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Romans Online
If Caesar could've googled Gaul,
Would he have gone
To Vercingetorix dot com?
And could Cicero, if connected,
Have uploaded
His Phillipics in PDF form?
What if Hadrian had had
A firewall install,
Instead of his stone one,
Stopping that mad Spam
Coming over from Caledonium.
iMac, iPod, iClaudius:
But Nero on YouTube
Would've given Gibbon
The most to nibble on.
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Going by the new and rather unwieldy calendar I have devised, today is the millionth of Erasmustard; which, of course, made yesterday Wibblygibblymas Eve. Hurrah! I bet all those kids who knew about it had a hard time getting to sleep last night! ... although I'm sure they were all very perplexed to wake up this morning and discover that nobody actually gets any presents on Wibblygibblymas Day.
Still, never mind, that's their problem, and the disappointment of greedy children won't stop me from wishing you all a very merry Wibblygibblymas and a happy New Pingo ... like the one being celebrated by this fine gentleman:
Meanwhile, since you probably don't know yet, let me tell you that the Wibblygibblymas season is a time when we forgive those who are a pain in our ass, so I hope you will forgive me for inventing a calendar that has a million days per month, and a thousand months per year. Indeed, the paper version is so enormous that those among you with busy schedules will obviously need to hire a truck to transport your at-a-glance pocket day-planners around from place to place. After all, you wouldn't want to miss that important lunch date on the 567,021st of Zuuuuup, would you?
But then again, perhaps you would, since, at least according to the farmer's almanac I've just written, the 567,021st of Zuuuuup is traditionally an unlucky day for lunch dates. Mind you, it's so far in the future that anyone reading this will be dead by then anyway.
I wonder, did Julius Ceasar encounter these kinds of time problems when he was putting his calendar together?
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Although our journey was perhaps not quite as arduous as that of HMS Beagle, we did navigate the treacherous, sludge-laden Boston streets this weekend, bound for the Museum of Science, where the Darwin exhibits can be examined and an IMAX movie called Galapagos erupts twice daily.
You might suppose, considering the stupendous efforts the great man made on behalf of biology, that Charles Darwin's legacy deserves more than a stuffed sloth, two tortoises, a five minute VHS tape loop and some ammonites on a stick. And you'd be right. Alas, a mock-up of his study and some shiny beetles pinned to a board don't really add much. Letters and pages from his notebooks, however, provide fascinating insights into Darwin's brilliant and cavernous, yet humorously self-deprecating mind. I would have enjoyed reading more of those.
Fortunately, an array of superb icy aerial photographs by the late Bradford Washburn were worth the price admission, especially this dramatic image, exposing the bellybutton of the Doldenhorn.
Those tiny, vertical black specks on the ridge are actually people.
The motto of the Museum of Science is "It's Alive," and although both Washburn and Darwin are dead - Darwin many years ago, Washburn just in January - their fascinating work will still inspire you to pick up a camera or a magnifying glass and begin investigating the world for yourself. Good luck with that.
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This morning, after fighting my way through the thick sheets of a Stalingrade snowstorm that the preternaturally misinformed NPR announcers predicted would be a mere "slight dusting," I discovered an email from author Matthew Moses in my inbox, wondering whether I would agree to review his novel, Anti-Christ: A Satirical End of Days. Well, considering that most of the books I admire are either out-of-print or published by presses small enough to fit inside a matchbox, my recommendation is surely what even Jesus himself might describe as "somewhat of a mixed blessing."
Besides, I have only just achieved base camp on Frederick Brown's prodigiously Everest-like biography of Flaubert, so I am understandably loath to undertake any other reading expeditions at the moment.
And anyway, you can judge for yourselves, since the author has generously made chapters one through three available for perusal on his own website.
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For some reason, the weary, long suffering janitor at work always rolls into my office just as I'm inexpertly shooting a half-eaten apple core into the trash can from ten feet away, or bouncing balled-up waste paper off the outer rim from the same distance. Tonight I said, "I'm not the asshole I appear to be." But I don't think he speaks any English.
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"On Fridays we focus on being unbearably sanctimonious."
