American Fez

The Ectoplasmic Superhighway

Inspired by popular social networking sites such as Facebook, I have created a similar service for dead persons who would like to meet other corpses online. I'm calling it Skullbook.
All the deceased will require to get started is a computer with an internet connection, a sense of fun, and a reputable medium or psychic who can channel their user name and password via a spirit modem.
In addition to these fantastic life-after-death relationship building possibilities, there will be an e-commerce and auction area named r.i.pBay, where members can sell used shrouds and second-hand coffins and all sorts of ephemera.
All information gathered from the ouija message boards will be strictly confidential and secure.
I am also working on a beta version of Skullbook for those dead people who have been cremated. It's tentatively called MyUrn.

La Cucina Della Morte

At lunch, whilst solemnly baptizing a garden salad with gleaming drops of vinaigrette, I discovered a rogue black olive in my beautiful arrangement of lettuce leaves. It was lurking amid the pristine greenery like some sort of sullen Mediterranean turd. Naturally, I was forced to toss the entire salad away in case it had contaminated the legitimate ingredients. I can stand a brutish beetroot stain, but black olive plague germs? No way. I'd prefer to starve.

Whirr, Click, Whirr, Click

My local Whole Foods Market has significantly beefed up its in-store security presence, although perhaps "beef jerkied up" might be a more accurate description, since the rent-a-cop in question is remarkably scrawny and rather old. Any determined shoplifter could probably have knocked him out cold with a haddock fillet. Nevertheless, he wore those absurdly ubiquitous mirrored sunglasses common to his kind, and policeman-ish looking dark blue pants tucked into highly polished combat boots. There was a belt, also, from which many defunct electronic gizmos hung. I think he may have deaf, too:
"I'm going to steal this leg of lamb."
"Pardon?"
"I said I'm going to steal this leg of lamb."
"Er, that's in aisle four."
"I'm going to walk out of the door now without paying."
"But it might rain later. Have a nice day."
Mind you, at least this guy isn't surly and threatening like the heavyweight goons on patrol at Barnes and Noble Bookstore.
Anyway, after my Whole Foods expedition I strolled around town for a while counting CCTV cameras: nineteen, and that was just the equipment visible to my eye. They say Britain is bad for intrusive surveillance, but we might be worse.

For Peat's Sake

Whisky, as a drink, I have always regarded with ill-favor. It is the color of troubled urine and, at least in its Caledonian form, has been distilled into the last refuge of clubman bores the world over. A more profitable conversation can be conducted with a cacklingly toothless Cockney washerwoman staggering out of her local gin palace, than with some scotch slurping pseudo-sophisticate slouched in his leather armchair.
"I'm really fond of the Macallan ten year."
"Why?"
"It's really smooth and, er ..."
"Oh shut up you tedious old fool."
I know whereof I speak, since it takes one to know one. During habitation of my early twenties, I decided that scotch was the genre of alcoholic beverage that a young buck such as myself should drink. Consequently I embarked upon a self-directed quest to establish which brand of scotch best suited my particular palate. My conclusion, after much sour face making research, was that I actually preferred the blended 'Famous Grouse' variety to any of its supposedly upper-shelved, single-malt superiors.
This is not the case with grape based booze like brandy or port or wine, where expensive bottles are always noticeably better than cheaper ones. Therefore, I say throw the grain drinkers back into the muddy swamps where they belong and let them no longer disturb our ears with their yeast-infected nonsense.

How Can We Best Educate Our Kids?

My own rewarding story: I had the good fortune to be educated at home. Sure, it may have been the Old Scrotum Home For The Criminally Insane, but so what? I still received a better grounding in calculus and English literature there than I would've done in any normal classroom. I particularly enjoyed my biology lessons with Napoleon ... well, at least the teacher thought he was Napoleon, but he was in fact just plain old Mr Arthur Wellesley.
Old Scrotonian pupils also benefited from special "modules" that certainly would not have been taught at the local High: You And Your Diminished Responsibilities In 1987 was one I remember with fond affection. So, You've Sawn Somebody's Head Off, Now What? was another.
At Luddite Tech I majored in Atahualpan Studies, and here my scholastic luck evaporated. After eight semesters of returning from class registration empty-handed I finally realised that the college didn't actually offer any Atahualpan Studies at all. Apparently I had confused Atahualpan Studies with Spanish As A Second Language in the college brochure.
And seventy-nine years later, I am still paying back my student loans :-(

The Extraordinary Prune

I spent the weekend nursing my grievances. They caught a slight chill while marauding about in the rain on Friday night and have since be confined to the sanatorium wing of Castle Frown.
The poor things. Naturally, I have taken great pains to hasten my grievances' recuperation by administering to them twice daily a medicinal tincture of my own devising: a sulfuric yet improving mixture of mandrake root and iron tonic steeped in turtle soup. I also attempt to soothe their fevered slumbers by reading aloud from their favorite book, Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice by Christopher Hitchens.

