American Fez

Brief Encounter

A chance meeting in the lowest and most crowded dungeons of the city subway with an old squash partner of mine, while wedged between those malodorous seismic strata of human sediment euphemistically known as "other people's armpits”, leads to the discovery that this former athletic foe of mine now discourses on the subject of history at one of Boston's most revered and prestigious centers of learning. He complains to me – at length - that most of his students “text message” their friends on mobile phones while he is lecturing, a non-scholarly activity that is apparently not as silent as one might expect: “tap-tap-tap-tap times twenty” was the expression he used to describe this intrusively annoying phenomenon.
“Perhaps they are taking text notes of the class and just recording them on their phones.” I suggested, trying to be helpful.
“No.” he replied bitterly “They’re just effing-well morse-coding the sordid details of last night’s orgy to each other while I’m up front shouting myself hoarse for their supposed benefit.”
Changing the subject to cheerier arenas of conversation, I informed him that I now published an amusing blog.
“You’re just as bad as they are!” He said.

Maestro Rising

I am currently composing a powerful and passionate operetta inspired by Wilson's <i>Memoirs of Hecate Country</i>, scored for massed tin whistles, alto saxophone, and noisy vacuum cleaner whose bag is too full. All the female parts will be sung by Kate Bush. I began work this morning.

Casanova's Verdict

One of the cutesy, nose-ringed office girls was listening to a pop song containing the screechy lyrics "Do you want me, baby? Oh do you need me baby." - it would be nice to be both wanted and needed by your lover, I decided, as I passed by her desk, but I would wager my last bottle of cologne most people are just either one or the other.

Me? I would most certainly prefer to be wanted, since to be wanted implies that your magnificent and powerful body combined with your dexterous, passionate and expert bedroom skills are invested with incalculable waves of irresistible charismatic power, and that only you can satiate your lover's unquenchable carnal desires and longings, only you can fill the empty space in thier wildest dreams.

Whereas, if you are the kind of dumpy loser who is only merely needed, well, oh dear, that sounds like you're unfortunately the sort of boring and clumsy, insecure waste-of-space who is usually asked in a whiny voice to hold your partner's hair back while they are being extremely sick in the toilet after a fun night out with their more interesting friends .. and that's if they actually do return home that night, which is unlikely, considering what an unattractive proposition you are. That's what I think anyway.

Irrational Geographic

We sent a package to New Zealand today, a rare occurence that prompted me to ask myself: on what deserted latitudes of this great big globe of ours can "Old" Zealand possibly lay? And what was wrong with this Old Zealand so that the mutton-chopped Old Zealanders felt the urgency to emigrate from their ancestral homeland and sail the wide Pacific, to diembark upon their chosen shore while dodging Maori blowpipe darts and then establish pioneer sheep shearing stations in this green and promised valleys of the antipodean wilderness? And why, to layer mystery upon mystery, when the country's main exports are wool and lamb, did these early Zealandic settlers name their capital city after a beef dish? I had absolutely no idea. I was unable to satisfy my own curiosity. This whole old Zealand business was all double Dutch to me ..... aaaaaah! Of course!

The Amazing Memory Man

My first organizing device, presented to me when I was a very small boy, was an equally very small pocket diary, bound in a type of plastic that I can only describe as "cherry leatherlook". In this tiny book, assiduously flicking to the appropriate pages provided for such information, I immediately recorded all the important birthdays that I could summon to mind at that moment in different colored inks. Then I never opened the diary ever again and completely forgot that I even possessed such a thing.

Many different types of illustrated calendar have hung over my many different desks throughout the years: crouching sportsmen have stared down at me with Gillette razored chins; Weegee's sidewalk has run its violent, monochrome course above my head; Renaissance beauties have fluttered from January to February and then ... well, they never made it to March, and neither did Weegee's gangsters nor the kneeling football stars. I generally forget about the calendars by March, regardless of what images are printed on them.

A palm pilot for my birthday? "Meeting with Rick @ Noon" was the only thing I programmed into it. I am sure the batteries are already oxidizing or whatever they do when all that brown gooey rust starts seeping out of them. Meanwhile, who is Rick? And what was I supposed to be meeting with him about?

You know, I always figure that if you can't just remember something in your head, then it can't be very important anyway.

Doctor Who

I am feeling so vague, low budget, and spacey, rather like a drugged giraffe floating upside down in zero gravity, those long knobbly legs and that pendulous neck all akimbo. I am an alien to purposeful effort and a boon companion of lethargy. The yawning black timeless void that is the rest of the day opens before me with spine-chilling inevitability. The afternoon is a foreign and hostile papier-mache planet where dragoons of underpaid Daleks and Cybermen clash in unrehearsed laser beam battles beneath two waning paper pink moons stamped in a limpid cardboard yellow sky like a pair of bloodshot alcholic BBC cameraman eyes.... where oh where are my assistants and a that stupid metal dog thing? Cut!

Harvesting Happiness

The succulent kwaqumanga and the robust bumbat: these are my favorite winter fruits. Their serpentine vines embrace the chalky doric columns of the blood-stain splattered gazebo I transformed into a tropical greenhouse in memory of poor old murdered Uncle Horace R.I.P in all his many remaining pieces.

My gardener, Ariadne, formerly a cutsie-pie TV witch and as curvy as a banana, bottles a delighfully delicious brandywine from a secret combination of bumbat and kwaquamanga juices accented with obscure French grapes she obtains from Fantomas Fruiterers, the famous Burgundian "grocerairres". She treads this exquisite and exotic concoction herself, with those delicate pixie brown feet of hers, peddling away at the magenta mush inside a specially constructed glass barrel designed by myself.

And then at eventide, Ariadne and I gather beside the glowing fire that burns with great intensity beneath my ornamental mantelpiece, and we get smashed off our faces on the brandy she has produced that day. Oh yes. The succulent kwaquamanga and the robust bumbat: these are my fruits, my harvest of happiness.

