American Fez

I Am the Poor Man's J.G. Ballard

What properties will we need for our Monopoly of the Future, as our hologrammatic counters hover across the perspex playing surface: a Chinatown that stretches halfway around the board, perhaps? What about several sets of identical gated communities? The industrial and corporate park beside an unidentified glass dome? Four subterranean monorail stations, obviously. A string of international hotels and super marina with Megaplex Mall. Don't forget the Pharmeceutical Werks, Big Oil Company and that chain of consumer detox spas and suspended-animation centers? And obviously there will need to be a stack of 'community barcode' cards and a stack of 'i-chance' cards: "go directly to Guantanamo Bay do not collect two hundred cell phone minutes."

Parade of Self Delusion

My most satisfying and rewarding pastime is undoubtedly my voluminous correspondence with high circulation glossy magazines, thanking the editors for publishing important and insightful articles about my favorite celebrities. For instance, I have always known that Jennifer Aniston is a beautiful woman, but until the recent in-depth interview and eight-page souvenir picture edition about her appeared, I had not realized that she is also a compassionate and intelligent spokesperson for motivated women from all walks of life.
Consequently, I purchased the highly collectible silver dollar commemorating her aquiline profile available for a limited time only from the Franklin Mint. This wonderful item currently resides atop my family television set as an example of unimpeachable female virtue for my wife and daughters to follow.
Renee Zellweger is a gorgeous and desirable young lady, obviously, but who knew about the amazing extensive range of her tremendous acting abilities? Well, a fully illustrated feature article I read last week reveals the incredible news that this charmingly chubby-cheeked creature can perform just about any role her directors demand, from smiling hello to tearful goodbye, and still retain her ravishing starlet looks! I am proud to hang a seven-inch diameter ceramic plate featuring an artist's representation of Renee on my dining room wall, and I hope that my descendents will enjoy it long after I am dead as an especially valuable and cherished family heirloom.
At night, laying awake in bed, I often stare miserably at my overweight, uncosmeticised wife and wonder why the dozy cow doesn’t take the simple effortless steps to become as talented and glamorous as these outstanding models of feminine grace, wit, and elegance. Alas, I must conclude that I am married to a stupid pair of worthless tits. But where is the magazine editor to whom I can write about this terrible injustice!

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Note for non-US readers: "Parade" is an especially banal publication that is freely inserted in certain Sunday newspapers.

Supreme Court: Grow vs Made (Landmark Decision)

An old-fashioned Supreme Court can make a wonderful addition to any domestic situation, whether you are frankly Bored of Education or simply having a quiet abortion at home with friends. But what kind of Supreme Court is right for your family circle? Generally speaking, there are two different kinds of Supreme Court: either one that you “Grow” by carefully neglecting a moldy muddle of poisonous fungi and putrid vegetables in an unattractive bowl or chipped vase; or a Supreme Court that is “Made” by hammering corroded fragments of old twisted metal into rotten planks of splintered balsa wood.
Naturally, your choice of Supreme Court will depend upon certain factors, but whichever type you pick, wisdom, originality and reasonableness should be avoided at all costs. Creating a modern Supreme Court requires cultivating a senile arrangement of self-righteous partisan consensus. Something in-bred, docile, and inflated with hot air is best. After all, you don’t want to be bothered with other people's opinions and beliefs.
Unfortunately, however, there are major disadvantages with both these types of Supreme Courts. The "grow" variety will quickly begin to give off an appalling and sickening stench, while the "made" sort takes up far too much room and produces spine-chilling clanking noises at night.
So be very careful when making your Supreme Court decision, and please try to make a better one that it would.

Still Ill

I have been researching dark liqorice in the Diarrheaeum of my local Cistern Monastery. I have learnt how lowly Abbadon was expelled from the bowels of Excelsiass the Great; how King Cleano plunged the ancient Shittites into Boggadom and bleached Wyrd Germo from behind the secret Ubend to answer for his brownish crimes; and what bowl was flushed at the Last Crapper ...yet unresolved mysteries still remain.

