American Fez

The Invisible Man Goes Social Networking

Flora, I saw your profile online and you seem like the kind of helpless, passive female who might become obsessed with a psychopathic genius like me while ignoring the devoted attentions of the nice guy who really loves her. In other words: a perfect match for me.
And what about me? Well, I'm a scientist and an inventor, but don't be put off by that: I'm not the boring old boffin type. In fact, most of my friends think I'm absolutely crazy!
Physically I'm what you might describe as a scarf, hat and glasses floating around in thin air kinda guy, but sometimes I like to "funk it up" a little by wrapping my body in bandages like an Egyptian mummy. I've attached a small black and white photograph. I hope you like what you see; or at least what you can see.
As for hobbies, I enjoy the music of the Mad Organist, smoking a pipe, stalking my victims in the fog, and generally terrorizing the living daylights out of simple villagers. Please get back to me if this sounds attractive. I promise I won't kill you.

See also:
King Kong's Facebook Page
The Phantom of the Opera's Facebook Page

The Breakaway Province of Erewhon

An envoy from the breakaway rebel province of Erewhon meets a NATO representative, vainly attempt to convince the robot of the western powers that his small state would rather be free than democratic.

Unfortunately the western word for democracy is the same as the word meaning oil and gas pipeline, and so there is a great deal of confusion when the Erewhonians try to put their case across. Freedom, he patiently explains, means doing what we want, not what the west wants.
"Does not compute," replies the NATO representative.

Quotation of the Week

"Three times the shade untouched slipped through his hands,
Weightless as wind and fugitive as dream"

From Robert Fitzgerald's translation of The Aeneid

The Beach at Somnus

Exhaustion has strung two fleshy hammocks between my ears for my eyes to sleep on; and if you peer deeply into my pupils you can just make out the lithesome silhouette of a hula girl rotating slowly in a retinal zoetrope. It is vacation time in my brain and all the cells have spontaneously turned into little gray leis while bronzed neurons surf soothing waves of z's.

Name Calling

Obama Bin Biden: has anyone else thought of that yet? I don't read The Weekly "Low" Standard or The National Kazoo, so I don't know what the sophmoric neo-conservative zeitgeist is at the moment. Nevertheless, I'm sure John McInane's people will be all over it before too long. Frankly this election is less interesting to me than a snail race filmed in slow-motion. I just hope to God that our children won't give a damn whether their candidates fought in Iraq or not when their moment of suffrage arrives. War heroes are good soldiers. It doesn't automatically follow that they will be good statesmen also. In fact - as history has relentlessly revealed - it usually doesn't. But many voters still seem to believe it does. Why?

A Lack of Communication

I was peeling the onion of ennui, slumped against some wall in a cul-de-sac considering becoming a graffiti artist, when, out of the corner of my tearful eye, I suddenly caught sight of the back of my Imagination slipping around the corner at the open end of the street. It was wearing a floppy-brimmed hat and a swirling cape, and frankly it looked like a terrible twat, so I thought no more about it.
Then later, while staring vaguely out of the window waiting for something to happen, I saw my Imagination shave the tops of the trees in a skywriting plane. It left a jet-stream of sentences behind itself, but they were all in French so I couldn't read them.
I went for a walk by the river, idling the hours away by counting ripples in the water from the middle of a bridge, until my Imagination came gliding past in an executive gondola, serenading a woman who wasn't really my type.
Afterwards, tossing and turning in bed, I dreamed that my Imagination was singing satirical songs about me at a party that I hadn't been invited to. For seem reason, I seem to think that my Hopes were accompanying him on the accordion.

Where the Pyramid Meets the Pie

After examining various renderings of the so-called Food Pyramid, I have decided that it looks rather like one of those Egyptian curses carved in hieroglyphics over the entrance to an especially malevolent Pharaoh's tomb.
Or perhaps it's merely a Third Kingdom inventory of all the proteins and carbohydrates he will need in the next life? After all, Anubis frowns on extra fat.
And why is it equilaterally sided? Surely the pyramid should be isosceles shaped at the very least, particularly since the two servings of fruit must weigh much more than the three servings of vegetables opposite them. Is this supposed to be the trickle-down theory of nutrition or something? Really, one might just as well consult a "Food Sphinx."