This post is dedicated to the gracious and far too humble Outer Life

Testament of Youth

There was a period in the fog stained distant past, before the completion of my formal education, when I labored in the kiosk excavated from the pink marble and gilded fixtures of the lobby of a grand and glamorous hotel. Here I sold a variety of luxury products and imported newspapers to an intermittent trickle of well-heeled clientele to whom my own existence and personality were unworthy of serious consideration. I was merely the commandable human mechanism who conveyed over-priced methods of passing the time to wealthy idlers: Dunhill, Stuyvesant, and Davidoff cigarettes provided for customers who did not really smoke; the London Times folded and passed along to customers who would never read it; cappuccino in tiny waxen cups brewed for those parties who would never drink it as they waited for their luggage to be delivered by the Hussar liveried bellhop. The job paid well, and at this youthful time of life - when it seemed that every Albert Camus paperback came free with your choice of any Velvet Underground album – I squandered all my earnings on escorting Julie Christie look-alikes to the local art film theater to glower at obscure Italian films so we (I) could discuss the salient features of the sex scenes afterwards. In other words, a typical adolescence that was nostalgic for a New Yorker translation of a cinematic high-gloss European ‘ideal for living’ that had never really happened.
But then, one day, as if scripted into place by some celestial film director, a very distinguished foreign gentleman strolled up as was lounging in my little hotel kiosk, flicking through some terrible Alain Robbe-Grillet novel. It was Fellini, and he purchased an apple croissant from me. At least I thought it was Fellini, until his Gucci-embalmed wife called him Geppeto or something like that. Still, for one moment, I could have been a player in the Fellinesque carnival, part of that celluloid, dubbed-voice Italianate hipster circus.

Ah! The innocence of it all, those halcyon days of ravenously pretentious youth, eager to wear the existential beret of the cafe lurking faux-intellectual nerd, before I realized that certain books - Maurice Blanchot novellas, for instance - carried more cultural baggage than just their dog-eared weight of incomprehensible pages, that they were, for all their sophisticated foreigness, actually completely unreadable nonsense.

Unfortunately, despite all my experience of apple croissant vendorship, I could never get the sales patter right to offload my unwanted library of the Blanchot and Robbe-Grillet genre of literary dreck, but possibly that may have been a consequence of the fact that the shelves of second-hand bookstores were already creaking under the strain of bearing too much of that sort of thing.

The Bird Feeder

I have been observing January's birds as they hunt and peck in the snow fields, famished, hopping about to keep warm, wrapped up in their feathery parkas with balaclavas of plumage pulled tight over their heads - but why no thick socks, little sparrow?
But this morning they observed me, their avian wall-eyes burning with expectation, as I strung a new bird feeder from the usual tree, its black cradling boughs become a hammock for those lazy snow flakes who couldn't be bothered to fall all the way to the ground.
My charitable task accomplished, I had barely jogged back inside my house before the insistant chant-like twittering began: "wasabi! ... wasabi! .... wasabi!"
You see, I have decided to add a little Japonaise mountain sunflower to the regular winter mix of grains, crumbs and pellets I provide for my garden's flying guests at this time of year. This my seem unconventional to some, but my wasabi flavored gourmet bird food has been a culinary smash hit with the more discerning and sophisticated flocks who gather outside my kitchen window, watching and waiting for the chef to emerge each day. Indeed, I am now thinking of installing a bird bath with hot and cold running saki ... but then I wouldn't want to turn into a chef-patron now would I, so maybe not.

Retreat From Moscow

By turns trudging, wading, and leaping through the massed ranks of snow flakes that paraded in swift, sweeping formations across Beacon Street, outflanked by the swirling blizzard and crushed beneath the might of the icy cold, I thought of Napoleon clinging to the mane of his exhausted horse as they returned early from the failed Russian campaign. And I thought also of Napoleon's famous curvy brimmed hat slipping off his frowning head as the ragged remains of his broken army staggered on behind; those frozen faces, the relentless snow and the endless march through barren white wasteland. A famous episode in the history of human misery.
How would I have done it differently if I had been Napoleon? Well, I don't think I would have been as fat as he was, for one thing. And that pushy, nagging Josephine would have been shown the door to my tent long before the famous "not tonight" evening, and she would have been replaced by a Nana, or dare I say it, a Fifi, even. And I certainly would never have entertained the idea of a jaunt to Moscow in the winter.

Workers of the Ionosphere Unite

When I was a very small boy, my father informed me that there was an angelic workman wearing wing-ed overalls whose task it was to hang the sun in the heavens at daybreak while balanced on his celestial stepladder; and this cosmic laborer also painted the sky blue, fluffed up the clouds, and then finally straightened the horizon after its nocturnal rigors. Sometimes I would wake at dawn – birdsong being the music he tuned into on his supernatural radio - clamber out from beneath my blankets and squint through my bedroom window, attempting to catch a glimpse of him performing his astral chores. On overcast mornings my father would tell me that the man had simply gone on vacation for the day, and so there would be no sun until he returned. Back then, of course, I was filled with wonder. Now I just think painting the sky blue every day would be a very boring job and not an especially smart career move, unlike, say, tree architecture or something spectrally white-collarish like that.

St. John of the Press

Since December 26th God-fearing pundits and commentators have been wringing their rosary clutching hands and experiencing dark-night-of-the-soul-in-print moments endeavoring to explain this recent tsunami calamity to their devoutly bewildered readership: why would a benevolent and loving, long white-bearded God who lives in the Paradise beyond the clouds let such an awful thing happen to all those poor people? Good question.
Their answer, naturally, is the usual ivory-tower-dwelling-monk dribbling hogwash about horrific events casting the actual wonder of “creation” into glorious and transcendent relief.
Those more sensible Ancient Greeks, of course, would have seen things differently. In the sun-kissed, olive stained, grape scented Classical World, goatherds, vase painters, handmaidens, high priests, and oracles believed that quarrels between the Gods were the cause of all natural disasters, and whatever happened to mortals as a result, well, the Gods just didn’t care about mortals one iota, and they would just pursue their Olympian business regardless of the human cost.
Yes, those Greeks hanging out in the Agora Food Court thought that the Gods were completely indifferent to human suffering, that was just the way it was, and so you’d better get used to it pretty quick. Somehow, that makes much more sense - I mean, why would they care about we feeble pink-headed tubes of flesh and blood? - than all this Christian nonsense (except for what my hero Paul Johnson writes, although I must admit I am a trifle disappointed by his recent column in The Spectator)

Presidential Inauguration Special

Freezing cold bitter winter - again! It's the same thing year after frigid year without fail. When is this moron Bush government going to do something about it? What is it with them? Do all those warm and toasty folk in Florida pay more taxes or something? Oh no. You can bet your frost-bitten toes that it's dirty-tricks expert brother Jed pulling strings and hiking thermostats so that the well-tanned yes-men out in sunny FLA will vote Republican again next year. And the rest of us? Well, we just get iced because we can't afford to grease the sweaty palms of the heat lobby and we are forced to listen to Ted Kennedy beg for fuel money for the poor and needy. What's wrong Ted? Why not pour just a fifth of your booze stash over the coals. That should keep the fires burning until next Spring

Where's my other glove? Where is it? Bloody terrorists will steal anything.

