American Fez

Uncle Arthur

It is really quite astounding that the medieval shaggy dog story of King Arthur and his thankless quest for the Holy Grail has proven to be as enduringly popular as it so depressingly is. Arthur himself is a very boring character. A sort of mythical Woodrow Wilson who eats with his hands.
Once he has withdrawn Excalibur from its stone, and leveraged possession of this weapon for dominion over the land, Arthur's charisma evaporates entirely. This is undoubtedly Queen Guinevere's problem with him.
She is a beautiful, buxom young woman brimming with primitive passions and Dark Age desires. But, alas, she marries a bearded prude who apparently prefers being gloomy with wizards to pleasuring his womenfolk. Not very chivalrous if you ask me.
So there's no fun for Guinevere at Camelot. Just another night in with a leg of lamb and the Jester. What's a girl to do? Is it any wonder she giving Launcelot's chainmail gusset the glad eye?
Yet the Arthurian absurdity that really rolls my eyes is this Round Table business. According to legend, the table is designed in circular fashion so that no knight will feel slighted by being made to sit at the end. Essentially, then, it's just a lazy-susan for overblown egos clad in shining armor.
However, we should be grateful to the Grail yarn for one thing: without it there would be absolutely no Pre-Raphaelite paintings at all; and then romantic freshman girls would have nothing to decorate their college dorms with.

Next week: Hillaire Belloc's 'Ha'nacker Mill': not as miserable as he makes it out to be.

For Pete's Sake (Charity Fatigue)

For Pete's Sake .... (cue melancholy piano music - although I would actually advise you not to click this link since it will take you to a site peddling the most insidious of ivory tickling sounds. However, these noises will provide a suitable musical setting as you read .... For Pete's Sake)

For Pete's Sake

Pete is an eight-year-old goldfish diagnosed with Dorsal Fin Fungus Plague. His home is a polluted municipal pond in the public recreational area up on Grievous Street. You know the place, it's the derelict wasteland everyone calls "Dogshit Park." Anyway, eventually the Dorsal Fin Fungus will start eating into Pete's brain, all of his scales will fall off and he will turn dark brown.
Pete will found, perhaps two weeks later or so, floating upside down at the pool's perimeter like any other piece of unsightly flotsam. Although I'm pretty sure that most of him will have rotted away before anyone actually decides to haul his wretched carcass out of the water and toss it in the trash. But until then, until that day of merciful release he still swims aimlessly around his murky environment trying to avoid the frogs.
So, for Pete's sake, we ask you to donate whatever you can afford to: For Pete's Sake.
With your help we can spray the pond with Frog Killah and wipe out the disgusting amphibious Frog vermin once and for all. Then Pete can spend his declining years in contaminated tranquility; except, of course, for the zoned-out junkies who shoot up in the park at night and take turns urinating on his head because Pete is so sick with the Dorsal Fin Fungus that he can't escape through the pond scum fast enough ... For Pete's sake send us $100 today so that  Pete and other goldfish like him don't have to get their little heads pissed on by herein addicts and pot freaks.
We just want the money, for Pete's sake. We are not running for it; we are not walking for it; nor are we even hosting a lobster boil-a-thon to raise money for it; and we are bloody well not going to sponsor a silent auction of "local crafts" either ... you know, the kind of organized extortion where decent people feel obliged to pay over the odds for a useless ashtray made out of third-rate wicker. We are absolutely NOT going to sink that low. Not even for Pete's sake!

Betjeman Is A Shit

Lines on Sir John Betjeman's Centennial Year

Fat Irene in dark brown polyester
Together with Miss Belchingham
And dear old Thingy from Cirencester
Like to read the works of Betjeman

After the larding has been completed
For tomorrow's Sunday lunch
Their bedtime milk is overheated
They really are a horrid bunch

Three old ladies who smell like sick
Like brimstone, sulfur and magnesium
As they chew the fat, drool and lip lick
Whilst reading the works of Betjeman

This year would be Sir John's centenary
Were he not summoned by final bells
And sent to an everlasting Coventry
For corrupting high falutin' gels.

