American Fez

Take Up Thy Bed And Melt

Whilst mulling over the naked chocolate Jesus exhibit recently banned in New York, I wonder if anyone has ever considered sculpting a similar life-size Jesus out of communion wafers. Now that would be a theological conversation piece.
Perhaps it could be chocolate-covered, if the artist so desired, and maybe given a crown of cashew nuts? What about floating submerged in a vat of ice cream blessed by Archbishop Willy Wonka? Or walking atop a sea of cappuccino?
The problem with Jesus art, of course, both sacred and profane, is that it's been done - so, so, so many times. I'm not religious and even I find it tiresome. We've already got the psychedelically skinny el Greco job, we don't need anymore.
Ultimately, the chocolate Jesus is just plain lame, and unfortunately it can't cure itself of that.

Voice of a Generation

I was attempting to remember who the "voice of my generation" was, until I realized that it was not so much a "voice" at all but more of a sort of extended and inarticulate nasally whine.

Still, it's preferable to John Lennon.

Trendy Ted Dalrymple

"My wife who is French" is the new "I work in a prison."

Explanatory note: Theodore "So Little Done" Dalrymple is a conservative social critic. He used to begin his articles by notifying readers that he worked as a prison doctor, but now that he is retired Dalrymple's first paragraphs often refer to the geographical origins of his wife.

Schizophonic Sound

It is most heartening to observe that the unselfish, philanthropic iPod company still devotes large acres of billboard space to unmissably stark, colorful posters warning its public against the many dangers of epileptic seizure. Even such a comparatively healthy person like myself may suddenly become prone to violent fits of uncontrollable writhing and foaming at the mouth whenever unmelodic, rhythmic noises are applied to my eardrums via the insertion of twin, white plastic nodules.

Fortunately, iPod's important advertising campaign teaches us that such disturbing and embarrassing episodes can easily be avoided if music lovers refrain from employing modern, mobile headphone equipment when enjoying their favorite tunes.

(Meanwhile ... why are all the iPods ads apparently directed exclusively at youthful fans of rock, rap and reggae music? When will iPod create an ad for classical music listeners, perhaps featuring the silhouette of a crazed, wild-haired orchestra conductor? Or what about the silhouette of an in-bred yokel with a piece of straw drooping from his lips for bluegrass aficionados, etc?) 

This Is Hollywood

One wonders - admittedly idly while waiting for one's kettle to boil - what the inevitable sequel to the hit movie 300 is going to be called. Will cinema marquees flash the legend 300 2 into the evening skies? Or perhaps, since everybody died, it will simply be called 0.
Spartans were famously more interested in expanding their chests than their horizons, so character development and plot will undoubtedly be rather grim and one dimensional, whichever title is used.
Historical progression, of course, would dictate that the sequel's director will call "action" at the battle of Salamis, but I don't suppose audiences really care about a bunch of weedy Athenians swanning around in their triple-decker boats.

Mein Whisker

Although Adolf Hitler may have failed to establish his thousand year Reich, the Fuhrer has posthumously inspired an internet site devoted to photographs of feline shapes that resemble his own facial features.

Whatever next? Snails that look like Goebbels? Frogs that look like Goering? Mexican hairless dogs that look like Himmler? You have to say, these images are much funnier than those dour, ceramic bulldog Winston Churchills that tourists can purchase in London shops. The Nazis may have lost the war but they have certainly won the amusing diversion competition.

Many thanks to Bleak Mouse for alerting me.

Lessons From Canute

The bellicose, jingoistic concept of "territorial waters" has always amused me. Certainly, a country may claim dominion over the air space their ship's pennants and ensigns sail through, but to actually insist that it owns the water below is a demonstrable load of bilge. Water is, quite literally, a fluid element that ebbs, flows, swells and eventually evaporates; nobody can scoop a cupful up and say "this is mine" because in a matter of moments such an amorphous possession will be gone for good. So I suggest Iran should cease being so hydrocratic about its briny boundaries and releases the British sailors it has abducted, since it obviously doesn't have a peg leg to stand on.