The Dark Cheese

My family has been producing powerfully pungent cheeses for over five generations at our dairy dungeon in Belchfield. Among the most popular cheeses are blue chudder, crumbly scrotum, and fancy goat tyrd, which is a port-wine cheese, or at least that's what it looks like.
Old Mother Gertrude took our special family curdling secret with her to the grave, but fortunately her restless ghost returns every full moon to shriek it throughout the house at hair-raising volume. This can be rather alarming, obviously, but since these hauntings do provide us with the esoteric information required to continue making cheese in the traditional manner we have always refused permission to perform an exorcism.
Consequently, our cheeses are the only cheeses to have appeared on the front covers of both Cheese Eater Monthly and The Catholic Herald. The former accused our cheeses of being "too clammy," while the latter denounced them as "ungodly." It sounds like bad press, but frankly any adjective is better than boring old "stinky."

Home Truths

Mr. America was recounting his recent experiences of what he referred to as "my Private Hell."
It doesn't sound all that bad to me, I told him when he paused for sympathy. In fact if your problems could be compared to an earthquake, then I doubt that even an especially nervous ant balancing on a slender blade of grass growing in the fault-line would notice the insignificant tremors. And furthermore, your so-called Hell is not particularly very private either, since I've received reports of them from at least two other sources. And so, if pressed, I'd probably describe your situation as less of a "Private Hell" and more of an "Open-House Limbo offering free coffee and sandwiches for anyone who wants to have a good look around."
He did not seem best pleased with this assessment. You don't know, he whined pathetically, anything about it.
Oh but I do know, I explained: I've watched you accept a sub-prime mortgage on your own mind from the Bank of Convention. You've been complaining that you can't afford the oil to fire your imagination and so you want to drill for your ideas inside somebody else's head. You've devalued your personal currency and now there's a risk your personality is falling into recession. Overall, I'd say that you were experiencing a credibility crunch. But don't worry: it's really not that bad: it will pass. It will pass like undigested hamburger meat through the colonic rodeo of a constipated couch potato. I'm sure the President will come up with some sort of self-esteem stimulus package for you. Maybe he will send you a free mobility chair or something.

Chillywood

I recently witnessed excerpts from a colorful Chinese film in which male and female combatants flew acrobatically through the air performing somersaults, backflips and what appeared to be a violent version of Chubby Checker's "The Twist."
Why, I wondered, since China is generally recognized as the birthplace of gunpowder, did the opponents of these aerial assailants simply not blast them out of the sky with cartridge loaded weapons. Such a feat of marksmanship would possibly be no greater than a fairly mediocre round of clay pigeon or skeet shooting. Such a film could be renamed Crouching Tiger, Brace of Partridge, and would be both historically accurate and immensely entertaining.

(This blog post is a protest against the Peking Olympiad, with the exception of any event that Michael Phelps is competing in. I don't care if I have all the facts straight or not. Hopefully it will be equally as effective as all the other protests have been.)

A Pleasant Evening

I have just returned from dinner at the house of Jack Sprat and his enormous wife. It was a typically small affair. Besides me, the Sprats had only invited Little Jacker Horner and that tedious Hubbard woman who always insists on bringing her mangy dog along. There are never any bones or scraps to feed the poor animal since the Sprats always lick their platters clean, as is well known, so I don't know why she doesn't just leave the beast at home.
Predictably, there were only two options on the Sprat's famously limited menu: fat ala carte, or lean with a side of starch. Frankly I find both of these choices distinctly unappetizing, but it would be rude to decline, and so I just chew away while pretending that I'm actually eating a dainty dish of baked blackbird pie instead.
The evening ended with a recitation of Retirement Home Rhymes, which are pretty much the same as Nursery Rhymes except that they are very long and depressing rather than brief and whimsical. My personal favorite is Tom Tom the Reaper's Son. I'm  sure you know how it goes:

Tom Tom the Reaper's son
Is very old and nearly dead
His time is near
His grave is here
And poor old Tom is filled with fear

All in all it was a very pleasant evening, but I don't think I'll be going back there again in a hurry.

See also: Grown Up Nursery Rhymes

Horror Movies

The most spine-chilling moment in cinematic history is undoubtedly that famously horrific scene when the artlessly banal, zillion-dollar waste of celluloid is actually about to begin. Frightened eyes are covered with trembling fingers as the opening credits roll: "Oh my God, he's in it, and so is she. This is going to be really scary. I can't watch. Tell me when it's over."
But we really start squirming with fear after realizing that we're sitting in a sticky double-bill of someone else's spilled Pepsi and rancid popcorn. Will the Professor's dry-cleaning potion be able remove the evil stain of this Blob? The suspense is unbearable.
Meanwhile, even the most talented of Hollywood's prosthetic make-up artists cannot recreate the terrifying blank look of apprehensive zombie lifelessness on our faces as the plot unfolds; and no Oscar-winning screenwriter's imagination could pen the mournful monologue of profound regret and desire to be elsewhere that runs through our minds as the dreadful film progresses.
And has there ever been a monster more hideous than the director's ego? Have you ever heard a more blood-curdling scream than that A-list actress demanding that her name appears above the title? Will we ever dare to go back into these tomb-like movie theaters again? Or perhaps an angry mob of moviegoers armed with pitchforks and flaming torches will burn them down before we get a chance to decide anyway. Who cares? I much preferred the book.

