American Fez

The Man in the Iron Mask As I Remember Him

He was languishing in a Languedoc dungeon when I encountered him. Personally, I thought he could have polished his mask and changed his shabby shirt for the occasion. After all, even if he was doomed to rot in desperate and eldritch anonymity, good manners still cost nothing. Furthermore, the atrocious stench and dark, dank conditions of his cell, together with the fact that he was forbidden to remove his mask or reveal his real name under pain of death, did not provide ideal circumstances for the informal, chatty "meet 'n' greet" session I had been hoping for. To lighten the mood I suggested a parlour game, the one where the name of a famous celebrity, dauphin or other person of royal blood is secretly written down on a piece of paper and then stuck to a player's forehead; this player then has to guess his "identity" by asking the other players questions about "himself."
Unfortunately this brave attempt at neighborly bonhomie went over like a lead balloon also. In the end I just left and went to visit my great friend the Birdman of Alcatraz instead. Now he's a real hoot.

The Tarzan I Knew

I always felt that Jane's alarming new boyfriend would not assimilate well into civilized society. His name was Tarzan of the Apes, after all, not Tarzan of the Canapes. But Jane insisted we bring him home, just like vain and besotted women always do.
Personally, I also found him to be extremely lazy, especially since he never learned to say "Me, Tarzan. You, Jane's second cousin Stephen twice removed on her mother's side" no matter how many times I tried to teach it to him.
Then there was his incessant and annoying yodeling from upper story windows, generally followed by an anxious scan of the horizon before his features would inevitably collapse into puzzled frustration when nothing happened. Perhaps he was a bit mad?
Social occasions were an absolute nightmare. It was usually me who had to apologize when he slurped straight from the punch bowl or devoured the decorative pineapples. Jane would be nowhere to be found, as usual. "Put your damn knife away." I was constantly telling him. "They supply proper forks for eating those with."

I am not surprised that he ran away to join the circus after falling in love with a bearded lady. They tell me he made a great success of this new career, combining the roles of Lion Tamer, Elephant Showman, Flying Trapeze Artist, Bareback Rider, and the clown who gets a bucket of water thrown over him.
Jane was most upset when he left so I took her to the zoo. I think that cheered her up a little.

Mars Needs Mystery

Music lovers are lucky that Gustav Holst composed his famous Planets Suite before his creative juices could be influenced by NASA's recent photographs of tedious Martian terrain, otherwise his evocation of the so-called red planet might have been a two-minute dirge called "Maker of Yawns," rather than the dramatic "Bringer of War" meisterwerk he did produce.
One important piece of inter-stellar information such pictorial evidence does provide, however, is the sure and certain knowledge that no little green men live on Mars. Lots of little green dust mites, perhaps, but no slaves of Ming the Merciless.
Frankly I preferred the old mysterious Mars with its faceless face and brooding glamor. Why can't these spoilsport boffins ever keep their dull discoveries to themselves instead of ruining everybody's fun?
After all, I don't swagger around Cape Canaveral forcing rocket scientists to waste their time examining my holiday snaps, so I wish they could learn to be equally as discreet with their lame pictures.

Close Encounters of the Nerd Kind

I have never seen a UFO; unless you count the fleet of saucer-shaped Zazzonian battle-cruisers I spotted zig-zagging over the treetops near Geekhaven reservoir in 1987, but since my extensive research into alien  warships enabled me to "identify" these particular  vessels as undeniably Zazzonian, obviously can't be considered to be UFOs.
People have called me pedantic, but there is no room for sentimental, sci-fi nomenclature when we are dealing with the possibility of a hostile invasion force from another galaxy. I tried to explain this to the assembled members of the Geekhaven Sky Watchers Club at our recent AGM, but they just punched me in the face and walked out.
They can sulk into their night-vision binoculars for as long as they wish, but there simply is no evidence for UFOs, especially since my latest book, How To Identify Flying Objects, is an exhaustive field guide to our various intergalactic visitors, which planets they hail from, and what the different kinds of space ships they travel about in are called.