The Library of Congress must be extremely desperate for material: why else would this once proud institution even consider archiving the lachrymose outpourings of self pity and hyper-egotism that masquerade as oral history during National Public Radio's Story Corp broadcasts? Indeed, these intimate friends and family dialogs, aired for all the world to hear, are related with such nauseating sentimentality, in such a cringe-makingly conceited manner, that the most extrovert of Oprah-goers seem models of confessional restaint by comparison. Surely even Paris Hilton and Co would undoubtedly regard an appearance on Story Corp as strictly infra-dig.
Unfortunately, the show's producers apparently believe themselves and their work to be the modern Studs Terkel. And so, more and more, NPR news begins to resemble an audio version of the features page of a housewife's magazine; a sort of Good Housekeeping podcast, if you will.
"I love you."
"I love you too, mom."
Ugh! Leave it at home.
Meanwhile, thank heavens there is the XM satellite alternative.
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Shibboleth: A Shibboleth is the devious mongrel product of cross breeding a Yeti and a Sloth. Their natural habitat are the polluted rivers of hot drivel that dribble down the shiny chins of decrepit old men called senators. The highly fashionable Mutt Rheumy line of ill-fitting transparant leather thongs and "male bras" are made entirely from tanned Shibboleth hides, as are those ubiquitous Hillary Klingon dolls that space tourists bring back from Mars.
Meanwhile, a modern crusade against the culling of Shibboleths has been initiated by Baraic O' Bummer, the lead singer of U2be. "Shibboleths: can't live with 'em, can't live without their campaign donations" says old John McBeginagain.
Christ on a skateboard, I'm bored of Presidential Race already!
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Graham Greene
A photo-op with the Papal Nuncio: aggressive foreheads: a map of Zambia: perhaps an umbrella stand or two and a pygmy in a bowler hat. All of it wallpapered over in a familiar pattern of slightly moth-eaten and mildew-stained mystery.
Personally, I have always found Greeneland to be an extremely uninspiring place, rather like the dreary, unimaginatively landscaped vistas of worker bee Washington DC: paragraph slabs of great tedium constructed from orderly rows of featureless, functional administration sentences, each staffed by browbeaten, bitter and gloomy word drones. Every line of writing is an empty mezzanine level connected by a series of enclosed backstairs leading to drafty corridors without end. Hushed voices, gunshots and typewriter rattles all echo the same monotonous tonality here.
An unshaven man in deep shadow: damp underpants drying on a cast iron radiator: an old Land Rover that's run out of gas on top of a desert dune at sundown. Ultimately, I would have to say, Graham Greene's functional fictions provide better grist for movie mills than they do for novels. Cue zither music. Yawn.
The Tuesday verdict is: Boring!
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Haphazard piles of disheveled secondhand novels molder against the bookseller's wall; many with broken backs, they are falling apart and forgotten, muttering bitter nothings like crazy old men nursing ancient grievances in the cobwebbed corners of splintered shelves. Who knows where they've been these past forty years or what infectious diseases those brown spots are symptoms of? These are books to be afraid of, books that you should cross the aisle to avoid. Every shade of yellow fever lurks here.
Yet there are some, those arranged expectantly around the cash register, that remain almost preternaturally bright and hopeful; Plain Jane paperbacks with straight spines, seated patiently around the dance floor, waiting for someone, anyone, to pick them up and whirl them away. How many times have they been flicked through, flipped over and examined, but finally seduced and abandoned, yet again.
Where will they all go when the business is evicted and the shop shuts down? Presumably they will be dispatched to whomever will take them, and then moved on again, and again, endlessly sent spinning from one place to another like a dizzy orphan in a book by Dickens.
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Those fans of bookish men who enjoyed my role as "Mr February" in the 2007 Interplanetary Vogue calendar will be delighted to learn that my splendid physique is also highlighted in Good Housekeeping's annual swimsuit issue, available in stores this month.
Puritans and killjoys will undoubtedly complain that such images degrade the models who appear in them. However, I must say that the magazine's black and white photographs of me in my swimsuit are both artistic and tasteful, as you can see for yourselves.
For some reason, the editors at Good Housekeeping seemed a trifle bemused when I pulled out my deep sea diving gear at the shoot, and they asked me if I had anything "skimpier."
I told them that this is what I wear when I go swimming. I could certainly take the brass helmet off and unplug a valve or two, I supposed, but then it just wouldn't be the same.
Maybe I could at least take the lead boots off, then, they asked.
