American Fez

Ascent of the Hill of Beans

Base camp has been established on the shores of Lake Tomato Sauce, and tomorrow we make our first ascent of the Hill of Beans.
The Baked Bean section at roughly 5000 feet should be the most arduous part of the climb - difficult, murky terrain with all those weird tan-colored chunky bits in it; and we expect to discover the body of the Anne Margaret character from Tommy along the way.
Afterwards, we progress to the Haricot Bean Section (approx 6000 feet), which is followed by a nimble negotiation of the treacherously narrow String Bean Crevasse.
Then it's the truly breathtaking Mexican Jumping Bean section (variable feet), before our scramble through the Coffee Bean scree, over Broad Bean Plateau, and finally onwards to the summit of the Hill of Beans and the ceremonial planting of our flag on Humphrey Bogart's nose.
My only hope is that we don't run into the Abominable Beanman.

The Irreversible Decline of "Pardon?"

Except in the extremely dubious circus of Presidential whim, the word "Pardon" is swiftly disappearing from modern speech, especially its employment as an indication that a voice in conversation has not been heard correctly. Nowadays most miscommunications are concluded with either an ignorant "What?", an irritable sounding "Sorry?", or most uncivil of all, the bovine "Eh?"
Almost nobody responds with a polite, "Pardon?" anymore. This is because it's all about apportioning blame for the mishearing these days, and saying "Pardon?" makes it seem like it's your fault; the antiquated and subservient response of an out-moded, worthless old duffer who should swap his ear trumpet for an hearing aide so that he can be told to clear out his desk. Any high-energy achiever worth his weight in iPhones replies with a barked "Excuse me?", implying that his pathetic interlocutor simply wasn't speaking loudly enough to begin with.
Ultimately, a "Pardon" is begged by an insignificant nobody, whereas an "Excuse me?" is demanded by a superior being.
Personally, I usually exclaim, with an unmistakably insouciant tone, "You're going to have to repeat that. I'm afraid I  wasn't listening."

Boris the Bee Keeper's Blog For Kids

Hello children. I'm Boris the Beekeeper. Do you want to come and see my Magic Bee Hive? It's just down the garden path here, next to the foul smelling, worm-riddled compost heap. I want to see if I can collect some lovely honey from my Magic Bee Hive for sweetening that disgusting herbal tea which is the only kind my stupid wife buys.
But first we have to put on our protective clothing so that we don't get stung by the nasty possessive bees when we try to steal their honey. That fool of a wife of mine got stung yesterday, which is why her head has swelled up like a beach ball and is full of greeney-yellow pus. She might die because she's allergic. She can't eat peanuts either. Isn't she stupid, children!
Do you know how we collect the honey from the Magic Bee Hive? No? Well that's because you are stupid too and cannot even wipe your noses properly. Oh well, I guess I shall have to demonstrate.
What we do is, we spray poison on the bees so that they all die. When they have fallen on the ground, we stamp really hard on the ones that are not dead yet and shout "Die! Die!" at them in a funny German accent. Then we sweep them up into the big, black plastic garbage bag and burn them on a big bonfire that annoys the neighbors. Then we have a cigarette and a large scotch. Afterwards we smash the Magic Bee Hive with a heavy sledgehammer and pay the kid next door five cents per hour to scoop the honey up with his bare hands. And that is how Honeynut Cheerio breakfast cereal is made.
Next week I'll be showing you how to destroy a summer picnic by inviting lots of ants and wasps along! So bugger off until then and leave me in peace. Bye bye.

