American Fez

Awaiting The Whim of Poseidon

There will be nothing new posted here on Friday, Saturday or Sunday as I am going sailing in temperate and wat’ry glades, navigating a miniature schooner through rippled channel and over sunken galleon propelled by revitalizing zephyrs and shan’t return from my nautical idyll until Monday morning. Meanwhile, here is an electronic scan of Edward Hopper’s famous painting entitled “Ground Swell” for you to ponder on. In his excellent but brief book on Hopper's work, Paul Strand observes that the boat is anchored in time and space by a triangle composed of the white sail, those bronzed yachtsmen with their rather pasty female companion who stare at a fixed point as if hypnotized, and that reprovingly angled bell buoy which is the object of their unwavering gaze. As for my own unwavering gaze, it will be directed at the clouds from the window of an aeroplane until I reach my coastal destination. Travel by air always makes me extremely nervous and as the jet sppeds along the runway I usually begin chanting T.S Eliot's famous phrase that he borrowed from Julian of Norwich for his Four Quartets: "All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well", over and over again, much to the consternation of my fellow passengers. Never mind, let's all be nervous together, I say. Safety in numbers and all that....

An Eternal Flame

Last night after a vigorous game of squash my throat felt extremely parched and sore, as if I had tramped across the deserts of Araby and back with Sir Wilfred Thesiger in an especially exploratory pro-dehydration mood:
"Come along you tardy fellows, the Zouave of Zahaaria and I once crossed the Gobi with only an ounce of turnip juice between us to assuage our vicious thirst, so we can certainly march six hundred miles under the blazing sun with only a thimbleful of weed-killer to split between eight people and the camels. Look at my tongue, chaps, it already looks like a shard of shriveled-up beef teriyaki and so should yours ... or else you’re not doing it properly. Oh look, here's some more endless arid wasteland. Hurrah!"
Anyway, personally, I decided to ease my discomfiture by eating several scoops of vanilla ice cream, and embarked upon an expedition to the store to purchase a quart of this self-proscribed remedy. Alas, the store was unable to provide me with plain vanilla flavor since every tub of ice cream stocked in the freezer was unfortunately ruined by the addition of crunchy enhancements such as nuts and M&Ms and so on. I keep hoping that one day Plain will make a fashionable resurgence and that conventional flavors will become the new avant-garde taste sensation: no more ice creams with chocolate chip piercings or fudge chunk tattoos. Oh, who will lead the phantoms of freedom from mix-ins over the gelato barricades?

PS - if you don't know who Sir Wilfred Thesiger is, you probably ought to find out. But I'm not providing you with a link. Oh no. You can do your own damn research as far as I'm concerned.

Economies of Cute

Although she disguises her intentions with desktop Mickey Mouse memorabilia and those ‘Kindly Spinster’ brand voluminous floral print dresses she wears, my colleague Alison is really an unvarnished Lucrezia Borgia of the rodent world, scattering grated poisons around the openings of our numerous office mouseholes with all the gleeful abandon of an exhuberant bridesmaid showering confetti upon a happy couple. Observing Alison sowing these drugged seeds of death, you might conclude that she is afraid of mice, but you would be quite mistaken. She actually nurtures a pet white mouse called Guido in her home: a mouse who is cosseted and mollycoddled to such extravagant levels of luxury that Guido’s exalted status in Alison's household would turn even the most pampered of poodles emerald green with envy. And yet Alison exterminates Guido’s browner and less domesticated cousins without a second thought. I refer to this inequitable state of affairs as “The Economies of Cute": clean and fluffy lives while greasy and matted dies - but that's girls for you.

