American Fez

Bedtime News

Once upon a time there was a faery diplomat named Condoleezza who flew all over the dark forest of Grimstadt granting oppressed woodcutters the gift of Democracy.
Ding! Polling booths magically appeared in all the old, gnarly pumpkin tree stumps.
"Now quickly run along and vote." Condoleezza told the woodcutters, "Because at the stroke of midnight Democracy turns into a violent insurgency."
"Can't we just have a load of monetary aid instead?" the woodcutters pleaded.
"No, because you'll just spend it all on worthless beanstalk seeds." Condoleezza replied. "So listen very carefully, these are your candidates: Rumpelstiltskin (conservative); Old Mother Hubbard (socialist); Jack Sprat and his Wife (centrist); and Shrek (green party)."
"It doesn't look like we're all going to live happily ever after if that's all we get to choose from." the Woodcutters said.
"I'm afraid not." Condoleezza agreed. "Which is why I'm also giving you the gift of a box of steadfast tin soldiers. And now it's time that all little Woodcutters were safely tucked up in bed."
"But it's only seven o' clock!" the Woodcutters wailed.
"Yes." said Condoleezza sternly. "That's the curfew from now on."

The Bourne Parking Ticket

I am writing yet another new screenplay:"The Bourne Parking Ticket." I think this one will be quite exciting and action packed.
Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) assassinates a double agent in the "Self Help" aisle of a Borders Books and Music store. He then returns to his Lamborghini only to discover that a mysterious $40 parking ticket has appeared on the windscreen. Da da-da! WTF? Is it a set-up? Is he being framed? Are 'they' making Bourne a fall guy for the owner of the double-parked Skoda across the street?
Determined to discover who wants him to pay the ticket and why, Bourne penetrates the very heart of the Meter Maid organization. While Bourne is disguised as an ordinary traffic cop waiting for an iced latte at Starbucks, Officer Kerbstone (Kate Beckinsale) tips him off about a cryptic parking directive called "loading zone reserved for commercial vehicles only." Can Kerbstone's information be the all important clue? Is this the final piece of the jigsaw?
Bourne and Kerbstone have a strangely disconnected erotic encounter in an alleyway, and then Bourne rushes over to the parking space outside Borders. Sure enough, there is a sign on the road marked "loading zone reserved for commercial vehicles only." But Bourne is absolutely certain it hadn't been there when he had parked the Lamborghini. Is Bourne losing his mind? Has he been drugged by rogue operative within the CIA itself? Did foreign spies remove the sign while Bourne was assassinating the double agent and then replace it  after he had driven away? And the most spine-chilling conundrum of all: surely parking in a loading zone used to be only a twenty buck ticket?

The Lion Has Things

John Bull once proudly proclaimed that Great Britain possessed an empire upon which the sun never set. Well, the sun sometimes doesn't set on certain sections of such humdrum countries as Norway and Sweden either, so perhaps permanent daylight is not really much to boast about after all.
Nevertheless, the nostalgic tourist can still find the spirit of merry England if you ferret around hard enough - for that crumb of quaint Eccles cake accidentally lodged in the nethermost shanks of Arthur Negas's underpants, for example; or in the primly shattered remains of a Wedgewood teacup forcibly thrown at Doris Stokes's head by an unsen hand; and, of course, especially in the music of Ronald Binge, when transcribed for performance by rhubarb stalk run through a squeaky mangle. Flora Robson? She's not in this bit.

Hat tip to John Derbyshire for no reason at all.

The Boy Who Cried Beowulf

I am writing yet another new children's story: The Boy Who Cried Beowulf.
A charming and instructive tale, it tells of a young boy called Harald Pottur, who works as a slop bucket carrier at the local mead hall. To relieve the tedium of this dreary job, young Harald often interrupts the mead-sodden merrymaking by shouting "Beowulf! Beowulf!" at the top of his voice. Thinking they are being attacked by a flesh-eating monster, Beowulf and the Geatish revelers reach for their swords, rushing hither and thither until they realize they are victims of another of Harald's eldritch jests. However, on one particularly grim evening the mead hall is actually attacked by a flesh-eating monster. Harald attempts to raise the alarm, but, tired of his foolish pranks, the drunken Geats ignore his desperate cries. The monster bites Harald's head clean off his body, drinks deeply of the young boy's gushing blood, wipes his lips with Harald's still pumping heart, and then belchingly stalks back into the night from whence he came. The end.
And the moral of this story is: "Kids, you would be much better off reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the original classic poem than my gory tale of death and booze."
(700 pages. Illustrated. Suitable for ages 3 and up.)

