hoping it would be a sort of honorary epithet. Maybe I could just kick a king in the shins or something, and that would count as the "cide"?
NB: does anybody actually know what the collective term for a bunch of creeps is? I've written 'a crepe of creeps', which can't be right.

Night of the Conger Eel

Still far too hot for comfortable sleeping at the moment. I was flopping around in my bed like a fish dying on the deck of a deep sea trawler. A bedeviled sailor haunted by an albatross moon, gasping for air, shipwrecked on the treacherous reef formed by my own sheets and pillows. A half-concious and heavily perspiring Jonah, evaporating to death within the murderous heat and deadly humidity of the whale's sweltering belly.
After such night-time struggles, it becomes difficult to properly wake up in the morning, and I often arise from my slumbers looking like the contents of Dr. Caligari's famous cabinet, if I manage to rise at all.
I am seriously thinking of replacing my worthless and feeble alarm clock by hiring one of those Kyoto drummers, and having him hammer away at a massive gong until I am forced to leap out of bed and scramble across the floor to restrain him.

In My Own Image

God?
It's a good question.
The answer, of course, is in the inflection: God; Gohd; Ghod; Gord; Gawd; and even Gud, if you happen to be the Rev. Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland, a man who has no time for "the Pape", whom he thinks should "Rut in Holl".
Frankly, speaking as a devout member of my own congregation - "I'm not only a sheep, I'm also a shepherd" as we are taught in the Stephenesque Church of Reasonableness - I have some pretty radical views about God.
He's a lot like me, I think: reasonable, considerate, decent sense of humour (I hope) .... but, like me, he can also get bored very easily.
Take the Creation of the World, for example. It takes five days to place the first of the land masses in position. It's a big Earth and there's a lot of surface area to cover. However, you really want to get a start on decorating the edges of these land masses because that's the fun part.
So, even though you've only built twenty-five percent of the land masses so far, you start fiddling with the Norwegian coast - "These fjords look really great!" you think to yourself, "I'm really glad I decided to make this world. I'm really getting a great deal of personal satisfaction from it."
But - wouldn't you know it! - by the end of the sixth day all that back-breaking, intricate fjord work has become just a little bit too tiresome, and you've still got the other seventy-five percent of the land mass to make. "Grrrr. I'll never get this finished!"
"Wait! I've got an idea!" you suddenly think. "I'll just fill the rest in with water and call it the Seven Seas! Nobody will ever know the difference!".
And then amazingly, Hey Presto, all of the sudden it's the seventh day and you can put your feet up.
At least that's how I think the world came to be like it is, based on the notion that God is a lot like me.

Mixolydian Mode

Don seems that he might know a bit more than most about how to re-string a rebec and belt out a galliard, and here be a most excellent font of divers musickes-a-plenty, as they used to say back in the old days - - although Don also might have spent a little more time dallying at the "Court of the Crimson King" than some people might consider absolutely necessary!

Archeology of Lunch

After much digging over the course of several days hard labor, the coolies we had hired finally reached the Plasticozic level, unearthing many signs of a Plastic Age settlement upon the site as they sweated in the hot American sun.
"Careful now!" I yelled through my bullhorn. "Put those shovels down. This is now a job for delicate trowel and brush work by trained archeologists like myself."
Many painstaking hours spent scraping in the historic dirt long into the night produced only several shards of early tupperware and a pair of men's flip flops. But then, as midnight approached, I pulled an amazing discovery from the relunctant ground.
"Look, Daphne!" I gasped, cradling a curiously decorated child's plastic lunchbox in my arms.
"What is it, Carter?" she replied. "What can you see?"
"Wonderful things." I told her, pointing to the pictogram of a strange web-slinging creature and the bizarre hieroglyphics that surrounded him.
"What do they mean?" Daphne asked, astonished.
"Spiderman." I told her, deciphering the strange letters. "You see, my thesis was right all along. The Plasticozic peoples were actually stupid enough to believe that such dumb movies were good."

A Game of Marbles

Those Apes of God over at the Social Affair Salon have finally been able to tear themselves away from the Cave of the Golden Calf long enough to continue adding posts to their admirable blog.
Currently they are discussing the Greek whine concerning ownership of the "Elgin Marbles", those stone adornments that previously adorned the Parthenon and today reside in the British Museum: "acquired by Lord Elgin, a peer of Scottish descent, in the early nineteenth century at a time when Greece was still an obscure province of the far flung Turkish Ottoman Empire and the indigent and uncultured citizens of Athens were using marble statues as doorposts or as raw material for cement. The British Museum view is that they were acquired legally and that Elgin rescued them from the neglect and rapacity of a Balkan nation having no real links with the original Athenians."
Well said, Apes of God.
Personally, whenever I examine historical artifacts in an American museum, the melancholy of their displacement always entices me to desire to visit the land of their origin: good for tourism and all that, you might say.
So take a tip from me, Greek government, you've lost your marbles and it's not a bad idea to keep it that way. You're a mad country: mad, bad, and dangerous to drink the water in; and we like you that way.