Reservations As Thanksgiving Approaches

We only stole things two things from the Indians:
1) Their country.
2) Their shoes.
Personally, I don't wear moccassins and I have very little time for people who do. These lightweight, buff-colored suede slippers are without doubt the world's ugliest footwear. I mean, just look at them. Frankly, the Indians should be paying us reparations!
I have never understood why the Native American Indian is so miserable about his lot in the world, especially at Thanksgiving time. I mean, who in their right mind wouldn't swap North Dakota for an annual slap-up turkey dinner with all the trimmings? I know I would. And I would throw most of Arizona into the bargain.
Also, the Red Man can go to the big department store sales the day after Thanksgiving and buy some sturdy leather brogues to replace those aforementioned horrible mocassins. Today, Running Nose and his tribe truly dwell in the land of opportunity and the angry spirits of his forefathers may finally rest in peace in the sacred burial grounds of their ancestors. Hurrah!
Surely this is what Sitting Bull foresaw when he said "The mighty rivers of the great plains shall run with gravy and see those huge mountains over there, they look exactly like roast potatoes, don't they. Please pass the casino .. I mean the cranberry sauce."

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

The Sickly Child

'Tis the season of coughs and sneezes in the mucoid citadel of catarrh and phlegm. Sprawled across a sanatorium divan the wan one flounders beneath many blankets bulked. A solitary sprig of mentolyptus grows in a sticky yellowed meadow strewn with scrunched up tissues upon which the sickly child rests his weary and weighty head ...mother? ...mother?" Alas, there is no answer from the darkening hall, save the foul wafted stench of steaming medicine and the relentless sniffles of the doomed.
In other words, I feel a little bit poorly today.

Positively 4th Rate

I recently watched a DVD copy of the perplexingly "highly acclaimed" Martin Scorsese documentary called 'Bob Dylan: No Direction Home', and it seemed to me, as my eyes flickered in time with the television scan lines, that 'No Direction At All' would be a far more suitable title for this rather lazy and humdrum work of biography.
Even those who dislike the music of Bob Dylan must concede that the Hibbing songster has created an extraordinarily fascinating personal myth for himself, yet this carefully nurtured mystique was neither explored nor exploded in the film. One imagines this to be the price paid for Dylan's collusion with the production, which was merely an assemblage of D.A. Pennebaker's archive performance footage punctuated with interviews featuring Dylan satellite figures repeating remarks and observations they have made many, many times before. And as with anything vaguely "sixties" related, the editors wheeled out old newsreels of Kennedy being shot. In other words, here we have a ready-made souvenir from the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame rather than a compelling portrait of a contemporary artist of some distinction. Which is fine, as far as it goes; but I just don't understand the critical multi-orgasm that greeted its simultaneous broadcast on American and British television, for there is certainly nothing special about it. Pennebaker's own black-and-white effort 'Don't Look Back' is a million times the film that this piece of video wallpaper purports to be.
Time out of mind? Bored out of my mind more like.

More Bad Poetry From Ages Past

Trawling through archived papers at the South Scrotum Public Records office in search of an old Puritan recipe for salted pig bladders, I came across yet another manuscript scroll containing literary works written by members of the South Scrotum Poetry Society. The following poem, apparently composed by an unrestrained and ill-advised versifier named Nathanial Gnat, is entitled "Lines Upon A Grecian Armpit." I post the poem here only because I am certain you will hate it as much as I did.

Lines Upon A Grecian Armpit

Mutter to me, oh fragrant Muse
Of the mayonnaise sweet
That tired Odysseus did confuse
With the embrocation for his feet.

How armed wi' antiperspirant
Fresh-smelled Achilles
Did'st navigate the Hellespont
With his warlike silly-billys

Thrice deodorized Dido
Your heavily scented charms
Make a Cerebus of Fido
And yon sensitive nose alarms

Owl odiferous Athena
Magicked by osmosis
After munching Trojan wiener
To cure thy halitosis

Amaranthine Repast

Had an interesting salad for lunch. All the ingredients were cultivated in the Imperial Vegetable Patch of the Secret Garden within the Forbidden City, tended by specially trained eunuchs who purified the sacred earth with thrice blessed Tibetan spring water poured from a golden watering can shaped like a human skull. Nestling in this handrolled canopy of lime and jade leaves were seven enormous ruby red tomatoes and a single proud cucumber which had been handpicked by the handmaidens of the Empress Succulenta.
Naturally, I smothered the whole lot with Ranch dressing and baco-bits. Love that shit.