Notes:

Sir John Betjeman was a Poet Laureate of England, born in 1906, now dead - - - "is a shit" refers to one of his two current and feuding biographers who has apparently been misled by a fake document - - - Sir John wrote a long-winded poem called "Summoned By Bells" - - - "sent to Coventry" means to be shunned by one's peers - - - "Gels" was a plummy English way of pronouncing "girls"

The Uses of Sisters in Literature

Although no poet can claim that my sister Morgana's face might possibly act as a catalyst for the launching of a thousand ships, I can certainly assure you that the sororal visage in question was at least indirectly responsible for the embarkation from the shores of Lake Atahualpa in 1975 of a small furry body aboard a flaming shoebox. The solemn occasion was the Viking Funeral of my pet mouse, Achilles, who had prematurely expired after being crushed to death by an enormous, over-fed rabbit called Snowy. Suffice it to say, this floppy-eared, cold-blooded murdering bunny belonged to Morgana.

Unless there are three of them and they happen to be weird, perhaps the sort of warty witches who chant the recipes for unhealthy Scottish soups while cavorting about blasted heaths amid the wild heather, then within the context of a traditional male-orientated narrative, a sister character can only serve two useful functions. The first of these is to be the slightly older sister debuting in adult society, desperate for sophistication but prone to committing such excruciating faux pas in every drawing room that our hero can only observe her ritual humiliations with cold-eyed and sarcastic satisfaction. The second sister role is that of the tactlessly barbarian much younger "Devil child" sibling, guaranteed to demolish anyone and anything unfortunate enough to fall into her evil clutches. My sister - et tu Morgana - takes pride of place in this latter category, and so poor Achilles was always doomed.

During a particularly busy school period for me, Morgana employed the Trojan Horse technique of offering to clean Achilles' cage in exchange for a sackload of sherbert I had successfully mined from an excursion to the local confectioners. She relocated the brave mouse into the brute Snowy's hutch at the bottom of our garden while she completed this simple chore, but then forgot, or so she explained while staring at the floor, to re-house him once the task was done. Snowy, with oafish and malicious thoughtlessness, apparently decided to fall asleep using Achilles as his pillow.  When I returned home from football practice the little fellow was dead.

Despite my recommendations and exhortations, neither rabbit pie nor jugged hare ever appeared on our family dinner menu after that black day. And so with grim pleasure I received the news one morning that Snowy's scene-of-the-crime hutch had been struck by lightning during an especially violent thunder storm. The guilty rabbit himself had been fried to a cinder and his toasted remains unceremoniously disposed of by my father ... "Thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges."

Memories of Grim Melodies

Despite his aversion to Vangelis, Jean Michel Jarre and most other balding yet pony-tailed practitioners of the shiny and geometrically patterned shirt wearing "science club" school of making music, my father would listen to anything performed on an old Moog synthesizer.

Friends of mine who made excursions to our house with the intention of admiring my large arsenal of replica weaponry were often bemused by these futuristic burping noises emanating from the family room. I would explain that "papa" wrote soundtracks for UFO movies in his spare time. What else was I going to say? If dad decided to play his music late into the night, I would often go to bed and dream that I was being attacked by gigantic intergalactic squid from Calamarie 6, the purple planet.

Works for this gormless sounding instrument were unsystematically stacked in the LP storage compartment of what he stubbornly persists in referring to as his "hi-fi unit." Here were also to be found bizarre ethnic albums picked up during our travels to Belize, Sierra Leone, Morocco and Ceylon in the early 1970s. Additionally, there is a large and battered box containing several recordings of Tchaikovsky's ballet music; about twelve Goon Show discs, two of them without sleeves; that masterpiece of easy-listening melancholia, The Lonely Bull; an oddball souvenir called something like A Zillion Guitars Go South of the Border; and an old 45rpm single of David Bowie's Space Oddity, no doubt acquired due to the presence of a mellotron in the mix. But it was only the Moog stuff that ever received a rub down from the vinyl care kit Dad kept wedged in beside them.

I suppose I should have foreseen the day when my mother ought him his first Casio electronic keyboard. Or was it a Bontempi? I really can't recall, mainly because I was never allowed to appear near enough to the sacred instrument that I might discern the manufacturer's mark. Nevertheless, I do remember that its presence in his study was responsible for transforming my father from a mild-mannered musical dilettante into The Mad Organist. It was as if after drinking his noxious potion, Dr Jekyll had suddenly decided to take up the alto saxophone.

Perhaps you have seen those films set in the Dark Continent where glassy-eyed white hunters are driven mad by the incessant native, voodoo drumming? Well this was very much the effect produced by activation of the pre-programmed "Bossa Nova" rhythm selection built into the wretched machine, especially when combined with a ham-fisted rendition of "The Girl With The Nut Brown Hair" unwisely arranged for synthesized bassoon.

