American Fez

Roll Up, Roll Up

In a last ditch attempt to reinvigorate his enfeebled campaign, Republican hopeful Walter Mitty Romney joins the Limbaugh Circus and swan dives into a public paddling pool flooded with purified essense of traditional conservatism. Alas, most of this sticky red ooze evaporates into hot air just as unlucky Mitt leaps off his platform.

But fortunately Mitt is attached to a very elastic bungee cord, so he'll be able to bounce right back up again and try some other desperate stunt. And he won't even have to get his feet wet!

Advanced Rhinography

There is nothing that gives me greater satisfaction than getting right up people's noses. If there was such a thing as an express nose elevator (maximum load eight offensive sentences) I would ride it straight up to the top floor every day.
But, in actual fact, getting up people's noses is probably more like deep cave exploration, since everybody's ancient shibboleths and most profound prejudices are found within their noses, daubed on their nasal walls like the paintings of primitive man: "Shine your light over here, professor, and take a look at these strange markings. As far as I can make out it would appear that the owner of this nose thinks that voting in elections is a worthwhile activity."
"Yes, Roger, however bizarre it may seem, your analysis is quite correct. I expected as much. It proves all of my theories. Just look at the wretchedly inane scratches on the cartilage, they are common to a species of extremely credulous nose owner who really believes that any politician is ever going to change anything ever."
"Do such nose owners really exist, professor?"
"In certain very ignorant tribal cultures, yes, indeed they do."
"This is great professor. What other weird opinions do you think we'll discover in this nose?"
"Oh not much else. Most of this nose was flooded with dense, mind warping mucous a long, long time ago. I'm afraid we'll find nothing in here that makes any sense anymore, so we'll simply put what's left of it out of joint and move on. After all, there are countless similarly strange noses to get right up"

Review Review

With the exception of retired dentists in New Hampshire, I often wonder if anyone reads the National Review anymore. These days it seems to be composed entirely of loudmouth, cigar-chomping articles written by supercilious blowhards who write as if they actually wanted to work the sports desk, but never made it. To compensate, they give each other lame nicknames like J-Pud, VHF, Stooge, F-Off and so on. It's the sort of pathetic charade that people who want to be hip and popular but aren't enjoy. The magazine is almost bad as the Weekly "Low" Standard.
Do you ever get the feeling that Kerrang has become the most intelligent, rational and astute periodical on the market?
Meanwhile my favorite quote of the week comes from that old headbanger Steve Sailor: "Neocons are harder to kill than Rasputin. No matter how often everything they touch turns to ashes, they, personally, pop right back up with nice new sinecures in influential institutions." How I wish I had written that. Quality Rasputin allusions are always a sure sign of quality writing.

The Real State of the Union

Like most Americans, I was absolutely astounded that the President's "State of the Union" address contained no mention of Heath Ledger's tragic death. I will be very interested to see what Bono has to say about this insensitive omission. Does Bush care nothing about the upcoming Oscars?
The nubile shadow of Hannah Montana hung heavy over tonight's speech, yet Bush was noticeably silent on the subject of his favorite TV shows. He has been running for two unsuccessful seasons already, for heaven's sake, and we still don't know whether Bush prefers the Atkins or South Beach diets. Surely it is high time that this idiot passed the karaoke microphone to someone who actually knows all the words to Sweet Caroline.

Tax Rebate Porn

The most recent issue of The Nation contains an arresting sentence written by Barbara Ehrenreich: "With all the talk about how to stimulate it, you'd think that the economy is a giant clitoris."
Too true. Except, of course, that this economy is a cheap, plastic marital aid equivalent of a clitoris with "Made In China" stamped on it.
Mind you, I suppose it's one hell of a Presidential dildo who's doing the stimulating, so perhaps it all makes sense after all. Who can tell?

Ice Station Romney

Good news for Mitt Romney: Marie Smith Jones, the last native speaker of Eyak, has died. This means that Mutt won't need to spend three million bucks on Eyak language campaign advertising in the run up to the Alaskan primary election.