300

As anyone who reads real history books will no doubt know, there were actually more soldiers in the Greek lines at Thermopylae than just the three hundred Spartans of popular myth. In fact, the Greek order of battle in that famous pass was as follows: three hundred Spartans, nine hundred Thespians, Dr Charles Atlas, a coach party of Panathanikos fans, twelve domestic lobsters, nine thousand really vicious ants, Merlin, a whoopie cushion salesman, ET, Daniel Boone, Childe Harold, the Rockopoulous Bazouki Band, Spring Heeled Jack, Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Number One Ladies Detective Agency, Gunga Din, Bob Hope, El Cid, Santa Claus, Shaka Zulu, Batman's personal valet and Lord Snooty's Giant Electric Head.

Hat tip to Victoria Davis Hansom Cab Co for making sure everyone made it on time from Athens airport.

William Wildebeest

An ancient ancestor of mine, an Iceni tribesman named Stephenicca, was enslaved by the Romans in about 48AD and sold in the Forum to a Pompeiian lawyer named Spurius Maximus. Ordered to copy out endless reams of personal injury claim forms by dim candlelight like a Bob Cratchit in sandals, he was whipped and beaten whenever Spurius lost a case.
Since my bondaged ancestor obviously never received a single penny of compensation for his many enforced labors, I am currently suing the Italian government on his behalf for reparations. Surely some sort of monetary atonement should be made for the outrageous treatment he received, and a typical Italian shrugged shoulder apology simply isn't good enough..
Therefore, I will be demanding a two week, all expenses paid luxury vacation on Capri, which should, I think, just about right the wrongs poor Stephenicca suffered so long ago.

Spring Fever

Much like the Christmas celebrant who is still discovering renegade green pine needles scattered about his house in mid-March, the invalid recovering from influenza continues to find old and crumpled cough drop wrappers in the bottom of his coat pockets long after his symptoms have disappeared.
If this sounds like some proverb in a Chinese fortune cookie, then that's because I've recently been slurping more than my fair share of hot and sour soups, which I regard as bowls of steamy acupuncture for my gummed-up nasal passages. When I am rendered inactive by a cold I favor both the Oriental herb and the Swiss lozenge as means to a restorative end. However, if I am absolutely bed-ridden by an unusually powerful runny nose I employ a medicinal tincture of witchy cauldron concoction called "The Macbeth Infusion." I'm not sure what's in it, exactly, but I'm pretty sure I can taste eye of newt, blind worm's sting and liver of blaspheming Jew in there. Yuck! Still, it's not quite as disgusting as Vicks Nyquil at any rate.

Judging A Book

According to the BBC, publishing executives at Wordsworth Editions consider Jane Austen too ugly - "she was not much of a looker" - to adorn the cover of a memoir about herself. I quite agree. The portrait of Austen reproduced below, apparently painted by her sister, depicts Austen as a porridge-faced spinster who obviously spent far too much time squinting at parchment and laboring over her needlework, although, judging by the style, it might just as well be a caricature of some miserable Roman kitchen slave scribbled over an unfinished fresco in Pompeii.

And to speak frankly, I don't enjoy Austen's novels either. There is far too much winsome sighing and not enough savage breast heaving, if you ask me. Strawberry Shortcake's bum being formally pinched by Anthony Trollope: "If I may beg your pardon, Miss Shortcake, but the pert protuberance and firm roundedness of your posterior has, perhaps with your unconscious consent, suggested to the most raffish components of my masculine emotions, hereforto hidden behind by a veneer of gentlemanly conduct and virtue, that, with your blushing permission, perhaps a slight amount of virile pressure may be applied, however briefly, to its fleshy exterior by at least two of the fingers belonging to my right hand."