Burial At Sea

However unprepossessing or commonplace they are, submerged objects always attain a profound degree of gravitas and dignity after settling themselves upon the river bed or ocean floor, waterlogged with mystique and melancholy like watery shades doomed to haunt gloomy, aquatic corridors until the end of time; or perhaps the detritus of ancient oceanic adventures: a sunken beer bottle, for example, that might contain a message.

"This be the last post of Ahab Pundit, skipper of the good ship Blogosphere. We have been online for many years now and have run out of ideas. We can't survive much longer on recycled Bush jokes and You Tubes. I send this bottle out in the hope that whomsoever finds it will install a del.icio.us widget on ... oh God, dear God ... what's the point? There be weevils in me keyboard and the first mate be obsessed with a giant squid meme. Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"

Writer's Notebook

Dramaturgy and Posterity : Why It's Better To Write For The Screen Rather Than The Stage

Since movies are filmed on recordable media, your cinematic masterpiece can be archived on DVD and watched at whim whenever fancy pleases. Stage plays, however, only run for a dozen or so performances before the final curtain falls across your set forever. Even if your play is revived in three hundred years time by some Venusian Amateur Anti-Gravity Theater Troupe, they'll probably do it in "modern dress", so all your profoundly drawn gritty blue-collar characters will be wearing silver togas with matching cloaks and thigh-length high-heeled astro boots. Which wasn't what you intended at all!

"Jazz: Delicious Hot, Disgusting Cold"

I am currently engaged composing a new jazz number called Feelin' Kinda Existential Tonite. The completed tune will obviously be a showcase for my ambidextrous virtuosity on both bagpipes and electric zither, neither of which, I realize, are instruments normally associated with the jazz idiom. Fortunately, however, my work is very avante-garde and experimental, so it doesn't matter a blue note turd whether the finished piece is actually listenable or not.
I'll probably post an mp3 or WAV file here when I'm done. It shouldn't be too long now. I've just got to fiddle around with my notation for the quiet, ultra mellow bars that immediately follow my groundbreaking twelve-minute bagpipe solo. This quiet, ultra mellow sequence is unequivocably the most important section of the work, and it's absolutely vital that I get it right, since it's obviously the bit when the audience will clap wildly and croak "thass real nise Stevie" during live performance.   

Household Gods

Although it has no intrinsic value, numbered among my most treasured personal possessions is a Buddha carved from Welsh slate, purchased by my father when visiting the land of the Dragon on business long ago. This pitch black figurine is one of those beaming Buddhas who seems more lascivious satyr than enlightened being, more likely to be found slumped contentedly against the wall of the local brothel than communing with nature beneath falling lotus blossoms.
I also have a plastercast Aphrodite; a faux marble Julius Caesar; a trio of prancing centaurs; two stone Jack-in-the-Greens; a wooden icon of an unidentified saint that I bought at the Vatican; some weird gnome sort of clay thing that looks as though he was mis-fired in the kiln; a bendable Betty Boop; and a Captain Scarlet action figure (which, of course, is only an excuse to study the Melody Angel doll that accompanies him).

Did You Find Everything You Were Looking For Today?

If there is an oppressed peoples in modern America, then it is that much snubbed tribe of supermarket cashiers who labor unceasingly and thanklessly in the tyrannical shadow of the shopping cart and the sale coupon. Customers are usually rude, or non-communicative and impatient, with paranoid, mistrustful eyes scanning their receipts in search of telltale discrepancies and clues about overcharging. In fact, being a supermarket cashier must be very similar to what it was like working behind the Iron Curtain selling foot deodorants and frozen apple strudel to Stasi automatons.
If I were confronted by this endless conveyor belt of sour-faced humanity and their ghastly purchases each day, I'd think I'd probably kill myself. So I always make an effort to greet and converse with cashiers in a polite and meaningful manner. But, alas, the poor creatures are often too beaten down and depressed to respond, barely even managing to summon enough energy to recite their mandatory corporate sales mantra: "Did you find everything you were looking for today?"
No. No I didn't. I never do. But then I wouldn't expect to in such awful company and in such dreadful surroundings as these.