But I said no way: I'm very sensitive about my feet, as you know.
Anyway, you will find the spread featuring the pictures of me on pages 843 through 844, between the laxative advertisement and an article on triple-tier cake stands.
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Roger Inscrutonable writes:
Designed by Sir Humphrey Purp in 1931, the exquisite outside toilet in the backyard of number 168 Coldbottom Road, East Chilblain, is in serious danger of being demolished. The current owner, Mr Reggie Sane, plans to erect a so-called "patio swing set" on the site Sir Humphrey's grand turdorium currently occupies. Needless to say, the successful execution of this philistine plan will be an act of cultural vandalism akin to the destruction of classical Rome by barbarian hordes (and even they at least left the toilets intact!) Surely it is a sign of the end of a civilised society when a
beautiful building such as the East Chilblain Shithouse is deemed less important than the idle leisure
activities of synthetically tanned layabouts like Mr Sane.
Constructed from a sturdy combination of concrete, brick and corrugated iron in the cubicle manner, and fitted with a latch to ensure privacy, the shithouse contains a single toilet connected to a series of subterranean lead pipes and rectangular cistern with a simple pull-chain flush mechanism. The seat is made from wood and features a convenient indentation for the correct placement of buttocks. But the outside toilet at 168 Coldbottom Road is more than just a Purpian architectural masterpiece demanding preservation for future generations to enjoy, for the functional design also reminds us of an earlier age, a golden age, when brave men were not afraid of faulty plumbing, when stout hearts would unflinchingly wade across a stone floor flooded with freezing urine in the middle of a cold, black night simply in order to empty their noble bowels.
King Arthur, Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel: none of these dynamic heroes of yesterday's Britain shat indoors in ceramic comfort as far as I am aware. Surely our sense of national pride dictates that we must save the East Chilblain Shithouse from the puny, philistine whim of half-wit hooligans such as Mr Sane. This throne of kings, this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this outside toilet.
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Here is a detailed, easy-to-follow guide to my personal tea-making process. If you don't like my process, well, you can just go and jolly well boil your own head for all I care. Anyway, here are intricate steps you are required to follow. They have been sequentially numbered to provide an easy reference guide for those unfamiliar with the warm embrace of Rosie Lee.
1. The first thing I do is put the kettle on. (I would normally have a geisha do it for me but unfortunately I don't know any, so I have to do it myself.)
2. Then a tea is selected. I usually employ loose tea from Taylors of Harrogate, but since you are obviously not as refined as me, otherwise you wouldn't be reading this, you can use whatever shameful "bag" you buy from whatever proletarian sty of a supermarket you obtain the rest of your tasteless groceries from.
3. The tea chosen is then spooned into a tea-pot (mine is a ceramic souvenir model of Anne Hathaway's cottage with a bit of dried glue stuck on it from when I had to fix the spout after it broke of last year)
4. Hot water from the kettle is then poured into the tea pot and the whole concoction is left to Meryl (that's just a bit of Cockney rhyming slang I invented) for about ten minutes or so,or however long it takes you to arrange a load of ginger snaps on a plate.
5. Using a specially designed tea strainer, or a very, very tiny sieve, pour the brewed tea into your vessel of choice. If I'm entertaining I'll unwrap the Delft, otherwise I use this weird Hobbity brown and green mug that I bought from some weird hippy potter at a craft show because I felt sorry for him. How did I ever let myself get dragged along to that in the first place, that's what I want to know! Or I might use the New Criterion/Armavirumque mug with the Evelyn Waugh theme cartoon printed on it that I bought because I felt sorry for those bow-tie sporting culture vultures. Or the Leeds United Football Club mug with the Billy Bremner lookalike drawing on it that I bought because I felt sorry for myself. Obviously I am a man with many mug options. I suggest you become one too.
6. Your tea is now ready to drink, and if I were you, I'd pour as much milk and sugar into it as I possibly can. I mean, you don't want to be actually tasting the horrible organic leafy muck, do you? Or, alternatively, I'd make a cup of coffee instead. Or why not break open a bottle of beer, even. Anyway, whatever you choose to imbibe once your tea-making chores have been completed, I hope you won't be sick.
Next week: How I tread my own grapes, straight out of the freezer!