Sweet Electrolysister

If you are going bald it is because all that absent hair is being siphoned off through your nose. Barbers won't tell you this since they are all in league with the ear people. Whatever. That is their affair. At any rate, once upon a time I could boast of clean and airy nostrils, but alas, these days my nasal passages are full of tumbleweeds and briars. This hirsute state of affairs is especially annoying when I am vexed with a sinus cold and all the snotty stuff gets entangled in the undergrowth, like a vast green sea swamping an enchanted forest. I was so irritated by all the resultant sniffing and snorting that I recently went to consult a laser hair removal specialist.
"Stick those laser beams up my damned nose and give it maximum voltage." I told the woman. "Burn these troublesome bristles away. Burn them out, I say."
In the end she persuaded me to purchase one of those battery-operated nose trimmer things instead, but I wasn't happy about it.

(in case you're wondering, this is much, much less than you need to know)

Charming

Perhaps you are familiar with the old legend of King Alfred the Great falling asleep while his oat cakes burned themselves blacker than the soles of Viking feet?
Well, in that case prepare yourself for a delicious surprise: this evening's menu features char-broiled Atlantic char on a bed of chard, preceded by selection of charcuterie and followed by Charlotte russe drizzled with green chartreuse ala Chez Cha-cha-cha.
Obviously, I like my meals to have a theme, and tonight's theme is "The Ingoldsby Custard." What? You are chary of my reference? How dare you. Looks like you're one proper little Charlie who's not getting any pudding.

Cosmopolitan Living

Just what is the deal with home decor stores these days? All the goods for for sale are either bundles of brown sticks, lumps of unpainted clay, or a sheet of rusty and dented metal. It's like browsing for housewares in the Khyber Pass:
"I'd like to buy a comfy cushion, please."
"Sorry. We haven't got any, but we do have this Tuscan shit sack stuffed with loose stones."
"Okay, I guess that'll have to do. Now what about a couch to go with it?
"Well, we've just received a shipment of really beautiful six-foot rock escarpments from Outer Mongolia featuring fossilized marine life embedded in the surface."
"Can I eat a TV dinner on it?"
"Sure. If you don't mind your drink sliding off every now and then."
"Whatever. I'll take it."
"So that all comes to a grand total of $2,600. Can I put that on your Visa card today?"
"No, because I'll be paying with two chickens, a goat and a bag of salt."

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Episode Guide, HBO's Rome

Episode Number One Too Many: The Naked Eagle

To celebrate the Lupercalia festival, Vorenus and Titus Pullo enter a fancy dress competition as Laurelus and Hardio. They lose and Vorenus kills everyone in a blind rage while Pullo stands around scratching his head and pulling faces. On the Palatine, Atia parades around her villa in the nude for twenty minutes as Octavian explains his plans for raising ten legions by selling patent acne medicine to the Parthians. Mark Anthony asks Atia if she likes a hard cock. She replies that she does. Some anonymous Jews do some Jewish stuff followed by a scene of a beautiful girl who will become important later working in a brothel. An Egyptian who was a key figure three episodes ago for reasons nobody can remember gets his throat cut. Vorenus finds a guide book to Pompeii and Pullo persuades him to start the Aventine's first travel agency. "This show is another fine mess you've got me into" they both conclude.

Discuss this episode in the, er, HBO Forums

The Chattering Class

When will the inky-fingered hacks of the American media realize that the New Orleans flood fiasco was engineered by the Machiavellian Pharisees of the Bush administration to distract attention from the extremely disturbing fact that those ignorant and incompetent White House apparatchiks still allow raindrops to dribble out of the ozone holes in the sky and onto the heads of innocent civilians? Exactly what is the Pentagon up to? Latest figures from the Oprah Institute indicate that unregulated raindrop emissions are responsible for at least thirty-four different kinds of female baldness. Is it any surprise, then, that Bush, Blair and the other patriarchal wig barons do nothing? And according to a report released this week by UNESCO, Africans from many parts of Asia routinely get very wet when it's rainy because greedy Western capitalists have stolen all the fabulous designer umbrellas that were a gift from Bob Geldof and other concerned celebrities. But what does the United Nations do about it? They make chunky chicken soup, play lite jazz selections on iTunes and stare out of the window listening to the pitter-patter while sipping hot tea. Granted, that's a good start, but surely more aggressive action needs to be taken. If only Al Gore had stopped snoring, had not bumped his head and not gone to bed, and could've got up in the morning, then perhaps we might have avoided this illegal and unnecessary precipitation mess.