How I Shave

Shaving your face with a razor in the morning can be a messy and excruciating business, as these memorable lines from the Icelandic Song of Darraðar remind us:

Blood rains from the cloudy web
On the broad loom of slaughter.
The web of man grey as armor
Is now being woven; the Valkyries
Will cross it with a crimson weft.

I usually begin my morning shave by making a series of random and violent strokes across my chin with a two-handed broadsword, then switch to a small battle axe for delicate touch-up work between the upper lip and base of the nose.
When the water in my wash basin turns deep red, and my lower face is naked and raw, I toss my weapons aside and dress my wounds with Grendel's Breath Aftershave Balm: it's sold exclusively by Beowulf Brothers of Bond Steet.

Sole Sense

Ms Tinkerty Tonk quotes a so-called "shoeblogger" who whines on and on about the demise of the cobbling trade.
But what sane pedestrian is willing to pay sixty-dollars to have their ratty shoes mended by some wizened old Italian lunatic who lives in the corner of a dry-cleaning store? It's cheaper to simply throw your old brogues away and buy a brand new pair. Small wonder that American consumer patience has worn very thin with this particular breed of leather craftsman. 
And it's not like we aren't well aware of all their dirty little cobbling secrets, either. Everyone knows that all the real work is done at night by exhausted elves toiling away in a filthy sweatshop while our lazy, good-for-nothing cobbler friend is snoring himself drunkenly to sleep. Personally I'd prefer to go about barefoot rather than press a single penny into the unethical and indolent paw of such a slave-driving, labor-law transgressing swindler.
Frankly, I don't understand why the elves don't open their own shoe repair store. I would gladly bring my boots to them to get re-soled if it's only going to cost me a small glass of milk and a bit of stale pie.

Unchecked

When you pause to contemplate what gargantuan obelisks of luggage many passengers think will fit in an airplane's minuscule overhead baggage compartment, it is remarkable that the Druids did not consider shipping those monumental standing stones to Stonehenge via British Airways. These days I wouldn't be surprised if my flight got delayed because John Wayne had ridden aboard and was attempting to herd a head of cattle into the hatch above row 26.
Apparently, as if Houdini had helped them pack, modern travelers believe that the laws of spatial physics do not apply to their suitcases. Frankly I blame airport terminology. After all, let's face it, the entire world probably does count as a single carry-on item if it's Atlas who is doing the carrying: "So, let's see: I can stick Europe up there, and Asia beneath the seat in front of me, and India behind her, and I think I can squeeze Africa above this guy  ... oh, excuse me sir, but bits of my Madagascar appear to have fallen into your complimentary beverage."

Anti-Pedant Note: Yeah, I am aware that Atlas was only condemned to shoulder a celestial sphere, and not the actual globe. I'm just trying to make a point for Christ's sake.

Poetaster

The Raven
Quoth the parrot, 'Never mind.'
- Fin -

Notes on the text:
Poe's knowledge of elementary bird life was apparently severely limited. Only a complete ornithological ignoramus would have written about a talking raven. Consequently I have replaced this feathered impossibility with a much more plausible talking bird - our old friend the parrot. Also, most of the Gothicky gobbledygook, so-called "poetry" has been deleted. All of that sententious nonsense about "lost Lenore" is really boring, furthermore, it detracts from the parrot's profound message of boredom and ennui.
The following are poet approved textural questions for your Discussion Group or Critics Circle:
1. Polly want a cracker?
Do you think the parrot is hungry? If so, why?
2. Who's a pretty boy, then?
Is the parrot too concerned with outward appearances at the expense of his inner soul? Discuss with reference to last month's copy of International Plumage

