American Fez

Junk Mail

For me, it is rather like the fianl eradication of the Black Death plague from medieval Europe, but by God's mercy, wheedled out of Him with some vicious self-scourging, several bouts of high pitched keening and a whole lotta repentance, my subscription to the The New Yorker will thankfully terminate this week.
It only ever seems to be me who criticizes this disgracefully wretched magazine. I suppose proper critics and journalists won't write anything anti because they desperately desire to be published in the pallid rag someday and fear black marks against their name - shirking their duty, I call it, since The New Yorker is so unremittingly dire that in any proper cultural dialogue all the talking would cease while the speakers took turns to spit in its face. Only the cartoonist BEK produces any work of interest from the ruined pages of that weekly decline-in-progress. But, hurrah, as of next week, I will no longer be obligated to use up valuable garbage bag space with the discarded pages that comprise this miserable waste of ink suitable only for stablizing rickety table legs in gloomy dentist's offices in the most backwoods and backwards of suburbs.
So New Yorker, in the name of God: go!

ABCs

So. My critique of the alphabet is going pretty well. I have re-orchestrated the alphabet song up to "C" already (see below), which means that if all remains on schedule I should be done with F by, fittingly, Friday.

Add A Cedilla, If You Are Foreign

C: the letter of the average, the mediocre, the mundane, the humdrum, the okay, the not bad, the run of the mill, the just getting by, the reasonably passable. Looking rather like a discarded, unseasonal Zero cast into the darkest of closets where a bored moth has taken a bite out of it, C is the proverbial "can do better."
In Hebrew C is called Caph, which means the "hollow of the hand" (presumably an empty hand, which is all we can expect from the C outlined above). And, of course, it is the ancient Greek's Gamma and the Roman numeral signifying one hundred, as in: "Disney's CI Dalmations - Now Playing At Your Local Bread and Circus".
The character of Baldrick in the BBC's Blackadder defines C as "green wobbly thing that mermaids live in", which is pretty unbeatable so I'll leave it there.

Movie Database

Gwendolyn Lotzovayliner first appearance on the silver screen was as one of the ravished maidens in Hiram G. Crapmakker’s 1922 weeper Getting The Bird. Later the same year she was cast as one of the starving usherettes in the same director’s Empty Cinema, and was given further roles in such long ignored non-classics as Out of Focus (1926), Worthless Boys vehicle Nickelodeon Numbskulls (also 1926), and the epic Sound Ruined My Career (1927).
But it was not until 1928’s The Flatulent Ones, directed by Douglas Jodhpur, that Gwendolyn really began to make her mark on Hollywood. Playing the tortured girlfriend of French farting sensation Le Petomane, Gwendolyn brought a sense of real emotional strain to the screen as she stirred vat after vat of boiling baked beans on the cramped Puniversal back lot.
After not receiving an academy award nomination for her performance as Lil’ Lil’s nurse, Lilly, in 1930’s Lil’ Lil is Ill, Gwendolyn finally quit the movies in order to concentrate on her first love: being forgotten about forever.
So you might wonder why Waystovmonee Home Entertainment have released this seven-disc DVD retrospective of her most boring films?
It’s a good bloody question.

Today's State of Mind

Inspiration, a farting muse trapped in an hourglass drifting in an waveless ocean of anti-matter, observes shivering and naked Thought collecting driftwood on the ever receding, shingled shore while Perception sells rickety deckchairs and flavorless ice cream from a rusting, corrugated shack to a shuffling, circling procession of anonymous, pre-meltdown waxwork figures that has no beginning and no end.
The beautiful, bronzed limbed Talent has harnessed the swallows and flown south until she and her favors are conjured back by the frantic beckoning of Blank Papers.

Observations While At The Mall

If Hogarth or Gillray were to caricature figures from our modern world, I am sure the sketchbooks of those master’s would be crowded with studies of the ‘Gay Loser’ and his tawdry, shrieking entourage.
For the Gay Loser lacks the feline grace and charm of those other, more sophisticated individuals who share his sexual inclinations, and what he lacks in urbanity and elegance, he makes up for in sour-faced, bitchy obnoxiousness.
The Gay Loser himself is generally plump, bald, and bespectacled, and his fag hag is fatter than the general run of female companions who attach themselves to the more tasteful and physically favored genres of homosexual personality.
The Gay Loser believes that Andy Warhol is a good artist and that Annie Lennox is a diva. He thinks that the drag queens whom he calls “she” are “brave” and “so wonderful”, although he doesn’t actually know any of them personally.
For some reason, the Gay Loser is heavily attracted to Catholic iconography.
The Gay Loser is often spotted wearing a tee shirt manufactured by Hermes, Gucci, or Versace, since a plain white tee shirt is only the garment available from those couturiers that the Gay Loser can afford to buy. In fact, the constantly window-shopping Gay Loser regularly complains about the fact that stores don’t carry things he couldn’t afford to buy anyway.
The Gay Loser studies high priced female fashion magazines for reasons best known to himself.
The Gay Loser will stand in close proximity to me at Neiman Marcus, making unfunny derogatory remarks about the luxury merchandise in an affected effeminate voice to his ‘The Gap’ bag carrying, chubby, braying friends while I am shopping for cufflinks.
The Gay Loser never, never, never ever shuts up about the fact that he is gay.

I apologize if my gay readers find this post homophobic, but it is no less than the truth as you very well know

Non-Linear B

The old Hebrew sign for "house", B is the shelter to where we all must run when our first plan fails, which is why the letter resembles a capital P who has got itself foolishly pregnant and must find lodging since it has been cast out of its family home. B is certainly no stranger to ignominy, since in olden days it was branded on the forehead of blasphemers.
B's Egyptian hieroglyphic equivalent is either a smelly foot or a well-sheared sheep, depending on which foolhardy archeologist with a pharoah's curse hanging over his head you decide to consult. Although it's also possible that Nefertiti and her Nile dwelling cronies knew it simply as a sort of unimaginative box shape. Meanwhile, in later years B.C, a wealthy Roman who marked his Egyptian slave girl "B.d" would be asking 300 denari for her services.
Finally, B is also the chemical symbol for Boron, a word which if slightly mispronounced could very well describe this post.