Advertisement

Although the event is more than a year away, since I mentioned the artist Rex Whistler yesterday, I should point out that the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery will be exhibiting a retrospective of his work that commences on May Day, 2006 and runs until the end of June. There are more details here. And just to give you some idea, here is an amusing example of Rex's work entitled "Allegory: HRH The Prince Regent Awakening The Spirit of Brighton", scanned very badly by me from a plate in Rex's biography "The Laughter and the Urn", written by his brother Laurence. Anyway, if you are going to be in London between May and June of 2006, I suggest you make a jaunt down to Brighton for the Whistler show, it will be a very worthwhile trip and you can lose your teeth in a "stick of rock" while you're there. Hurrah!

Untitled, 2005

After the clattering, drain-flooding downpour of the night's rain, a struggling morning sun bravely began trying to muscle its way out from beneath a heavy conflagration of grumbling clouds as I walked along the river to work. Sheets of yellow sunlight broke on the river bank and then suddenly evaporated into gloom again, only to immediately reappear on a slim stretch of rippling and now glistening water, as if someone above was experiencing difficulty with an anglepoise lamp. A sleeping mallard standing on the round rocks of the shore was thrown into gleaming three-dimensional relief while the trees on the opposite bank remained a damp, flat, and inchoate smudge of tangled grey-blues and pale green, only for the duck to fall swiftly into darkness as the trees blossomed into modelled form. I felt as though this particular Monday was offering me a choice between Impressionism and the painted clarity of say, Thomas Eakins. Obviously, I would have preferred a Rubens kind of day or something similar with lots of gloriously nude women in it. But I suppose beggars can't be choosers, so in the end I voted for the hard light option.

And here is probably as good a place as any to note that I have added a list of my favorite painters to the links column, should anyone care about such prejudices. I have named the list "Light and Shade" and it is exclusive to British and American painters so that it doesn't grow too long; I shall add the Whistlers, James and Rex (no relation) as soon as I find decent web sites for them. Fairfield Porter, of course, is the artist whose painting of "Laurence Typing" illustrates this page (my sincere apologies to whomever owns the copyright on the picture).

Meme Bore

So. The monkey you most resemble is the one with the red bum. The Roman philosopher you are most like is Tedius Yawnus. If you were a book you'd be the Rand McNally street atlas to Nowheresville. If you were in a fairy tale you'd be the person who puts in the pea in the Princesses bed, and if you were a character in a film you'd be the guy who does the annoying card tricks in "Last Year At Marienbad". Frankly, Meme Bore, I don't give a damn. I couldn't give a zebra's turd.

Pallas Athena and Me

As a child, usually after terrorizing the neighborhood with my extensive range of toy weaponry, I would often fling myself into a makeshift HQ and fantasize about how I would die “well” upon the field of combat. Naturally, I had neither been torn apart by a high-velocity shell nor crushed beneath the caterpillared wheels of a Panzer tank. Oh no. The battle won, I am struck in the heart by a single bullet fired by a cowardly sniper and fall backwards in graceful slow-motion into the arms of admiring and tearful brother officers, notably the young Churchill (to whom my life of courage would be a great inspiration), and a guy called Hardy who hops around asking “can I kiss him now?”
It is a very Rupert Brooke sort of way to go: “There is a part of some foreign field that is forever Old Scrotum, Massachusetts and all that.” Followed by a standing ovation when I stroll into Valhalla, etc.
But, of course, now that my mind has achieved adult maturity, I fantasize about swaggering around some table covered with maps in some gloriously comfortable French Chateau while dressed in jodhpurs and full regimental regalia, wearing millions of medals and waving a pointy stick all over the place: “How does the King expect me to invade Asia without adequate air cover and only four battle cruisers. Still, we’ll give it our best shot, eh chaps.”