This was the soundtrack of my youth. Fortunately we both grew up.

Today my father in his study concerns himself with crosswords only. The sole sound that interests him is the flipping pages of the Mediterranean cruise brochures my mother scrutinizes, searching for yet more methods of making my inheritance disappear. The Moog albums have long since been banished to the Salvation Army drop off center, and the Casio keyboard - or was it a Bontempi? - languishes in their basement, alongside all the other detritus of antediluvian household technology: itchy electric blankets; the espresso machine that never worked properly; an old Apple Mac thingy; some sort of medieval looking exercise contraption. And there it shall remain, sleeping like King Arthur surrounded by his Knights of the Round Table, waiting for the time when my father shall have need of it again ... did somebody say Rick Wakeman?

Au Revoir Skunkerton (For Now)

So that last post concludes our "Week In Skunkerton" series of posts. We shall visit Skunkerton and its inhabitants again quite soon, for this squalid and smoggy city is never very far from our thoughts. I leave you with this simple souvenir: a cheap postcard:

Doesn't Matter Who You Vote For Because The Government Always Gets Elected

Skunkerton is a veritable mecca for tourists interested in fast food, dysfunctional architecture and teen suicide. Where else can you gorge yourself on microwaved meat product while a human oil-slick urinates on the street in front of your very eyes? ... well, actually I suppose you can do that pretty much anywhere ... but only in Skunkerton will that human oil-slick also be the city's Mayor.
Mayor Conor O' Backander is affectionately known by all his cronies as "Con Man," and in return he fondly refers to them as "The Mob." Together they rule Skunkerton with a ruthless combination of targeted violence, bribery and intimidation, nepotism, charity walk-a-thons and the so-called "All You Can Eat for $25.00" days held at the food court in Skunkerton Shopping Mall.
Con Man has been in politics since the age of twelve, when he became a town selectman for neighboring suburb Verry Highlands. His first legislative act was to close down the high school where he was failing all his classes. After graduating 'sum cum via papa' from Corrupton Community College in 2006, Con Man immediately married South American lampshade heiress Martina Bormann. The couple have one son, Jose O' Backander, whose name has already been put down for Congress.
Con Man's proud track record of political achievements includes extorting money to build the new Casino on Rte 666, being orally pleasured by his secretary without being caught, and supporting the War with Iraq while simultaneously calling for our troops to be brought home. Mayor Backander is neither pro nor anti abortion. He is one.

The Devil's Music

Besides the massive Boredoms Books and Music, the only CD store in Skunkerton is the local Phat Toons franchise, located on the fifth tier of Skunkerton Shopping Mall, between the Miss Pregnant Outlet and Nerd World.
The best-selling CD at Phat Toons is "Serenade For Pings" by popular white rap artistes Fo Niggaz, although Elton Yawn's "Saturday Night's Alright For Hair-Weaving" also shifts a considerable number of units each week. This fact is a big disappointment to the manager, Ed Hayke, who wishes his store sold more stuff by the likes of Satanizer, Devil Mutha and similar alternative metal bands whose sonic achievements he really admires a whole lot. In fact, Satanizer's latest release, "Another Soul Sold" is the only CD that gets played - at tremendous, ear-splitting volume - in the store during opening hours. This cacophonic, reverberating noise can even be heard - and felt  - by the teenage mothers trying on elasticated pants in the changing rooms at the Miss Pregnant Outlet next door. Consequently, there have been many complaints and at least three miscarriages.
Which is all rather interesting, since it is often rumored that the young stud responsible for putting these poor girls in the family way is actually Ed himself! Perhaps he is not as stupid as he looks? ... Nah, must be a conicidence.