Flintstone Fashionista

When oh when will those lazy, slack-assed scientists finally manage to grow an actual full-size dinosaur from the strands of dinosaur DNA they keep stored away in their fridges? It will be a very important breakthrough for me since, well, as regular readers know, I am the last of the Great Romantics, and I harbor this beautiful dream that one day I  shall be the first man to buy the woman in my life an extremely chic and luxuriously expensive Tyrannosaurus Rex-skin handbag with decorative clasps fashioned from sabre-toothed tiger teeth by specially selected Milanese craftsmen. In fact, my lover and I could turn admiring heads as we swanked down the street in an entire range of designer dinosaur products:

"Have you seen my new shoes? They're brontosaurus, naturally."

"Mmmmm. Silky smooth! 100% Pteradactyl oil for those special, intimate moments when you desire to leave your footprints in her tar pit.

"Jurassic: the new fragrance from Stephenesquei: the secret of fire for the primitive man in your life."

And so on. Until the store that sells the stuff is demolished by a massive comet from outer space.

Jonesing

I've spent most of the day taking part in an international conference call that involved a Welshman named Jones, who, since it is the custom in Wales, is no doubt called "Jones the Marketing Man" in the green and pleasant valley where he dwells. Since there are so many of them, all men of Harlech named Jones have their occupations added to their surnames:  Jones the Builder; Jones the Baker; Jones the Fishmonger; Jones the Car Mechanic; Jones the Strip Club Owner; Jones the Male Prostitute: Jones the Drug Dealer; Jones the Unemployed; etc.

Was I a useful participant in the conference call? No, of course not, I was far too busy thinking of types of Joneses. In fact, I have absolutely no idea what was said. Never mind. I shall have Jones the Steno fax me his notes.

Tales From The Vienna Woods

Early von spring morning, Johann 'Wandervogel' Strauss thrust his lucky glockenspiel into his knapsack, slapped his thigh three times, und he set off valking towards ze voods in his favorite dancing suit and best waltzing shoes. Ze local cuckoo voss in good voice as Johann strode along, singing snatches ov lieder und choreographing ze other birds in a complex acorn gavotte in ze treetops. Golden sunlight filtered through the oak leaf clusters in ze wood and ze vurld ov formal ballroom dancing evenings seemed far, far avay. Feeling slightly ... er, er, vat ist der wurd? ... Er ... peck, peck, peckish? Ya! Ya! Ist good, no? Ha ha ... So! feeling slightly peckish, Johann made his vay towards a clearing in ze forest.
When he arrived at zis spot, however, he discovered to his dismay zat a detachment of busty Rhine Maidens ver already making ze place their own.
"Vat are you doing, busty Frau Rhine Maidens!" Johann cried. "Zis iz ze Blue Danube country und you are in ze wrong muzik und very far from yourown true river!"
Unluckily for Johann, ze busty Rhine Maidens were used to huge, heroic bearded men clad in heavy armor und winged helmuts, und so zey were not impressed by Johann's reedy voice, nor hiz ridiculous frock coat, zilly knee breeches und dainty waltzing shoes, so zey took it in turns to sit on his face for half an hour each and crush his cheeks with their powerful Wagnerian thighs until ze owl hooted und it voss time for eveyone to go home. And zat ist how Johann Strauss came to compose ze Tales From Ze Vienna Voods.
Ze end.

Your Money In The Future

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Punctuation Poem.

Ode To My Punctuation

my Punctuation: erratic, oh!
A garland of giggling commas
Crowning grammer’s sweaty brow.

… behold the breezy dash!
Where semi-colons suck face with run on sentences;

“Who is Lynne Truss?”.
Exeunt author charioted by his 'pards.

My Daily Bread

Here is a copy of the "teleplay" that I have recently been asked to submit for the highly acclaimed British TV detective drama Foyle's War. As you can see, my script is written in the true spirit of this popular and exciting show.

Scene One:

Chief Superintendant Foyle and his female driver, Sam, pull up outside the Hastings Cricket Club Pavilion and stroll inside. There they discover their quarry, Barnstable, who is wearing a shirt and tie and also a v-neck sweater beneath his tweedy sports jacket. His glasses flash viciously in the morning sunlight. Foyle looks as if he can't decide whether he should fart or not. Sam stares off into space in her prim uniform.

Foyle: Excuse me .... Mr Barnstable isn't it? I'm a policeman and I'd like to ask you a few questions if I may.

Barnstable: For heaven's sake man! There's a war on and I'm trying to run a successful cricket club! Have you any idea of the strain I'm under. I haven't got time to answer your impertinent questions! What do you mean by barging in here and causing such grief to my entire family and all my servants!

Sam: (to Foyle) Excuse me sir, but, gosh, I say, isn't that a man's athletic supporter? Do you think I could, you know, try it on or something, even though I'm only a girl?

Barnstable: How dare you! This is private property!

Foyle: Could you tell me, Mr Barnstable, if, for instance, you've ever seen this pair of black leather jackboots before. And if you recognise this piece of paper with "Hello everyone I'm a Nazi spy" written on it.

Barnstable: What! What! Dash it all, man! This is an outrage! How dare you! Listen to me, I have very powerful friends in Berlin and if you persist in..... oh damn I've given myself away. Well, I suppose it's a fair cop! Well done Foyle! Jolly good show in capturing me. Yes, it's all true. I am a fifth columnist after all even though I am a pillar of the community. England shall win the war now. No doubt about it.

Foyle: I certainly hope so Mr Barnstable.

Sam: (to Foyle) Good heavens sir. I say. What a turn up for the books. The secretary of the cricket club is actually Nazi fifth columnist! Who'd have thought it. Gosh.

The End. Music and, er, .....credits?