To Buy Or Not To Buy. That Is The Question

The great, gray-bearded, furrow-browed and balding philosophers whose imposing, majestic statues dominate the marble halls of history were never called upon to solve the most pressing Socratic method-defying logical problems nor explain the more wisdom-of-Solomon confounding dualities faced by persons such as myself in our present day and age, namely: "Do I need a new pair of cufflinks? No. Do I want a new pair of cufflinks? Yes. Are these cufflinks worth that absurd amount of money? No. But can I rationalize spending it? Yes. So should I buy these cufflinks? ...... one can imagine those eminent thinkers twiddling their robes and tugging their beards in the Agora, so befuddled by the question that the voting pebbles are worn away to mere shards and slivers in their hands by constant nervous agitation. Kant's Critique of Pure Cufflink Buying lays unfinished upon his writing table. Neitzche carted off to the lunatic asylum having torn the sleeves from his own shirt and eaten them having failed to provide an answer. They have some nice ones at Neiman Marcus department store. I might return there this evening. I don't know.

A Critique of the Alphabet

We begin, reasonably, with the letter A.

Into the valley of sentences rode the twenty-six letters, urged onwards by the leader of the pack, A, which, as anyone familiar with the meaning of auguries in Greek sacrificial prophesy will tell you, is not an especially good omen: those ancient Athenians believed that you don't want an A is your entrails if all is to be well; alas, there is one in the word, right between the r and i. So, right off the bat, this does not bode well at all!

Never mind, A is also the wigwam of letters. It is the tent from which the other members of the alphabet tribe issue forth on to the plain of words in their torrent of disorganized mumbo-jumbo, preparing for the great pow-wow between the vowels and the consonants.

In Egyptian hieroglyphics A was drawn as an eagle, from which shape the letter takes its current form. But the Phoenicians knew A as the sign of the ox, no doubt drawing the plough that churns the furrows of sense. And if we return to the Greeks, as it seems we always must, Pythogoras would have had something to say about the letter that his friends would have called Alpha, especially the top bit.

And that, pretty much, is A.

Next week: B.

Ghosts of Thanksgiving Past

The Poet Considers The Thanksgiving Guest

Ah, ye weedy herbivore in yonder footballed lounge!
Come, let us sing of roasted birds and saucy cranberry
For thy demand for repast of verdant leaf and raspberry oil
Doth sit heavy with my pilgrim blood and steaming gravy.
Will ye partake not of the shank? The breast or crackling wing?
Behold, bronzed stuffing awaits thy benapkinned pleasure!
And thy tongue can findeth easy purchase in this walnut stuffing.
Yet this will not be, I fear, for being vegan is not fun.
So, sir, thou art the other, other white meat. Begone!

And What's More

Personally, I have never understood why the Native American Indian is so miserable about his lot in the world, especially at Thanksgiving time. I mean, who in their right mind wouldn't swap North Dakota for an annual slap-up turkey dinner with all the trimmings? I know I would. And I would throw most of Arizona into the bargain.
Also, the Red Man can go to the big sales the day after and buy some sturdy leather brogues to replace those flimsy suede mocassins he wears all the time. Shivering Bear truly dwells in the land of opportunity at last and the angry spirits of his forefathers may finally rest in peace in the sacred burial grounds of their ancestors. Hurrah!
Surely this is what Sitting Bull foresaw when he said "The mighty rivers of the great plains shall run with gravy and see those huge mountains over there, they look exactly like roast potatoes, don't they. Please pass the casino .. I mean the cranberry sauce."

Have a happy Thanksgiving, whoever you are, and may your peace pipe be packed with the herbs of plenty.

Frankenstein's Thanksgiving

At this time of year, those of us celebrating Thanksgiving with a large roast turkey dinner begin to suffer sleepless nights, worried sick that we will make a pig's ear out of carving the bird's body. It is always a terrible moment when your loved ones glance mournfully up from the pitiful, shredded strands of ripped meat scattered across their plates, eyes brimming with tears, and fix you with a withering stare of accusatory reproach. And then your trembling, ashamed, guilt-ridden hands spill cranberry sauce all over the brand new linen tablecloth.

However, this year, I believe that I have discovered a solution to this eternal holiday problem. This year I am buying the turkey in frozen components: two individual servings of drumstick; a couple of individual turkey breasts; several pounds of sliced turkey meat; and so on. And then I am going to construct my own E-Z carve bird in the oven by gluing all the pieces together with mushy adhesive stuffing. This will make the bird much, much easier to elegantly and professionally slice and serve since it will just fall apart into those perfect portions of the specific body parts when I pull them apart with my carving knife!

Voila! No mess. No enraged sawing and stabbing with the utensils at the table while all the guests look on with embarrassed smiles. So, for what we are about to receive may we be truly thankful, even if our dinner does look bizarre and deformed.

The Spirit of Sales

I am invited to observe a "sales meeting" this morning. It is rather like attending a seance in one of those gloomy, Edwardian oak-panelled rooms, where, operated by the medium's assistant hidden behind a curtain, various misty apparitions are mechanically conjured for the benefit of a circle of tearful believers who hold hands around a rocking and bucking table. And in the sales meeting, Account Executives also, moaning and breathing heavily, summon their ghostly, disembodied "contacts" and attempt to bring forth messages of good cheer from the Other Side in strange and unearthly voices.

"Lower the lights please."

Rap ... rap .... rap.

"Is anybody there? Is anybody there?"

Rap ... rap .... rap"

"I say, what's going on? This is absurd."

"Silence! The Northwest Regional Rep is going into his trance. The sales spirits will not come if they sense a sceptic among us."

"Ahhhh. Mnnnnn. Aggggggerbnnnnn."

"My God! What is that substance coming out of his mouth?"