Final Thoughts on Less Vegas

The word that best sums up Less Vegas is "ersatz." Every inch of the city is a cheap, unimaginative copy of a comic strip idea of somewhere else: Tom and Jerry racing around the Roman Forum; Mickey Mouse holding court on Piazza San Marco; and Scooby Doo sleeping in the Sphinx's kennel. Meanwhile Old MacDonald bets the farm as a toothless Dracula sings Frank Sinatra and Snow White marries Black Jack at the Visa Card Chapel. The gold-plated sidewalk only ends when the cartoonist's pen finally runs out of money ink.
Less Vegas vacationers are trapped in the crack pipe of consumerism. There is nothing to do except spend money on food, souvenirs and slot machines. The only books on sale have pictures of naked women in them. Sightseeing consists of stumbling around casinos watching all your savings disappear with the aid of a cocktail waitress tour guide. From Keno and Bingo to big fat zero in the blink of a bloodshot eye.
I realize that these thoughts and those of the preceding posts are neither new nor profound - it is a common conceit of science-fiction writers that our future cities will be slum conglomerations of Vegas and Chinatown surrounded by wasteland - but I hope I have expressed them in an entertaining way. It is an easy thing to laugh at Las Vegas, to roll your eyes as you roll the dice, to claim that kitsch is cool and to enjoy the non-stop party while you're there, but this place is truly the Slough of Despond masquerading as an oasis in the desert.

Cash Out

Less Vegas, as you know, is the pink elephants graveyard. Shoppers cannot walk into a Walgreens and be certain they are actually in a real Walgreens, and not some Walgreens theme hotel with twenty-five cent slot machines in the aisles instead of foot deodorant and haemorrhoid cream. On Less Vegas Blvd top stores include Fake Titz Inc and Toupee King.
Hungry? There's slabs of seafood in this illuminated desert; magician David Copperfield caught all the fish at the Bellagio's water show. "Waiter. Is this a real Caesar salad you are serving me, or just a Caesar salad tribute salad made with enormous facsimiles of all the original ingredients?"
I've recently discovered that hotel maids don't really clean your room at all, the bell hops simply move your bags to a new one each day when the building revolves.

Fake Is The New Real

Las Vegas, Nevada: the illuminated desert where old electricity meter readers go to die; home of the slot slut and the blackjack bore, Vegas is a city-sized greed theme park in which fat losers find themselves stuck fast on a greasy human fly strip; a zombie town Pompeii made of processed cheese and buried by cigar ash. A river of drool runs through it and the air is thick with meaty flatulence. The Rat Pack? The Maggot Cluster more like.
Top tip: if you drink yourself into a coma after gambling away your life savings, you can still play Keno while unconscious!

What Heaven Will Be Like

"There would be a troupe of Red Indians, a fire-eater, a woman with a very large snake, a formidable singer called Ida Barr, a Polish boxer who would take on members of the audience, Demetrius the Gladiator whose act involved blowing up hot-water bottles, a man called Bob who hit himself on the head with a tin tray while singing Mule Train, and, most notorious of all, a drag act called Miss Shufflewick, famous for her outrageous routine and for her alcoholism. 'See this?' she would say, stroking a fur coat that she was wearing. 'It's made of untouched pussy. You don't get much of that in the West End.' ... During the act with the snake, Mrs Shufflewick muttered loudly, 'Make a nice handbag that.'"

From: You Cannot Live As I Have Lived And Not End Up Like This, a biography of William Donaldson, written by Terence Blacker.

Upcoming Non-Events

Forces of work have conspired to exile me to Las Vegas for a good portion of next week. The city is hosting an exposition of television news helicopters, high-definition plasma billboards, Fantastic Voyage sized video cameras and so on. As with all such events, my task is to stroll around the vendor booths collecting as much free merchandise as I can possibly cram into my suitcase and then leave without buying anything.
During my stay I shall be residing at an hotel called The Whore's Lighthouse. At least that's what the accommodations look like on their website, I forget what the hideous concrete dunghill is actually named. Obviously, the tricky part will be deciding how best to occupy myself when not surveying the audio-visual madness in the exhibition hall: I don't approve of gambling (with my own money); I have zero desire to see a show featuring acrobatic French-Canadian mimes who make human pyramids while pulling wheelies on a unicycle; and I don't particularly wish to drink myself to death with foaming vomit-colored cocktails, either.

Between Thought & Expression

Anyone who has watched a Fellini movie will know that perfectly synchronised picture and sound don't matter a damn if the content works; and in the little box below, some other muse-hounded genius called "Shawshawshaw" has successfully overdubbed the Velvet Underground's evergreen "Sister Ray" on ancient footage from the Lawrence Welk Show:

What You Looking At?

My ghast was well and truly flabbered upon discovering that such a mild weblog as Stephenesque was receiving hits from a forum run by so-called "Extreme Skins."
However, after conducting discreet investigations I learn that these "Extreme Skins" linking to me are in fact cheerful fans of the Washington Redskins, and are not, as I feared they might be, a motley crew of skinhead Nazi readers who are even more aggressively bald and angry than their conventionally shaven skulled brethren.
Phew! For a moment there I thought this site was being confused with The Weekly Standard!