In The Vaults of Financial Time

With what fond reverie do I recall my first check book and matching ledger. I must have been roughly twelve years of age at the time, and since I happened to be in England, this profoundly important brand new possession was actually a "cheque" book, presented to me with awesome solemnity and great ceremony by an inky, purse-lipped clerk from his loftily secure perch behind a portcullis window in the hushed and oaken depths of the local branch of Lloyds Bank.

It was a day very much like today, in fact, that I took ownership of that first totem of personal economics: patchy snow, blustering wind, but not too cold. I was well-wrapped up, though, in my dark blue duffle coat and trailing scarf to fend off the damp British winter, but with only that incomprehensible ledger, a few retractable pencils, a short loop of string, and a pocket compass to keep my financial affairs in order for the next three year or so.

And I must say, things haven't changed too much since then.

I still cling to the concept of the paper check as the most civilized method of transporting sums of money from one place to another, despite the computerized revolution that has storms the halls of all modern financial institutions. This is partly because I tried to pay my gas bill "online" the other day, only to discover that to complete this internet transaction I was required by the gas company's website to download Macromedia Flash 6.3 or something.

Ah yes. Utility bill administration..... now where's that pen I was just writing with?

Summer Holidays

So. As the frost crystallizes on my windowpane and the radiators shudder and groan from the strain, I am already devising summer activity and recreation plans to keep my body and soul together during these long winter nights: I'm going to rent a small cottage somewhere in the country, and roughly fifteen minutes walk from this cottage, give or take a country mile, hidden deep amid green pasture, wandering sheep and wildflowers I shall discover a large tumescent mound of earth. This mound of earth will measure approximately twelve feet in diameter and be somewhere around six feet high. The mound's perfectly circular pattern will obviously imply that ancient human hands shaped it many centuries ago. I will become archeologically obsessed by this mound and decide to excavate it while the voluptuous blonde assistant I will hire to “take notes” sunbathes nearby. Obviously, I shall hire manual laborers to do the actual digging, since I will naturally be supervising and taking notes, occasionally applying suntan lotion to my voluptuous blonde assistant 's back and shoulders.
About three days after breaking ground, an old blind woman from the local village will appear on the periphery of our dig. She will point a trembling finger in my direction, and with a quavering deep voice she will accuse me of messing with things I don't understand: "ancient and evil things that should be forgotten lest they bring disaster."
Pushing my voluptuous blonde assistant to one side and rising from the sun bed as I pull my Hawaiian-style boxer shorts up, I shall inform the blind old woman in forthright and dignified tones that "I am A Man of Science", and that I “pay no heed to superstitious gibberish and foolish local gossip”.
"Be it on your own head then," she will probably reply, and will ride back to her dismal, unsophisticated village on one of those absurdly mud-caked rattling tricycle things. Then she will undoubtedly notify the other villagers that there is no telling me - “the ignorant infidel” - and they will all mutter amongst themselves darkly in between gulps of freshly brewed local cider.
The very next night –while the moon is full - my relentless digging schedule will surely unleash the Unnamable Horror from the pit that it has been imprisoned in for the last three thousand years. One of the spades will suddenly strike stone - a stone slab with mysterious hieroglyphs engraved upon it - and then the Ungodly Misbegotten Fire Demon will force its way through the crack and emerge from the dank tomb in all its spine-chilling, blood curdling monstrousness.
Obviously, the first thing the Foul Fiend From Beyond The Grave does upon being unleashed will be the systematic breaking of the necks of all my hired laborers – (I'm obviously tucked up in my bed with the voluptuous blonde assistant at such a late hour, so the Evil Horrible Thing won’t actually get anywhere near me. Hooray!) - and then the Flesh Eating Beast will stalk off in to the night and terrorize the rest of the countryside.
Naturally, I'm banking on the Unnamable Horror being really busy killing all the villagers for the few hours that remain until morning, so that I can make my pre-dawn escape with my voluptuous blonde assistant and never look back.
Well, at least that's my tentative plan for the summer months anyway.

Metranil Vavin and the Song of the Messy Bedroom

1. Houston we have a problem: inability to clean messy bedroom because the rocket placed beneath my own buttocks to do the cleaning has failed to ignite. Conclude that poor design by rocket manufacturer is responsible and that you cannot find good help these days.

2. The maid has quit due to ill health: specifically massive heart failure caused by shock at seeing pile of old library books on bedroom floor that have still not been returned to the library despite repeated requests to do so by bossy librarian. Conclude that maid is not literary type and that you cannot find good help these days.

3. Despite leaving individually wrapped meat pies and tiny glasses of milk beside the fireplace with flattering note written in purple ink, the promised army of elves did not appear to clean-up the mess in my bedroom while I slept. Conclude that old fairy story about cobbler and elves who mend his shoes for him is a total lie and that you cannot find good supernatural help these days.

4. Unable to find cleaning supplies because the cleaning-supplies cabinet is too messy and crammed full of other stuff, and consequently if I open the cleaning-supplies cabinet door everything will fall out on top of me and I will therefore be too injured to use the cleaning-supplies anyway Q.E.D. - therefroe Conclude that best plan of action is to visit somebody else's bedroom and forget all about it.

The Great Stephenesquo

Guided by invisible fingers - as if by magic - the unnamed project folder suddenly appeared on my desk, but it was with that style and overworked, devious sleight-of-hand variety of trick magic perhaps best typified by a mangy and malnourished rabbit being wearily plucked by its scabby ears from the musty, torn silk interior of some crumpled hat by some third-rate alcoholic and malodorous conjuror as his fat, jaded assistant with carelessly bleached hair totters across the creaking stage on flabby, varicose veined legs clad in unwashed fishnet stockings. Such a project folder as this, I decided, belongs in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinets labeled “indeterminate materials”, and that is where this unnamed project folder now resides. Which of the assignment jugglers, I wondered, will come looking for it first, for I shall shoot a database at them from my stage pistol, and they must catch it in their teeth or be damned.

For Your Consideration

And I? Must I always be forced to wear the sodden acorn cup upon my head and languish with puffy cheek beneath the pungent shade of the mottled toadstool until that wizened old witch-hag called Time decides to cast her malevolent enchantments upon me and transform my rosy elfin flesh into the shoddily glazed ceramic limbs of the forlorn pixie figurine who gathers dust between the stopped carriage clock and the weeping Pierrot clown on the already cluttered mantelpiece of the sore-throated fat lady who is preparing to croak her final aria as the snivelling gang of enslaved rubberized "bendy" ogres engrave "Made in China" upon my faux marble tomb stone?
Well .... must I?