Batman in Pajamas

Via unsolicited email I am boldly offered the opportunity to Be A Hero In Bed, which I find quite perplexing, since I wouldn't normally consider a king-size divan to be a particularly suitable arena in which to perform noble deeds requiring superhuman courage. Furthermore, it is difficult to imagine myself as a night-shirted crusader leaping from mattress to mattress in pursuit of blanket hogging master criminals. And besides, you can bet your last batmobile that most evil-doers sleep in the nude, and their greasy asses are something I don't even want to see, never mind kick. So I think I'm going to delete this email without another thought. Mind you, I am rather curious to know what kind of super powers are granted to a bedroom superhero. No doubt it involves some sort of super sonic snoring gun or whatever.

Kropotkin Calling the Kettle Black

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, which in my experience is the best way to phrase him, "What do they know of exhibition poker tournaments who only exhibition poker tournaments know?"
Politics is very much like a game of poker, if you ask me: it is also played by cheats, alcoholics, stetson wearers and desperate men who gamble more than they can afford. And like professional card sharps, politicians will generally pretend they have a royal flush when in fact all they have two threes, a four, one five and the Queen of Spades. But a losing hand won't stop White House Fats from playing double or quits with China Slim long into the night. He just can't stop himself.
If only these politicians would leap back from the gaming table Wild West style and shoot each other dead one of these days. Alas, the problem with that scenario, of course, is that they're so inept they'd only manage to hit the innocent piano player in the corner.

Dumbo(s)

I have never understood the Republican Party's logic in adopting an elephant as their symbol. After all, even the most talented of native craftsmen couldn't fashion a good umbrella stand out of Dick Cheney's feet. And furthermore, unlike those Republican politicians providing testimony at, for instance, the Iran-Contra hearings, an elephant famously "never forgets." So just what is the connection between the Grand Old Party and this hefty jungle beast? Perhaps it is simply that, as with the difference between Indian and African elephants, neo-conservatives have big ears and traditional conservatives have small ones. Who knows? Hopefully the stampede towards the 2008 Presidential nomination will reveal further clues.

Life Cycle of The Pocket Diary

December 25th: Pocket Diary is unwrapped with much disappointment because festive parcel was originally thought to actually contain an iPod.

December 26th: All remembered birthdays are entered into diary, along with any known appointments and events, however trivial and inconsequential they may be. For some reason, street address of parents is also added in appropriate section.

December 29th: Weights and measures conversion tables in back of diary are vaguely consulted during moment of extreme boredom while waiting for bus. Name of girl met in bakery is hastily scribbled on back page of diary, along with unreadable telephone number: is that a 4 or a 9?

January 2nd: Random page of diary is thoughtlessly torn out when emergency enclosure is needed for piece of chewing gum that requires immediate disposal.

January 5th: Very small pen that attaches to spine of diary is lost somewhere.

January 8th: Amazingly, Pocket Diary survives wash and spin cycles of laundry machine when forgotten about in back pocket of jeans.

January 14th: After not making any entries for several days, and with no real reason to enter anymore in future, Pocket Diary is finally abandoned in home office desk draw. Excuse is made that "more room" was required on diary pages to enter details of very active social and professional life.

Two Years Later: Very small pen that attaches to pocket diary is found in inside pocket of old jacket being donated to Salvation Army stores. However, jacket is rejected because of large blue ink blob on inside lining caused by ink from very small pen leaking into pocket. How did such a very small pen contain so much ink?

Four Years Later:  Pocket Diary is rediscovered in office desk draw with pages stained yellowy-brown and stuck together by unidentified and potentially toxic liquid seepage. Uggh. What could possibly have caused that? Pocket diary is picked up with kitchen tongs and finally thrown into garbage.

This is the life cycle of the Pocket Diary. It is repeated every year.