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I was extremely surprised to discover the Last of the Mohicans mooning about on my front stoop this morning. On closer inspection, however, after safely concealing my scalp beneath a duffle coat hood, I realized that the animal-skin and fur clad figure before me was in actual fact the local mailman. Perhaps you remember those old cinematic Westerns featuring a half-breed US Calvary scout who wears a dusty, ill-fitting combination of regulation army uniform, feathers, beads and heavily fringed beaver hide? Well, apparently the US postal service is trying to achieve the same hard ridin' look. Hmmm. No doubt I speak with forked tongue, but I'm hoping that the missing 1099 tax form that was sent to my correct address, but for some reason deemed "undeliverable" by Big Chief Sorting Office, is currently being re-paddled down the Charles river in a hollowed out tree trunk amid a pile of supermarket circulars and empty fire-water bottles.
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While enjoying a performance of contemporary Flamenco music and dance at the Majestic Theater, amusing memories of my favorite old, itinerant Boston street vendor were called incongruently to mind. There was a certain saturnine something in the manner and appearance of Antonio Campos, the fine singer, as well as his guttural, tragic vocal tone, that reminded me of gritty George, who once sold vintage magazines around Copley Square.
George's tragedy, of course, and the root of his keening, dramatic style of selling, was that he never had anything for sale that anyone wanted to buy. His unwanted wares were limited to a collection of crumpled comic books, usually Conan the Barbarian, and assorted dog-eared copies of Time or Life, arranged in a grid pattern on whatever patch of concrete he had set out his stall that day. "Conan's are here!" he would belligerently sing at random passers-by, "Conan's are here!" The tone of his voice attempting to hint that these grimy publications had finally arrived after years of frustrating delay, freshly printed, hot off the press, featuring the latest news that everybody craved.
But then, after shifting and re-shifting in my balcony seat, I decided that these recollections of old George were, perhaps, not really so incongruent as at first appeared. His particular brand of over-emphatic and forlorn salesmanship would have, for instance, provided suitable hammy background action for the Seville streets scenes in a production of Bizet's Carmen, where he would fit right in with all the gypsies. Perhaps he had missed his natural vocation. Perhaps he might have been a reasonably successful operatic actor had his personal circumstances taken a different turn, with a string of bit part credits to his somewhat recognizable name. For George was, after all, one of life's great extras; always part of the crowd, obvious yet not obtrusive, heard but never really listened to, he was the perfect human scenery.
I imagine he would have hated Flamenco music with a passion; Lawrence Welk was more George's style. We are rightfully reminded that it takes all sorts to make a world, but I guess in the end that still doesn't mean that you have to buy their junk. I certainly don't.
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While waiting for departure at Park Street subway station, squashed into fresh bodily contortions by the arrival of yet more wriggling passengers, my senses were suddenly assaulted by the sharp smell of sweated brandy. The perpretrator was not hard to spot with his face flushed red, heavy-hooded eyes, furtive and fidgety motion like an animated weasel trying to slip out of the frame.
Of all daybreak's unpleasant odors the sickly sweet stench of covertly consumed booze is the most distressing and disturbing. This man was practically vibrating with an almost visible alcoholic aura, as if he had stumbled into a pocket of infra-red light rendering these noxious emanations of addiction perceptible to the human eye. He settled himself self-conciously at the darkest corner of the train, hunched over, brooding, glaring at the greasy stains on the floor then violently sucking in his own foul breath as one might siphon gasoline through a length of tube. Yet he had made an enormous effort to conceal whatever despair he felt by adopting a disguise of ancient suit and hopeful tie, but it was an effort so in vain that he might just as well have tried to hide bloody nostrils behind a big red, round clown nose. The train moved off, rattling through the tunnel like a tin can being kicked along the streets.
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My desk has become a white desert of shifting papers where great obelisks built of reference books are erected daily; an inhospitable landscape somewhat reminiscent, at least from an inspirational point of view, of the final stanza of Shelley's Ozymandias. Here is the uncharted dune of dictionaries, and the treacherous thesaurus outcrop too. The lone and level sheaves stretch far away.