"Ectoplasm. It is formed from the spirits of three Martini lunches paid for by expenses."

"Look! The sales rep has made contact with his spirit guide. It is the spirit of Henry Ford, but he wishes us to call him Atahualpa."

"Atahualpa. Do you have a message for anyone in this circle?"

Rap ... rap .....rap

"Yooooou ......
caaaaaaan ......
haaaave ......
anyyyyyyyy ......
coloooooooor ......
aaaaaas ......
looooong .....
aaaaaas .........
it'ssssssssssss ........
purrrrrrrrpleeee....."

"Agggggggggghh!"

And that was pretty much the end of the meeting.

Paint Along With Amedeo

Hello there folks. Amedeo Modigliani here to talk to you about painting and such.
You know, if you're like me, you soon grow weary of drawing enormous breasts and vulvas all over your school books in pencil and want to graduate to doing pretty much the same sort of thing in oils. Well, Uncle Amedeo is here to tell you how to go about doing it in four easy steps (although it may take many more depending on how many glasses of absinthe you have drunk).

Step One: You will need to beg, wheedle, or steal some paints. The only colors you really only need red, black, white, and some sort of gross orangey pigment for the people's skin. That's mainly what I use. You will also need a piece of canvas from somewhere or you can use a bit old old cardboard or something.

Step Two: Now you need to find a subject for your painting. Pretty much any huge breasted old hag off the street will do. Personally, I prefer girls whose faces look like they've been hammered out of a block of wood with a blunt chisel.

Step Three: Tell the woman to take all her clothes off and drape herself across the bed like she's supporting the world's biggest cello between her knees (you may need to shout at her in a really loud voice if you are both drugged out of your minds)

Step Four: Draw a big outline of the woman's body with black the paint, then color it in with the gross orangy pigment. Pay special attention to the breast areas because that's the bit that's really important to making a successful picture. Then make a big black triangle for the vagina, since this is another key area of your art work.

Step Five: Using the red paint, color in the bedroom wall, and then do the bed sheets with the white paint.

Step Six: Voila! That looks great! Just like the ones I do. And for an extra special touch you can glue some shiny candy wrappers on your picture like my friend Gustav Klimt does.

Yehe Haya Haya Yaeee Haya

One of the interesting things about me is that I'm not only a senior clerk at a medium sized company of chartered accountants

- I'm also a shaman

My shaman name is Boring Elk and my accountancy name is Crunching Number. But you can call me Herbert C. Pencilsharpener III

For someone like myself, who is rather modest, shy, and mild-mannered, my shamanism provides an endless and stimulating topic of conversation when I fallinto stride alongside new people at one of the charity fund-raising cancer, hunger, and aids walks I attend. I have also lectured on my ancient and mystical inheritance at the Balsa Wood Craftsman Club annual dinner dances. But shamansim also has its drawbacks, especially if you suffer from chronic asthma attacks as I do.

Also, as a shaman - and I am the only resident shaman in East Twatford - I often find that people ask me to perform icky and unpleasant acts that make wish I were not cursed with these strange and magical powers.

But, hey, whether it's cooking the books or beheading and disembowelling an eagle and then eating its still warm and bloody heart, all things must be find their final resting place in the sacred burial ground. All things must shred.

Drivel Dribble

Do ye reject the National Basketball Association and all its works?

Aye

Did ye observe the All-Stars that do liken themselves unto Gods be humbled at the Olympiad? And ye observe that it was good.

Aye.

Do ye repent of thy inflatable sneakers, thy sweat headband, and thy shirt that doth hang below thy knees and can be likened unto the maternity garments worn by thy brood mare?

Aye.

Oh dear me. I don't know. We missed a good opportunity to deploy the NBA in Iraq back when this whole Mesopotamian war kicked off. After all, it seems to me that the peoples of Iraq have no interest in our democracy, but, judging from the pictures I see of youthful Iraqis on television, they do have a great deal of interest in the styles and manners of our basketball teams (and, interestingly enough, the players selected for our basketball teams players quite often behave like Iraqi insurgents!). So then, let the peoples of Iraq live and be governed by the rules of the NBA and its basketball court. It is what they want.

Blank Inside

Anyone who has searched achingly and desperately for an okay, reasonably decent, non-smutty birthday card that isn't too unacceptable knows that legendary heroic ordeals such as severing the serpent-tressed head of the gorgon Medusa seem like mere quick trips to the local grocery store to purchase a packet of tomatoes by comparison.
I mean, for Heaven's sake, deep beneath the swirling and uncharted waves of the Bermuda Triangle rest countless msteriously vanished ships and the sunken ruins of the lost magical land of Atlantis, and there too, amid the mermaids, talking seahorses, giant squids and strangely marked urns containing ancient secrets, there, half buried in the sea bed, is probably that sales rack featuring the pretty good birthday cards that are actually fairly funny.
And so those of us who must buy printed greetings await our Argonauts.

Stage Door Retailer

I have decided to simplify my Christmas shopping this year by not purchasing any goods promoted by advertisements featuring the Blue Man Group. Since this ludicrously popular theater troupe endorse so many products, boycotting these items will significantly reduce the dizzying array of gift ideas available at department store counters.
Have you ever seen a Blue Man Group performance? I ask you: what sane person would part with a good portion of his paycheck to watch an Asphyxiating Jackson Pollock Impersonator Competition and three Smurfs being sick on the floor at a toilet paper jamboree while a monkey plays the bongos? Yet people do!
Meanwhile, I don’t know about you, but I will absolutely rush out and buy any of the superior quality authorized merchandise for the discriminating consumer that the cast of The Vagina Monologues are recommending as stocking filler this festive season. So ignore the Blue Men and follow the Scarlet Ladies, that's my holiday tip. After all, it’s what the women want that counts.