Grown Up Nursery Rhymes

I was invited to a dinner party at Mary Mary Quite Contrary's cottage last night. She laid on her usual unappetizing buffet of vegetables grown in her garden, very heavy on the silver bells and cockleshells as you might expect. Frankly I find both ingredients completely inedible, and I don't think I'm the only one who feels that way.
Conversation around the table was a total disaster. Mary Mary disagreed with everything anyone said like she always does, and then Simple Simon insisted on repeating that extremely tedious tale about his encounter with a pie man for the umpteenth time. Dessert was a stodgy confection of curds and whey which Little Bo Peep had brought along. But I didn't eat mine because there was a hairy spider leg in it.
Mary Mary became especially contrary when it was suggested that she give the assembled company a tour of her garden. She complained that people only came to visit her because they wanted to leer at her pretty maids all in a row. Nevertheless, after a great deal of flattery, and being promised a free bag of my specialty 'ring o' roses' compost, she finally assented. Well, if you ask me, it must be a very bad year for growing pretty maids all in a row because this season's crop are terribly flat-chested. I was bitterly disappointed and spent the rest of the evening sat in a corner, sticking my thumb into various pies and winking suggestively at Lucy Lockett.

Latcho Drom

This may come as some surprise to you, and certainly isn't immediately apparent upon encountering me in the flesh for the first time, but, believe it or not, I am actually in possession of what is known in rock 'n' roll circles as a "gypsy soul."
Unfortunately, however, it is trapped inside a couch potato mind. And so, instead of tripping through my imagination in a gaily painted, horse-drawn caravan, my gyspy soul just squats by the side of the cerebral road peddling bunches of lucky heather to my obsessions and neuroses.
"Buy some lucky heather, sir?"
"Of course, I'm a superstitious neurosis. I'll take six or seven bunches."
The Lonely Planet guidebook to my brain actually warns you to beware of this type of activity, especially outside fantasy synapse sites and other popular tourist destinations. And tonight there is a full moon, a wolf moon no less, so we shall see what happens then.

Last of the Dodecahedrons

Of all the legendary Native American tribes who once chased buffalo across the plains of this great country, the most mysterious by far are the Dodecahedron peoples of northern Massachusetts.
Named after their distinctive twelve-sided spiky hairstyle and elaborately trepanned skulls, the Dodecahedrons were hunter-mathematicians who also enjoyed experimental canoe design, scalping palefaces in fractal patterns, and solving difficult problems of Euclidian geometry set by the tribal elders.
Most scholars believe that the Dodecahedron tribe’s failure to grasp the importance of logarithmic tables in relation to the inexact science of hammering big holes into their own heads greatly contributed to their almost complete extinction.
Indeed, only one member of this proud people remains, Running Joke, the Last of the Dodecahedrons, who subsists with his peace pipes and other sorts of pipes in a makeshift dodecahedral wigwam erected behind Harvard University School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. In these sympathetic surroundings Running Joke has created a small but successful cottage industry making authentically uncomfortable Dodecahedron "doccasins" for Harvard freshmen to wear on their feet. And here he will hopefully remain until called by his forefathers to join them in what Dodecahedron religion calls "The Happy Counting Grounds."

Sniffly Wiffly

It started with a quick silvery sneeze, shooting out of her nose like a short blast from an aerosol can. Oh no, a cold is coming on. Soon the quick silvery sneeze will develop into a steady translucent drip, and finally thick yellow oil flooding her nasal pipelines. From atichoo to many tissues only takes a day or so. Then it's the full-on, horizontal Death of Ophelia routine for weeks. A fading petal. A malingering minx: "I can't come in again today. I still don't feel well."
Oh well, never mind, I guess the rest of us can shoulder on while you enjoy your chicken soup soap operas or whatever it is you do to pass the snotty time when you're feeling sick.
"I don't know. My nose is so blocked up. I feel like I can't breathe."
Good. Then maybe you'll finally stop altogether and then we can  hire somebody new.
"Would you bring flowers to my funeral, if I did die?"
I doubt I'd be able to get the time off. We're so short staffed at the moment.
"You mean you wouldn't organize a day of mourning?"
Well, maybe a minutes silence at lunch break.

What Am I Going To Do With All These Boomerangs?