Creatures of Habit, Creatures of Change

Thursday afternoon and time is moving really slowly. In fact, it's normally already Friday morning by now. But no, not today - or to be accurate - no, not tomorrow.
On the whole, I would say that today has been roughly seven hours and twelve seconds longer than yesterday was, not counting the brief moments I spent laying unconcious on the floor.
Does this mean that Friday will be even shorter than it usually is?
Or will Friday - that most roister-doistering of days - borrow a few hours from Saturday, since Saturday put the squeeze on Sunday last week and Friday has come to collect. Who can say?
Personally I have to go now. My time is up, so I leave you with the guest list for my Annual Swashbuckling Classic Adventure Hero Dinner Party that I am hosting this weekend:

Confirmed Guests
Robinson Crusoe +1
Last of the Mohicans (must bring his own finger bowl this year)
Count of Monte Cristo
Davey Crockett
The Three Musketeers - except Athos, the boring one.
Scarlet Pimpernel (prompt arrival appreciated)
Swiss Family Robinson (child portions optional)
Tarzan and Jane (proper dress required)
Flash Gordon
Dale Arden
Doctor Zharkov (just in case the blender breaks again this year)
Sherlock Holmes (no smoking at the table)
Miss Marple (liquids only)

If you would like to be included in this festive occasion, email me explaining how you daringly escaped from Cutthroat Island, saved the Queen of France from the evil Cardinal, or how you killed Captain Blood in a duel to the death.
You must bring chocolate cake if you come.

And No Man's Wit

In Spain I was sunburned Satan red, and when my face and limbs began to peel I resembled a boiled lobster sprinkled with shavings of cheddar cheese. My selfish parents had abandoned me to the care of a Spanish nanny who knew nothing of sensitive skin, and she took me out strolling far from the shade. Of course, this was back in the 1970s when sun worshippers would slather their limbs with olive oil and roll about on the beach as if they were sausages in a sandy saucepan. Nevertheless, to add insult to injury, sprawled amid a collection of cheap leather on the steps of an ornate but malfunctioning fountain in the dusty square outside our hotel, having missed his Californian moment by a considerable number of years, a Tim Buckley clone picked at his guitar like a vulture ripping into a piece of particularly tough gazelle carcass. Every time I ventured out from beneath the security of the hotel awning he tried to play Puff the Magic Dragon, hoping that my guilt-ridden father would toss him a fistful of pesetas for his efforts, something for him to take back to his “woman”, who no doubt possessed a “gypsy soul” also. Even at the age of four I knew that here was an example of a genre of person who should be avoided at all costs in the future. And to this day I still associate hippies with painful, prickly skin complaints. Here comes the sun, little darling? Just stick your head back in the clouds, baby.

Caveat:  Having just said all that, I should point out that Tim Buckley’s “Lorca” album, named after the Spanish poet, is actually pretty damn good. As is, of course, his immortal “Song To The Siren.”
These, naturally, are my thoughts on the matter.

Herakles and the Natural World

After the Easter chores have been completed, Spring turns the most irreligious of seasons. Like the desperate supplicant who only directs prayers heavenwards in his darkest hour when treacherously ambushed by his own negligence and sloth, I require no spiritual assurance when the carnival of Spring parades down my street and this lissome season catches my wintry beads in her hands and bares her Brazilian wax at me … er... as the craven, yellow-bellied mollusc busily generates its own protective shell inside a rock pool bunker behind seaweed barricades, so do I cower and shake my raging fist at the circling seagull whose aimless defecations care not a whit for fishermen at sea tonight. And so, in the court rooms of the clouds, behold the reproved cormorant, like a feathered Lear hanging madly in a blasted sky. Even crabs march in a straight line when the sea swells and mermen are afoot. Oarsman, pass by.
These are my thought on the matter, for what they’re worth.

In Agreement With A Master

... “The common English traveler, if he can gather a black bunch of grapes with his won fingers, and have his bottle of Falernian brought him by a girl with black eyes, asks no more of this world, nor the next; and declares Naples a Paradise. But I knew, from the first moment when my foot furrowed volcanic ashes, that no mountain form or color could exist in perfection when everything was made of scoria, and that blue sea was to be little boasted if it broke on black sand.”
These are the views of John Ruskin, and are also my thoughts on the matter.