At the Conference

This morning we are tediously lectured by some banal Hawaiian-shirted buffoon about the need for change; "transformation" as this bovine stochastic proceedure is called in oaf language. Interesting, isn't it, how the speech about the need for change never changes, conference after conference, year after year.
Frankly, whenever change is mentioned I always consider the crocodile. This hugely successful genre of reptile has remained the same since the days of the dinosaurs. Crocodiles don't evolve, they merely eat more stuff. The only thing about them that has changed is their menu.
How I wish I worked for Crocodile Tech Inc, rather than Chameleon Limited. Even if I got turned into a pair of shoes, at least I'd know where I stood.

Fabulous Beasts

Greetings fellow cryptozoologists. Today I am blogging from the murky depths of Loch Campaign, where my submersible cameras have joined the hunt for "Pressie"" the scary, slippery eel-like monster who slithers through these dark waters every four years or so.
Mystery surrounds the exact nature of Pressie. Nobody know what it really is or what it really thinks. In fact, the only thing we know for sure about Pressie is that it frightens old ladies and small children. Unfortunately, Lake Campaign is stuffed full of money, making it almost impossible for my equipment to penetrate the glommy-green, subfusc atmosphere and record any definitive images of the beast.
However, thanks to the wonders of infra-dig video technology, my cameras were able to capture this fascinating picture.

Some locals are hopeful that Pressie might be an example of Republicanus Reaganomicus, a type of dinosaur formerly thought to be extinct. Others have denounced him as simply an overgrown common earth Mormon. But whatever he turns out to be, this strange beast of Lake Campaign is most assuredly related to the ritually fattened Cash Cow.

Advice To Presidential Contenders

Ask not what your integrity can do for you, ask what comparing yourself to John F Kennedy can do for you.
What can you do for your country? You can bugger right off, that's what you can do.

Why I Quit the NASA Space Program

Outer Space is the most exclusive country club in the world: "I'm sorry sir, but we maintain a strict dress code on the lunar surface and I simply cannot let you touchdown unless you're wearing a big round glass fishbowl on your head that has loads of tubes sticking out of it. And, as everybody knows, the only reason we landed on the moon is so that our astronauts could research the golfing possibilities (too much rough and absurdly deep bunkers, which is why we never went back).
I briefly joined NASA in the June of 1987, after being told that Houston needed someone with the Right Stuff and the proper footwear to investigate whether or not the rings of Saturn could be turned into a six lane circular bowling alley. But I quit on my first morning when an ugly gang of nosy busybodies in silly uniforms started waving guns in my face, rudely demanding to know who I was and what I was doing there.
Mission Zero-Gravity Skittle must have been top secret because no-one had heard of it. I don't suppose goons like that get clearance for that sort of classified information. Nevertheless, it was unacceptable treatment and I resolved never to go back. Let them win the space race without me, I decided, if they can!

Note: America did in fact win the space race, both the 385,000 kilometer hurdles and the Earth to Jupiter egg and spoon.

Current mood: Light Years Away

I am currently listening to: Gil Scott Heron's "Whitey On The Moon"

I am currently reading: Victor Pelevin's "Amon Ra"

New Needle

Without fail, as soon as I buy a "The Best Of ..." compact disc, the artist whose collection of greatest hits I've just purchased will invariably release a "The Very Best Of ..."
Besides superior re-packaging, these annoying new Cd's usually feature exactly the same track-list as the original, except that ten extra songs will have been included at no extra cost. Sometimes even a whole second disc will be added, often with multi-media elements and a free tee-shirt offer.
Obviously this unhappy situation is rather ironic, since logically you would assume that such an exclusive sounding item as a "The Very Best Of ..." should surely contain less music than a plain old, undiscriminating "The Best Of ...", not more.
Of course, now, with the fortunate advent of the iPod and similar devices, consumers need no longer waste money on such inequitable compilations. We can download the music and create our own idea of what constitutes an "Absolutely The Very, Very Best Of ... " Unfortunately, I have recently discovered that this personally selective iPod method of acquiring listening material rarely amounts to a collection of more than two or three songs by any given artist. Oh well, another example of less is more, I suppose.

The Flip-Flop Clad Douche Bag Cometh

Summer, the season previously known as Spring, spreads its golden wings over the city as Apollo stirs from his cloudy slumbers. And once again the quiet path beside the Charles river suddenly becomes a hazardous speedway of skinhead rollerbladers and gaunt, sweaty cyclists jostling for athletic supremacy. An Esplanade? Yes, Boston has one of those, but it's more of a gladiatorial arena where wheeled assailants achieve terminal velocity and innocent pinickers are fed to the extreme frisbee players. I ask you, is it really necessary to wear extra baggy, knee-length shorts and smoke a cigar while skateboarding over the park benches?