The Way We Dream Now

Far too hot and flopping around in my bed like a dying haddock on the deck of a Japanese trawler, I suddenly found myself brought to my senses by the Tooth Fairy, tapping at my forehead with her molar-tipped wand.
"Young man," she said, mistakenly, "Are you little Tommy Taylor, aged five and three-quarters, who has left a tooth for me under his pillow?"
"Who the Hell are you? The Tooth Moron?" I replied rather groggily. "Of course I'm not little Tommy Taylor. That should be immediately apparent even to a blind old miniature crone like you with a brain as minuscule as yours so obviously is."
"Well well!" she exclaimed. "If you're not little Tommy Taylor then I just don't know what to do. Really I don't."
"I've got a good idea." I told her. "Why don't you buzz off back to whatever gingivitis infested saliva swamp you emerged from and let me get back to sleep."
"Now I'm beginning to remember who you are." she said. "You were the obnoxious child in the fez who ate too much Turkish delight. I always got cramp carrying your nasty yellow teeth back to Fairyland since all those fillings you needed made them extra heavy. The other fairies used them as grave markers because they were already horribly tombstoned. Honestly, I think I've seen less tooth decay in the mouth of plague-ridden water rat. By rights I ought to reclaim all those silver dollars I left for you. And you certainly didn't spend the money on charm lessons, that's for sure!"
And this was when I suddenly decided to armpit the Tooth Fairy to death.

Marching On

Curious how classical artworks often depict the personification of Time as a bald old man with a flowing gray beard, laboring under the weight of his scythe and hourglass. It seems to me that the Old Masters got their symbolism wrong there.
Surely a more accurately analogy for Time would be an indecisive woman preparing for an evening out; constantly restyling her hair into ever more complex architectural designs, ceaselessly applying layers of variegated lipsticks that never dry, kicking off and slipping out of unacceptable shoe after unacceptable shoe, casting yet another rejected black dress onto the furiously spinning hands of a demented cuckoo clock. And somewhere, buried deep in dense, impenetrable jungle at the bottom of her closet, is the handbag that for some inexplicable reason she really, really needs tonight.
Only such an interminable moment as this can give a true picture of the utterly remorseless void of never-ending eternity.

Sunday

If I may paraphrase James Joyce: history is a public sauna in which we are all trying not to sit next to the fat guy without a towel who farts a lot. Alas, history is full of fat guys like that, and they are currently positioning their flabby, flatulent buttocks to sit on the future and squash it.
Not that I care. The sun has turned his blowtorch on and it's far too hot to care about such petty trifles. And so I sit here, sweating like a minotaur in an especially dank and fetid labyrinth, thinking about all our evaporating human qualities.

Cowboys and Indians: Which is Which?

According to the Conmanaho medicine man who does my plumbing, my toilet is a sacred space, a place of mystery and of pilgrimage that requires constant attention from a powerful scrubbing action shaman such as himself.
"Heap big blockage in u-bend pipe." he told me. "Like buffalo turd not finding proper path to return to land of its forefathers."
We lit a stick of special bleach scented incense and let it burn on top of the cistern.
"Evil spirits dwell in shower faucet." he added. "So water sometimes run tepid and nozzle gets clogged."
"How do we get rid of them?"
"Conmanaho medicine man will return tomorrow with spirits of ancestors and clean hard to reach areas with telescopic totem pole style sponge mop. It not cheap, though."
"How much?" I asked.
"Four hundred dollars." he replied.
My pale face suddenly went paler: "But that's outrageous."
"Householder make low whistling noise with forked tongue. Price very reasonable for performance of ancient Conmanaho tribal ceremony." he explained.
What a load of sitting bull! It's always the same with these people.

Instant Vintage

I recently purchased a wine-making kit from Winemakers-Online because I have decided to make my own wine using the specialized Winemakers-Online wine-making process. Consequently my kitchen currently resembles Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde's laboratory on a particularly hairy day. Urban viticulture also lacks the feety romance of its traditionally bucolic inspiration: instead of a chateau and a vineyard I only have a length of plastic tubing and some sample packets of Shiraz powder. And I'll probably leave it at that, actually, since I'm thinking that it will be far easier and much less messy to simply buy cases of already made wine and then decant it into empty bottles before sticking my own photoshopped labels on, rather than spending my free evenings elbow deep in buckets of foul smelling grape pulp.

Re: Boot

Computer problems at work, and problems with all the various devices attached to it by cables that extend from the hard drive like the aimless tentacles of an especially lazy and stupid octopus.
In other words, I keep "crashing" my computer, a phrase I've always hated since it sounds as if I've driven the bloody thing into a hairpin bend at great speed, lost control and collided with a tree, when in fact all I've been doing is attempting to open the glove compartment.
Surely a more accurate description for this kind of CPU failure would be "seizure," as in 'I will have to get back to you on that because my laptop has just had a seizure.'