The Glittering Past That Never Was

Cigarette smoke exhaled from the lips of a beautiful woman enters the room in a swift shaft of pale mist like a genie summoned from a lamp, then tantalizingly pirouettes and arcs and twirls, as if the first wish this genie granted was to transform itself into the most graceful of prima ballerinas.
It is moments such as these when you must carry an expensive and elegant lighter in your pocket. "Please allow me, madam" - click: a sudden flickering flame and you are instantly transported backwards in time, into the ballrooms of the Faubourg St Germain, as the brief fire from the lighter is reflected in the woman's eye like the corner of some crystal chandelier.
I first began reading Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past", as it was called then, during the summer of 1983 when I was employed as a lifeguard at a sort of "gated pool" constructed atop a wealthy apartment complex in the city. Here, in my imagination at least, the Guermantes paddled in the shallows while Albertine sunbathed beside me and Baron de Charlus bellyflopped repeatedly in the deep end. To some degree it was idyllic summer, and yet my mind was racked with doubts: how, I wondered, should a Proustian lifeguard actually respond to a woman drowning? I decided that he would undoubtedly recall his impressions of Odilon Redon's painting called "Ophelia", if only because the pool boy had been neglecting his duties and consequently there was a lot of flotsam in the water.
These are my thoughts on the matter, at any rate.

A Concurrence With the Ages

.... "It is a riddle to me, how the story of oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches; how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysicks, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of spirits; for my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that there are witches. They that doubt of these do not only deny them, but spirits: and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort, not of infidels, but atheists. Those that, to confute their incredulity, desire to see apparitions, shall, questionless, never behold any, nor have the power to be so much as witches. The devil hath made them already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain of changelings."

These are the words of Sir Thomas Browne, and are also my thoughts on the matter.

And So We Bid Farewell

Short and sweet as it was, our season in Old Scrotum draws towards its quaint conclusion, and so we must bid farewell to our new friends, mount our bicycles and ride off into the sunset with our packed lunch. Next up: "My Thoughts on the Matter"

Rough Guide

Planning to vacation in Old Scrotum this summer? If traveling by aeroplane it always pays dividends to plan for the unexpected. That's why I always ensure my carry-on luggage contains a re-sealable packet of strawberry flavored powdered drink. This way, if my travel plans suddenly go awry and I find myself forced to drink my own urine to stay alive while floating on a inflatable raft in the middle of the freezing Atlantic Ocean, well, I can just add the strawberry flavored powdered drink to the mix and - hey presto! - it doesn't taste so bad anymore. I should add that you also need to pack a sturdy plastic beaker to drink out of, and a straw too, not to mention a plastic spoon for mixing purposes, and a selection of fresh fruit makes a suitable and attractive garnish. But then you also need a paring knife to cut the fruit into easily handled segments, and a clean napkin just in case any of the strawberry urine and fruit juice dribbles down your chin. I suppose you could always use your life jacket as a sort of kid's bib thing to wipe away excess spillage - but that would be bad table manners. So in case any other survivors are also clinging to the raft, I suggest you push them off so that you can use your life jacket in any way you see fit without causing embarrassment to yourself - Quick Tip: you can use your paring knife to stab at the fingers of the other survivors if they put up a fight. But that's just me - you can just pack an extra pair of shoes if you like, but it won't do you any good.
Personally, I was thinking of summering in Italy during the month of August. But unfortunately all that's changed now. Perusing a map of that great and antique country I had decided to base myself in a place called Detail. According to my map Detail is an absolutely enormous city - forty times larger than Rome! - so you'd have to figure there would be lots of fun stuff do there, and zillions of flights in and out of the airport. Well, you'd be mistaken. But it wasn't until I encountered a considerable degree of difficulty booking a hotel in the area that I realized something was really wrong, for when I enquired about accomodation in Detail at the Italian Tourist Bureau, the man behind the counter just gave me a blank stare.
"Look." I explained to the fool, brandishing the map under his nose, "Detail is right there. Exactly where the Adriatic used to be!"
But he just tossed the map in the trash and then he had security throw me out - so much for traditional Sicilian hospitality!
So as it stands, I am now thinking of scrapping my Detail plans altogether and going to place called Scale instead. According to the map it's an extremely thin and very long island in the Mediterranean featuring several sandy causeways leading to these sort of number-shaped coral reef type things. Should be lovely!