Day of the Jackal 2

It is around about now that bloggers with literary aspirations such as myself begin composing our latest - alas all to often worthless! - submissions to the poetry editors at cultural magazines across this great land. I am hoping to submit my latest poem to at least four or five journals, but so far I have only be able to complete five lines of it (two of which are exactly the same!). So obviously I need help.
If you have any ideas for more verses please send them to the features editor at Maxim and he will forward them to my log cabin poetry retreat in the woods. All contributions are gratefully received. Thanks in advance. Here is what I have written so far:

The Sewers of Heaven
for John Fitzgerald

Show me what flotsam navigates the sewers of heaven:
Heralded, expelled, born forth with a roaring flush.
Like conceited, once-favored, proud Lucifer ejected.
Slung out by the bouncers of Paradise on his sulphuric tush.
Show me what flotsam navigates the sewers of heaven.

Stephenesque Contra Soames

A Lecture on the Subject of Keats

"And I bet not one of you ignorant sods knows what a Keat is, do ya?" said the Sergeant Major.
Well, actually, as a matter of fact, we do:
A Keat is a small, frail twittering thing with a very short life expectancy. Often the Keat's nest will be usurped by stronger, more arrogant twittering things such as the Lesser Spotted Shelley and the Web-footed Belching Byron. When it gets cold outside, such as late August, the sensitive Keat will be forced to migrate to warmer places like Italy, where, prancing around in effeminate plumage that is too big for him, the Keat will pine away both day and night annoying the more robust local twittering things such as the Large Jawed Garibaldi. Nevertheless, the song of the Keat is still regarded as being among the most daintiest lilts ever to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.
Finally, it is worth noting that when shot, the Keat makes for good eatin'.

Meanwhile, Enoch Soames supplies an alternative biography of this lovesick loser.

Interactive Elephant

This is an interactive blog. YOU are the blogmaster. YOU fill-in the links. YOU receive the comments. YOU are added to (insert link to blog here)'s blogroll. YOU are the subject of a feature about blogs in the Boston Globe. It's easy! Just follow these simple steps and YOU too can be a blogger!

1. The post below is about blogs. Read it carefully.
2. Wherever the word "blog" appears replace it with a link to the blog that YOU think most fits that description!
3. Ready to blog? Great. Here we go!

My Blog

Blogs are rather like elephants: there are rogue blogs; there are blogs with big ears and blogs with small ears; circus blogs and pink blogs; blogs whose ivory tusks are sold for high prices on the black market; blogs that are ridden by Hannibal to the very gates of Rome and blogs on which Indian princes travel beneath silk canopies; and then there is also the fabled blogs graveyard which explorers can never find even though they die trying. But mostly, it seems to me, there are those blogs whose feet are cut off and the severed appendages are used for the storage of umbrellas and walking sticks.

Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: and I could boast a huge collection of toy soldiers, knights, cowboys, and other types of warrior, some metal, some plastic, and all of varying sizes and scales. These I would divide into the good guys who dwelled in the valley (basically my bedroom floor), and the bad guys who came from the world beyond my bedroom window, gathering on the windowsill with the object of invading the valley below. These insurgents were comprised of the Afrika Korps, any soldier that couldn’t stand up properly on its base, anyone that the dog had chewed, and that stupid robot thing my aunt bought me. The defenders of the valley and everything in it were the combined forces of 101st Airborne, Grenadier Guards, US cavalry, some Romans legionnaires, and the army of Warwick the Kingmaker (well, that’s what I called them anyway).
Battles were decided by throwing a small rubber bouncing ball at the assembled ranks. Any target that fell over completely when hit by the ball was vanquished: there is no such thing as a skirmish when you’re a kid, you see, it’s all about aerial bombardment. This is the wisdom of youth.

My Nose: The Cathedral

Viewed via tilted head in a mirror, human nostrils are somewhat evocative of the great, silent vaults of medieval cathedrals; the septum its majestic nave; the bridge of the nose its proud flying buttress. But then, of course, there is also, alas, the medieval congregation: a slimy, shapeless mass; shifty and rough-shod; forever dripping, dripping, dripping into the places it is not wanted, like the wheedling herds of swine whose grunting cries it imitates so perfectly.
Yes, I have caught yet another Gothic cold.

Great Wall

A leathery member of the carp family, pouting, bewildered, and friendless, slides through the dull bubbles and olive colored murky water, settling disconsolately amid the silt dunes that landscape the bottom of his taped-up tank. In an adjacent tank, anchored to the floor by their heavy, weary tails, twelve greenish-brown lobsters huddle together, twenty-four clumsy claws interlaced like the pieces of a living jigsaw: who’s next for the callous, indiscriminate net? Welcome to Chung Wah Kitchen. Rickety wooden tables; scraping chairs; florescent lighting; menus laminated in grubby plastic and pinned to the walls. A poor illustration of a dragon clambers across a calendar spotted with unreadable Chinese characters. The soda machine vibrates and hums like a autistic child. Number twenty-four; Kung Pao beef; spring rolls and Peking ravioli; small vegetable fried rice. To go.

Special Arts Posting

"Why am I being quoted here?"
- Montaigne

"Does anybody know why I am being invoked about all this?"
- Edmund Burke

"Leave me out of this."
- Yukio Mishima

The latest drawings and sketches by New England artist "Little" Tommy Krayola have been garnering a lot of attention recently. Critics have been gathering like hushed cardinals in the presence of the Pope at Krayola's parent's kitchen where his work is available for private view, attached to the refridgerator door by magnets specially designed for this purpose. Although Aimless Scribble in Blue and Green may indeed be "very nice dear", and perhaps Mommy and Daddy can be described as "very clever honey", most discerning viewers will leave 43 Elm Street feeling extremely less than overwhelmed by the lack of talent so prominently on display.
But then typical Krayola pictures such as Doggie (collection of Auntie Sandra) have always been overpraised by his exclusive coterie of obsessed admirers, most of whom are in fact related to the artist himself! Outsiders - those who may hold an alternative opinion of the progidy's worth - are not encouraged to call.
For instance, when I visited Elm Street quite recently and enquired about the Krayola collection I was not admitted to the exhibition: "I'm getting dinner ready." was the artist's mother's pathetic excuse. Can you imagine the uproar if Whistler's famous subject had behaved in a similarly obstructive manner when Oscar Wilde came knocking! But in today's art world where anything goes, the artists must be babied, coddled, spoonfed, and put to bed early.