Meet the New Potato

The ambitious Croatian town of Belica will shortly be opening their newest local attraction: a museum devoted to that versatile old cooking pot warhorse called the Potato.
Personally, as a rule, I am not that interested in potatoes, so the exhibits and interactive elements will probably leave me cold. And one can only imagine the predictable and unappetising display of starchy food choices available in the museum's cafe.
The gift shop, however, should be absolutely unbeatable. Hopefully there will be a vast arsenal of high calibre potato guns for sale; and Mr Potato Heads dressed in traditional Croatian costumes; not to mention abstract potato print artworks to decorate your walls, and desktop-sized fossilised potato rocks for the natural history students among you.
French fried lapel pins, anyone? Set of four will only cost you a kuna.

Economic Sense

Reprinted from The Weekly "Low" Standard.

UNICEF's thinking about the effects of child labor is all very wrongheaded. In fact they are actually doing Third World kids a disservice, since by starting work so early in life, surely these busy boys and girls will be able to accumulate extremely substantial pension dividends for their retirements. After a lifetime spent stitching together high performance sports sneakers, and assuming that his or her investments are prudent, the average Ricketistani orphan will be able to enjoy his or her twilight years in the lap of whatever passes for luxury on the Dark Continent.
How I wish I had spent my pre-teen years in a windowless shack profitably producing nasty, cheap polyester clothing so that cretinous Western kids could look ridiculous in suburban discotheques, rather than being a cretinous Western kid who looked ridiculous in a suburban discotheque, and will consequently have to rely on non-existant social security payments so that he can barely subsist as a cretinous old hack journalist looking ridiculous in a crumbling pre-fab retirement home that stinks of urine.

The Falernian Legacy

Will anyone ever know the true facts concerning the puzzling chain of supernatural coincidence surrounding the so-called "The Falernian Legacy?" It seems unlikely. A discreet shroud of silence has been secretively drawn over these mysterious and clandestine events by those who claim, truly or falsely, that they were indirectly involved at one time or another. And indeed, alas, we do not even know who these shadowy claimants are or were since, remote and anonymous, they died many years ago and are buried in unmarked graves in inaccessible cemeteries long since lost beneath the shifting sands of unfathomable, inexorable time.
So. What exactly was "The Falernian Legacy?" For better or worse, we are not sure. We do know that there is a fragment of torn, fading and mottled parchment kept double-locked inside in an ancient and rusty unopenable tin, and that upon this parchment are vague and unreadable scratches - possibly a row of question marks - made by an unsteady and unreliable hand using a damaged quill dipped in invisible ink that was already running out when the first untranslatable words were being inscribed upon this untrustworthy document. But this is all we really know for certain.
Indeed, many so-called experts have claimed that there was no such thing as "The Falernian Legacy," and they aver that I have simply made it up hoping to sell a documentary about it to the History Channel.
But we will never know for sure, since I have drawn a discreet shroud of silence over this mysterious and clandestine "The Falernian Legacy," and will never speak of it again unless I get the grant money.

From Phil Ochs to Phil Hoax

Perhaps the most insurmountable problem preventing any musical appreciation of the folk song idiom is the irrefutable fact that the mealy lyrics of these so-called "airs" are mostly concerned with the dreary seafaring activities of inconsequential ne'er-do-wells. The absurdly portentous appearance of dubious Elfin folk can also be guaranteed to spoil what otherwise might have been a pretty melody. And, all to frequently, the nasally-challenged, hempen-clad warbler of such "ditties" will prove himself to be an incorrigible liar before the first verse has been sung, usually by the transparently cretinous ruse of deceitfully backdating his wearisome hard-luck story by three hundred years or more.
I recently caught one particularly mangy specimen accompanying himself on matchstick guitar while croaking out the words to "This land is your land, this land is my land," which was actually rather duplicitous and inconsistent of him, because his previous song had been all about how the land apparently belongs to the Native American people instead. Come on, folk singer, make your mind up!