Some Sci-Fi For Hattie

Just as certain types of gleaming, fiery rockets hurtle forward through star fields at the speed of light, so it follows that others must silently glide in reverse through the dense, shifting shadows of black holes at the speed of dark. Are these mysterious shapes the clandestine phantom spacecraft of spectral commando ninja Martian spies, dispatched from the subterranean inner sanctums of forbidden galaxies to circumnavigate the secret depths of alien solar systems as we humans sleep our dreamless sleep? Or are they simply something I just made up to pass the time?

Am I not better at this than, say, Arthur C Clarke? He who rests in suspended animation in his tubular aluminium tomb, waiting for the signal to rise from the plasmic ashes of .... etc.

The Accusation

Boston: a landscape of ice, grit, frozen mud, and scattered sand: the detrition of the melting Ice Age must have resembled this after it had finished re-arranging the furniture: ice, grit, frozen mud, and scattered sand: an expanse of ground that has become a private parking lot for the wintry elements as they browse the expensive stores of Newbury and Boylston streets: the patterned and methodical icy rain pours into Brooks Brothers to select a much needed new tie and cufflinks for itself, while the wild wind rushes across the street to Dyptique to impulse purchase a lemony scented candle for eighty bucks (just like someone else I could mention).

The Chosen Ones

Someone recently asked me what my ten favorite songs were, the so-called Desert Island Discs that I would be forced to play over and over again on a wind-up His Master’s Voice-type phonograph half-buried in the wild and sifting atoll sands - assuming that there would be room for such a modestly sized CD storage rack aboard the makeshift raft that swept me to whatever “dark and Afrique shore” I would be marooned upon.
Anyway, this afternoon I completed my list and here, in no particular order, are the songs on my coconut grove jukebox.

1. Dawn Upshaw singing Peter Warlocks’s setting of John Fletcher’s “Sleep”. This is on her highly recommended “White Moon: Songs To Morpheus Album”. I have several different versions of this melancholic song on Warlock song collections of varying quality. Upshaw’s is by far the best of them.

2. Marianne Faithful singing Noel Coward’s “Twenty Century Blues”. I first heard this as it played over the final moments of the extremely uneven TV adaptation of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. For some reason, the truly terrible John Somebody-or-other playing a middle-aged Nicholas Jenkins watches 16mm cine film of a semi-naked Widermerpool dancing around a stone circle. The song is good, though, as is (as always) the crusty throated Faithful.

3. The fourth of Richard Strauss' “Four Last Songs” sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. I’ve got two different versions of Schwarzkopf singing this song, and probably about six others on different Strauss albums. I like the one where she sings and Szell conducts the orchestra the best – (not that I really know what I’m talking about when it comes to such things). The only song on my list written in a foreign language!

4. “My Heart Stood Still” sung by Chet Baker. Lorenz Hart could write a damned fine song, although it is hard to find a decently recorded version of this one (which, interestingly, also crops up in the aforementioned Powell TV adaptation). Sinatra does one which is too florid, and Tony Bennett’s is far too down market for my tastes. So I guess we’ll go with the heroin addict: “I never lived at all until the moment when my heart stood still.” Indeed.

5. Gerald Finzi’s setting of Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing”. Very ominous. Sung by Stephen Varcoe with Clifford Benson playing the piano on my CD. One for those days when you're feeling really down about the First World War, I suppose. If you like Hardy's poems better than his novels - as I do - then Finzi is definitely the composer for you, since he set almost all of them to music.

6. The Bonzo Dog Band's “Ali Baba’s Camel”. A bit of old music hall with crazy sixties styling and sound effects. Always cheers me up every time I hear it.

7. “Your Funeral My Trial” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Oh dear. I must admit I love the idea behind this song more than the actual, er, execution. A good one for when you’re feeling evil – and you will be feeling evil sooner or later if you're stuck on a desert island for ever and ever.

8. William Shakespeare’s lovely “O Mistress Mine” from Twelfth Night. Arch courtier John Dowland set this pretty sweeting to music (as did many others, including Peter Warlock). Buy Fred Dellar’s Dowland version if you can find it, since it is period accurate, one imagines.

9. Fairport Convention’s “Matty Groves” is a jaunty, amusing folk song about love and death from long, long ago performed on electric instruments. I love Sandy Denny’s voice. She can sing anything and make it sound the only song in the world.

10. And so can super cool Scott Walker. And I’ll choose – yes, why not? - I’ll choose him singing Jacques Brel’s sublimely over the top “My Death” from his first solo album, called simply “Scott 1”.

Stillness and Time

Saturday at the McKim building, exhausted by my fruitless cross-examination of the yellowed pages pasted into mothballed books, I took a stroll outside into the snowy afternoon air and the wintry silence of the library courtyard. Sheltered beneath the great rectangular arcades of stone, I leant my shoulder against one of the rounded columns, hands cradling a warm, steamy coffee cup, and I watched the swift, thick, white flakes sweep diagonally across that enchanting statue of the exultantly naked and prancing bronze bacchante: “He’s looking at you” the infant faun she clutches seemed to whisper. “He only has eyes for you. It's you he wants.”
But the bacchante, of course, already knows that. And so I stood there in the courtyard, as the hushed snow fell, and I wished, just for a moment, that I was made of bronze as well.

Groundling Monday Mornings

Act CCXXIV: Scene MMCIXV: An upstairs room at the Merry Pig Tavern, Cheapside. Captain Chive slumps in the corner surrounded by empty jugs. Enter Mistress Grit with a bowl of steaming porridge.

GRIT: Arise sir. It be nine o' the clock and all sluggards must plead sanctuary wi' the Roman cock .

CHIVE: Confound thee for a pauper's bladder, woman.

GRIT: Aye, sir. William of Stratford doth say a beggars's bladder suckles no honey from the teat of a privy keeper's daughter so where's the sense i' licking?

CHIVE: Well confound William of Stratford for the coxcomb louse on Tartar's crown says I.

GRIT: Thy calumny won't make a chameleon o' the clock, sir, it still be nine hours since the midnight chimes and all thy company is away to Sou'ampton wi' Prince Hell.