Ninevahtendo

But when I am not painting mythopoetic genre scenes suitable for framing, I am designing a heavily sanitized version of the popular computer game "Grand Theft Auto" - a version which will be appropriate for Christian families and their friends to play and enjoy.
The action of the game is set in a Biblical-era Temple where numerous unshaven and shifty looking moneychangers are selling their shoddy wares on the sabbath. Players control a karate-chopping and kick-boxing Jesus by means of a joystick panel, and can obtain extra power and energy by curing lepers and raising the dead that they discover while destroying the moneychangers. The object of the game is to clear the temple grounds of moneychangers and then preach a sermon while dodging rocket fire from a series of space ships that suddenly emerge from the sky.
This fashionable, exciting and educative game will be called either "Moneychanging MoFos" or "Temple Avenger". You may pre-order your copy from your local Computer Superstore or place of worship.

The Unpardonable

As the long winter nights draw in, I retire with melancholy, brooding brow to my skylit attic, where, with brush poised twixt canvas and inspiration, I paint the spirit of seasons past in an expansive manner recalling those great French academians of the nineteenth century.
My first picture depicts a naked, shivering and bloodied Satyr being ceremoniously condemned by a jury of grim Centaurs to the black, fiery pit of everlasting despair: it is called "For He Had Exposed His Genitalia To The Faery Queen".
But I am reliably informed that a shorter, snappier title might be economically beneficial when the picture comes on the market, so I am also thinking of naming it "The Unpardonable" - which is a great title, and not one that I am certain I wish to waste on this third rate oil painting.
Do you have a Private Collection, I wonder? If so, I am sure my work would be a valuable addition to your living room, hallway, library, or investment portfolio. And I know for a fact that my picture would look very nice hanging over your fireplace.

I Am Charlotte Simmons' Ex-Boyfriend

No. No. It's too easy. Wolfe whistle and I'm come to you my lad: now that is novel dontcha effing think? Time to ring the M.R Jameses, if you know what I mean. Talk about "The Plot Against America"! Too many books spoil the Roth.
What are we going to do with all those sliced off covers when the paperback slips its disc?

And that concludes this edition of Open Book on BBC Radio Four. The time is five o'clock

Dr. Beadle's Dickensian Advice Column

Dear Dr. Beadle: I am a Distressed Gentlewoman, and last week my immediate family and I, all thirty-four of us, were sprawled on the sacking lain across the floor of the humble slum in which we are forced to subsist as we covered our rickety piano's legs with scraps of embroidery that my eldest daughter had begged from a drapery in Spitalfields. We maybe poor but we like to keep up the appearance of gentility. Anyway, before we could complete our task, my husband William suddenly stood up, and gazing off into the distance he exclaimed "The Reaper!" in a hoarse whisper; then he clapped his hands to his chest as if about to bust out in song, only to sink to knees and then fall face down on the floor. He has lain there these past several days without moving or speaking. His body has gone cold, the flesh is slowly withering from the bone, and his eyes have rolled back into his head. Oh what can the matter be?
- name and address supplied and sold to the highest bidder

Dr. Beadle replies
Dear Distressed Gentlewoman: It would seem that your husband is dead. This is quite normal so do not alarm yourself. I suggest you cover his body with lime and throw it out into the gutter. Don't worry, no-one will notice. Then the normal proceedure for women in your circumstances is to throw themselves on the mercy of the Workhouse. In such an establishment you yourself can die in abject misery at your own convenience. But first you will wish to place all your daughters in domestic service or into a life of prostitution and gin; and your sons, naturally, should be put to work in a blacking factory or stone breaking yard. If you are very lucky, of course, you may know of a cruel and hideous parental guardian who can whip some sense into them first.

Woe Is Everything Always

Entering the so-called Blogosphere is rather like being dragged into an especially blockheaded and humdrum conversation by vacuous, nondescript oafs slouching around a half-empty, stagnant water-cooler that is slowly leaking on to the threadbare gray carpet of a featureless, flourescent-lit, white-walled corridor in some God-forsaken and soulless concrete office building whose steel supports are sinking into the mud of the world's most desolate and derelict industrial park.
You would think that a construction such as the Blogosphere would be different. You would think that original ideas would take root here and sprout into a great forest of creativity. But, alas, you would be very wrong indeed. The contents of the Blogosphere are just the same old streams of thick sewage that spew forth from the drainpipes of all the other worthless types of media, only far more conceited.
And therefore I must apologize for the poor quality of this particular blog: I thought I could do better.

Guest Blogger: Paul Johnson

And Another Thing

I often glumly concede that I am possibly the only human alive who still kindles within his bosom some small fiery regard for the tenets of classical beauty, since the ornamental alabaster birdbath in my garden seems to be the only location where classical beauty may be beheld in these egregious modern days of the portable xylophone, deodorizing insole, and digital “walkie-talkie” system.
Throughout history, many barroom philosophers, dilettantes, and public nuisances such as Solomon, Dante, Goethe, Ruskin, Whistler and Mabel Norman have tried and failed to develop and sustain their contemptible theories of classical beauty, but only Liu Xiao, the thirteenth-century Chinese sage, author, and inventor of the pontoon bridge has ever formulated a truly accurate – and illustrated -description of that most elusive of aesthetic concepts.
I first encountered his work while staying at the late Rabelais Alfresco’s Tuscan farmhouse-cum-palazzo in the summer of 1953 (it was from Rabelais, incidentally, that I purchased the aforementioned ornamental alabaster birdbath for the princely sum of nine million lire including installation). The de Alfresco family jewels included a rare sapphire encrusted first edition of de Boredomme’s immortal work, “Sundrie Hexagrams Dicovered by thee Author in the Countrie of Cathay” (highly recommended bedside reading if you are unwell).
de Boredomme, of course, married Inga Dull in Gothenburg in 1774 - against her parents wishes. It was bad match, as events would prove. Nevertheless, Theresa, one of the great Norwegian foot-fetish femme-fatales of the nineteenth century, would hold a regular salon on Wednesday evenings for the infamous Scandinavian Cobblers Association, an august body of intellectually curious tradesman. It was on such an evening that …(continues on and on in the same vein for pages and pages)