The dreariest aspect of Eastern thought, that tinkling stream of inanities masquerading as inscrutable profundity, is undoubtedly its antipathy to clutter. I like clutter. I like being surrounded by more than is absolutely necessary. If you ask me, a place setting at dinner is not a place setting unless it contains at least three spoons. Being faced with two chopsticks and a bowl is just downright depressing.
Unfortunately this Eastern mania for spartan living has been infecting Western life for many years now. You cannot thumb through a woman's magazine these days without encountering overwrought printed mantras about the benefits of Feng Shui organization. Toss out all your treasured heirlooms and memorabilia, they advise, then replace them with a small potted shrub and an arrangement of pebbles: this will encourage growth. But wait a minute? I thought the point was to cut back?
On my desk, within reach as I type, are a computer terminal, two Hungarian bottle stoppers, a Welsh Buddha carved from black slate, a ship in a bottle, a 16mm film splicer, a small brass hand bell, a bust of Athena, the odd fountan pen gist set or two, assorted reference books, scattered papers and an empty box that used to contain envelopes. And I still have a bottle of liquid white-out in the desk draw, behind the mountains of unused thumb tacks and staples. However, in that long, flat desk draw over the space where your knees go, well, in there I keep my boomerangs. It's the perfect place for them, they wedge together very nicely in there, all six of them.
Why do I need six boomerangs? I don't. Even one is more than enough. After clearing away all the jolly clutter on top of my desk, a Feng Shui expert would no doubt tell me to get rid of them and put a plastic pencil and pen organizer in that draw instead. Well, Feng Shui can fung off as far as I'm concerned. How boring. This kind of tedious, commonsense thinking is why my brain remains uncluttered by Eastern aphorisms.

The George W Bush Cash Dispenser

Apparently, the inappropriately named "Government" might be presenting me with some free money in the very near future. Apparently they believe that I am failing the laughably named "Economy" by not spending enough of the money I already have. Could've fooled me. Anyway, apparently I have adopted such parsimonious measures because I am afraid that the country is heading for recession, and by spending my Government issue windfall I will help boost the economy back to acceptable levels, whatever they may be. This is nonsense for two reasons:
1. I'm going to deposit the windfall straight into my savings account because I'm afraid the country is heading for a recession.
2. Except for certain grocery items, I do most of my shopping in Europe. Why? Well, the Rue, the Strasse, the High Street and their online iterations actually sometimes sell products I want to buy. The American Shopping Mall, on the other hand, can offer nothing but heavily discounted plastic garbage, only suitable for indiscriminate binge-buyers and greedy tourists on a spree.

Lyndon LaRouche and the Dianetics of Politics

The disciples of Lyndon LaRouche, mostly young men and women in their early twenties distributing armfuls of political literature, are once more blockading the streets of Boston with their incorrigible rhetoric and dubious statistics. Usually these fresh-faced zealots are equipped with clipboards or portable tables: they want signatures; they want email addresses; they want to sign you up for unlimited harangues from their elderly guru.
It has always seemed to me that the process of peddling political demagoguery is very similar to that of selling hardcore drugs: potential adherents are given the first leaflet for free, but are then forced to pay through the nose for full color brochures after they're hooked. And the results are pretty much the same too, if you ask me: there is very little difference between wasting you life smoking crack in a coldwater flat and wasting your life stuffing envelopes at campaign HQ on Sunday morning. Sane people should in bed still, reading the paper and brewing terrible coffee.
Lyndon LaRouche, of course, is famously the perennial Presidential candidate, and as such I suppose he is no better or worse than of those other egomaniacal baboons who currently cloak themselves with Republican or Democratic party respectability. Nevertheless, it is somewhat disturbing that LaRouche's youthful acolytes are as determined and as dogmatic as they are, since their fervent behavior is profoundly reminiscent of most personality cults that consume rather than enlighten people's minds. At least the Hare Krishnas in the park offer passers-by some salad bits and pieces. All you're likely to get from the LaRouche mob is an "Impeach Cheney" bumpersticker if you're lucky.