The Parable of the Weeping Orphans

In the spring of 1907 two weeping orphans called Hunchbacked Pete and Whooping Cough Willie lucklessly found themselves thrown upon the hard charity of the Old Scrotum Orphanage. This pair of unfortunate boys had been condemned to scrub the cold and stony floors of that dark institution by the Social Affairs Unit, whose grim agents had caught the boys eating hot dogs on the Sabbath. After a vigorous de-lousing, both of the little boys were dressed in itchy tunics made of coarsest weasel hair with matching underpants. These unusual and uncomfortable vestments were donated by the Parental Guardian Society of Old Scrotum, an august body of concerned townspeople whose preservation of good health and general well-being the orphans were instructed to pray for nightly. At nine o’clock, the boys were sent to bed without any supper. At the chime of the midnight bell, shivering beneath threadbare sheets, blue in the face, and no longer able to tolerate the scratchy uniform forced upon his scrawny shoulders by the evil warders, Hunchback Pete tore his tunic off, wriggled out of his underpants, and ran screaming into the moonlight like a diminutive cross between Quasimodo and Archimedes leaping from an especially freezing bath. He was found naked and dead on a windswept and blasted heath the following morning. Whooping Cough Willie on the other hand, simply went to sleep, learned to adore his weasel hair clothes. He developed into a strong and virile young man who made a name for himself in Old Scrotum amateur dramatic society circles. Despite his great age, Willie is currently appearingas First Gorilla in The Old Scrotum Wheelchair Players' production of Krapp's Last Tape at the Old Scrotum Playhouse and would like to thank Daisy Mae, King Phillip of Macedonia, Dr Doom, Silly Tracey, the bar staff at Lozenge and all the Mentholyptus Crew. He sends special love to the Social Affairs Unit and would like to dedicate tonight’s performance to Conker and the Syrup Gals.

Putting Away Childish Things

When I was a very, very small boy, certainly no taller than an especially short Pygmy Headhunter of the Western Ouillipoan Islands (a race now sadly extinct), I was fortunate enough to be presented with several sheets of colorful stickers imprinted with my name and featuring illustrations of the comic book super-villain, Dr Doom. For some reason, the dangerous idea took seed in my fertile young mind that by affixing my stickers to selected objects I could, by occult means, force the owners of these objects to do my bidding: a sort of Adhesive Voodoo, if you like, or Gummy Evil Eye.
These supernatural powers of mine were confirmed when the Keeper of the Old Scrotum Botanical Gardens, an odious little ogre of a man, fell dead from a sudden heart attack after I stuck one of my stickers of doom on his wheelbarrow; a very gratifying result from my perspective. However, I soon became very worried that the Police would discover my sticker, and consequently my murderous role revealed to the world on the front pages of Old Scrotum Advertiser.
Found guilty by a vengeful jury comprised of Old Scrotum’s finest and sternest, the judge would undoubtedly dispatch me to Devil’s Island, where I would be forced to braid hempen ropes with Captain Dreyfus and break rocks beneath a remorseless sun. How I cursed the day those daemonic stickers had fallen into my idle hands!
Fortunately, the law and medical opinion seemed to harbor the mistaken impression that the Keeper of the Old Scrotum Botanical Gardens had died because he ate too much fatty food and drank ale in excess – “ what fools these mortals be!” I thought - so the bony finger of accusation never steered its sleuthing knuckle in my direction. Still, despite achieving adulthood and banishing the fantastical fictions of childhood from my mind, to this very day I superstitiously avoid all commerce with novelty stickers, post-it notes, and iron-on transfers of any kind.