Financial News

I receive a postcard from the quaint English village of Belchford-Upon-Scribble, where my mad Aunt Madelaine is researching her biography of the seventh-century monk and heretic, The Interminable Pede.
According to Pede, Adam and Eve were cast out from Eden because they defaulted on a sub-prime Paradise loan that the Devil should never have offered them in the first place. This theory was anathema to the established church in Wall Street, who have always claimed that God had cut interest rates prior to "the Fall."
Mad Aunt Madelaine's short missive informs me that Pede's earthly remains are located beneath the altar of St Mortgage's Chapel, but many theologians believe that this is merely an early case of identity theft, and that the venerated bones actually belong to King Arthur, an Anglo-Saxon stockbroker.
Unfortunately, St Mortgage's Chapel is very nearly bankrupt, and the roof is in desperate need of repair. Mad Aunt says she put fifty-pee in a collection box marked "Pees for Pede." Every little helps.

Midnight Toast

The midnight toast is toasted in a chiming toaster and buttered with a slice of moon. The star-crossed marmalade, however, dissolves on my knife like anti-gravity diarrhea evaporating inside a rusting Sputnik. So tomorrow midnight I might try blackberry nubula on wheat instead.
There are more spreads in heaven and earth, Egon Ronay, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Dracula Shops at Kwik Save

perhaps the most revealing environment in which to observe modern humanity in all its greasy, bovine glory is at the food court of your local shopping mall, that gaudy, new-fangled version of a village green where shapeless forms feed greedily upon unidentified solids fried in Styrofoam and plastic.
But fortunately we don't have to enter such premises ourselves in order to witness mankind's devolution. I discovered the picture below on a Livejournal site, photographic evidence that even so-called alternative lifestyles have succumbed to the banal arena of ficus and Formica that is the consumer's food court. What does it say about the world when there is no where else for fantasy to go except the mezzanine level of a consumer terminus?

Medieval Manners

Although I've often thought that falconry might be fun, for the most part I thank God that I was not born in the Middle Ages. Back then, even Kings had to crap out of icy windows in the winter, their regal buttocks quivering with cold as they squeezed and strained high o'er the frozen stream below. And afterwards all he had to look forward to was watching a deformed jester make fart jokes. Then there were all the plagues, self-flagellation and auditioning for Ingmar Bergman, recently RIP, although I thought he'd already been dead for years. How times flies.
Obviously, if you did have the misfortune to be alive in the Middle Ages, then the best thing to do was become a monk and stick to Cadfael like a wart on an old crone's forehead. I suppose you could always join Robin Hood's band of Merrie Men, too, as a last resort, but it looks like Friar Tuck has already got the plum job. Still, apparently there is always room for another Alan A' Dale:

Genealogy.com

One of my more interesting female ancestors was resident in the riverside village of Spyder-Upon-Whey, in the county of Curdshire, during the early nineteenth-century. Or at least that's what our treasured family coloring book says. Alas, the Muffet side of the family has always been somewhat of a mystery. Besides her pronounced arachnophobia, we know no more of Miss Muffet than what is contained within the pages of this heavily crayoned heirloom.
She was noticeably short, somewhat skittish and unconventional, preferring to sit on the ground during her woodland rambles rather than employing a deckchair, shooting stick or other alfresco seating device. Consequently, she appears to have suffered from an alarmingly red, sort of scribbly complexion with excessively rosy cheeks and an overall unnatural ruddiness extending to both her arms and legs. Her hair was a multi-fringed tangle of dark brown strands sticking out at strange, gravity-defying angles, as if it had been thrown on top of her head by a frustrated knitter of chunky brown sweaters.
Overall Miss Muffet must have looked extremely rough when judged by the genteel standards of her fellow Victorians, and such an unappealing visage has led my Great Aunt Mary Mary, always one to forward a contrary opinion, to suggest that Miss Muffet was probably a lesbian. But she's one to talk with all her pretty maids in a row.

The family resemblance is actually quite striking.