Subscription Offer

Conservative gourmands will surely start salivating upon hearing that today marks the maiden publication of The New Croutonian: a journal of salad preparation and the arts, edited by myself. Here is a short menu of the mouthwatering essays you will discover generously slathered across the pages of issue one.

George Orwell: Thousand Island or Vinaigrette? by Theodore Dalrhubarb

Bacon Bits 1968-1973 by Stilton Kremer

Militant Islamic Chefs Will Steal Our Cucumbers If We Allow Them Into The Kitchen by Mark Foodsteyn

Waldorf Without Walnuts: New Salads at the Whitney by James Saucepanero

Arugula contra Romaine by Roger Scrouton

Shakespeare's "Dark Radish" by Brooke Oil

Notebook: Modern English Salads Are Brown and Disgusting by Anthony Dandelions

Reggae: the Essential Facts

"I've got many rivers to cross" sings the prominent reggae artist Jimmy Cliff. Fortunately Mr Cliff lives in the age of the suspension bridge, so fording these watery obstructions will not present him with any great difficulty. Even a relatively primitive pontoon bridge, one presumes, should suffice for the task at hand. Alternatively, the swift if somewhat haphazard trajectory supplied by a human catapult provides Mr Cliff with yet another option when considering how best to reach the opposite bank.
This is pretty much all you need to know about reggae, except that neither Bach, Mozart nor Beethoven ever composed a single bar of music in this style, and that it was a form of song form unfavored by both the great Caruso and Maria Callas.

La Marseillaise

If, as his campaign literature claims, French presidential candidate Francois Bayrou regularly drives tractors and can milk cows with competence, then were I a monsieur I would most certainly vote for him. As with our forthcoming American election, the competition in France is dire:

Segolene Royal is a socialist, which is rather like being a betamax video recorder but with fewer practical applications. No farming experience and cannot really be described as buxom, rosy-cheeked milkmaid type, either. So not much use to anyone, then.

Jean-Marie Le Pen has two girl's names and an amusing last one full of bile-colored ink. Le Pen is non-retractable and should be put away in the desk drawer alongside those messy old bottles of typewriter white-out and loose staples. No farming experience. More at home in 'Animal Farm' rather than on a dairy farm.

Nicolas Sarkozy's last name makes him sound like the boring member of the crew from a fifties sci-fi film, the one most liable to be hypnotized by the aliens and then ejected into the blackest voids of deep space. No farming experience. Would have absolutely no idea how to wield either a pitchfork or hoe.

Just goes to prove that elections these days are more like sponsored crop rotations than political events: turnips and potatoes, both blighted, is my best guess.

Easter Parade Tomfoolery

Doubting Thomas, Thomas the Rhymer, Thomas the Tank Engine, John Thomas and Lady Jane, Fantomas, Tom Thumb, Little Tommy Tucker, Tom Tom the Piper's Son, Poor Tom, Old Tom, Tommy Atkins, Tom and Jerry, Peeping Tom, TS Eliot, Uncle Tom Cobbley and All.

Stephenesque's Friday Refutation

If it is indeed true that 'only the good die young,' then all of the personalities to whom this proverb is regularly applied should still be very much alive into their nineties and beyond.

Umbrian Umbrage

Anyone who has wandered through the museums of Athens and Rome will be well aware how wearisome limping around the endless galleries of bronze and marble sculptures can be. So frankly it amazes me that the Greek and Italian governments are demanding the return of similar antiquities currently residing in the museums of America. Surely the Europeans have more than enough busts and torsos already? How many stern-faced and beady-eyed renderings of a classical head can one country really need?
Mind you, that Etruscan chariot sitting in The Met, I'd want that returned pretty pronto if I were Umbrian. This week's New Yorker interviews the Met's curator, who disagrees with my assessment of the situation. And then there is the story of the Getty Museum's equally dubiously acquired Statue of a Victorious Youth in last week's Spectator.

Tonight's TV

Hi there. I'm Bob Ahmadinejad, host of popular television game show "Brinkmanship."