Take The Quiz!

Which Fatty Acid are you?

Butyric acid - 15%
Caproic Acid - 32%
Lauric Acid - 14%
Myristic Acid - 69%
Palmitic Acid - 3%
Palmitoleic Acid - 157%
Stearic Acid - 74%

Trouble Ahead

Emerging from a thick brown pool of sizzlingly transluscent turkey fat and heralded by a persistant drumstick beat and belch-like bass baritone, the ghost of Thanksgiving Future beckons ye with a sweet potato-knuckled pilgrim finger: Grace Darling adrift in a stormy cranberry sea aboard a creaking gravy boat desperately seeking dry meat.

The Horticulture Vulture

Marshmallow fungus mutates in the fallow field: winter is a good mixer, with a splash of sun and moon, as you study the toadstool seating plan. Your elf self at the head of a maple table screened by a pine wood palisade - "Ill met in hindsight, proud Titania." - and a hawthorn or hackberry outhouse, because pretty soon the Milk of Human Kindness becomes the Urine of Human Indifference. But where do you go to take a piss in Paradise? That's what I need to know.
Meanwhile, the grinning berries barricade themselves in black branches and roll with the breeze like a tombola of frozen poison

In The Works

Here are just some of the titles of the short stories I will be submitting to a variety of international literary magazines as soon as I have written them:

1. But Where Will The Fat People Live?
Evil Squire Scrawn has been narrowing cottage doorways in the village. Can Miss Plumpo crush him to death before it is too late? All will be revealed in this, the first installment in the justly celebrated "What About All The Fat People?" series of gripping adventure tales featuring overweight sleuth Miss Plumpo and her glamorous sidekick, Obesia Ass.

2. Alyosius Shits By Candlelight
This is one for children, a heartwarming tale in which little bow-legged Alyosius learns all about potty training from a farmyard goat that talks. Unfortunately, the goat must also tell Alyosius that he is dying from Goat Leukemia.

3. Jane Austen's Poorly Knee
While researching the life of the glamorous 18th century romantic poet Rupert Boore, busty Oxford professor Joanne de Crappe-Scollar unearths secret correspondence between Boore's mother and Jane Austen revealing that Jane Austen may have grazed her knee once while bending down to pick up a piece of needlework on a visit to Primly House in Somerset. A treat for all Jane Austen fans or anyone else who is a sucker for this sort of thing. Available from your nearest airport in November, or look for it just lying around discarded on the seat next to you while traveling by public transport.

Meanwhile, below is one of the many color photographs illustrating for my forthcoming biographical work, Raymond Chandler's Boston Duck Tour

This was taken last night looking southwards down Fairfield street from the corner of Commonwealth Avenue. I think Raymond Chandler would have liked this particular section of Boston very much had he ever paid $60 to be driven along it in a gaily-painted and reconditioned former military amphibious assault vehicle as some loud-mouthed "guide" recited reams of meaningless inofrmation.

Musical Sensation

My new operetta is nearly completed. I just have to write some music and it's done. The bloody thing has taken me twenty-five hard years of blood, sweat, and lounging around in cafes talking about it to anyone who will listen.
As far as I know, this is the only operetta ever scored entirely for accordion, glockenspiel, and knee-cymbals. There was a trumpet also, but these days I find brass just so passé. Just a little too Philip Glassy. And we don't want that.
Anyway, the action takes place in the eighteenth-century Boston court at City Halle, and follows the efforts of a recently re-elected Italian Mayor to overcome his speech impediment. I have called it “Wigoletto”: a good combination joke based on eighteenth century headgear, speech problems, and, of course, the actual opera called “Rigoletto” (I always find I have to explain these things)
Act One begins with a slight tremble on the knee-cymbals, followed by the persistent cuckoo-like refrain of the glockenspiel, and finally the triumphant whirl of the accordion sets the scene as the hero enters and the libretto begins:
Mayor Mumbelino (falsetto): There is too much powder on my wig!
Chorus: There is too much powder on his wig!
Mayor Mumbelino (andante allegro): And I'm going to kill that bloody cuckoo!
Chorus: (bass-baritone): Rip its bloody Irish head off!
Mayor Mumbelino (ear piercing shriek): There is too much powder on my wiiiiiiiiig!!