Walter Mitty Romney

Despite achieving only a narrow and desperate victory in his home state of Michigan, Mutt Rheumy is already behaving as though he has been presented with an incontrovertible mandate from The People to be proclaimed Chief Executive of the World and Hierophant of Everything. Alas, Rhomboid will undoubtedly scrape the Republican nomination, if only because the muscular application of his vast coffers of cash will eventually overpower all the other candidates. Personally, as a resident of Massachusetts, where this walking waxwork was briefly Governor, I would rather vote for a lobotomized striptease artiste. I would be more inspired by a mosquito's anus in free fall. But that's just me.
Meanwhile, as anybody else noticed that Hilarious Clinton is looking more and more like a Sheela-na-Gig as each day passes?

The War on Tourism

Michael Shirtoff, the midriff revealing "supremo" of Homeland Security, is apparently claiming that Europe is "a key threat" to the United States. Obviously, as a former Russian, he must know a thing or two about threats to the United States, but I suspect that this is merely another excuse for US airport immigration sentries to be even ruder to foreign nationals than previously, while pushing traditional American culture down everybody's throat at the same time. For example:
"What is your purpose in visiting the United States, Mr Zitezeer?"
"I am bringing my children to Disneyland."
"I see. In that case you can either get the Mickey Mouse theme anal probe or be interrogated for seventeen hours by someone speaking in a Donald Duck voice."
Frankly, I wonder which countries and continents Mr Faceoff does not think are hiding under his bed. Meanwhile, that sound you can hear is the American tourist trade getting kicked in the balls again by its own government.

Flesh Traffic Jams

Since most major highways are organized, theoretically at least, into Slow and Fast lanes, surely it is high time that pedestrian sidewalks were likewise equipped with Nimble and Ungainly divisions.
For instance, today, whilst traversing a slim pathway ploughed through recent snow fall, I suddenly found further progress at a reasonable pace impeded by a plodding object of enormous size. It was a fat person who could barely breathe never mind move. A human impasse whose lumbering efforts, since mounds of shoveled snow made it impossible to circumnavigate his massive bulk, reduced those pedestrians trapped behind him to advancing by mere baby steps. This inefficient situation rapidly developed into a shuffling, ultra slow-motion conga line of about eight or nine people taking three times as long to walk down the street as they normally do.
The solution, of course, is to open Anorexic Avenue running parallel to Wobble Bottom Way: a true definition of dual carriageway.

Tetragrammaton

"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law," is an occult axiom apparently divulged to the magus Aleister Crowley by a demonic entity called Aiwass.
Of course, even before evaluating the supernatural advice offered, one immediately wonders if Crowley has spelled this entity's name correctly. I mean, how do necromancers discover how to spell names like Aiwass and Chorozon, or even Yahweh for that matter? Do they actually interrupt their magical workings and mystical rites and simply ask the divine being in question what the accurate spelling of his, her, or its name is?
"Behold thou trembling mortal, I am the great Aiwass. Prostrate thyself before my majesty"
"Yeah, erm, but first, how do you spell Aiwass, with one s or two?"
"Two s's and there's also an i after the a."
"Great. Let me just write that down. I want to make sure it's spelled right when I publish details of this ceremony, very important, and then we can get around to the business of me selling my soul in exchange for accumulating earthly riches and vanquishing mine enemies and all that nonsense."
"No problem, mortal. There's actually a weird accent thingy over the w too, but you don't have to bother with that. Nobody else does."
Such moments must be extremely awkward for all concerned, especially when the necromancer is rolling around naked inside a magic circle with a wand stuck up his bum. So, when all is said and done, I suppose "do what thou wilt" must probably refer to spelling of demonic entity's names as well.

A Rich Man's World

What is this so-called "Economy" that all the Presidential candidates are squawking on about like a flock of excitable parrots who have been watching too much CNN election coverage?
As far as I can tell The Economy is rather like some sort of abstract dietary system in which greedy, bloated binge eaters are fed troughs full of diluted capital before being stood on a speak-your-weight machine and ordered to either lose or gain a few pounds. Frankly, I don't like the looks of it.
But I am interested in money: why some people have far more than they will ever need; why I have less of it than I think I should have; and why some people apparently have absolutely none at all. You know, the basic stuff. Why don't the candidates ever talk about money?
Of course, the candidates will claim that money is all tied-up with The Economy, and I suppose it is to some extent: tied up like "curious masochist seeks dominatrix for heavy S&M relationship."