More Tales From Skunkerton

Celebrating a birthday or anniversary? Entertaining a lady friend or business colleague? Or perhaps you are just so pig greedy that you must ravenously satiate your grossly obscene appetite at all costs. Whatever the reason, you can find a table piled high with sizzling fats to accommodate all your needs at Cap'n Greasy's Pirate Shack Bar & Grille, conveniently located just steps away from the public toilets on route 666 at Skunkerton junction. Our famously lard laden 'Pieces O' Eight' menu offers enough artery-clogging variety to satisfy stomachs of all shapes and sizes.
These words are printed on all the menus at Cap'n Greasy's Pirate Shack, where the bills of fare are as "thick as the Bible," since Cap'n Greasy will undoubtedly be "catering the Beast's picnic at Revelation" ... at least this is what Pastor Glutens always snorts without fail every time Cap'n Greasy employee Jack Errup hands him one of the enormous menus.
Although Pastor Glutens is a frequent customer at Cap'n Greasy's and has known Jack for many years, Jack still mumbles through the little speech he memorises each evening: "Yo ho ho. Ahoy there shipmate, my name is Jack and I'll be your cabin boy tonight. If you have any questions about the menu please don't be afraid to ring the ship's bell. You may choose any eight items from the Pieces O' Eight menu. All dinners come with peg-leg fries and a side of parrot-slaw. Can I get you a drink from Davy Jones' Locker while you are deciding? ... A large rum and coke? Sure. And there are seven specials tonight: Cap'n Greasy is offering a Tuna stuffed with cheddar cheese and baco bits on a bed of fried onions with ..."
But after he has ordered his drink Pastor Glutens invariably loses interest in the straggling remains of Jack's rambling specials speech, so Jack often incoherently slips the 'c-word' in casually amongst the other ingredients that comprise the lengthy list of additional entrees he is reeling off, thus: "and that comes with boiled asparagus ala Blackbread, Jolly Roger sauce, c***, and a plank of mayo potatoes. I'll be right back with your rum and coke."
Besides such rare opportunities to pull similar daring pranks, the favorite part of Jack Errup's job is the fact that, like most of the other teenage waitstaff in Skunkerton, he need not change into an novelty pirate costume before his shift begins, because he already looks like a lice-infested, pox-carrying sea dog in his street clothes.
However, when Jack's shift at Cap'n Greasy's is over, his working day is still not complete. After causing a great deal of malicious damage to Skunkerton Gazebo due to an act of wanton vandalism, Jack has been condemned by Skunkerton District Court to complete 10,000 hours of Community Service by helping the mentally disabled with their shopping. His lawyer's plea that if working with the mentally disabled was to be his sentence, then the spine-chilling time Jack spends trapped inside his own head should be taken into account, was considered by the Judge to be logical but unacceptable.
Jack is Phil Errup's son from his first marriage, to a Miss Sally Cochupper from nearby Smellsville.

A Day In The Life

Candy Errup, heavy-set, eighteen-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs Phil Errup, works full-time at The Gut, a fashion retailer catering to fuller-figured girls, and consequently the most popular clothing store in the Skunkerton Shopping Mall. Candy is responsible for operating dressing-room spycam number two, and also for scraping chocolate crumbs and soda stains out of the merchandise that customers have tried on and rejected.
Throughout the summer Skunkerton's flagship Gut store has been pushing its "Everything Elasticated" range of skimpy skirts for fat chicks. Candy particularly likes the Everything Elasticated stuff because it mixes and matches well with Gut's midriff-revealing "Boob 'n' Belly" signature tube tops, and it also looks really cool with the sparkly nose and nasel piercing jewelry she gets for cheap from Sexy Slutz with her frequent-shopper discount card.

During her breaks Candy likes to smoke cigarettes and guzzle grape soda by the loading dock. After flirtatiously swapping belches with Tony and Juan in shipping and receiving, she waddles over to the Mall elevators and rides up one floor to Boreders Books & Music. Here she browses through the dictionary looking for words such as "rhytidectomy" and "abdominoplasty." Alas! She always scrunches up her acne-riddled, rouge-smeared face because she can't even understand the definitions.
Nevermind. After work Candy enjoys relaxing in the Food Court with a milkshake at Fellatio's, or a fruit eggo from Shiny Pancake. She will tell you that she's "people watching" - but it's hard to see how, since her fellow Gut-clad diners are so monstrously obese that they block the view!

Right now, on sale, don't miss Gut's Back To Diet School Special Super-Saver featuring Gut's latest collection of Pret-a-Portly figure-hugging, flab-exploding hot pants in your choice of over a zillion brand new sickly colors. Available exclusively while stocks last at your local Gut store, Skunkerton Shopping Mall, Route 666, Skunkerton, Massachushits. Exit to the rear. Thank you.

And The Winners Are

After much fierce, astronomical debt acquiring competition, Mr and Mrs Phil Errup of Vinyl Heights have been crowned as this year's King and Queen of Skunkerton Shopping Mall. They were presented with gold-plated "laser" sceptres, his 'n' hers adjustable diadems and coronation parade through the Food Court, led by Skunkerton Shopping Mall representative Mr Mark Down. All sceptres and diadems are exchangable for the winner's choice of eight Orange Julius Eggos at Shiny Pancake or six hours of free parking.