Radio Twerp

This weekend I was going to treat the blogosphere to an audio podcast instead of my usual written post, thus instantly transforming you all into ear-lending listeners of dulcet tones rather than squinty-eyed readers of labyrinthine and often overly alliterative sentences.
Alas, oh cruel fate, I have been stricken with a violent form of laryngitis and I am consequently unable to produce coherent speech of any kind. This is a particular shame for anyone interested in Indonesian culture because I was going to orate the whole thing in a Balinese accent as well. Oh well. Never mind.
I did attempt to rasp my way through a few test recordings, but they sounded somewhat similar to what a demented psychic channeling the astral spirit of an especially yappy chihuahua barking at a phantom postman might sound like.
However, I did manage to tape the tappety-tap noise of me typing these apologetic paragraphs out on my computer keyboard, so if anyone wants to listen to the mp3 of that I'm sure I can post the file to an FTP site or whatever works for you.

People Magazine Press Release

Since most of the world's most prominent investigative journalists have already reported the basic facts, I suppose I must admit that their various exposés and scoops are all absolutely true. Yes, I was the artist's model for the "Crackle" elf on the Kellog's Rice Krispies box.
Although I am not ashamed of such past endeavors, of being the unacceptable face of toasted rice breakfast cereal, I am still anxious to know how these embarrassing revelations will affect my career as the world's best loved Barry Manilow impersonator.
We have all heard the crude and cruel parodies by now: conga lines of smarmy light-night comedians singing "At the Cocoa, Cocoa Puff Cabana," and the lyrics to Barry's wonderful song Mandy rendered as "I need you today, oh Muesli." I doubt any intelligent person finds them entertaining, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Mr Manilow for being the cause of these gross insults to his significant talent and whatever pain their performance may have caused him.
It is a sad indictment of today's celebrity-centric society that important interpretative artists like myself must endure such intrusive media scrutiny. Obviously, Rice Krispies are more male-dominated than Honey Oat Clusters, less egalitarian than Corn Flakes, and perhaps the characters of Snap, Crackle and Pop are rather creepy, but I fail to see why the promotional indiscretions of my youth should be held against me now. Surely the profound emotional integrity of my musical tribute act and my daily morning diet of plain croissant and apricot yoghurt speak for themselves: I have left the world of elf hats, oversized spoons and  twee advertising jingles behind me. I have moved on, so should the media.

(VIP seating is still available for The Ascent of Manilow! at the Las Vegas Simulacrum Arena. Tickets for all shows are $125, no concessions. Coach parties are welcome and block booking is suggested for Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Monday through Thursday. No refunds.)

Fragments of a Clown's Autobiography

I grew up in an extremely musical yet penniless Viennese family. Even when my father could put no food on the table he always made sure there were always scores on the piano. He was an unemployed percussionist and I went to school each morning wearing old tambourine skins strapped on my feet instead of shoes.
But my greatest misfortune was that none of the neighborhood kids knew the difference between a Beethoven sonata and a beetroot strudel, and so I was bereft of any boon companions to practice scales and restring violins with.
In such isolated circumstances many children develop so-called "imaginary friends," and such was the case with me, except my imaginary friend was an extremely moody and volatile German orchestra conductor named Herr Hermann Octave.
Alas, even he barely acknowledged my existence, merely sulking behind my mother's big bass drum for hours on end, except for those alarming occasions when he would stare fixedly into the distance and gesticulate insanely while frothing at the mouth, before suddenly shrieking "No! No! No!" at the top of his voice at some invisible bassoonist.
In fact he was more of an imaginary nuisance than an imaginary friend. It was quite a frightening experience for a delicate child such as I.

Burmese Logic

Despite all the sanctimonious ramblings of the United Nations relief effort it is not surprising that the Myanmar generals were unwilling to allow western aid specialists into their country.
After all, they probably took one good look at the Hurricane Katrina statistics and thought, "Yeah. Thanks but no thanks. We're probably better off handling this one ourselves."
This is what you'd call "a generalization."

The Virtual High Street

The online magazine Spiked features an interesting article by Norman Lewis about how the vast membership of Asian social networking sites makes their western equivalents such as Facebook look like unpopular chat rooms for militant misanthropes.
The South Korean site Cyworld, for instance, apparently handles over twenty million active user accounts. And they are truly active users, too, customers and suppliers of their own thriving micro-economy, not just apathetic collectors of dubious "friends."
Consequently, one wonders if we shall soon be treated to outraged complaints of virtual Chinese pirates selling shoddy digital imitations of e-haute couture avatar clothing and bags.