Paul Johnson is a regular contributor to the Specktator

The Acorn-ist

Perhaps you have seen that documentary in which Pablo Picasso slathers his brush across a piece of glass attached to the camera lens? I believe the film is called "The Mystery of Picasso" (although the only Picasso mystery as far as I'm concerned is why his paintings are only worthless in one sense of the word). Well, anyway, I had a similar experience to watching "The Mystery of Picasso" on the subway this morning - and it lasted about as long too! - as I was forced to observe a woman in the seat directly opposite me laboriously slather red lipstick across her mouth, shade her drooping eyelids blue, and scrub rouge into her cheeks.
And it was these puffed-up cheeks that once again reminded me how closely a woman applying cosmetics resembles a squirrel devouring a nut: there is a flurry of intense activity immediately followed by a moment of frozen concentration; a quick glance left; a swift glance right; and then the instanteous resumption of intense activity followed by another moment of frozen concentration; a quick glance left;a swift glance right; and then the instantaneous resumption of intense activity ... and so on and on.

The Thomas Kinkade In Your Mind

Hello. I am the Thomas Kinkade in your mind. I hope you are feeling cozy in your quaint thatched cottage with the mossy stone wall that runs alongside it set amid rolling patchwork hills. Behold the dappled trees and wild flowers in lush, colorful and resplendent bloom!
And yet it is also softly snowing! See how the dainty, glistening flakes tumble down to the pure white carpet in which your pretty cats gambol and prance.
It is magenta twilight. The sun illuminates fluffy clouds drifing peacefully across an azure sky. And the moon shepherds its flock of twinkling stars.
A beautiful golden fire shines forth from the latticed cottage window. Someone is roasting marshmellows. Who could it be? Well if it isn't lucky old you and your handsome family!
Meanwhile, torrents of human blood begins to pool in the locked room upstairs: drip, drip, drip through the creaking attic floorboards, staining the Persian rug in the room below. There has been a horrible murder.
Mad Jack the Hatchet Man lurks in the misty red woodshed with his gleaming cleaver. Your name mumbles across his quivering lips. His grip tightens on the evil weapon as he silently lifts the latch and begins to ...
... No. No wait! What's happening? This is all worng. The Thomas Kinkade in your mind is having one of its funny turns. I'm terribly sorry. This happens from time to time .... Move along please. Nothing to see here. Move along please. Nothing to see here ... yes, madam, it's just a Thomas Kinkade gone bad. I'm sure you'll read all about it in the tomorrow's newspaper. Move along please. Nothing to see here. Just a Thomas Kinkasde gone bad. Move along please ...

We Come to the River

This afternoon I listened to a bloated buffoon, obviously inebriated by the vast quantity of newspeak and jugs of jargon he had recently swallowed, pontificate floridly on the subject of "workflow"; as if work were some sort of mountainous river in the wilderness whose treacherous white water rapids can only be safely navigated by recourse to powerpoint presentations and computer databases provided by trained consultants from specialized departments.
Ah, but you see, I know my own river pretty well already: I've explored and discovered the source; I've already mapped all the tributaries; I've dredged the estuary.
And I tell you this: it's bloody polluted. Just like all the others.

Guest Blogger: The New Yorker Staff

The Talk of the Town

Every Wednesday afternoon, cartoonist Drew Crappe drives the two miles from his Frank Messy designed Long Island home to the post office in Inheritauk. His latest unfunny cartoon is neatly wrapped in brown paper and stamped for immediate dispatch to Pete Sake, the New Yorker's cartoon editor.
"I know my stuff isn't very good." Drew says as his gaze drifts across the blue expanse of Apathy Sound. "But nobody at the magazine cares and Pete is an old buddy of mine."
Drew and Pete were at Harvard together in the fifties. "Even the Lampoon rejected everything we did." Drew says. "So we started our own college weekly called the Cambridge Lampoon. We weren't very creative or original back then. Fifty years later and we've not changed at all!"
"Drew has basically been working with the same idea since high school." Pete Sake tells me as he delegates all his work to an intern. "It wasn't funny then. And it's not funny now. But the readers of the New Yorker will accept any old trash. It's a pretty low-brow publication these days."
He shifts some drawings around on his desk and sighs. "These are pretty good cartoons. But I've never married the sisters of any of the guys who did them. So I can't use them. It's as simple as that. But Drew is family. I put one his cartoons in every week otherwise my wife would kill me."
Back in Inheritauk, Drew Crappe is skimming stones across Apathy Sound. "I guess I ought to be ashamed of myself, eh." he says. "But the New Yorker only costs $3.95, so I'm not that bothered really. You get what you pay for in this world .... and, anyway, even my dreadful, poorly drawn and unfunny cartoons are much, much better than the shouts and Murmurs stuff they print. Now that's truly awful."

- Heimlich Humbugger

Feelin' Really Jacobean

Personal History

Back in the 1590s, me and Bosola used to sneak into Anne Hathaway's cottage and steal six-packs of Coca Choler from the ice-box. It was basically just fizzy yellow bile in a can, but we liked it better than sack. Her weedy, bald husband would often chase us all the way along Rotten Row, but he could never catch us.

Perhaps you remember that old Coca Choler advertising jingle? The one that went:

"I'd like to teach the Elizabethan World View to sing in perfect harmony. With night's black angels and the ghost of Hamlet's father to keep me company."

Then again. Perhaps you don't. It was never really very popular except in Walsingham. And look how things turned out!