How Things Came To Be The Way They Are

Most tediously conventional Biblical scholarship maintains that Adam and Eve devoured an apple from the Tree of Knowledge and were consequently exiled from Paradise by God for pointing rudely at each other's genitalia.
Naturally, my own take on this rather squalid little story is somewhat different. After careful study of the ancient texts I can now reveal that instead of eating the apple, Adam and Eve actually made a very strong and potent cider from it. Never having sampled an alcoholic beverage before they obviously became very intoxicated indeed, and, as drunks usually do, they wandered around aimlessly for many hours engaging inanimate objects in absurd and one-sided conversations before passing out in a strange and unsuitable place. They awoke suffering from terrible hangovers with absolutely no idea how to get back to the Garden of Eden, and this has been the human condition ever since, and will remain so, at least it will until some enlightened soul can mix up a powerful sort of metaphysical Bloody Mary.

Behind the Lines

Although this American Fez weblog (or whatever you may want to define it*) often appears to be a mere compendium of unequivocal nonsense, much of the hogwash collected here does in fact have a factual basis.
For instance, several years ago, while unsuccessfully pursuing a pale beauty who would not have looked out of place modeling pentagrammatical earrings in a Wicca-wear brochure, I found myself persuaded, against my better judgment, to sign-up for weekly yoga instruction in the back room of some local herb-o-mart. Suffice it to say, I took one look and fled before my hairy classmates had even removed their shoes. No witchy beauty, however so pale she might be, was going to be riding my broom if "armpits ahoy" was the price I would be forced to pay every Wednesday.
This experience manifest itself most recently as The East Twatford Centering Center, a post from last November, but at the time I scurried home and wrote the following words:

I have just taken my first yoga class, and I have to say it is the worst martial art that I have ever practiced. At the beginning of the class I went into my famous attacking "hah-cha" posture, but everybody else just sat cross-legged on the floor.
I decided that this was obviously some kind of deceptive defensive tactic on their part; an attempt to lull me into a false sense of security. So I circled them warily in silence for about fifteen minutes; ready to strike at any moment; sizing up the opposition;attempting to catch their eyes while they pretended to ignore me.
Very clever, I grinned, but not clever enough! And then, like a leaping leopard, I attacked.
It took me roughly sixty seconds to kick all their faces in. They could do nothing to protect themselves because their limbs were folded up in these weird knot-like positions. I was even able to knock the so-called "expert" unconscious with two simple, swift chops to her neck.
You know, I used to think Aikido was a crap way of fighting, but yoga takes the biscuit!

Who needs past-life regression therapy or tarot cards when writing stuff down always unveils the naked truth so much faster and far more reliably.

*When I first started writing a weblog, in the summer of 2001, I received quite a few irate comments from internet purists to the effect that The Skeletal Fish Project, as this page was then known, wasn't a proper weblog.

Encounter With A Folk Singer

I was strolling through Hyde Park, thinking about a particularly delicious slice of lemon meringue pie I had just eaten, when I observed the rather tousled and acoustic guitar-laden figure of Ralph McTell approaching.
"Let me take you by the hand," he said, with an alarming degree of over-familiarity, "And I'll lead you through the streets of London. I'll show you something to make you change your mind."
"If you're going to show me an oat cake or a chocolate eclair." I told him. "Then you're too late because I've already seen them and my mind decided to go for the lemon meringue instead."
"No, no. I'm going to show you the old man," he explained. "The one outside the seaman's mission."
"Why? Is he some sort of experimental baker or award-winning pastry chef or something like that?" I said.
McTell shook his head vigorously: "Of course not. The old man's unemployed and homeless and he doesn't have any friends."
"Oh I see." I said, without enthusiasm. "So you want me to buy him a chocolate eclair? Don't you think he'd prefer a sandwich or a vegetarian kebab? Perhaps you'd like me to treat the old man to dinner at the Savoy."
"This is getting absolutely nowhere." McTell wailed, swinging his guitar dismissively in my direction before sulkily stalking off towards Speaker's Corner. "You're obviously not the lonely, sensitive sort of person I thought you were."
"Wait a minute, Ralph. I'm sorry." I called after him. "I didn't mean it. You can take me by the hand and lead me to Paddington Station, if you like. I've got a train to catch and I'm not sure how to get there. We can even stop by the closed-down market on the way if you really want to, and you can show me the old girl with dirt in her hair."
But he had already disappeared behind some trees.