This Week's Recipe

Grand Beef Wobble avec Frog's Brains ala Frankenstein

Here is a wonderful dish you can easily make at home provided that your kitchen is equipped with a multi- speed electric galvanizer with secret formula whisking attachment, a hunchbacked sous chef, some test tubes full of bubbly stuff, and industrial strength drainage facilities.
A single vat of Grand Beef Wobble avec Frog's Brains ala Frankenstein can feed up to sixty torch-wielding villagers.

Ingredients:

A freshly slaughtered cow (your hunchbacked sous chef will undoubtedly get one that has died of foot and mouth disease, but that's probably not a bad thing for this particular recipe).
Fifteen ounces of frog's brains
A pail of water that a busty milkmaid has recently washed her feet in.
Garlic that has been rubbed in a vampire's face.
Theatrical onions

Remove the top of the cow's skull and substitute its brains with the frog brains. Place the cow in a vat along with the garlic that has been rubbed in the face of a vampire and the theatrical onions. Apply electricity from lightning conductor and bring the cow to a steady wobble. Now throw the bucket of water over it. Voila! Your Grand Beef Wobble avec Frog's Brains ala Frankenstein is now ready to serve.

(In case your wondering, I've just spent several hours perusing a gourmet cookbook. None of it made any sense to me)

Five Weekend Adventure Stories

The Last of the Neo-Cons:
Senator McShootagook struggles to escort his extremely boring presidential campaign to the White House against enormous public indifference.

The Imam in the Iron Mosque:
Ultra-fanatic Muslim cleric welds a mosque-shaped helmet to his own head and stumbles around accusing everyone of insulting Islam.

Gullible's Travels:
Credulous English spinster vainly searches the Aegean for the time-share villa she has purchased on a Greek island called Skamos.

The Cripps Family Robinson:
Inner city gang members called Robinson are marooned on Blood Island with inevitable consequences. Music by Mixmaster Crew So-so.

The Count of Monty Python:
Zany, madcap Count escapes from his remote prison cell by repeatedly repackaging all his old skits and songs in exhorbitantly priced boxed sets. Eventually the guards get so sick and tired of hearing them that they simply throw the dungeon doors open and force him to leave.

My Lunch Hour, As Retold To A Child

Apparently today is the day that the teddy bears have their accursed picnic. Frankly this is news to me, I can tell you. And it's not good news either. In fact, it's extremely inconvenient, since I was planning on going down to the woods myself. Now I shall have to take a rain-check or scrape together the makings of some sort of ludicrous disguise. Such a pain in the ass.
Fortunately I still have the latex head from last year's Baloo costume laying around. The inflatable Mowgli doll accessory has seen better days but I suppose it'll just have to do. Not that it really matters anyway. Those teddy bears are so inherently stupid that they'd be fooled by a fake beard and Walmart lederhosen. And besides, they'll all be too busy admiring each other's gingham neckerchiefs and inappropriate hats to bother with me.
Of course, there should be quite a crowd in the woods, too, because they all show up for this thing. And it's not just all the teddy bears there are, it's all the teddy bears that ever there were, which means you get some pretty ancient and mangy specimens lumbering around. The smell is absolutely disgusting, as you can probably imagine. And it's not just the matted hair, unwashed bums and omnivore breath that stink either. If you ask me this whole picnic thing is simply an excuse so that the bears can all take their famous shit in the woods at the same time. It's really quite bizarre.
So if you are also contemplating going down the woods today, I'd watch where I was stepping if I were you.