An Occident Waiting To Happen

I recently found an extremely rare photograph of my eccentric ancestor Igbert Nogg, three-time Smutney-upon-Grizzle village ping-pong champion and award-winning teapot decorator, whose desperately unrequited love for The Dragon Lady of Fang was so sensitively chronicled by me in my book Buffoon: How Igbert Nogg Made A Big Fool Of Himself In China
As I exhaustively document in that splendid tome, Nogg left his home on the banks of the Grizzle in the spring of 1869, ostensibly to enter an international ping-pong tournament in the Fang region of old Cathay, but in reality, as he confided to his secret diary, "to induct my pink member into the Dragon Lady of Fang's yellow parliament."
Alas, Nogg would fail spectacularly in this endeavor.
Aside from pale depictions of her floating in ceramic space on the sides of numerous collectible Chinoise teapots, no westerner had actually ever seen the Dragon Lady of Fang, but like Chinese whispers confided to porcelain ear, stories of her physical perfection and ineffable charm were told along the Silk Road that lit fireworks in the minds of any man who heard them. Eventually these breathtaking reports even reached the fabric shop in Smutney-upon-Grizzle high street where Igbert Nogg purchased fresh linen hankerchiefs every other week.
His slumbers that night were haunted by feverish visions of the naked Dragon Lady dancing the Dance of the Seven Veils with seven enormous tea strainers, to a tune Nogg himself beat out upon a kettle drum and steam whistle. He immediately set sail for China the following morning, even though he had absolutely no experience of seamanship whatsoever: "God shall be my guide upon the open seas," he wrote, "Until I get there. Then I don't want to think about God anymore and have some fun instead."
Nine years later Nogg arrived at the port of Fang, rather the worse for wear, looking somewhat like Karl Marx dressed as a Breton fisherman performing the "I'm a little teapot" mime. He introduced himself to the Dragon Lady's startled courtiers as the "Envoy from Smutney-upon-Grizzle,"  informing them that he had come with an offer of marriage for the Dragon Lady so that a valuable alliance might be forged between the two great powers of Fang and Smutney. "Here is my handle and here is my spout," he added, before being arrested for indecent exposure.
My photograph depicts Nogg emerging from prison, slumped in the doorway of a fortune cookie export office.

His resemblance to Richard Nixon dressed as a Manchurian coolie impersonating Mickey Rooney as the Japanese maniac in Breakfast At Tiffany's is uncanny.
Nogg finally returned to Smutney-upon-Grizzle in the winter of 1884, spending his remaining years as a reclusive opium addict and purveyor of cheap, pirated copies of paintings by James MacNeil Whistler.
As for the Dragon Lady of Fang, well, she just got old and fat.

Low Expectations

Charles Dickens' decision to become an author of sentimental fantasies was a great loss to the boot blacking industry. With the possible exception of the appearance of brown boots upon the gentleman's footwear market, the day Dickens concluded that the ink pen was mightier than the boot blacking applicator is without doubt the blackest day ever recorded in the annals of boot blacking. And this disastrous undertaking did not merely affect the boot blacking trade. Charles Dickens himself surely suffered as a result of such rash and eccentric behavior also.
For boot blacking is, I'm sure you will agree, a far superior occupation compared to the idle and effeminate pastime of writing whimsical novels. It is extremely significant, I believe, that Dickens was able to draw upon his wealth of experiences in the boot blacking factory to provide substance for his comical books, whereas lounging around in a smoking jacket all day contriving those ridiculous stories could in no way have prepared him for an exciting and challenging career at the cutting edge of modern boot blacking technology.
If only Dickens had brought his substantial imagination to bear on the production of boot blacking productivity, rather than abusing it so profligately on the composition of penny romances and so-called Christmas "numbers," then who know what tremendous advances could have been made in the art of blacking of gentlemen's boots.
Instead the world is left with precariously stacked shelves crammed full of enormous leatherbound classics whose only function is to frighten children out of their minds. I thought Dickens was supposed to be against that sort of thing?