Hat tip to Instapundit

See No Evil

Fact Checkers busy at work in the offices of the New York Times, circa 2007

Many such Fact Checkers are sold into journalistic slavery when very young, and then killed as soon as they are old enough to understand what the popular phrase "sources say" really means.
- Reuters

Pedestrian Suggestion

How can George W Bush prevent his administration from becoming the subject of paragraph after paragraph of dismissive and satirical dissertation in the history books of the future?
Simple: he must introduce dramatic new legislation to divide the nation's sidewalks into "slow" and "fast" lanes, and no doubt posterity will also demand a dedicated "breakdown lane" at the kerb for all those wheezy fat people and ladies who wear painful shoes.
The Presidential message should be clear and concise: Can't walk properly? Then get out of the way. We don't need no stinking foot gridlock on the crosswalks of America!

The Urban Yachtsman

Close kin of the equally ludicrous Urban Angler, the landlubbing Urban Yachtsman should tie a tight clove hitch knot in his own windpipe and do us all a favor. Sperry topsider boat shoes on his sockless feet; knee-length beige shorts with prominent pleats and creases; pastel peaked cap pulled low over his fake-tanned forehead; tropical theme t-shirt beneath an blue and yellow windbreaker that is two sizes too big; the Urban Yachtsman always seems to be in a hurry, as if he were in danger of missing some important sidewalk tide. Do real America's Cup sailors dress like this? Not unless their vessel is sponsored by Regattawear and Cap'n Seasicks Frozen Seafood Snacks. In fact, the only actual contact the Urban Yachtsman maintains with the ocean is that swordfish steak infused diarrhea that he flushes down his suburban toilet and into the sewer system after a Saturday night booze cruise. He is a nautical nought and a misguided sartorial shipwreck that really should be scuppered.

Sprynge

Since pilgrimage season is nearly upon us, I am celebrating the blessed martyr by recasting and rewriting Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for a contemporary setting. In my modern version of this classic narrative, the Pilgrims (tourists) depart from a Starbucks on Route 66 to visit the shrine of Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.
Unfortunately, their plane is delayed and so they are stuck in the airport for many hours. To combat the tedium it is suggested that each traveler reveal some secret about themselves in gory detail. The Blonde Wife of Richman begins telling her story first, but soon shuts up when she realizes that nobody is listening because they are far too busy screaming into their mobile phones or playing portable video games. The end.
Sure, my update is pretty short compared to Chaucer's original, but who has the attention span these days to plow through all that poetry. And at least mine is in English!

More Calendar Plans

If you ask me, the organization and administration of our working week is wholly inadequate and extremely misguided. Only the most mindless of unimaginative drones could possibly consider the arrangement we currently endure - five days of backbreaking labor followed by a miserly two days of "rest" - to be anything other than completely worthless and an insult to civilized society. Surely a soothing and eminently productive cycle of six working days followed by three days of leisure is far more preferable? No more complaints of "there aren't enough hours in the day" will be heard when staff are allotted six challenging days in which to accomplish one's appointed tasks! And then there is a whole three days of personal time to look forward to, a good amount of time employees can use to learn read and savor Proust, get their hairy backs waxed, or even sail around the world.
To integrate with the existing heavy Nordic theme, I am thinking of calling the new work day Baldursday, after the Norse god Baldur, and it will make a nice twenty-four hour sandwich between Wednesday and Thursday. The new weekend day will be called Apolloday, and we can easily slip it in after Saturday as a sort of prelude to Sunday, since Apollo is actually a sun god himself.
Obviously, to make my idea viable the entire month of October must be erased, and a few others need to be trimmed, but this is such a small sacrifice if families can enjoy a late night Apolloday picnic without worrying about getting up for work on Monday morning