Breakthrough

Using iOuija, my new psychic web browser, I have been able to make internet contact with a spirit blogger from beyond the grave. It is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories and amateur parapsychologist, but for some reason he uses the blogger name "Little Debbie."
Unfortunately his posts are very short and often hard to decipher, mainly because he's only got a cheap ectoplasmic dial-up connection. Apparently the IT guy on the other side is constantly tied-up trying to help deceased old ladies send transcendental Instant Messages to their bereaved relatives. You can imagine the sort of dull, uninformative bandwidth-clogging crap they write:
"We are all very happy here.
BTW, your Uncle Bertie is with us. LOL
So deathbed confession does work after all!
G2G - Luv Freda (1922-2003)"

Typical. Here I am with the chance to learn important, groundbreaking facts about life after death, and my lines of communication are blocked by the chatterbox shades of decomposing gossip mongers. This is exactly the sort of thing that drove Houdini up the wall.

Dreams Come True

Tonight is the Night of the Shooting Stars, traditionally known as the Feast of Saint Lawrence, when, if you concentrate hard enough upon a desired object while witnessing a meteor falling through the sky, you may be able to magically alter earthly events to your own advantage.
Or, if you are feeling especially benevolent, I would like a new Lamborghini please.
Alas, the idea of wishing upon falling stars is obviously just an old folk tale, although I don't think it would hurt if you specified the Lamborghini Spyder convertible when wishing on my behalf. But not the yellow one. I repeat: not the yellow one.
Note: There is actually a Lamborghini dealer at the foot of the Via Veneto, right next door to the human bone decorated Crypt of the Capuchin Monks. They are probably the most incongruous neighbors that exist anywhere in the world.

Know Your Audience

My short story, 'I Was Caesar's Barber,' has been rejected and returned by the first magazine to whom I've sent it. Mind you, this is not very surprising since the magazine in question mostly publishes opressively personal accounts of dysfunctional relationships written by anorexic women with substance abuse problems. My story is about a superstitiously skittish Roman hairdresser who must inform Julius Caesar that the proud, autocratic general is losing his hair. It's sort of ersatz Punch circa 1957, but I don't see much worng with that.
In my cover letter to the editrix I observed that, although not exclusively comic, my amusing story would undoubedly introduce a welcome touch of Apuleiusian levity into what was otherwise home to an excruciatingly over-earnest pack of Woolfs. Apparently she thought not. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so specific?
I'm not too disappointed, however. Obviously I had been harboring vague apprehensions that such a po-faced publication was not an ideal forum for my whimsical writings long before the rejection notice arrived. Perhaps I should turn the barber into a Jew and dispatch the rewrite to Heeb?

Get Thee Behind Me Carl Sagan

The single greatest proof that there are absolutely no other alien civilisations in the universe is that NASA haven't stumbled across any of their trash bags yet. Forget UFOs, our first encounter with the Martians would undoubtedly be their spent cigarrette butts, empty beer bottles and used condoms.
But there aren't any. And no discarded inter-galactic garbage means no aliens. End of story.
What? You think the Martians are all ultra smart, silver toga-wearing space saints who live in an incredibly advanced society that serenely recycles all its waste? You've been reading too much science fiction, matey. They would be disgusting slobs, just like us.

The Song Deserves the Blame

Finland's entry in the 1976 Eurovision Song Contest, apparently performed by a domesticated yeti, a pair of failed ingenues who've drunk too much Bacardi, a wife swapping librarian couple and the Mad Organist having a bash on the piano. I had forgotten how ghoulishly quaint the nineteen-seventies can sometimes seem; and disarmingly naive, too, for even in the more desperate realms of amateur showbiz such a confabulation of exuberantly untalented weirdos must surely be unthinkable today. The entrancing ditty is called "Pump Pump"