See also: From Phil Ochs to Phil Hoax

Early Science Fiction

Although I am not entirely impervious to the romance of nineteenth-century French mythopoetics, I must say that the mystery of  The Man in the Iron Mask is about as puzzling as a Scooby Doo jigsaw suitable for ages 4 and up, since, as any fool can tell, he was obviously merely a robot wearing real people clothes.
Unable to fashion an acceptable replica of a real person's face, the robot's evil master must have decided to retain the android's regular head and simply pretend that he was a normal human forced to wear an iron mask all the time. A pretty clever idea when you think about it,  and a much better story than that sub-standard, so-called "adventure" version churned out by the industrious if rather uncreative quill of Alexandre Dumas. The robot character could have been written as a sort of Darth Vader of Versailles, pitted against the Three Musketeers in a desperate battle for control of Louis XIII's mind. And perhaps, many years in the future, he builds a rocket ship disguised as the Eiffel Tower in which he plans to escape Earth's orbit once he has brewed enough French coffee jet fuel to power his alien craft. Alas, the Iron Man's interstellar plans are foiled by Tintin and that absurd dog of his.
If only H.G. Wells had been born in Burgundy instead of Bromley, Kent.

Male Chauvenist Pigalle

I am voting for Obama. Why? Because if he becomes President we can accuse all those anti-American nations of being racist. Also, Barack's wife Michelle is the only woman in American politics who can hold a candle to French Premiere Nicolas Sarkozy's new squeeze, singer and ex-supermodel Carla Bruni .
Apparently a recent killjoy editorial in national French bore-sheet Le Figaro whined that "while a barrel of oil flirts with the hundred dollar mark so Nicolas Sarkozy flirts with Carla Bruni." Who the hell cares? Quite frankly, if I were Sarkozy at the moment, the only kind of oil I'd be interested in is ...
Anyway, in other world news, there have been interesting developments in Britain lately. Unfortunately Prime Minister Gordon Brown's wife isn't one of them. Nice woman and everything. Just rather plain looking, that's all.

Protean Politics

My recent dreams are haunted by the campaigning figure of Hilary Clinton, the true "Candidate for Change." First she changes into a bat, followed by a toad, then finally and most terrifying of all, she transforms herself into Mitt Romney. It's like something from The Manuscript Found In Saragossa, and consequently my slumbers have become a sort of nightmarish New Hampshire where shape-shifting politicians canvass my fevered sleep: Vote Bat! Vote Toad! Vote the Slimey Thing that Crawled Out of the Swamp!
You see, in America, news of events in Kenya and elsewhere is pre-empted by what Barack O'Bummer has for breakfast; and the American mind can find no respite from bulletins about that hideous parade of ogres and gnomes pitching to be President of this land of shopping malls, highways, gated communities and ghettos.
Change? Not in our ever fattening lifetime. Hilary, Mitt, Obama, Huckerbee? I'd rather vote for Britney Spears, she knows more about healthcare than they do.

The Cutting Edge

Surely it is high time that the "Sword" element of Sword and Sorcery was finally flung back into the Lady of the Lake's submerged domain, and that this very tired sub-genre of fantasy fiction was reinforced with more modern and interesting weaponry: Smart Bomb and Sorcery, for instance; or Mind Annihilator and Sorcery; perhaps even Human Evaporator Gun and Sorcery.
It seems to me that the sorcery coupling possibilities are endless, since, no matter what swashbuckling excuses may be made, the fact remains that swords are cumbersome, old-fashioned and ineffective.
Let's face it, if Conan the Barbarian, Beastmaster or Errol Flynn attacked me with a sword, I'd simply shoot them with my deadly laser beam. End of story, nuthin' to see here folks, move along please, just a swordsman got himself killed in the street and more fool him. So come on, honorable heroes from fable lands, buck your ideas up and get with the times already!