Corporate Scatology

The plumbing arrangements at my place of work feature a staff washroom and a separate "client" washroom (softer toilet paper, brass fittings, more spacious, executive-style tampon dispenser, etc). At some point we have even discussed having one of those attendants who hand out towelettes to the washroom patrons, but our assistant district sales manager claimed that it wasn't in his job description so nothing came of the idea.
Anyway, this morning I caught, red-buttocked as it were, an unauthorized junior employee illicitly exiting the client washroom with a copy of Boston Job Market clasped in his grubby little hands, the unmistakable, tell-tale "whoosh" sound from our powerful flush system leaving me in no doubt that he had been engaged in what I shall simply refer to as "illegal dumping activities."
"And just what the hell were you doing in there where you absolutely don't belong?" I demanded in my most stentorian tones.
"Taking a shit." he replied with all the disarmingly honesty of young George Washington confessing to his cherry tree chopping down culpability; a resemblance enhanced by virtue of the miscreant's untucked shirt tails and baggy sweater creating a frock coat-like silhouette.
Such similarity to our first and greatest president, especially manifesting itself so shortly after the President's Day holiday, might have inclined me to overlook this ill-advised and ill-directed evacuation of bowels, were it not for those three extremely black marks already placed against the young man's name this year: application of far too little air freshener to soiled room atmosphere (16th of February); application of far, far too much air freshener to soiled room atmosphere (21st of February); incorrect disposal of air freshener aerosol can (also 21st of February).
As it was, I could see no option but to confine him to usage of the portable facilities on the construction site across the street for the foreseeable future.
Later, in the privacy of my own office, I awarded myself a gold star for magnanimity above and beyond the call of duty.

Time's Yawn

If, as James Joyce claimed, history is a nightmare from which we are trying to awake, then you could probably say that the Dark Ages were the REM stage of this fevered sleep. So it follows that the Classical Era would be where humanity was nodding off in bed after reading a few pages of Plato, the Middle Ages a period of loud snoring, farting and bedwetting, the Renaissance a plumping of pillows, and we completely pulled all the covers over to our side of the bed during the Enlightenment. Victorians took heavy doses of sleeping pills, Edwardians blearily arose to elbow height to have a sip of water, and I'm afraid you'd have to say we' moderns have been getting out of the wrong side of the bed ever since. Surely it must be time to wash the damn sheets?

The Main Street Terror

My local utility company is currently digging and jack-hammering an extremely annoying and inconvenient hole just beneath my bedroom window. Obviously, I have warned them that their unwise roadworkings will undoubtedly awaken and unleash the dark and monstrous forces that have lain entombed and forgotten in the sacred ground for centuries, but they simply laugh in my face - the ignorant fools!
I have even paid a vagrant twenty bucks to babble weird prayers beside the gaping pit while wearing a High Priest of Grogk costume, but my holy man's presence is disregarded and the utility company's ill-conceived excavations continue.
"Those orange safety helmets and plastic goggles won't be much good when the evil demon with burning eyes and flaming nostrils finally claws his way out of his subterranean prison." I told them. "What are you going to do then? Try and beat him off with your little thermos flasks?"
No reaction. They were obviously refusing to acknowledge my existence, so I went upstairs to my apartment and changed into lederhosen, a tweed jacket, spectacles and fake beard, reappearing as Professor Heinrich von Teedius from the University of Hellespornberg, a world-respected expert in satanic cults and devilry of all kinds.
Wearing this disguise I showed the workmen a picture of a carnivorous dinosaur I'd found in an old encyclopedia. "This is the terrible, vengeful beast whom you are about to release in to the world." I shrieked. "Behold the zillion fanged weasel deity who stands over twenty-feet high and feasts on human flesh. In the name of God, relinquish your tools now before it is too late!"
"You'll have to do better than that, sir." the site supervisor replied. "We're on triple overtime for this job."
Really, the mind boggles at what one must do to achieve a little peace and quiet around here.