Mr and Mrs Errup, both of whom are heart-warmingly overweight, were awarded their prize after spending over $1000 on foot deodorant at Mega Drugz. In addition to purchasing bulk quantities of these chemical pedicare products, the sweaty couple have also spent good money on Gastro Go, Ass Wax, Face Polish and Mango Hairshit. When not perusing the parmeceutical aisles, both Errups enjoy buying sweat pants, plastic sandals, spangly tee-shirts, So That's What Idiots Call Music CDs, and whatever else they can lay their greasy, fat fingers on before the family's numerous credit-cards inevitably "max out" again.

Why not say 'hello' and 'congratulations' to the victorious couple next time they are causing interminable delays at the bank with their cretinous inability to understand simple directions.

From My Memoirs

During the nursery years of my existence, when it was neccessary for my naturally rebellious nature to bend to the will of Sturmbannführer Mother, I found myself on numerous occasions a prisoner in the dank vaults of the dungeon known as Sunday School. Here, amid dark pews, grey memorials and withering floral tributes, the condemned would paint Jesus by numbers and mumble "Come by ...aaagh, my lord, come by ....aaagh!"
Mrs Sidebottom, the devout, pink-rinsed hag who ran the camp, resembled the snake-haired, scorpion-tailed Medusa as animated by Ray Harryhausen in the film "Clash of the Titans." Her crooked profile and bony fingers featured in my nightmares for manyyears.
She hated me, for I was the boy who would interrupt her recitations of Biblical nonsense with snide and sniggering questions, such as "Since this a school, Mrs Sidebottom, why don't we have a gym class?"
And that old classic, guaranteed to raise a grimace, "Mrs Sidebottom, I'm wondering how did Noah, in the middle of the Sinai Desert, find not just one, but two polar bears?"
And, of course, my personal favorite because it was the most annoying: "If Jesus died to save us all, what will happen to the people who were alive before he was born ... do they get a bye?

Stir Fryday

Although I have no wish to invade Carter's Difficult Country, I would like to draw your attention to The Dwarf Judge:

A Philippines judge who said he consulted imaginary mystic dwarves has failed to convince the Supreme Court to allow him to keep his job.

You have to admire deployment of the adjective "imaginary" prior to the words "mystic dwarves" in that sentence, since it ensures synchronicial connection of these jury-rigged Philippino figments and their judicial consultee with Beachcomber's infamous Justice Cocklecarrot and his Twelve Red-Bearded Dwarves.
Two Fridays ago I barely mentioned ex-Nazi soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and the old belter dropped dead. This week, courtesy of my prophetic blog, life imitates Beachcomber in the form of judges and dwarves. Who's next?

Terminal Neophilia

Crap is the new good.
Let us cast this small, simple sentence as a spell to destroy the annoying "x is the new y" form of punditry. (Alas, "crap is the new good" has been so, so true for many, many years now)

Suffer Little Pigs

Speaking of pigs and piggeries, J.B Morton once remarked most memorably that "one disadvantage of being a hog is that at any moment some blundering fool may try to make a silk purse out of your wife's ear." Words to live by. Of course, Morton was a whimsical, casual genius inspired to compose portmanteau brilliance in an amusing manner by blending both surreal and banal observations. And because he was so clever, his work - written under the guise of "Beachcomber" - was confined to publication in newspaper columns later collected in cheap paperbacks forever falling out-of-print.

I doubt that such a dreadful, bargain-bin fate will befall the creations of that other lover of pigs, the currently popular illustrator Michael Sowa. After all, there is no need to caricature pigs so that they appear more comical than the poor animals already are. Or is there?

The picture above is a mass produced image of Sowa's famous picture "Pig In The Soup." Notice how the pig suffers from an extended snout and cartoon coloration. I have inset within this image is an alternative version of the pig's head as printed in the small coffee table book "Sowa's Ark" - the pig looks normal, painted rather well, and therefore, considering its surroundings, rather melancholy and profound. But you rarely see this gloomier rendering anymore, outside the covers of the book.

Sowa is, I think, a wonderful maker of weird, darkly ahistoric environments: Edward Hopper illustrating the Brothers Grimm. But he runs aground with his foregrounds. What should be "Animal Farm" brought to life by Franz Hals is actually pure commercial TV Toytown day-glo goofiness. Ars Longa? Apparently only if you make it cheapa.