Anyway, we'd drink so much Coca Choler that Bosola would get really angry and hyper. And then he'd stalk around Webster's Market stabbing people in their gaiters. And me? Oh I'd just run off to the palace and pull the Duchess of Malfi's hair until she started to cry. Oh yes. Those were grand old days. Things went better with Coca Choler back then.

Guest Blogger: Teedjus O'Pinion

By Teedjus O'Pinion
Special Pundit to the New Boring Times

How long has the US been in Iraq? And still no Baghdad edition of Monopoly!
Think of the hours of fun such a game would provide for single parent families across this great nation of ours: "Go directly to Abu Ghraib. Do pass Go. Do not receive 200 Stolen Kalishnikov Machine Guns."
And imagine all the Houses and Hotels that will need to be built once coalition forces manage to force the insurgent counters from the squares they have landed on.
"You have landed on an ex-residence of Saddam on which I have built three luxury hotels so you owe me eight million dollars."
Community Chest? Now that's what I call democracy!
But what about the electric company? Does anybody own that yet?

Continues on and on and on for pages and pages until someone punches him in the face

The Ghost of Post 101

Yesterday, had you spent a dark and scary night tossing and turning in the crumbling dungeons of this very website, you would have glimpsed through your half-closed eye the pitiful wraith of Post 101, as it briefly flickered in the bloggy gloom before vanishing amid the enshrouding internet mists. In life this doomed and wretched post was called "Five Highly Over Rated Films", and the mournful post itself was haunted by such hideous apparations as "Gosford Park" (shudder) and "Rules of the Game" (shiver).
But apparently Ghost Hunter Typepad has deleted it forever, so no-more shall the miserable shade of that post wander the drafty corridors of Stephenesque, clanking its chains and howling into the electronic void.

Battles of the Civil Union War: Bettysburg.

They were discussing gay marriage and related amendments on the radio again this morning: "Marriage a la Mode", you might think to yourself, if you were a latter day Hogarth (and I sometimes fancy myself in the role, tho' with poignant pen replacing whiplash brush).

Personally, I would march at least five miles in support of a gay couple's right to civil union, but then I would march the five miles back again in support of my right to make fun of the newly weds for being a bunch of sentimental pansies.

That's a reasonably civilized point-of-view in this matter, I think. After all, many of the great men I admire were homosexual: Harold Nicolson and Evelyn Waugh, for instance. And think of the part the Greeks and Romans played in the creation of our wonderful western world: most of those great ancient thinkers, warriors and artists were self-confessed players of the pink lyre, and our culture would be much, much poorer without them.

So, when all is said and done, I think we owe the gays on this one.

Cali: Fear Eats The Soul (or My Experiences In Los Angeles)

Nice Fassbinder reference, eh!

I kept thinking about that joke as I was whisked along extremely wide, straight roads paved in the shadow of desirably residential hills and exceptionally tall palm trees. My hosts took me around an automotive museum at which I grinned like a bored skull being shown the axe that severed its neck.

Then they ushered me to the "Farmer's Market", a reformed relic of the agricultural depression era, where, seated at at decaying and lopsided table, I chewed on leathery oysters and explained to those eager faces that I did not wish to a purchase souvenir key ring or baseball hat.

So they dragged me to "The Grove", an alfresco mall built in a hodgepodge of architectural styles through which, on roughly forty feet of rail and overheard wire, a ludicrous double-decker red tram ran backwards and forwards. I bought nothing.

My hotel room did not offer internet service, and neither could I locate an internet cafe in the vicinity (apparently they had all been closed down due to violence).

Is that a house? Or a Crazy Golf hole?

Nice, clean, efficient airport.

I Was Arafat's Doctor

A Second Opinion Special

by Theohammed Dalrympaz

In the military hospital where I work many of our patients - freedom fighters, if you please! - arrive under armed escort in bulletproof helicopter with their personal mullahs. As with all their kind who live in frequently machine-gunned and bombed compounds of their own making surrounded by oceans of barbed wire -these "comatose commandoes" are invariably heavily bearded and camouflage clad with ludicrously oversized scarves wrapped around their heads - even while their lives hang in the balance as they drift off into their so-called (and Western government funded!) comas!

One such "important world figure" - called Arafat or Che or some other random communist nickname - was choppered in from whatever sector of desert or jungle he defended just the other day. I tried to talk to him about T.E Lawrence and the paintings of Raphael, but alas reader, the uneducated slob just sprawled lazily on his hospital bed with his eyes rolling back in his head.

"I'm dying." was all he managed to mumble in reply. "Give my love to Palestine."

Palestine? Another absurd name. No doubt she was the unwed mother of his bastard offspring.

Merlin Airways.

Many apologies for the disappearing act this blog has performed over the past few days while its owner was in Los Angeles; and disappearing act is the right phrase, since I encountered a magician during my flight westwards.
Prior to take off, I arranged myself as comfortably as possible - folding along the dotted line and inserting Leg A under Buttock Cheek B - into my assigned seat at the rear of the Boeing (the “aft” as aviators insist on calling that section of the aircraft) and opened my copy of Samuel Richardson’s ‘Pamela’ to page 1, secure in the knowledge that this lengthy and venerable book would occupy my mind for the seven hours we would be airborne: indeed, I had briefly flirted with the notion of booking the novel its own seat when I was reserving mine, since it is such a space-hogging, bulky book and I dislike being cramped.
However, as the plane began to fill with people, it seemed that such drastic measure would not have been necessary anyway, as no other passenger claimed the empty seat beside me, until, at the very last moment, an elfin, elderly man dressed all in black with a Fu Manchu beard and long gray tresses tumbling down to his waist came wading down the aisle and flung himself into it. Damn.
I nodded to him a polite yet silent greeting, and then resumed my relations with Pamela, hanging an invisibly obvious “Do Not Disturb” sign from my turned shoulder.
Nevertheless, about twenty minutes later, presumably after re-composing his vibe, he interrupted my reading with: “Do you like magic?” – a horrible thing to be asked by a oddball stranger with whom you have no wish to converse, since your first inclination is to reply with a defensive “no”, a dismal response to such a question that defines you forever as a miserable, soulless drone and bore with zero imagination or romance in you.
So, thinking as quickly as I could, the terse answer I gave him - hoping to create the impression that he might be out of his depth - was: “What type of magic are you referring to: traditional western witchcraft, eastern mysticism, or stage trickery?”
He smiled back at me brightly, as if he had finally discovered the Philosopher’s Stone after years of searching, stroked his beard, and said. “All, man.” he said with awe. “All of them. I dig them all."
Then he introduced himself as "Merlin Strangeways". Slowly, steadily, my brain began to evaporate as he talked. I have only just recovered.