The rules are simple: Celebrity World Leaders are invited to "Cling Firmly To God's Rope" no matter how frayed and unstable or imaginary it might be. The last contestant to let go is the winner and will receive the nuclear weapon of his choice and a night on the town with Emperor Nero. The losers must drink deeply of Satan's fiery urine.
Meanwhile here are the Swinging Campaign Contributions, America's number one cabaret act, to serenade us with a lovely little number called "The Ballad of Hilary and Rudy"

HMS Cornballs

Pretty much everything our toothy, Koran-thumping Iranian friend claims about the West is almost demonstrably wrong, except when he accuses us of "arrogance." You only have to conduct the briefest examination of our conceited, self-righteous media pundits and unctuous, canting politicians to realise that Ahmadinejad is absolutely dead right about that. Although I believe that this unfortunate quality to which he refers was originally called hubris in the ancient world.

News Flash

Captured American Fez Readers Shown On Iranian TV

Breaking all the rules of the Geneva Convention and the International No-No Accord, captured American Fez readers have been paraded on Iranian television wearing no pants and with a load of paper bags on their heads.   

It is surely reason for grave concern that the scheduled broadcast of "Jihadist Idol" should be pre-empted in favor of these frankly insulting and distrubing images of innocent American Fez readers with knobbly knees. Gunboat diplomacy, tubthumping and bellicose shouting are the only solutions. Yet cringing, spineless Stephenesque can only hide behind the UN's multicultural coat-tails, mumbling his abject apologies to the Iranian government for letting his blog invade their internet.

Prime Movers

No rational person can believe in so-called "intelligent design." Dumb design, however, is another matter. In fact, everything on Earth points to dumb design being the creative force that kicked the world into orbit. After all, what sort of intelligence would construct a world from a mucky substance that gets your knees all muddy when you fall over on it? And what dimwit tried to mask this crass mistake by covering up the mucky substance with a ridiculous green toupee of ugly weeds stapled down with ungainly "trees"? And furthermore, who but a total dunce would cover three-quarters of the surface with undrinkable water full of squids and other horrible, squishy stuff? And finally, who in their right mind would leave a bunch of talking monkeys in charge of it all? The mind boggles.

Old Mother Ahab

Part One: You've Got Ishmael

At the chime of the midnight bell each evening, the gray wraith of an wild-haired old woman floats across my bedroom, her face a frozen mask of inconsolable grief, wringing her hands and whaling.
At least I assume that's what the harpoon was for. Or perhaps there was some other, more sinister, purpose?
Of course, usually, most ghostly old women haunt the Earth because they are doomed to finish knitting the bright yellow sweater they began in life, or because their spirits will never find peace until that can of condensed milk they once absent-mindedly misplaced has been found. Consequently, I was understandably a little unnerved to witness this wizened domestic specter burdened by a huge hunk of antique fishing equipment hung about her neck, rather like a wrinkly Jacob Marley in sou'wester and carpet slippers.
Pulling a blanket protectively over my exposed head with two shaking hands, I decided to speak with the melancholy apparition. "What so ails thee, miserable spirit?" I demanded through chattering teeth. "That thy Earthbound shade parades itself before my transfixed eyes?"
"How nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to behold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea." the old woman groaned. "His vast, mild head overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable contemplations, and that vapor - as you will sometimes see it - glorified by a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts. For d'ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate vapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my mind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a heavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny; but doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of all things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this combination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who regards them both with equal eye."
"That's all very well." I said. "But frankly, I'd prefer not to."
And with that she vanished back into the ether from whence she came. yet another case of all's Melville that ends Melville.

Still Life With Tartar Sauce

To paraphrase Jake the Poacher, "here herring here."
Edward Le Bas was one of those artists who always painted as though they were viewing their subjects through a net curtain. His rendering of three little fish on a dish about to be kippered is a case in point.

I suppose such technique is considered a variety of impressionism, but it is impressionism of the unimpressive, unlit British kind. Surely only an art lover who has made his fortune from fishmongering would buy this picture. It is almost as dull as "Interior of Lyons Tea Room, 1932" by Ivor Beard R.A., or the illustrations in "The Shell Guide to Drearyshire."
Mind you, a modern Le Bas would be nailing live Tilapia or Chilean Sea Bass to his own slimy IKEA futon, so I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies.

Consumer News

I am currently awaiting the arrival of two packages: You Cannot Live as I Have Lived and Not End Up Like This: The Thoroughly Disgraceful Life and Times of Willie Donaldson which is being delivered from the transatlantic Amazon, and the 49th Parallel DVD, dispatched from its domestic equivalent.