Journey To Abysmello

The Abysmello Pass. This is the route the invading Ottoman Turks took, scattering their remarkable onion domes atop each blockaded castillo, most already betraying influence of the Less-is-Moorish architectural style common to the surrounding countryside. And here, in the ruined keep of Castell de Ludicrousi, built in 1373 for the Greco-Glaswegian laird, el Imposto de Savoy, we can still see the remains of a well-thumbed guidebook to the area dating back to the 1960s, possibly authenticated by experts as a genuine
"Frommers", the most valuable and worthless of its kind.
But this land is a peaceful land now. An arcadia of grape vine, olive tree, and poisonous insect. In the distance, paella encrusted hand cupped to his ear, the traveler can hear the insistant sound of tinkling cowbells as the tiny hunchbacked Abysmelloan children drive their stinking herds of Dwarf Yak to the local market.
Here they will be sold to either the highest bidder or Norman Douglas. Their Dwarf Yaks, meanwhile, will be unceremoniously slaughtered in the traditional manner, since they are even more worthless than a Frommers guidebook.
And so, after getting sick in a ditch from sampling the disgustingly foul Abysmello wine, with our pockets stuffed with cheap Turkish Delight sprinkled with way too much sugary powder, our shoes uncomfortably full of nasty hot sand, and our pants smeared with Dwark Yak dung (how did that happen?), we finally bid adieu to the Abysmello Pass, wondering why we ever came here in the first place.

"Horseman, Pass By"

Not many people know that in early editions of the Bible there was actually a fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse riding alongside War, Death, Pestilence, and Famine.
He was known as Miserable Hot Muggy Weather and medieval artists depicted him as a shirtless, hairy and sweaty man, clad only in a pair of nasty plastic flip-flops and those ludicrous parachute pants that cut off just below the knee. Miserable Hot Muggy Weather also carried an enormous boom box on his shoulder that played nothing but rap music, and his horse sported rollerblade wheels instead of hooves.
However, by the late thirteenth-century this Fifth Horseman had been erased from the scriptures because even the self-flagellating medieval churchmen thought that the idea of Miserable Hot Muggy weather was far too horrifying for contemplation.

People In Nee

And speaking of diversity of readership, we move - as most of our Scandinavean friends did back in the single digit centuries - from Wotan to Jesus with a nod to Nee People.
A blog in nee is a blog indeed! You might say.

Great Tank Battles of the Century

Strolling along Joy Street, hands lounging in pockets and head full of tales of medieval Manfred and his deeds, these August reveries are suddenly cut short by the sight of what appears to be either a Soviet T-34 or German Panzer rumbling across the cobblestones towards me. I feel like one of those misadventurous Victorian time-travellers who, absently-mindedly turning the wrong knob and twisting the wrong crank, instead of materializing beside some lazy Old Calabrian fountain, disturbingly find themselves dangerously exposed on the Russian Front in the thick of the action during the summer offensive circa 1942.
The sun beats down without mercy. I mop by sweating brow with fear as the tank draws closer. There is no escape.
Fortunately, just as I make my peace with God and prepare to be crushed by the thing's creaking caterpillar tracks into the unforgiving Steppe, I manage to pull myself together and leap aside, breathing a sigh of relief.
And would you believe it? The object of my consternation is merely a modern baby carriage and not the enormous armor-plated beast of war it looks like.
All the same, I could swear I heard a turret swivel as the SUV pram passed by

Death Metal Rocks

As an equal opportunity "weblog" I welcome readers from all shades of the cultural spectrum to Stephenesque; and so, being mindful of my diversity rating, I was especially glad to discover that what appears to be a Scandinavean Death Metal Appreciation Internet Forum had been linking this humble post of mine: a little story about a little whore called Miss Kerry Edwards.
Alas, since I am not a member of the aforementioned SDMAS, I was unable to access what it was the Acolytes of Woden Rock - or Wotan Rock - or is it Loki and Fenris Bop Live? - liked or disliked about the piece in question.
Anyway, welcome one and welcome all.