Postcard From A Distant Shore

In her eloquent acceptance speech, Miss Ethel Pucker, winner of the 1932 Old Scrotum Miss Mermaid competition, favorably compared the Old Scrotum coastline with the South of France. "The Cote d'Scrote!" she exclaimed, "One can almost see the cloves of garlic bobbing in this cornflower blue sea that swells beside brown powder beaches, recalling as they do, the sands of Araby. Here, sunburned crabs paddle sideways in the shallows and ink-black mussels luxuriate in their dainty rock pools. Meanwhile, far off in the distance, beneath the arabesque waves, a seahorse shimmers through sunken pirate treasure, and an octopus exhales and shoots off into the submarine shadows, his slender tentacles fluttering like emerald seaweed in the Gulf Stream. Thank you for voting for me." Unfortunately, after Colonel Ulysses Q. Neptoon, a judge of the 1932 event and scion of Old Scrotum society, revealed in his memoirs that he'd "Had the filthy cow all ends up behind the dunes during intermission," Miss Pucker revised her gratifying estimation of Old Scrotum's seaside charms to: "that polluted little stinkin' piss-hole lame ass town."
Alas, even the most loyal Old Scrotumite must confess that Miss Pucker's second opinion can boast some considerable degree of accuracy, despite the bitter circumstances in which this unhappy verdict was administered. The Old Scrotum coast is certainly no stranger to the effects of oil slick and sewer pipe, and even whales have been known to beach themselves in order to get out of the awful water. Miss Mermaid competitions are no longer staged, either. These days, of course, its all Mr. Beast From Forty Thousand Fathoms: I trust I can count upon your support this year?

Illustration is a woodcut of a "Sea Satyr" by the Renaissance artist and scientist Conrad Gesner, who produced a great variety of such intriguing images

Remembering A Poet

One of Old Scrotum's most famous sons is the venerable New England poet, Ezra Pence, who also taught Creative Writing at Old Scrotum Community College.
In 1937 the college's esteemed literary journal, The Scroterian, then edited by the vituperatative critic James Paneverything, published a commemorative issue showcasing Pence's most famous poem, "Getting My Ass Kicked Because I'm A Poet" which featured extensive scholarly annotations by the editor himself.
I am indebted to the Paneverything estate for permission to reprint the poem and notes:

Getting My Ass Kicked Because I'm A Poet

The pen is mightier than
The sword?
Not so, sir.
E'en the boldest poet
Shalt fall in the field
When fighting an Ostrogoth warrior
Armed to the teeth
And swinging a great big bloody bit of metal

- - -Ezra Pence

Editor's note: this is absolutely crap - JP.

Scrollywood Boulevard

All film fans are familiar with Hollywood, and most moviegoers have heard of Bollywood, but how many people - even ardent cineastes - can name even the brightest stars of Scrollywood, that hotbed of motion picture activity based in Old Scrotum, Massachusetts? Not many, that's for sure. But this will soon change, because whether you're talking Hollywood or Bollywood, it's all Follywood compared to the thrills and spills of Scrollywood.For in Scrollywood the emphasis is on IQ rather than FX. Here tear-jerking romance meets screwball comedy and action-packed adventure on the high seas of Outer Space. Indeed, many of America's finest amateur thespians have recently sought the alluring stardust promise of the famous Scrollywood sign: "Old Scrotum Exit 2m. Get in Lane"
All this entertainment industry action has been a great economic boon for the Old Scrotum economy, and local business is definitely feeling the benefit. Downtown cafes are now stuffed with the rear ends of Pantomime Horses discussing "the biz" with the front halves of Talking Pigs, while Ugly Sisters trade nose extension tips beneath humming hairdryers in the barbershop and itinerant Aladdins scour thrift stores for a decent winter coat.
Unfortunately, intense competition for plum roles in Scrollywood productions means that many of these aspiring stars are obliged to endure long periods of unemployment and destitution. The only spotlight these traveling players are likely to step into is a probing beam from the Old Scrotum sherifs squad car. So most simply content themselves with regular appearances on Scrollywood Squares the charity game show and soup kitchen staged weekly at St Griffith's Church of the Holy Close-Up.
Still ... Hooray for Scrollywood, eh!