Amid such mess I'm unable to find room to put my coffee cup down, so the half-empty vessel is eventually lowered to the carpet, its base settling softly in the nap like a ceramic space ship landing on a verdant planet. What must the dust mites think, I wonder, of this alien edifice suddenly appearing in their microscopic world; and when I retrieve it, will they organize cross-carpet tours of the crop circle the cup's departure leaves in their fabric fields, or the "weft circle" or whatever label such bugs will apply to the impression made.
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The quagmire of life is tidal and filled with the bilge water of existence. Here the diarrhea of day coagulates into the stinking swamp of night; an endless ocean of stagnant spittle, mucoid mud and fetid phlegm. Dank smells formerly smelled are consequently expelled into this heaving horror and then sunk beneath the wretched waves of greeny foam. YOU are the intrepid sailor who must navigate these sniveling seas. YOU must captain the good ship Gesundheit with its tissue paper rigging. YOU must read the eucalyptus compass and wield the mentholated sexton. And YOU must perform the sea shanty sneeze with its many, many verses. But I'm all stuffed up, quoth the raven.
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Climate change is just the tip of the iceberg, of course, and I don't know where I stand on it, either. Indeed, my views on climate change change with the weather, as they say: I blow hot and then I blow cold on the subject of climate change. The arguments both pro and con all seem as full of holes as the Ozone layer is. But what I do know is that there is a big stinking slick of electric robot piss in the river every morning. I'm talking regular old boring pollution here. Nobody seems very bothered about that stinking mess anymore. Ground water contamination doesn't sell as many newspapers or movie tickets as greenhouse emissions, I guess, even though it is surely equally as deadly.
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Has anyone else noticed that the faun in the film Pan's Labyrinth is not actually Pan? Why then is the movie called this? Beats me; rather confusing, in fact. Mind you, after some aggressive checking, I discovered that the actual Spanish title of the movie translates into English as Labyrinth of the Faun, which sounds like music composed by Claude Debussy when severely hungover, so perhaps its American distributors were wise to throw that gratuitous Pan into the mix. On the whole, though, faulty nomenclature aside, Pan's Labyrinth provides excellent cinematic entertainment; and who knew the Spanish Civil War lingered on so long? I particularly enjoyed the truly horrifying scene where the young heroine is forced to read all of Andre Malraux's books. I couldn't watch!
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Paris, 1987
I was touring the town, dispatched on a chocolate foraging expedition to purchase a gateau worthy of a chateau, when I crossed paths with the enormous black widowy woman I called Madame de Piggie. Her body was built like the Bastille, but her face was fashioned after the great Cathedral, including a flying buttress nose, towering hair, and enough craggy age lines in which an army of gargoyles perhaps could hide, prepared to spring out with flaming eyes and devilish grins whenever her flaring nostrils gave the signal. If only I'd been wearing a fake moustache and beret, then she might not have spotted me.
"Good evening, petit stranger" Madame de Piggie said, her voice huskier than the sound of a hacksaw sawing through an iron pipe; she smelled as if she'd recently collapsed into the perfume counter at a WalMart: "And where have you been?"
"Buying cake." I stammered, suddenly reduced to the shivering status of a small boy who might have stolen it.
Upon disclosure of this piece of news, Madame de Piggie's huge eyelashes began to dance like the legs of Can Can girls at the Folies Bergere, scattering flakes of mascara in all directions. "Cake!" she shrieked, bustling her wobbling bulk towards the boxed gateau in my shaking hands. It was a total eclipse of the Seine.
And the moral of this story is: some people will go to great lengths for the sake of a cheap pun.
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These days everybody seems to be taking classes in either Ebonics or Klingon as a second language, but since I live in that foreign country L. P. Hartley called the past, where, as you are no doubt aware, we do things differently, I am learning Enochian instead. My decision is based on the twin notions that ancient Greek is a bit too modern and that, as far as I'm concerned, Latin just simply isn't dead enough yet. According to the scribblings of Dr. John Dee, Enochian is the language of the Angels, and of Adam when still resident in Eden, but then lost to humankind on that black day of his eviction. For me, of course, the main obstacle to fluency in this esoteric tongue is not pronunciation of the disemvowelled words, but the discouraging fact that Enochian is chanted rather than spoken and, as you know, mine is a somewhat shy demeanor, so such vocal exhibitionism is really out of the question. Still, I thought that it might be an amusing party trick to have the ability to invoke the elemental called Alhctga when spirits are low. The ceremony looks something like this when performed properly:
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