CHIVE. Prince Hal for Pheobus's sake, woman! Good Prince Hal!

GRIT: That's not what the Infanta of Spain says, sir, and she be saddled for his brood mare so she should know.

Alarums. Exeunt all towards the privy

Myths and Legends of the Pigs

Cataclysmic oceanic events, such as the devastating undersea earthquake recently experienced by the southeastern sectors of coastal Asia, always provide a resurgent platform for those pseudo-scientific New Age advocates for the myth of a golden citadel called Atlantis disappearing beneath pre-historical waves along with its population of beautiful and super-intelligent beings.
These archly romantic theories and absurd conjectures always amuse hardcore realists like myself, tough-minded cynics who only believe in the factual accounts of Atlantis revealed to us by the Ancient Masters of Higher Planes of Huclthrunnet Ra.
Alas, since I have sworn a vow of secrecy at the Altar of His Most Exhalted and Salted Ham, the Emperor of Mottled Hogs and His Fourteen Snuffling Piglet Heads, I can't tell you what it is.
Rest assured, however, that the true fate of that magical metropolis the sweetly-singing bards call Atlantis has something to do with an absent-minded young swineherd who messed up real bad on one particularly dreadful day.

French Letters

I interrupt this pig melodrama to bring you news of the scrawny horrible and ill-favored race unfortunately known to the civilized world as "the French". According to arch cigarette lender John Fitzgerald, French detectives are currently wasting beautiful Catherine Deneuve's time by insulting the divine actress' porcelain dignity at one of their grimy little garlic stinking police stations with their foolish questions.
So you see, not content with burning Joan of Arc on some evil Gallic pyre for no good reason, it seems that smelly Pierre and his hairy cohorts now feel the need to also victimize one of the loveliest and most talented actresses ever to grace the silver screen. When oh when will the Germans invade again? Come on Fritz - pull your finger out and get moving. There are some gorgeous women who need liberating from the onion peddlers.

Random Thursday Night Pig Melodrama

There was this guy dying on the sidewalk, coughing up chunks of blood as tried crawling to the rusted pay phone on the corner of Babe Street. I just stepped over him and kept walking. I even laughed a little laugh, you know how people do, one of those involuntary stacatto titters you make when you're really nervous. I suppose I could have stopped and helped him, you know, given him a hankerchief or whatever, maybe change for the phone. I don't know. I guess there was something in his death rattle that didn't appeal to me, so, like I told you, I just kept walking. The man who ran the ceramic pig store where I was doing my shopping said that normally healthy people died around that part of town all the time. Apparently they just dropped down dead on the sidewalk in the blink of an eye, he told me, every day it happened, as if some mischievous passer-by, choosing his victims at random, had secretly poked them with a poison-tipped umbrella. He said it had something to do with all the Lithuanians who lived around there. Death follows them around, he said, like a faithful dog who suddenly turns vicious for no good reason. That was pretty strange, I said, and he agreed that it was, but did have any Derbyshire Truffle Hunting Pigs in stock, I asked, fine bone china ones only, none of the imitation plastic crap you get these days, and how much were they. My wife had asked for one for her birthday and I'd promised to track one down. He said he'd have a look in the back. Anyway, I had been standing at the counter for about twenty minutes and he hadn't returned. I shouted out to him but he never replied. So after a further ten minutes of hanging about I leapt over the counter and went to find him. And what do you know? That's right. There he was, sprawled on the stock room floor, legs in the air, holding his throat with all this blood everywhere. Dying, naturally. His face had gone purple and he was trying to say something - beats me if I could figure out what it was he was on about. Interpreting incoherent gurgling isn't my field of expertise, anyone who knows me will tell you that. Fortunately there was a cardboard box next to him with all these really exquisite little china Truffle Hunting Pigs in it, hand painted I should think. Which one is the Derbyshire, I asked him. But he just kept coughing up his blood and wouldn't even point at the right one. So in the end I just took the lot, stuffed the box under my arm and walked out the way I came in. I mean, if he wasn't going to help me I wasn't going to just kick my heels around for hours in the dark until the next shift turned up was I. That's not the way I do things.

Metapigsical

Central to Schitze's theory of a Pig-created universe is the notion of Weltzenfrauhoggeism, or "Divine Sow", what Schnoutzer called the "Great Sty Mother" and Trotterzeim defined as "Huggable Henrietta the Hairy Hogette Who Made Everything". However, since all three of these discredited scholars currently languish in the drool-splattered padded cells of the world's most advanced centers for the treatment of terminal mental illness, their preposterous theories need detain us no longer.

Modern Piggers

New painting and sculpture by classically trained French pigs is the only valid expression of true artistic achievement available for viewing by present day connoisseurs of visual media. Only fools, philistines, trendy critics, gallery owners and museum curators refuse to accept this simple fact.

For instance, recent works such as "Impression: Trough" by Pablo Piggasso, created by saturating each of his trotters with a different colored paint and running across a forty foot by forty foot canvas and then rolling around in it, blend the pointillism of Seurat with the broad dramatic sweep of Turner's most dramatic efforts.

Described as belonging to the Swine-ist school of painting, Piggasso's work is on display at Sty 5, New York's hippest art space. Unframed, these uncompromising collages are seductively obscured by sensitive arrangements of yellow hay and browning straw meshing tastefully with bold, robust chunks of grey mud and, naturally, ingenious and remarkable applied dollops of Piggasso's trademark "droppings".

After strolling through the exhibits, why not visit Sty 5's alluring gift shop and purchase a machine-tooled souvenir "Impression: Trough" jigsaw of your visit. Or relax in the glamorous cafe and stuff loads of meatballs up your fat snout.

The Joy of Sorcery

So, you want to be like Circe and enchant wayfarers, steal their secrets, and then turn them into wild pigs?

What You Will Need:

One (1) Heavy duty non-stick cauldron.

Six pints of ichor diluted with 2 tbsp Waters of Styx.

Nose of blaspheming swineherd

7 finger length strands of golden fleece

Eye of Penelope's suitors

Wing of harpy

Pinch of sea salt to taste.