People Moving: Flesh Wobbling

Buttocks clenched and stomach churning, I braved the subway this morning. The whole system makes the antique characters from 'Thomas The Tank Engine' seem like scarcely credible science-fiction. In fact, Boston's superannuated iron horses would not look out of place impersonating the Alpine cable cars in some 1930s spy film. Hopeful passengers, refugees from the street above, might just as well hitch a ride on an aging snail who happens to be experimenting with rollerblades for the first time.
"Making all local stops" the drivers claim, as if their huffing, puffing trams are actually great inter-city locomotive, and usually prematurely since the train will usually collapse before reaching its final destination.

However, having said that, traveling by underground train does provide compensation for the keen-eyed people watcher. For instance, is it not ironic that the fattest and most enormous examples of humanity almost exclusively wear clothing associated with sporting activity? Observe two basketball shirts approaching and the chances are that the persons wearing them weigh over three-hundred pounds. But, alas, your curiousity will quickly turn to spine-chilling terror as you realize that these flesh mountains will undoubtedly take their places on the train either side of you.

The Curse of Captain Hedonism

As we all know, today no consequences need be considered for our desires and actions. The criterion of cool which will pull the hedonistic strings when irrevocably rash decisions are made is all that matters. And in the future, when things wrong, as they assuredly shall, we can condemn and denounce the world for failing to contain within its shameful hemispheres our concepts of what's cool. For instance, I wish I knew that this post would conclude in this manner before I set out upon its compostion, for then, perhaps, it might not sound so sanctimonious, tedious and pompous. Still, such consequences and considerations never stopped the Social Affairs Unit, eh? Bunch of prudes and killjoys. I suggest you give the Gongcast a whirl instead.

Sharing Our World With The Nutters of God

Strolling across Boston Commons this weekend, while repeatedly ducking to avoid an airborne armada of unruly frisbees, smiling at children wearing ice cream camouflage, playing hide-and-seek with courageous squirrels and stumbling over slumbering itinerants, I also found myself forced to run a gauntlet of religious crackpots flanking the sunlit garden paths and offering exciting brainwashing opportunities to anyone foolish enough to stop and listen to their wide-eyed drivel or pick-up a brochure.
All the cults and pseudo-theists assemble on the Commons for the summer season: Jehovah's Witlesses; Science-fictiontologists; Scary Krishnas; Falun Bong; the Social Wankers Party with their "Free Iraq-Cat Stevens Songbook Sing-A-Long."
It's like a Goblin Market selling Gods. An inescapable jamboree of metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. Nobody would notice if Al Queda snuck a stall in alongside the Moonies and Raelists.
At least the weirdos there weren't toting Katushka rockets, so I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. Mind you, our founding fathers were religious nut-jobs, which makes it all part of the United States of America's great tradition of tolerance. Which makes it okay, naturally. But, frankly, I personally beliecve it's wise to remember that you can obviously burn your hands on a melting pot.

Friends of Skunkerton Gazebo

Last spring I formed the Friends of Skunkerton Gazebo. Our local municipal works department had wanted to demolish the poor thing and create a memorial garden to honor the victims of the Shyte Street sewer disaster instead. But they were unprepared for the vociferous assault of the Friends of Skunkerton Gazebo's determined preservation campaign.
Of course, the great advantage of conventional gazebo design is that we weekend Rip Van Winkles can be "outside," yet still "in" at the same time. Admittedly, space within the gazebo is limited, especially when a brass band concert or coleslaw tasting is scheduled, but, as we pointed out to the Municipal Works Departments, we pro-active Gazebians can simply venture into the wooded area of the public park and collect timber with which we can construct a sort of palisade or gazebo extension, rather like the snaking standing stone avenues that once led to the great altars erected at Avebury and Stonehenge.
Cynics might say that Skunkerton Gazebo cannot claim the global and historical clout of those famous neolithic monuments, but our plucky pavilion plays a highly active and important role in Skunkerton's own chronological development. After all, it was from this sturdy platform in 1937 that Mayor Varruka, flanked by J. Edgar Hoover and Mrs Varruka, announced the winner of that year's Skunkerton Carnival's Adolf Hitler Lookalike Competition; the result causing great scandal since the victor was himself, and Mayor Varruka had also been awarded first prize in the previous year's Skunkerton Carnival's Charlie Chaplin Lookalike Competition. Many observers would later assert that the triumphant Mayor should have been denied entry into 1938's Skunkerton Carnival's Mayor Varukka Lookalike Competition, and that the event should never have taken place. However, as the triple crowned and justly laureled Lookalike winner would proclaim from his gleaming throne surrounded by the decorative splendour of Skunkerton Gazebo's vaulted canopy, "There's just some folks who don't like a parade."