Picture is actually a still from a silent 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz made by Chadwick Pictures

Up Country

The fatty tissues of a weasel's snout are not as valuable as the ivory tusks of an elephant, which is a great pity since the water meadows around Old Scrotum are teeming with weasels, and as you might expect, elephant sightings are unfortunately few are far between, except for the gilt ones stuck on the Playhouse ceiling. If only this value system were reversed, and if only rich ladies secured their jewels and trinkets in decorative boxes inlaid with expensive weases snout fatty tissue, then the intrepid Old Scrotum weasel hunter could amass riches beyond the dreams of avarice, simply by scouring our wetlands for his quarry armed with only a small de-nosing knife and a handy snout collectos shoulder bag. For it is whispered that just as dying elephants drag themselves off to their legendary Elephant's Graveyard, so terminally ill weasels make the long trip from their homes to the Old Scrotum countryside to die. But as the situation exists, should some serendipitous huntsman happen upon this secret weasel necropolis, he might just as well keep walking because, beside the worthless decaying snouts he will discover there, nobody in their right mind really wants a weasel leg umbrella stand either.

Traditional Old Scrotum Hospitality

There is something of the amber-cheeked glow of an Oriental Potentate that illuminates the triple-chinned features of MacGregor Mathers, landlord of Old Scrotum's most famous tavern, Ye Mandrake's Arms; as if with a single clap of his imperious hands he could summon some beautiful, bronzed and sensuously supple Middle Eastern maiden to shake her bejewelled belly and twist her silken hips to the hypnotic rhythms provided by a drum of camel hide and an esoterically decorated flute. But alas, there is only fat Beryl behind the bar who does not much resemble a Delacroix vision of a Gypsy Slave Girl. Still, who knows, after quaffing several foaming tankards of MacGregor's Old Scrotum Special Brew, many a perception of the nature of Beryl's charms has taken a turn for the surreal and the bizarre.
Never mind. As MacGregor stomps around the room changing channels on the numerous televisions that dangle from the rafters, Beryl waddles in the opposite direction, taking orders from bedraggled patrons crammed into rickety booths. My personal favorite items on the menu are "Enscarpment of Liver with Volcano of Pig's Brains" or "Shock of Sheep's Face in Rancido Reduction Sauce".
Whatever the weary wayfarer desires, he will always enjoy an old-fashioned New England at Ye Mandrake Arms, as long as he doesn't mind the disgusting state of the bathrooms.

The picture of the Delacroix "Gypsy Slave Girl" is actually Delacroix's "Odalisque" ... which is pretty much the same thing really.

Our Town

Although the Founding Fathers had very little patience for the area of Massachusetts we now call Old Scrotum, a rebel band of pilgrims called The Founding Deadbeat Dads built America’s first brothel here in 1625. Fortunately, these dubiously motivated early settlers were unable to locate any women of easy virtue among the ladies of the Mayflower to work there, and so this “house of no-repute whatsoever” as it was called fell into wrack and ruin, eventually being turned into a schoolroom upon whose foundations Old Scrotum Community College stands today, and where these introductory words are being written!The town of Old Scrotum itself nestles comfortably among the broad hills of the Buttoqua Valley, accessible by car via Interstate 666, or by chartered ferry across Straynge Sound followed by overland piggyback courtesy of the Snaggle Sisters who live nearby.
But don’t look for Old Scrotum in any atlas! The original Rand McNally was once denied succor at a local Inn, and consequently in a fit of pique the touchy cartographer refused to acknowledge the town on any of his silly little maps. Not that the populace cares: McNally’s omission has made Old Scrotum a virtual tourist-free zone.
However, the superb art collections on display at the downtown galleries of the Community College Museum and the newly opened Shite Modern, a generous endowment of the Ravin-Lunie Foundation, means that Old Scrotum has become a Mecca for connoisseurs and aesthetes. Some of the works in the museum’s possession are very valuable indeed, and these include the Renaissance quattrocento altarpiece Jesus Preaching From An Implausibly Convenient Rock possibly attributable to the School of Brobdingnagio; also St. Boobie Berating the Apes of God a fine example of vorticism. Meanwhile, visitors to Shite Modern can view the Pointillist masterpiece Sulla Pointing in the General Direction of Rome; and, of course The Wedding at Canada which is Surrealism of the most bizarre kind.
All in all, there is much to see and do and speculate upon in Old Scrotum, and over the coming months I will your personal tour guide to this venerable New England seat of learning and trough of nonsense.