Place all ingredients in your cauldron. Grease it with Grecian grease specially imported from Greece (oops! better add this to your "what you will need" list)Now travel to the mountain where Prometheus is chained to a rock, being careful to offer prayers to Poseidon and kill all the sea monsters you encounter on the way. Defeat the eagle that continually rips out Prometheus' liver with your magic arrows and then plead with Prometheus to provide you with the secret of fire. It will be very difficult to persuade him to do this since it means he will get in very big trouble again. However, Prometheus is a sucker for a pretty mortal so he will give it to you have a nice smile. Next, place the fire beneath your cauldron and gently warm everything until the ichor begins to boil. Remove from heat and place to one side. Reading from your book of incantations, recite the spell that turns people into pigs. After your victims have become pigs, return to your cauldron. It should be a congealed sticky mess by now and no good for anything, so force your new pigs to eat the gunk and lick the cauldron clean. Voila! No dishes to do - now that's what I call magic!

Pig TV Show Transcript

Hello and welcome again to Pig World with me, your host, Farmer Joe. Later in the show we'll be visiting Fairyland Maximum Security Prison to talk with convicted pig thief Tom Tom the Piper's Son about life behind bars and his feelings in the aftermath of the guilty verdict. But first, the Little Piggy Who Ate Roast Beef. Last week we spoke with the Little Piggy Who Stayed At Home, but since home for him is a simple sty constructed of wood and measuring only four feet by four and filled with a load of brown mud and a few strands of straw, we received many letters from viewers complaing that the program was not particularly interesting. And so tonight's guest, I'm pleased to announce, is a Little Piggy who lives a far more glamorous and exotic lifestyle: ladies and gentlemen, the Little Piggy Who Ate Roast Beef!

(Audience applause, some whooping and hollering as the Little Piggy Who Ate Roast Beef trots out on to the stage wearing a little blue jacket and a red bow tie, no pants . He sits, crosses his legs, tosses his ears back, and waves at the camera.)

FJ: Little Piggy Who Ate Roast Beef, you are a pig-about-town, famous for not staying at home, not going home, not even going to market, but for eating roast beef. Tell us about it.

LPWARB: Well, Farmer Joe, as you say, I'm not the sort of Little Piggy who stays at home (he coughs theatrically and receives audience applause) ... No, I like to go out and eat roast beef. Do my thing, you know. If I'm hanging out and it's a cool vibe, then I'm not the sort of Little Piggy who's going to run wee wee wee wee wee all the way home either, you know what I'm saying. No sir, I'm really just into chilling out and ordering a few sides of roast beef of an evening.

FJ: And then what?

LPWARB: Well usually I just kind of, er ... well, you know, I just keep eating it I guess. Nothing special. I don't do anything else.

FJ: So you just eat roast beef?

LPWARB: Yeah.

FJ: I see ... er, well, do you have any, say, favorite way of eating your roast beef, er, as a sandwich, for example, or with gravy perhaps?

LPWARB: No. I'm not bothered. I mean, I'm a pig, man. You know what I'm saying. I don't care about that sort of stuff at, you know. I'll eat the roast beef anyway it comes. After all that's what being a pig is all about.

FJ: Little Piggy Who Ate Roast Beef, thank you very much.

LPWARB: Thank you.

Rue Pigalle

There is much to see and do on the Rue Pigalle, so why not lend one's ears to the nostalgic echoing clippety-clop of four gaily painted trotters, tipped and polished deep in Folie Bergere burgundy, as they canter across the cobblestones. Relax at one of the famous outdoor cafes with a bottle of carbonated pork juice as the delectable arrangements of hog's snouts braised in brandy sauce wriggle and squirm on shimmering silver salvers. Observe the little curly tails, trimmed to perfection and coated in caramel then sprinkled with bittersweet chocolate, watch them silently as they spasm and twitch like the legs of a hanging man suddenly suspended from the darkling gibbet. Hear the sweet chansons sung by the sow at the bar of the Silken Purse, she sings of honeyed hams, crackling bacon, and those romantic, hunky loins of pork she remembers so well from that last summer spent at St Tropez. Ah yes, it is all happening on the Rue Pigalle....

Declaration

As of tomorrow, Wednesday 5th of January, the Stephenesque blog will concern itself exclusively with the art of Pig Melodrama and issues arising from the performance of Pig Melodrama
All of the links on this site that are not related to Pig Melodrama will be deleted. I don’t care any more.

Pig Melodrama has been written and performed since time immemorial in all the countries of the world. The ancient Greeks were familiar with what Socrates called “the noble literature of the Sty”, and the savage also acted out his own version of hog inspired rites and customs. During the time of the Black Death, the medieval crowds would gather in their marketplaces to witness the great traveling Carnival of Swine theatricals - or “Miracle Pigs” as they were often known - featuring the character named Everypig.
Even such luminaries of the stage such as William Shakespeare would struggle to compose plays as appealing and as commercially successful as those produced by the Merrie Companie of Piggly-Wiggleys.
Closer to our own age, hard-hitting modern dramas such as “Death of a Pigman” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Pig” have delighted audiences across the world.
Pig Melodrama has even hit tinseltown and many and varied have been the cinematic treats based on pig and hog themes, most recently “The Lord of the Pigs” has dazzled the Cannes judges with its truly wondrous special bacon-frying techniques.
The Stephenesque blog will continue this noble tradition and so you may look forward to entertaining and thoughtful articles on such diverse topics as The Pig Novel, Pig Opera, and Pig Portraiture. Thank you for reading and please keep an eye out for my forthcoming book The Survival of Pig Culture In The Age of Stupid Fat Cows (Rasher and Streaky Ltd. Dublin, 2005).

Zzzzzz

Zzzzzz. Who cares?

Why Bother?

Imagine how truly useful computers and computer applications would be if they were not invented and designed by nerds and geeks. Alas, the geeks, nerds and tech bores have created a micro-chip driven world of which they and their tasteless, artless, ugly, tedious, unstylish minds have become masters. This is why the future is so bleak and hopeless: the values of the nerd have become the values of the bovine media-saturated majority. "In the future everybody will be famous for the fifteen minute it takes them to clean their bi-focals and their slow drooling, hunchbacked blackberry tapping routine."

As someone who is forced to wrestle every day with the horribly egregious Photoshop program, I can only conclude that it was developed by a team of complete and utter total philistines. And nobody with a true love or understanding of the English language could possibly have played in the most infintesimal role in creating any of the writing programs currently available to mankind.