If you would like to join the Friends of Skunkerton Gazebo, or simply read more of this article in the Friends of Skunkerton Gazebo Weekly Newsletter, please send a check or money order for $459.00 to:

Mr. James Varukka
69 Stenchly Road
Skunkerton
PH. 76355

End of the Pier

Boston's brand new Institute of Contemporary Arts opens on September 17th, designed by Diller, Scofidio and Renfro of New York. The old ICA was sandwiched between a ye olde quaint fire station and a bar-and-grille that has always seems like it has struggled to recover from the 1980s. It featured a performance space in which patrons could not read the subtitles of foreign films unless they were sitting in the front row, and several floors of cramped galleries where large works could not be hung correctly. Having said that, I enjoyed many memorable events there. But here is an architect's rendering of the new building that I have stolen from the persistantly excellent British arts magazine Apollo:

Rather fine, I think, even if does resemble an evil marionette's futuristic missile silo-cum-marina from an old episode of Thunderbirds. Indeed, perhaps elements of such nostalgic animated televised entertainment could form part of an exhibition at some point. After all, what else are ICAs for? One assumes the extensive gift shop will consume most of that large glass box on the top - welcome to the Institute of Contemporary Mart - where you can purchase your souvenir Rothko mugs, Warhol wigs, Tracy Emin thongs and so on.
Alas, I personally will be in Rome on opening night, so I'll have to make do with the collections of the Borghese, Capitoline and Vatican instead ... damn.

New Products

Is your home or office infested with filthy, plague-carrying rats? Then you need Addle's new iPied, our latest portable Piper of Hamlyn system especially designed for busy, on-the-go Burgermeisters like you. Compatible with desktop iRunes software, most iPieds feature over five fairybytes of magical tune storage, enabling you to record up to thirty minutes of enchanting jigs and gavottes for high performance rodent hypnotising power.

Requires Magic Mountain 2.0 for Windows

Warning: Not Suitable For Children and The Easily Led

Another Dictionary Update

Hezrael (noun and adjective): Any area of land of disputed ownership that is so devastated by bombing and counter-bombing that it has become completely useless to anyone except those pundits and hacks of the news media who would rather count their column inches than the cost in human lives.

See also: Hezbollocks

Aural Syrup O' Figs

While discoursing amiably upon the illiterate strain that runs through most contemporary music, the late Frank Muir quips that popular quartet 'The Who' should really be called 'The Whom.'  It's an old joke, but a good one.
Every Sunday evening, sandwiched between nightly news bulletins, my local NPR station re-broadcasts an antique edition of BBC radio's quasi-literary game show "My Word!" featuring the clever clogs duo of Muir and his long time collaborator Dennis Norden. The other two participants are Dilys Powell - a late film critic famous for her grand apology to the film director Michael Powell (no relation) for savaging his film, the now classic "Peeping Tom" - and Anne Scott James, former editor of Harper's Bazaar, who married the genius Osbert Lancaster. Here is a picture of Anne in her younger days:

I don't know for sure, but I'd guess the BBC must have taped these shows in the late 1970's, and even back then listening to the shows must have seemed like tuning in to archived recordings from another Age entirely: audio fossils, as it were, unearthed and examined for their layers of wit, quaintness and charm: the sort of thing one listens to as one sips one's glass of vintage port in one's most baroquely upholstered leather armchair.

Meanwhile, setting our glass of port aside for the moment in favor of the spitoon, have you noticed how those priggish, dreary Social Affairs Knitting Circle  members - in the broadest sense of the term -  who wrist-slap the BBC for being too liberal ("smack its little pink botty" as they would say)  always seem to be consuming its content? If the broacasts enrage them so much, why not just switch off for good? Frank and Dennis would've make mincemint of these people. Mind you, intellectually speaking, so would Noddy

Asses of Osiris

Today is the Magenta Sabbath of Ra Risen; so yet again I am forced to attend another dreary meeting of the Seance Circle at my local Theosophical Society. Our spirit guide is a pit-bull called Angus, which is a bit of a problem since he just barks his head off when there's "anybody there." Obviously, at this point the other spirit manifestations can't get a word in edgewise, eventually buggering off with their important messages from the Other Side to a quieter and presumably pit bull-free section of the Astral Plane.