See also: King "Uncle" Arthur

Les Sniffles du Mort

I was at Death's Door all day, but that stubborn Grim Reaper never let me in. I repeatedly hammered on the thick mahogany panels; shouted 'yoo-hoo' through the letterbox many times; and constantly rung the doorbell that plays Chopin's funeral march music. Yet Death's Door remained firmly shut. You would think he might at least have invited me into his porch. No such luck, however.
"Go away," the old Scythemeister commanded from an upstairs window. "You've only got a cold and it's not a particularly bad one, either."
"But I've bought money to pay the ferryman," I replied, hastily covering my eyes with two gold coins.
"There's no ferryman here." he said sharply, and slammed the window shut in a very haughty manner. For a moment I thought he was going to set the three-headed dogs on me.
I can tell when I'm not wanted, so I picked up my George Foreman grill, karaoke machine, bound volumes of National Geographic, Olivia Newton John poster, and all the other necessities I'd brought with me for my journey into the afterlife, and I trudged back off home in a huff.
His loss. And anyway, I'm actually starting to feel a little bit better now.

The Future Most Powerful Man In The World

It is such torture listening to all these worthless, egocentric presidential candidates putting the "I" back into Iowa that I'm painfully putting the "Ow!" back. Mind you, the campaign trail has not been entirely bereft of compensations. For instance, here is a candid photograph I snapped of Republican hopefuls enjoying a quick game of Spot-The-Creep in a cow field. Everyone's a winner in 2008!

Those creepy candidates from left to right: Rudolf Giuliandrews in drag; Senator John McCornball looking at the wrong camera; Mike Huckersterbee wearing his Magic Jesus Hat; Walter Mitty Romney on his hobby horse; and understudy Fred "Flintstone" Thompson.

See also: Identity Parade

No More Fun

Frankly, I still cannot believe that I actually had to get up and shuffle off to work this morning. The Labors of Hercules were merely a mildly irritating chore compared to the colossal feat of endurance that involved kicking off my bedclothes and slipping into my dressing gown while it was still dark outside. Sisyphus was condemned to a relatively simple task compared to the shaving of vast acreages of stubble on my chin achieved by me before breakfast. And they call those lazy good-for-nothings Men of Myth! I tell you, the Voyage of Sinbad was a short trip around the corner compared to the endless miles of commute undertook my me this very morning.
Yes, the holiday season is terminated and those salad days of winter have finally drawn to a close; and so we must bid fond farewell to our cozy armchair beside the fireplace, and wearily trudge off to work again; once more forced to play Pierrot in that relentless Harlequinade known as the Daily Grind: cogs must be greased; levers must be pulled; underlings must be chastised; important new data must be entered. A fresh fiscal quarter has dawned upon us. 

New Beginnings, Old Problems.

Like Cole Porter, I get no kick from champagne; but I do get a thudding headache the morning after imbibing numerous flutes of chintzier vintages, rather as if a particularly industrious homunculus has set up shop in my skull and decided to build himself a battleship. Happy New Year: I am horizontally immobilized and still in bed, once again.
Oh dear. Instead of an optimistic launch pad for new and exciting challenges in the months ahead, January 1st is always such a do-nothing, non-achieving waste of a calendar page. At least it is for me. My upstairs neighbor, on the other hand, has apparently woken up as fit and as fresh faced as a Nazi athlete. He's worse than the hammer wielding homunculus. I should rouse myself, ascend the staircase with purpose, and get all Jesse Owens in his face if Heinrich doesn't pack this personal Olympiad up very shortly. Alas, I don't believe I can summon the necessary will power or resources to confront the situation. No doubt this is why Winston Churchill preferred brandy to bubbly.