Intermission or Entr'acte, whichever you prefer.

The next scene begins with a mournful accordion wail as the entire cast follows the cuckoo's tiny coffin through the corridors of City Halle with their heads bowed. As counterpoint, the glockenspiel provides a slight spring motif. Then there is a crash of knee-cymbals and everyone's legs go wobbly and they all fall over.

The End.

Matinee performances only
Money refunded at box office.

Scowl

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by hubris. It didn't matter though because they were really pretty limited when all was said and done anyway.
Suze had heavy-hooded traffic light eyes that flashed stop, go, tell me that you love me. But I had a stop sign mouth and after a quick oil change I only had eyes for her exit ramp. I had seen more curves on a straight line and she never once checked her rear view mirror. Sometime around late May I changed my name to Bruce and shifted south. Got myself a job as a dime store Santa Claus.
"What do you want for Christmas, kid?"
"A train set."
"That's costs more than a dime. You can't have that."
Then I found out that there was an old Injun reservation out beyond the blue mountains. Thought I might sell the chiefs a few cans of war paint. Laura Ashley color scheme I had in overstock. You guys could do a lot with mauve, I told them. Sure enough they wanted to trade and offered me an old Lakota recipe for tiramisu.
"Custard's last stand" I said. But nobody laughed.

Lazy Swine

I have at least five pairs of shoes in desperate need of repair. Last night I placed all five pairs beside my fireplace next to a bottle of diet Pepsi, two blueberry muffins and a handful of chocolate covered peanuts. Unbelievably, I woke this morning to discover that my shoes were still in desperate need of repair! Even the appetizing repast I had left beside them remained untouched.
Just what, I demand to know, were the friendly gnomes who live in the walls doing all night? Probably drunk stupid on toadstool wine, I'll wager. Lazy, good-for-nothing little loser people!
It was the same story when I wanted my couch moved from one room to another. Six walnuts, a can of ginger ale, half a snickers bar, and the bloody couch didn't budge an inch! Where, I ask you, were all those big and brawny ogres who don't mind a bit of heavy lifting? Prowling around at the fairyland disco with a jug of dandelion ale trying to pick up woodland nymphs, I'll be bound!
It's a serious disgrace that in this day and age you cannot find a single make-believe character to do a fair days work for a fair days pile of junk food.
What is the world coming to? Next thing you know, the witch who lives down the road will have to build a house out of crack cocaine if she wants to attract any plump little children.
Perhaps Theodore Dalrymple can help? He's a know-it-all.

Fortean Ravings

Like any sane and reasonable person, I believe that most conspiracy theories are frothy hogwash cocktails with a splash of balderdash and a slice of humbug ... but having said that, those startlingly well-exposed photographs from the Apollo moon landings do concern me. Can they really be visual documents of actual events in outer space? Or were they faked by NASA in a studio with actors and a black backdrop?
For instance, modern cameras are equipped with a lens filters dial featuring choices such as 'Bright Sun', 'Cloud', or 'Fluorescent' so photographers can select the correct color temperature compensation for prevailing light conditions. But I have never ever seen one with a 'Lunar Glow' setting, so without such an important technological aid how is it possible that the moon pictures look so good? Especially since the astronauts wouldn't have been able to see very much through the viewfinder while wearing those bulbous space helmets with the dark glass vizors.

Meanwhile, as we all know, dust is caused by dead particles of human hair and skin.
So what on Earth could folks have been up to during the California dust bowl?
These are questions that baffle the scientists and experts.

Why Bother?

So the speech impeded Mayor of Boston (his name is Mayor Moon Module or something like that) has been re-elected. A whopping thirty-five percent of Bostonians actually crouched in the voting booths and did their business. Oh yes, indeed, Mayor Minnow receives an unequivocal mandate from the people. An unbelievably and undeniably huge sixty percent of thirty-five percent of residents decided that our recumbent incumbent was yet again the man for the job. Hurrah! It's a record fourth term of complete and utter total apathy!
Mayor Mumble is a Democrat (from the Greek "Demos Kratia"): ironic, isn't it?

Bathwater Bawd

Softened in this steaming tub,
Pubes patina the water
Like seaweed tendrils
Streaming
From two half-sunken rocks
As an oyster of soap
Scheming
Dissolves twixt channelled thighs.
Beached beside them
A wrinkled minstrel pipes
Dreaming
That he is loofah size.