Whirligig

So now I fly to Los Angeles tomorrow morning. Then I go to a room and talk things through with someone. Then I go to another room and yell at someone else about the things. Then I go to yet another room and someone yells at me about some more things. Then I go to bed. On Thursday morning I go to a room and talk with three people. Then I go to another room and discuss with three more people what I have just talked about with the first three. Then we all yell at each other. Then we have dinner and drinks. Afterwards I go to bed. On Friday morning I return to Los Angeles airport and fly home. I get home at midnight and go to bed again.
Obviously my brain will be on sabbatical during all of this so new postings here before Saturday may be sporadic to say the least.
However, I will be in L.A ... so you never know, the desire to write something rude and abusive may overcome me at any time. Just don't expect any "live blogging from Terminal C."

Decision Day

So there you are. Where have you been? You've been out voting! Oh yes, very commendable, I'm sure. Oh yes indeed. Making your choice between Potato Head and Turnip Face. Funny really, because although it is you who puts your cross next to their name, it is actually they who mark your card. They already have your number, of course.
What have I been doing? Me? Oh I've just been dining at a very expensive restaurant for lunch with somebody else's money, and you know what, I finally decided that my favorite type of salad dressing is Walnut Albertine.
And across the linen table cloths, over the sparkling goblets and around shimmering platters drifts the dreamy, dulcet sound of that old music hall number: "It Don't Matter Who You Vote For 'Cause The Government Always Gets In".
Another cognac? Yes please, Pierre. Meanwhile, let me eat cake. Yes, the raspberry one that's dripping with chocolate icing.
Outer Life, more eloquent than I, is stuffing his face with Old Ma Lincoln's Olde-Time Fudge Brownie Mousse. Nice.

This Is What A Hotel Bathroom Does To The Human Mind

In the throne room this morning I decided that I have the armpits of a king, and so I crowned them with a tribute of anti-perspirant.

Trumpets and Alarums: Enter armpit followed by attendants

All: The armpit is deoderized! Stay dry the armpit! Hurrah!

Armpit: We bid you thrice welcome to our court: to you our cousin Chest Hair, and to you noble Freckle.
Pray, inform this de-waxed ear what news of that traitorous pretender Fake Moustache?

Chest Hair: Sire, verily 'tis said i' the kingdom that Fake Moustache doth mis-balance himself upon a cuckold's lip and that he doth haunt the lounges of the land as the lizard doth.

Freckle: Aye. And 'tis rumored that he plots with his kinsman the fool Wig to shave thee of thy power and usurp thy throne for themselves.

Armpit: Then get thee swift as a toothpick to Crotch Castle and there rouse loyal Lord Scrotum from his hammock'd slumbers ...

Off: phone ringing in a bedroom and a cab idling outside. Exit author with piece of toilet paper stuck to his chin to staunch the flow of blood.

Advanced Rhinography

There is nothing I like better than getting up people's noses. If there was such a thing as an express nose elevator (maximum load eight offensive sentences) I would ride it straight up to the top floor every day.
In fact, getting up people's noses is more like cave exploration, since all their ancient shibboleths and most profound prejudices are found there, daubed on the nasal walls like the paintings of primitive man:
"Shine your light over here, professor, and take a look at these strange markings: as far as I can make out it would appear that the owner of this nose thinks the Florida polls are crooked."
"Yes, Stephen, very good. I expected as much. It proves all my theories are correct. Just look at the child-like scratches on the cartilage: they are common to a species of nose owner who really believes that The Lord of the Rings is adults reading material."
"Do such nose owners really exist, professor?"
"In certain tribal cultures, yes, indeed they do."
"This is great professor. What else do you think we'll find in this nose?"
"Oh not much else. This nose was put out of joint a long, long time ago. Most of the opinions it contained have probably already been destroyed."

Dejection 2004

The 1964 British General Election that pit(t) Alec Douglas-Home against Harold Wilson was famously and accurately described as "Dull Alec versus Smart Alec".
Here in the United States the current race for power can be summed up less pithily and neatly, although it is equally as uninspiring, as we are faced with the zealot Burning Bush versus the oily Kerrymander.
Personally, I would rather vote for a carrot (providing its running mate was a stick) than either of those two organ-grinder's monkey-a-likes, desperately and mechanically cranking out all your old favorite economic and social agenda tunes in double quick time.
Come to think of it, perhaps the whole election process would be improved if Bush and Kerry were forced to wear little monkey's comic fez and scarlet waistcoat outfits as they gambol and hop around on the hustings screeching platitudes and grinning their politician's rictus grins, nodding and clapping to the unreliable rhythm of their abysmal music.
It's a cruel and horrible show, so why do you keep letting yourself get dragged along to watch it?

Eastern Skies

For me, the phrase "repressive Eastern Bloc regime" has always evoked images of the Terminal E baggage retrieval system at Logan Airport in East Boston with its revolving salt mines and Imperialist pig-dog leather suitcases permanently exiled to Siberia, never to be reunited with their loved ones.
But then everything about air travel is "Eastern" these days: the long lines of departure lounge refugees shuffling forward towards the gate like old women waiting in a bread queue; the constant showing of papers and frisking by grim-faced uniformed men; and most notably on the aeroplane itself, where the unfortunate passenger is sentenced to those cramped three seat rows: Near East (aisle seat); Far East (window seat); and Middle East (KGB interrogation cell).
God I hate flying. Why won't they let you take a ship instead?