We've tried distracting Angus with an ectoplasmic bone, but he doesn't seem to care. So tonight we held hands around the table, closed our eyes, and then began chanting "Beware of the dog. Beware of the dog" over and over again. No luck. As soon as the ghostly postmen arrived the canine cacophony struck up once more. "Well, Angus has certainly marked his territory on this table." Madame Svevo remarked, conjuring unwanted images of phantom dog turds floating in the aether above our heads. My only hope is that he does not carry ethereal fleas. I don't know. Why can't we have an American Indian spirit guide called Red Herring or whatever like normal people do?

Some Connections

One of my old posts "The Music You Are Listening To Timothy Is German Music" has been receiving a lot of hits recently. It vaguely concerns Richard Strauss  and the soprano Elizabeth Schwarzkopf  and their Nazi connections, but, as I remember, it began as a joke I wanted to make about Johann Sebastian Bach  obviously not being a very good composer since he never wrote any symphonies ... ha ha, er.
For some reason I never elaborated on the joke part of the post and the whole thing withered away into an apology for the poor quality of that week's blogs.
The Timothy referred to in the title was the recipient of a diary in Humphrey Jennings' famous war time film, later spoofed in Beyond The Fringe.
Speaking of war time films, the release on DVD of Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale means that the Criterion Collection can now offer us yet another opportunity to pay forty bucks for an old black and white film by including another disc crammed with worthless and unwatchable "extras" - but in in this case they're worth the money.
On a final note, both Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee, two of only a handful of decent pop musicians ever to emerge from the dark cellars of contemporary music, have died recently. Let us hope that the Texan freak genius Roky Erickson will not be joining them just yet.

Steam of Conscienceness (Sic)

Sheila is always complaining about me leaving the toilet seat up. So today I decided to remove the bloody thing altogether. I've stuck one of those ship's life belts on the wall instead, you know, one of the round, red and white stripey ones. She can squat on that if she gets really desperate.
It's all part of my vengence against her because on our last vacation we went to England the fat cow forced me to go with her on the "Beatles Tour" of Liverpool - which was very disappointing. They drag you around the Cavern Club and Penny Lane and John Lennon's grandfather's garden shed, but you never get to see Hamburg or Shea Stadium or any of the really interesting parts of the Beatles story - and let's face it, those places are what the fans really want to see when they go to Liverpool ... I don't know about you, but if I'm paying the equivalent of twenty bucks for a Beatles tour, then I want a trip across the Merseybeat River in the original Yellow Submarine as part of the deal, you know what I mean? What you actually get is a souvenir "I Am The Walrus" stick-on moustache and a Yoko Ono balloon. So that was twenty bucks down the drain. A ticket to ride? More like a ticket to catch pneumonia from wandering around a stinking slum in the rain. So, as far as I'm concerned, Sheila can bloody well fall into the toilet bowl for all I care.

I, Injudicious

During the staff meeting my mouth becomes a variety of Pandora's Box which, if enticed to open by those curious to hear my opinion, will vomit all the underhand unpleasantness and bile-filled paranoia of our dirty, misbegotten agenda into the dreary confines of the conference room. However, unlike in Hesiod's original myth, there would be no Hope left still trapped within after my mouth had closed again.

Today, teeth clenched and lips sealed, I refrain from referring to the colleague seated on my left as an "unctuous idiot" when they try to unload the more difficult of their professional burdens onto my already well-laden shoulders. I have no experience of lifting these particular bales of stacked responsibility.

"You'll be fine." I am told in flattering tones. "You know what you don't know and the really good thing about you is that you're not afraid to ask questions about what you don't know."

"Ah yes." I reply. "But certain things are bound to crop up that I don't know that I don't know about, and so I won't be able to question those because I won't know about them, and then issues will surely arise that I won't know have arisen until it's too late to know."

Pause. Silence around the table except for sound of the hinges of Pandora's Box being oiled in preparation for the opening ceremony. The entire exchange recalls Donald Rumsfeld's "knowable unknowables" media moment of a few months ago. The only occasion upon which I have ever expressed admiration for that vampiric looking man.

Dictionary Update

Hezbollocks: (n and adj) tiresome nonsense blogged about the Middle East by those who really know nothing about it; Cf the Phoenician inscription "That papyrus is just a load of old Hanniballs."