Getting the Finger

The only comic book I was allowed to read as a young boy was The Adventures of The Purple Finger, which regularly disappointed its readers with unexciting tales of a masked avenger who irritated super-villains by poking them with his glowing magenta digit. The Purple Finger also had a girlfriend called Sandra, but she wouldn't let him touch her. That was one of the dreary sub-plots; that and the fact that he constantly bit his nails down to the cuticle. Nailing-biting was the The Purple-Finger's Achilles heel, and hangnails in particular were like Kryptonite to him. He would be tearfully prostate and out-of-action for many hours whenever he acquired one. Meanwhile,banks would be robbed and innocent citizens would be beaten to a bloody pulp while Police Commissioner Moran vainly called for help on the special Finger Phone.
In a futile attempt to reinvigorate the series, a Robin-type sidekick figure was introduced into later storylines. This was the Little Dutch Boy who famously stuck his finger in a dyke to stop it leaking. Unfortunately he proved to be even more ineffectual and limited than The Purple Finger himself. Sticking his finger into things seemed to be his solution to every crisis. I recall that in one episode The Little Dutch Boy stuck his finger into the exhaust pipe of a super-villains getaway car. I suppose he must have thought this would prevent the baddies car from moving, but he was severely burned instead. Eventually The Little Dutch Boy was entirely eviscerated by a robotic coffee-grinder controlled by the evil genius known as Le Mauvais Bean. He was no great loss, sad to say
In another plot twist, if you could call it that, Sandra left town for good. Her reasoning, rendered in a speech bubble with extremely jagged edges, was that she'd rather sit on her own finger than suffer the inept and potentially lethal romantic attentions of The Purple Finger. And who could blame her? Certainly not me, for it was at this point that I stopped reading the comic altogether, realizing with an adolescent pang that it was only Sandra's curvaceously black-inked silhouette that had retained my interest in the first place.
Many years later, while searching for back issues of Amateur Glamor Photographer in a New Hampshire antique store, I came across a pristine collection of The Adventures of The Purple Finger, ordered by number and packed carefully into clear plastic sleeves. The owner of the shop was giving them away for free. Even nostalgia was giving the finger to The Purple Finger.

The Feed Creed

I recently sat down for dinner with a family whose patriarch declared their intention of thanking God for what they were about to eat before they ate it. He then bowed his head and began intoning some quasi-ritualistic gibberish that he referred to as "grace," behavior I found rather odd since the food in question had been delivered by a Chinese teenager who had received no gratitude at all for his efforts.
And besides, even taking into account liberal interpretations of the Bible, it is almost impossible to connect Egg Foo Yung with the God of Abraham. I find it highly unlikely, for instance, that Moses' fabled Manna from Heaven appeared in the desert as white take-out cartons containing a number thirty-six, a number twelve, three Peking ravioli and a serving of fried rice, even if God does work in his infamously mysterious ways.
Mind you, considering the ubiquity of Chinese restaurants in even the remotest corners of the Globe, such an eventuality is perhaps more believable than the piously accepted Christian story of Divine distribution?
Nevertheless, despite maintaining no religious convictions of my own, I decided it would be ill-mannered not to mumble an "amen" in tune with everybody else when the prayer was concluded. However, for some reason - perhaps the spirit took me? - I suddenly felt the urge to raise and shake my hands into the air while repeatedly shrieking "Hallelujah!" as loudly as I possibly could.
It was an embarrassing moment, one I vainly tried to explain away by claiming that I'd been harboring a strong and persistent Egg Foo Yung craving for the past two weeks, and now this overwhelming desire would finally be satiated.
The rest of the meal was conducted in bemused silence, except for an occasional whispered request to pass soy sauce from one end of the table to the other. At one point I did volunteer a "This Egg Foo Yung is really amazing. Better than I could have dreamed of." But this brave attempt at making polite conversation was completely ignored.
That night I suffered from a severe bout of indigestion, brought on by over-eating when trying to prove that I really did desire Egg Foo Yung enough to testify about it to the rooftops. This is why I am in favor of the total separation of church and dinner. I am well aware that our traditional dinners in the West have always always based upon the Christian trinity of meat, potatoes and cabbage, but today we live in a fast-paced, multicultural society and are blessed with a fantastically diverse range of international cuisines at our fingertips. Surely adding the dogmatic litanies of self-righteous and antiquated religions to these modern menus can only cause confusion, pain and a bad case of constipation?