Unto This Next

Igbert Lozenge, he whose existence is hard to swallow, he of Cheshire cat grimace and Ruritanian attire, he, Igbert, being of sound mind, even if it is barely audible, he, who knows not no reason why not nor wherefore none might say no, he, the said Igbert Lozenge, whose existence is hard to swallow, he who doth on this day celebrate the Feast of the Petrified Fatzo, thrice appointed Lard-Slatherer General to the Inflatulata of Cadiz, who, upon this his feast day doth in the sure and certain knowledge that he might have seen him here and there at some point in the past, he, the Petrified Fatzo, he doth bestow honour upon Igbert Lozenge, he who existence is hard to swallow, he who in return doth celebrate the feast day of the aforementioned Petrified Fatzo, himself honouring the vague notion that he might perhaps be able to recollect bumping into Igbert Lozenge at a countrie fayre once upon a time, perhaps when he was slathering lard for his mistress at a demonstation of her awesome lard eating prowess. Amen.

At the Deli

"Actually I'm quite partial to the more pungent cheeses from the former Yougoslavia, particularly the Dragansmilch and Bleu Tito, both of which I find exhibit a highly distinctive almondine creaminess and robust viscosity."
"Indeed, well, personally I'm very partial to you shutting your big fat cheese nerd mouth."
"I'm sorry!?!"
"Stick a wedge in it, cheddarface."
Food and wine conversation is generally the most pretentious, empurpled nonsense ever to abuse the human ear with its salivating, gluttonous ramblings. Cheese can be soft, it is sometimes hard, it may even be runny, but it is never robustly viscous. Such talk merely turns all delicacies into unpalatable waffle.

Et In Arcadia Bingo

The name Ozymandias has been much on my lips of late, although I trust mine are not as wrinkled as his. Shelley's short poem has always been a touchstone - literally - for lovers of ruins; those of us who would have few interesting vacation destinations were it not for the tyrants of yore and guidebook tours of their doomed citadels.
It always amuses me that if Ozymandias had been a real ruler, then tourists today would no doubt purchase cheap, mass-produced scale models of his "shattered visage" as souvenirs of their tour bus trips to whatever antique land he had held dominion over.
Everything will become disposable kitsch sooner or later, even the fire alarms that tell us our own house is burning down.

Wikipedium Entry

When Oliver Cromwell famously instructed Peter Lely to paint his portrait "warts and awl," it was because he wanted to be depicted for posterity carrying his lucky awl, an old pointy instrument the Lord Protector often employed to scratch his itchy facial growths with. But what is less commonly known is that Cromwell concluded this aesthetic command with the equally uncompromising words, "And make sure that my eyes will follow you around the room, since there's little point in bequeathing one's regicidal likeness to the world if it's not going to really creep people out."

References: 'The American Fez Bumper Book of Bogus Quotations.'

Sulla

Having never ever voted for any political candidate since I loathe and despise them all equally, I often feel that I live in a sort of "revolving dictatorship,"  and my relationship to government is not disimilar to that of an especially aggrieved plebian during the dark, uncertain days of the late Roman republic.
Surely it is the responsibility of any good democracy to provide candidates worth voting for. Perhaps the Supreme Court could be granted powers to veto the candidature of worthless media shadow puppets like Mutt Rheumy, Baraig O'Bama, Hilary Goddam Flinstone, George Pakistani, and Al Gormless et al?
Maybe someday another nation-building superpower will invade this country to establish their idea of what a proper democracy is. But who? I suppose the Little Green Congressmen from the third moon of Filibuster Seven are our only hope on that score.

Domus Dubious

Archeologists working in Rome have uncovered the remains of what they believe is an hotel that actually charged reasonable rooms rates. "Obviously this is evidence of a pre-Euro trading civilisation," travel historian Ivor Reservation explained. "And they may even have provided complimentary airport transfers also." 
Valuable relics recovered from the site so far include a set of large, plush bath towels and en-suite coffee making facilities with enough milk to make more than one cup. "These are amazing finds," Professor Reservation said. "Previously thought to be merely the stuff of legend."
The tradition of absurdly overpriced priced Roman accomodations is as old as the ancient story of Romulus and Remus, brothers who fought a duel over the last vacancy on the Palatine hill, and Professor Reservation is hoping that his new discovery will finally challenge the truth of Limitus Visa's classic statement, "I came, I saw, I'm still paying off that credit card."