The Last of the Dodecahedrons

Of all the legendary Native American tribes who once chased buffalo across the plains of this great country, anthropologists like myself know least of all about the Dodecahedrons civilization of northern Massachusetts, famously named after their distinctive twelve-sided spiky hairstyle and elaborately trepanned skulls. Dodecahedron culture generally centered on the building of canoes, scalping the paleface, and solving difficult problems of Euclidian geometry set by the tribal elders. It is thought that the Dodecahedron failure to grasp the importance of logarithmic tables in relation to the inexact science of hammering great big holes into their own heads has much to do with the tribe’s almost complete and total extinction. Indeed, only one member of this proud people remains, Running Joke, the Last of the Dodecahedrons, and he dwells with his peace pipes and other pipes within a makeshift wigwam erected in my backyard. Here he pays only $1000 per month rent, a bargain considering his teepee is conveniently located next to the septic tank. In these sympathetic surroundings – for some reason, he claims that quaint downtown Old Scrotum reminds him of the hilly land sacred to Dodecahedron mythology - Running Joke has created a small but successful cottage industry for himself sewing authentic handmade Dodecahedron moccasins for my neighbors. And there no doubt he will remain until called by his forefathers to what the Dodecahedrons calls “The Happy Counting Grounds.”

The Trite of Spring

The first cuckoo of spring also heralds the first buffoon of spring. An unwelcome pest who blights this much anticipated season with the dull rumble of his oafish skateboard and the haphazard trajectory of his so-called "rollerblading". The common household buffoon or half-wit, a string of identifying colored beads hung around his neck and lurid tattoo of "celtic knotwork" encircling his forearm, can usually be observed adorning himself with those ridiculous capri pants for men that expose his ugly, hairy calves. This ridiculous garment is often coupled with a pair of flip-flops and short-sleeve, printed shirts of garish and stomach-churning patterns, despite the fact that it is still really quite chilly outside. Buffoons also smoke huge, evil-scented cigars in public places in the middle of the day while screaming tedious details of their whereabouts into cellular phones. Some of the more moronic buffoons are content to fiddle idly with their ipods and cultivate long canals of volcanic saliva on their goatee'd chins. If you are unfortunate to come across such a buffoon whilst out walking, shoot him.

Friends Indeed

This morning, having the located with some degree of difficulty the magical mailbox that appears and reappears like a molehill at various points of the curbside, the shifting latitudes of this blue metal depository being apparently dependant upon the whim of Post Office employees moonlighting as practical jokers, I mailed my annual membership dues to the Friends of the New Criterion in the colorful envelope thoughtfully provided by the magazine’s subscription department. I must admit, I did feel a trifle guilty at the derisory sum of the check enclosed considering the bounty of enlightening material that I receive in return, especially since even the amount of postage that this august journal’s staff apply to the numerous monthly journals, important articles, invitations to special events, timely newsletters, and so on that they kindly send to me must surely exceed the miniscule amount of money I contribute to their admirable cause. All I can say is, my membership will be worth every penny, and the Searching-for-the-Source-of-the-Nile-like effort spent tracking down that will-o-the-wisp mailbox will be worth every bead of sweat - which is saying something because I despise all forms of manual labor.