Eat Your Heart Out Condoleezza Rice

My plan for peace in the Middle East is both simple and foolproof.
The Middle East must be sub-divided into four new quadrants: North Middle East, the East Middle East, the South Middle East and the West Middle East.
Each new quadrant can then be halved into upper and lower zones: the Upper North Middle East and the Lower North Middle East; the Upper East Middle East and the Lower East Middle East; and so on.
These eight new Middle East sections should be further divided by threes into the Far Upper North Middle East, the Middle Upper North Middle East and the Near Upper North Middle East, etc.
Now we have created twenty-eight distinctly new territories that need to be surveyed and mapped before any strategic planning can be instigated. And why stop there? What about New Far Upper North Middle East and Old Far Upper North Middle East?
Disorientated, sick and tired of reporting increasingly labyrinthine positions, the Israeli and Palestinian armies would eventually abandon their weapons and all go home feeling dizzy. Therefore my plan equals peace. QED.

Death and Disaster

Oil crisis, food shortage, earthquake, credit crunch: this litany of current world calamities almost sounds like a child's hopscotch rhyme. But unfortunately they are the front page news; and that was only the shortlist; just this week's hit parade of problems.
Joe Orton's morose punchline, "God laughs and snaps his fingers," is perhaps the most spine-chilling sentence ever written, since it turns dear old cuddly God into a cruel and callous despot entertained by inventing fresh miseries for his own creations. But that's probably just how it is. The ancient Greeks certainly thought so, as did the Romans.
So don't worry. We are not living in the so-called End Times. It's just special event prime-time in Heaven right now.

This was public service announcement on behalf of the Jeremiah Party.

The Corinthian Shoe

"Nothing is written" remarks Lawrence of Arabia in response to some particularly pessimistic nomad mumbo-jumbo. But surely it is an timeless truth that the cobblers of the world will never again sew together an article of footwear as pleasing to Allah as the super-adaptable desert boot.
According to Eric Newby, British POWs would slice the tops off to imitate normal shoes as part of their civilian disguise when escaping into the Italian mountains. Mine were never put to that sort of rigorous test, but they have tramped through the ruins of Hadrian's Villa in a torrential downpour, hiked across the Yorkshire Dales in a blizzard, and been trampled upon by hooligans at the Santiago Bernabeu amongst other sole-destroying and stitch-stretching trials and tribulations. Yet they have survived, a little balder and a little creakier, to be worn again and again. Here is a photographic portrait of the heroic pair that I commissioned myself to take this afternoon.

Obviously they have grown old now, and will soon need to be retired in favor of fresher examples, but these are the kind of shoes that are burnt on a ceremonial Viking funeral pyre rather than simply thrown away. Even then I'm not entirely sure that these resiliently sueded paladins would be successfully consumed by the ritual flames. 

Readers and Writers: Part 74

Through A Webcam Darkly

Nano cinematographers with tiny video cameras have been installed on this weblog so that I can now observe you while you are reading this. And it's all in HD resolution too.
In fact, if you could just hunch down a little. I want to record your reactions not analyze your nasal passages. Although, I must say, they do quiver in a most entertaining way.
Now you seem skeptical. Don't look like that. It doesn't suit you. Quizzical works better for me if you can manage that ....
Hang on, you're scanning through this way too fast. You've skipped an entire bit out there. It was an extremely important explanatory paragraph as well.
Oh wait a minute. I see. I can see you dragging your little clicker up to the top of the page. You're just going to press "back" on your browser and return to whatever technically challenged blogspot piece of egomania you were reading before this.
Well that's fine with me. I don't care. I'm sure somebody else will log on in an hour or two. I'll just sit here filming nothing until then.
Christ, I wish I'd got into podcasting when I had the chance.