The Entertainment

Apart from the fellow in the middle, looking somewhat like a saturnine Art Garfunkel who hasn't made an effort, these guys are undoubtedly the type of musical ensemble I would engage to perform at any special occasion: birthdays; weddings; circumcision ceremonies; suttee; annual general meeting of the Old Scrotum Backgammon Society.

And I'm not the only one. When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon it is reported that he marched with the Victorian Rag Band belching out 'Tutti Fruitti' beside him as he went. Similarly, after humbling Tsar Alexander in the dust at Austerlitz, it is said that Napoleon invited them into his victorious battlefield tent to play a few bars of 'Who Let The Dogs Out.'  Perhaps the great general even sat in on washboard?

Made In San Francisco

I recently overheard a slovenly buffoon in heavy sandals describe himself, quite accurately, as "a product" of the sixties, for it was indeed very easy to imagine him being poured out of a hippy mold in some flower-power factory on Haight-Ashbury: a manufactured object who had just arrived straight off the bohemian conveyor belt; an assemblage of mass-produced ideas and philosophies conforming to the radical prototype, rather like a human, pot-powered lava lamp that parrots its tie-dyed opinions whenever you pull its bushy beard.

Printed Material & Its Discontents

According to my bank, who will undoubtedly charge me a two-dollar service fee merely for mentioning their name, the world is rapidly "going paperless"; and indeed, these days my monthly statement is delivered via email rather than by bulky envelope. However, it seems that the paper saved by electronic transmission of these financial details is simply being turned into supermarket circulars and community magazines instead, unwanted reading matter  that floods our apartment lobby like an oil slick flooding a secluded bay. I must wade through this heaving ocean of washing detergent coupons and entertainment listings simply to leave the house. Apparently nobody told SuperSave and PriceSlash that we are all "going paperless" now. Unfortunately, nobody has told the news media either.
We have two free daily newspapers in Boston: the cult-funded Metro and the tissue-thin Boston Now; and two daily newspapers that really ought to be free: the plodding, ho-hum Boston Globe and the tabloid Boston Herald (suitable for readers aged 4-7.) Then there are the neighborhood weeklies: Boston Courant, Beacon Hill Times, South End News, Back Bay Gazette and so on, featuring the latest local bake sale stop press. Even the rodent population can't be bothered to wipe their greasy posteriors with these.
So many papers, so few readable stories. Still, until some genius discovers a better method of lining hamster cages, I suppose we're stuck with them.

The Five Books You Will Read In Hell

Of the five people we will meet in Heaven, I think we can all relax in the certain knowledge that none of them will be the sort of oleaginous pantywaist who writes books like "The Five People People You Will Meet In Heaven."
I don't mean to imply that such authors are inexorably damned to an eldritch eternity of fiery pitchfork inflicted agony in the deepest pits of Hell, of course, just that there is undoubtedly an especially tedious parking lot in Purgatory reserved for the ponderous aggregation of these prolific hacks.
Their works, however, will surely be required reading in Beelzebub's book club.

Virginia Woolf Doggeral

Virginia, frequent visitor
To the dildoed shores of Lesbia
Wrote novels most unreadable
Yet her essays were quite unbeatable.
So too bad, then, 
That Virginia was not unsinkable.

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Jacob.
Jacob who?
Jacob's Room
(1922)
But now it's mine
Announced Virginia
(1929)

Mrs Dalloway?
She went thataway.

Art Imitates Outer Space

Compare Vincent Van Gogh's famous painting 'Starry Night' beside a recent photograph of a storm in Jupiter's atmosphere. A case of telescopic eyesight?

The Wasp Keeper

Kippered herring; slice of toast; mug of bovril. That should keep the Wasp Keeper going until midnight. He'll save the dripping for when comes back. Nothing settles his stomach after a hard night's wasp breeding like a bit o' mucky fat.
He reads the local paper as he eats: "Crapton man's magic carpet stops working after Skake 'N' Vac cleaning." Also mentioned in the Sentinel: "Flying Rug Grounded By Instant Vacuum Powder." And apparently a foot of top soil is being added to Wormley cemetery since the folk buried there are currently only five-feet under. Council ineptitude, as usual, is the reason given. He sighs. You couldn't make it up. Nothing in there about wasps, though, he notices. There never is.
Belching, the Wasp Keeper rises from the remains of his repast, staggering off into the night towards Stingy Bottoms.