God help us all.

Best Books of 2004

Here is a list and brief description of the books I enjoyed most over the course of the past year. All of them should be available from amazon.bum and other reputable online book merchants.

Best Novel

"Bruneschelli's i-Pod" - by Nate Preshuss (Goode Lookine, New York 2004.)

Factually based, this gripping, fast-paced thriller follows dashing hero Steve Boldvin as he and sexpot sidekick Ariadne Titz outwit the evil agents of Pope Vitalis X and discover the dark secrets of Bruneschelli's tomb, guarded since the Renaissance by the Spanish Inquisition, the Knights Templar, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jnr, Microsoft, and the deeply mysterious Friends of the New Criterion.

Best Autobiography

"Foot Odor: A Memoir" by Randy Varukka (University of Massachusetts Press, 2004)

Sensitive and heart-rending account of Varukka attempts to control his chronic foot odor problem and maintain his sanity while proving his worth at sex-crazed foot fetish parties in 1970s Missouri.

Best Travel

"Partying With the Azalumu" by Chip Chuck (Waste of Time Books, Las Vegas 2004)

Plucky, hip young Chip Chuck hilariously recounts what he can remember of his time spent with the Azalumu tribe of the Western Marijuana Islands.

Best Non-Fiction

"How the Lavatory Cistern Changed the World: the Race To Produce the First Flush Toilet" by Thomas Crapper XIVth (Vanity Publishing Inc, Shadyville 2004)

The riveting story of how Crapper's great-great-great-great-grandfather invented the flush toilet and how his marvelous creation has benefited mankind ever since.

Ours Is Not To Reason Y

Perhaps the most prominent - at least in my own case - application of the letter Y was as a frontal gusset decoration for the infamous "y front" genre of men's underpanting, a hardy design perennial of male lingerie which can still be encountered today when examining the modern "boxer brief" for example, the whole being a memorable - at least in my own case - example of form following function.

Obviously I could drone on and on about the use of Y in the Welsh and Spanish languages; about how the Romans stole the letter from the Greeks and perverted it for their own nefarious purposes; or how the Saxons hammered the letter into shape in their own inimitable style. But then I would not have room left enough to speak of the "samian letter", which is what Y is sometimes called.

Y, in its guise as "the samian letter", was chosen by Pythagoras to be the letter representing the straight and narrow path of virtue, hence its later if heavily adapted appearance as a featured line on certain types of graph. Alexander Pope mentions the samian letter in his Dunciad:

"When reason doubtful, like the samian letter/ Points him two ways, the narrower the better"

Alas, Stephenesque's road of reason is always an extremely wide, dual carriageway with no exit ramps and no service stations.

Random Monday Night Pig Melodrama

By they time I had climbed to the top of the tower and reached the boudoir Eliza’s temper had already reduced my four poster to just a claw-foot mattress and a piece of splintered stick. To make matters worse, there was a pig’s head spinning around and around on the roulette wheel of the casino game I’d given her for Christmas. Seeing me walk through the door, Eliza picked the revolting thing up by the ears and threw it at me with all her strength. I caught the pitch down low, like a baseball player and slung it back at Eliza’s naked legs with some degree of force, knocking her down as though she were a solitary female pin in a bizarre game of flesh skittles.
“Where did you steal the porker?” I demanded, grasping her by those long red ringlets and glowering.
“He’s my pig.” She shrieked. “My pig, you bastard.”
Mustering all he calm remaining in my body, I said: ”If he’s your pig, Eliza, you’ll know what his name is, won’t you.”
She began weeping uncontrollably; deep, powerful, shuddering sobs that wracked her entire body. “Jean Paul” she gasped. “His name is Jean Paul the Pig, and I bought him from an online farm on virtual market day.”
I released her hair and she slumped to the floor. French pig, eh: the most addictive: the most lethal. It belonged to Eliza alright, I checked the name, tattooed as on the beast’s inner lip as I knew it would be, as they always are. But who had sold Jean Paul the Pig to her? And was this the first shipment? Or the last?
Eliza moaned. I picked her up by the hair again, bringing her head level with mine, and then kissed her violently on the mouth. Pig or no pig, she was still the most beautiful woman in Old MacDonaldsville. Ee Aye Ee Aye Oh.

Good News

I am pleased to announce that my monumental essay "Shush! You're Dead: A Concise History of the Silencer in Modern Automatic Weaponry" has been accepted by the New Yorker for publication, subject to approval by the fact checking department.

However, since my entire essay might be likened to a evil-smelling black sphere comprised of shapeless, shifting lies, outrageous insults, calumny, and insidious half-truths, I would surmise that such approval will not be bestowed upon the piece anytime soon.

Still, it is the acceptance that counts! So hurrah and hooray for me.

Meanwhile, here is a brief extract from my article to whet your appetites for its future non-appearance in the magazine in question at your local bookseller:

The Man With The Golden Gun is widely considered to be the worst of the famous James Bond series of espionage themed cinematic embarrassments. This dreadful film would surely have been improved tenfold if the character in possession of this golden weapon had afixed a silencer to the gun, then he could have whispered "silence is golden" to himself every time he shot somebody with it. Not only would such clever dialogue add much needed layers of dramatic wit and archly laconic personality to what is really a quite remarkably thin and one-dimensional role even by action movie standards, but it would also have saved the studio lots of money on 'bang' sound effects.

X the Unknown

Very little is known about the macabre and mysterious rites of the letter X, for its terrible secrets are jealously guarded by the Bathers of the Sacred Font, those nakedly sans-serif mythopoetic silhouettes who glide and back-flip in magenta misted waters like lascivious nymphs in some X-rated cinematic debauch-o-rama supposedly based upon the Dionysian orgies of ancient times.

Yes, it is no mere accident that louche rows of winking X's symbolize kisses scrawled beneath the signature of perfumed letters exchanged by clandestine and adulterous  lovers.

So X is certainly the most sinful and secretive member of the alphabet, in fact I'm suprised that it hasn't been blackballed by the other letters long before now.

But fortunately X is redeemed by the fact that in ancient times the new breed of non-pagan Xtians - disciples of Jesus X - were often crucified on X-shaped structures rather than the traditional upright cross so crucial to Xtian symbolism, and to this day X remains an abbreviation of Christ, as in the festival of xmas that has just passed so quickly.