Historical Perspectives

Nineteenth century French schoolchildren would return from class and ask their fathers: "Daddy, what did you do in The Terror?"
"Well, son." Le Pere would reply. "I was the guy who baled the hay that fed the horse that pulled the cart that transported the condemned aristocrat that was going to be guillotined."
Indeed. Everyone has their own special important role in the great events of the day. We call this "the Trickle-Down Theory of Spear-Carrying." Even if the spear is just an old broom handle with some arrowhead-shaped piece of cardboard painted silver and taped to the top of it.
But although many are chosen, few are called. Witness the following exchange: "Daddy, what did you do in the Second Punic War?"
"Well, son, I am bloody effing Hannibal, aren't I, what do you think I did? Sit around on my big fat Carthaginian backside all day like you? No. Not bloody likely. Back in my day we marched up and down with all the elephants and battered the living be-Jupiter out of all the bloody Romans. That's what I bloody well did in the Second Punic War, you cheeky, lazy, insolent little so and so. Now go upstairs and clean your bedroom."
Obviously, from such hazy historical question and answer periods, many well-worn conclusions can be tested and disputed.
For instance, the Albigensian Crusade: was it really just a blackberry picking expedition that went horribly wrong? Or the fabled city of Troy: was it in truth merely a wattle and daub hut belonging to an old woman called Mrs Merlin de Bazoomer, and did she only used it on weekends? Did the Barnum and Bailey Circus started the First World War?
It's all subjective, you know, it can all be interpreted however you like.

The embarrassing "historical theme" film still that illustrates this post was taken from a VHS home movie tape in use circa 1984-ish. No other explanation will be provided.

The Autumnal Altar

Arise oh ye Lord of Leaves, golden Gaia, browning Boddhisatva, infallable Fall, Jehovah of seasonal jams and equinoctical Earth Mother who carveth thy pantheistic pumpkin and other sacred gourds on the warm wooly blanket that covereth thy knees and keepeth ye warm now that long winter nights are drawing in ... to ye oh Lord of Leaves do we consecrate this autumnal altar and ask that ye ... Damn, I've forgotten what I wanted now ...

Obviously, the nonsense above was simply a cheap excuse to post this picture, which I think looks like a very nice Autumnal Altar but is in fact merely a stone bench and some leaves alongside the river walkway near my house.

The Doom That Came To Sarnath And Some Other Places Too

I suppose at this juncture of the proceedings I ought to attempt some sort of current events round-up. This so-called "Bird Flu" for instance. Mostly I am concerned for those nimble, sinewy exponents of the Voodoo Arts. Let's face it, anyone who must guzzle a chalice-ful of warm cockeral blood as part of their daily ritual chores is running a considerable serious risk of contracting a terminal case of Bird Flu; and it is extremely unlikely that even the redoubtable figure of Baron Samedi can concoct a reliable remedy to ward off these avian ill effects.

Meanwhile, there are terrible riots and "disturbances" in France. The smell of burning Peugeots fill the nostrils of Marianne and the phantoms of frondeurs stalk the streets of Paris once again. Oh well. C'est la vie, eh.
Eastwards, the situation in Iraq remains the same. Our reasons for being there change as often as the shape of a genie from the Arabian Nights - shazaaam! - but the actual situation remains the same. The trouble is that after all this time nobody still seems to know what that situation really is. If only one could live in one's own little world and write blog entries from the point-of-view of dead animals all day ... one can dream I suppose.
The slightly ominous picture accompanying this post was taken by me last night. It was much, much foggier out than it appears, but unfortunately my cheap camera didn't capture the swirling mist effect I was hoping for.