Hauntology

A specter haunts contemporary culture - the specter of modern French philosophy. Indeed, the main purpose of modern French philosophy is to provide experimental artists with convoluted justifications for their tedious tape loops, unwatchable films and dreary color splodge collages, and it has been an unedifying, ignominious descent from salon and Sorbonne to sweaty, feedback-filled subterranean art space ever since. Yet no modern French philosopher, no matter how creatively obtuse he may be, has ever furnished us with a theory explaining why experimental musicians, filmmakers and painters have continued conducting the same dismal experiment for so many, many years despite the obvious fact that the experiment has already been proven to be a dismal failure by all those experimental artists who have experimented with it before them. Fortunately, like fraudulent psychics summoning their inscrutable Indian spirit guides, experimental artists can always contact the Ouija Board of modern French philosophy to find a suitably obfuscating excuse for their self-important projects.
The dubious authority most often cited is Jacques 'Deconstruction' Derrida, whose work strikes me as an unassailable fortress of nonsense hidden inside a dense fog of waffle at the best of times. His 'Specters of Marx,' for example, positions Karl Marx firmly on the battlements of Shakespeare's Elsinore when the ghost of Hamlet's father appears, and equates the author of 'The Communist Manifesto' with the author of the play that will catch the conscience of the king. But surely Richard III's haunted tent on Bosworth Field is a more fittingly supernatural Shakespearian environment for Marx, with all the spectral victims of Mao and Stalin disturbing his concentration as he labors over the ideas that will ultimately lead to their deaths. Alas, although modern French philosophy takes itself very seriously, it doesn't want to get that serious.
As time goes by, of course, more ghosts gather in the studio seances of the art world, doomed to wander the Earth in search of the perfect simulacrum of a reference of a meaning of a hypothesis.

Orchardonics

Since seventy-percent of the human body is made of water, I am having all the water that is "me" drained and replaced by that artificially-flavored and vitamin-enriched fruit water that is so popular nowadays. This means that every time I swallow it will taste like Tropical Paradise. Unfortunately, when I get excited, I'll probably froth at the mouth like an overflowing fruit smoothie, too. And what about the whole perspiration issue? I don't want to be running around with sweaty, grape stained armpits all summer and smelling like a rotten pomegranate.
Hmm. Maybe I'll just go the simple, sparkling water route instead. Then I'll be able to offer women fizzy kisses at Christmas.

Madam Medusa

Desperate vote-cougar Hillary Clinton has vowed to continue lusting after the Democratic nomination despite increasing public indifference to her much vaunted "experience."
And so nightmare visions of this Gorgon-faced Obliterator will continue to haunt the dreams of Iranian children for a few more fearful weeks.
Hillary must have thought she was appearing tough on terror when she promised to incinerate Iran if those nuclear neophytes launched one of their hypothetical missiles at Israel. But in fact she merely came across like a cold-blooded Hag of Death capable of committing any atrocity if would boost her election chances.
"It takes a village," she once wrote. Apparently it also takes the coordinated annihilation of millions of people in a different village.

Mysteries of the Self

There are two kinds of inquisitive children: those who will butt heads with their reflection when trying to walk straight through a mirror, and those who will attempt to investigate whatever mechanism their bewildered brain must believe lies behind the glass. I've never been able to decide which of these reactions is the most naive, or which is a more scientific response to the Doppelgänger's first inscrutable wink.
In fact, I've just been staring at my Doppelgänger in the bathroom cabinet mirror while re-straightening nose. But I'll get into that reflection and catch the bastard one of these days; then he'll be sorry; then he'll be laughing on the other side of his face  ... er, which I suppose he always does anyway, obviously, but you know what I mean.

Five Reasons Why I Am Greener Than Thou

1. I recycle everything. Including my own urine. I pour the urine into gallon-size recyclable plastic containers and leave it on the kerbside. It's not my fault the stupid recycling people don't collect the stuff. It's their bloody job! My fascist neighbors can complain all they like, but at least I'm saving the planet.

2. I only wear shoes made out of hemp. When a particular pair gets worn out I simply roll them into cigarettes and smoke them, thus saving on the plastic bags I used to have to buy my marijuana in.

3. I have reduced my carbon footprint by limiting my travel to only absolutely necessary journeys, such as my annual trips to the Climate Change conferences in Peru, Switzerland, Fiji and Nigeria, and whatever World Bank protests are happening around the world at any given time. And even then I literally cry for the entire duration of all my flights.

4. My house consumes absolutely no electricity or gas whatsoever. All our domestic appliances are powered by a enormous treadmill operated by my wife and children. I have sole responsibility for the wind turbine, which is constantly activated by the vast amount of whole grains and root vegetables I eat.

5. Because the mere fact of human existence is so damaging to the environment, I have taken the only ethically responsible course of action open to me: I am committing suicide by eating too much killer red meat and lots of unhealthy puddings every day. It is a very slow and lingering death as punishment for all my past crimes against Middle Earth. Whoops! I mean Mother Earth, of course.