March Nuptials

I attended an ultra-traditional wedding this weekend, one of those relentlessly ceremonial affairs featuring a rather long-winded church service tacked on at the beginning; probably some variety of Coptic Mass or other, judging by all the taffeta and silk on display. I wish I could tell you more, but I couldn't hear a word, so I've absolutely no idea what the Arch-Patriarch or whatever he was was rambling on about. And since I guess it's traditional that the happy couple never sit down, I couldn't see anything either because they were standing in the aisle the whole time obscuring my view. If you ask me, they really ought to install those airplane-size video screens on the back of the pews. If people had something to watch they wouldn't get bored and leave.
Also, it would be have been a far more economical use of people's time if the so-called "wedding planner" combined the church service and reception all in one location. That church altar would have provided an excellent make-shift bar if they had thrown a decent piece of linen over it, and I would happily have danced the night away to the heavy organ sounds of the church organist. As it was, the Stepfather of the Bride, a certain Mr. Wicket, floridly demanded that everyone decamp to the mezzanine ballroom at the Hotel Warren Harding, where guests would find a complimentary fruit cup awaiting them, followed by cash bar disco with DJ Coopid Stoopid. So after all that traipsing about between church and hotel I only had time for a small soda water and a very quick word with the bride and groom: "I hope you will be very happy," I told them, "But I have a $50 bet with your uncle Ebenezer that you won't be. Good night."
Oh well, that's another weekend that just flew by. Where does all the time go?

Floral Jigsaw

I'm selling my naturally scented, handmade floral jigsaws on eBay for sixty bucks each. Essentially, you get a bag of potpourri (3,063 pieces) and have to put the flowers back together with sticky paste (not included).
No takers so far. Obviously all those trendy, couch potato bastards are too busy fiddling around with their PlayStation Flower Arranging games. There is absolutely no respect for traditional crafts today, especially the ones I'm trying to sell.

Telstar Triumphs

Television: the Essential Facts

Described by essential square-eyed authority TV Cream as "absolutely belting," without a five o' clock shadow of a Chevalier's doubt, the greatest television theme tune of all time belongs to that wonderful pan-European production, The Flashing Blade.

Mind you, has anyone ever seen the entire series from start to finish? When I was a mere budding blade the programmers only broadcast episodes one through three, and usually in the wrong order.

Literary Epochs

1930s: the Essential Facts

In the basement bedsit, a clothesline is strung across the cramped kitchen, hanging from it are the poet's itchy undershirts, dull gray from over washing and yellow in the armpits. Ammonia scented steam pours out of the old tin kettle as pinch-faced Virginia Scrubbington is straining parsnips. Attractive once upon a time, graduate of Girton, she longs to return home to Hereford. "He," meanwhile, is out at a socialist meeting about Spain. She is worried that his boiled underpants and socks will not be dry 'til morning.
Train station tea room, cold and dingy, even the stale buns are shivering. A suicidal fly taunts a dog-eared Daily Telegraph and cigarette smoke drifts in from the platform, signalling "No sign of it yet." A chair scrapes loudly across the concrete floor as editor Ernest Frowne disguises a sullen fart: apparently none of the ignorant philistines here want to buy the latest issue of Vacuum!
Meanwhile, in the country, Anthony Preshuss-Epicene caresses his author's copy of Edwardian Aeneas. So clever of him, and such a lovely watercolor cover.

Stephenesque's Brief Lives

Evelyn Waugh: the Essential Facts

A variety of weeble in tweed, Evelyn Waugh became Catholick zealot after adolescent homosexualism and later cuckoldom of first, failed marriage. In middle-age he retired from career of relentless social climbing to subsist as cantakerous garden gnome with ear trumpet in large house featuring abundant Victoriana. Died from excessive complications of ruddy-facedness. Besides literary works, produced eldest son blessed with prodigious talent. Of Waugh's novels: Decline And Fall is hilarious; Scoop is a work of genius; The Sword of Honour trilogy is good but marred by laughable sentimentality; The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold is depressing for all the right reasons; but by far the most famous of Waugh's novel is Brideshead Revisited, later televised as the Queer As Folk of its day, resulting in pretentious, emulatory fans of Star Trekkie like devotion. Waugh also wrote a number of biographies of tedious figures such as the Pre-Raphaelite bore Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His letters and diaries are enormously popular among the sort of nosy, obsessive people who like to read that sort of thing.

Stephenesque verdict: Evelyn Waugh is a classic .... fill in the blank at whim.