Some Poet

Personally, I would describe Thomas Hardy as a novelist whose poems outshone his novels, and Robert Graves as a poet whose novels eclipsed his poems.
In the case of Graves (co-author of an excellent book on English usage) I would proceed even further, asserting that his non-fiction is far superior to his fiction and poetry combined: "Goodbye To All That" was, of course, a seminal memoir of surviving trench warfare; "The Long Weekend" remains the most readable history of British society between the wars; and "Greek Gods and Heroes" (1960) is a fascinating introduction to those fascinating subjects. But best of all is "The White Goddess", Graves' great treatise on poetic grammar. I must have devoured this spellbinding book at least three-times all through and delved into specific bewitching chapters countless more. Upon its publication Graves was dismissed as a crank. He didn't care. His introduction to the reprint remains the most righteous written challenge that I know of: "Call yourself a bard? Bugger off!"
With the prominent exception of Public Television fundraisers hawking their anemic adaption of "I, Claudius" to the masses, nobody much mentions Robert Graves anymore. It's just Auden bloody Auden: the man who cut and ran when the chips were down. This is why poetry today sucks owl dick (except mine: see below).
Oh, and speaking of "The Battle of the Trees", this time last year I was busy blogging my own "Critique of the Alphabet" every day. This coming Christmas, while I'm temporarily away celebrating with my family, I intend to re-post the entire A-Z again in this very space. Will someone please remind me when the time comes?

Poetry Corner

Lines from "The Elfin Shitte" by Tobias Scringe.
Printed by permission of the Old Scrotum Poetry Society

Stir thy wretched cauldron, withered crone.
Your fat shalt be mine rollercoaster
And I shall swing on sinew
Whilst Fenris wolf chews the skulls of Popes.
In dark toilet abides yon casket ebonized.

'Oh please be gentle with me sir.'
Pleads the harlot to the libertine
'I have but this sole cri de coeur
And a corset sewn of polythene.'

Stir thy shining cauldron, sweet maiden
Your pubis shalt be mine carousel
And I canst cling to clitoris
Whilst centaurs lick the bones of Kings
In dark boudoir abides yon casket ebonized.

---

A note on the text: Writing this stuff always cracks me up. I don't care what you think

Release

Today sees the long-awaited publication of Anthony Powell's Some Poets, Artists and 'A Reference for Mellors', his third collection of criticism and miscellania. Hopefully, my pristine copy is flapping its hardcover wings across the Atlantic en route to my house from British Amazonia dot Com at this very hour ... meanwhile, perhaps now would be a reasonably appropriate moment to list those five famous books that I couldn't be bothered to finish:

1. Tarr by Wyndham Lewis
This is a novel written by a man that has forgotten who "A. Reader" is. Absolute bilge of the most tedious kind from the first sentence onwards. It's supposed to be about an artist in Paris, might just as well have been about a snail-salter in Miami. Should have stuck to the paint-pot Lewis, all your books are crap, except The Apes of God, and parts of Rotting Hill. Is it any wonder he remains an obscure figure with tripe like this clinging to his name?

2. The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley
The greatest first sentence of all time. Goes downhill considerably on the second sentence. Is any wonder LPH suffered from a weird relationship with his servants?

3. The Inmates by John Cowper Powys.
Masturbation and vivisection. Masturbation and vivisection. Please come back Jobber Skald and friends of Weymouth Sands ... is it any wonder that the great JCP concluded his career by writing bizarre Welsh fantasy science-fiction for "aware" children and being admired by Henry Miller?

4. Anything (joke) by Henry Green
Books bad. No good they said. Station cold, foggy, no-one reads books. No "the" ....but, oh look, there's one! Reading Henry Green is rather like reading a Whale Watch. Is it any wonder HG wound up drunk and crying on the stairs so that Dig had to step over him every time she went to bed?

5. The Bible
What's it all about? Beats me. Is it any wonder that our Christian God wound up served by the Vicars of Bray, Stiffkey, and Dibley?

Rabbits and Hares

To this very day my Grandmother always grows glum and vexed should she forget to say "rabbits" or "hares" three times when she awakes on the first day of every new month; an odd custom propagated by proverbial old wives that supposedly brings good fortune to the speaker. Remembering that she has forgotten is no great portent of impending disaster, merely a niggling concern that the following thirty days or so will perhaps not prove as serendipitous as they might otherwise have been. Ancient symbols of fertility and rebirth, rabbits and hares were sacred to Eostre, goddess of the dawn, and so the whole practice of invoking them makes sense in folk memory terms, I suppose. Still, one would have thought such an invocation should really be limited to springtime ritual only. How greedy we humans always are. No wonder the Divinities of Earth have long since ignored our prayers and abandoned us to our own dismal devices.