American Fez

Farewell 2008, We Hardly Knew Ye

See also: Farewell 2007, We Hardly Knew Ye

See also: Farewell 2006, We Hardly Knew Ye

The Absolute Tear-Jerkin' Truth

I am currently pitching the harrowing but ultimately uplifting story of my amazing life to Oprah Winfrey. I think it will be a bestseller and should inspire at least three separate Oscar-winning movie adaptations.
No doubt cynics will claim that I could never actually have been imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp since I am not old enough to have been alive then.
No doubt they will also cast their filthy aspersions on my heart-warming memories of being rescued from that Nazi hell by a passing flying saucer piloted by homeless aliens.
No doubt they will mock my account of gaining three-hundred pounds of bodyweight while aboard the nomadic space cruiser.
No doubt they will scoff at my incredible story of losing all that fat in under six weeks thanks to diet tips I received from a talking fish called Archibald the Fish.
No doubt they will point out that I am not even a middle-aged Vietnamese-American woman called Ngo Bah Mitty who came to this country to escape the terrible conflicts in Indochina that killed the rest of my family.
But unfortunately for them I have irrefutable evidence that proves everything that I have written is completely true: there is video footage of me talking about it on WBS's The Veronica Harrison Show in 1998.

Hot Gadgets for 2009

Apple's iClaudius by Robert Graves
Pocket-sized, remote-control Roman emperor that invades Britain and is easily manipulated by scheming women.
Pros: Smarter than it looks.
Cons: Snivels and stutters in standby mode.

Tushiba's multi-inch Giant Plasma Ass
Huge 1080lbs resolution plasma ass that gets bigger while you sit and watch television.
Pros: Ready for HD (and pretty much anything else).
Cons: It's difficult to find underpants this big.

Nontendo "Qui"
Wireless French puppet that agrees with everything Carla Bruni says.
Pros: Confirms all your worst suspicions about Nicholas Sarkozy.
Cons: Confirms all your worst suspicions about Nicholas Sarkozy.

Amazon Kindling
Horrible, wretched plastic thing for starting fires to burn proper books with.

Christmas in Beacon Hill

As usual, I am hosting Good King Wenceslas in my Boston apartment over the festive period as the poor man has no family of his own. Yuletide in Beacon Hill just wouldn't be the same without that jolly old Bohemian monarch sitting by the fire talking about distributing alms to the poor. But the highlight of the Good King's stay is undoubtedly when he does his famous "look out of the window at the snow" thing during our Feast of Stephen celebrations. It's usually a great and memorable moment, and we often even invite the neighborhood kids around so that he can describe to them what he sees by the light of the bright winter moon. However, this Christmas I am hoping there will be no repeat of last year's fiasco.
Unfortunately, when Wenceslas had risen from his armchair at the appointed hour, wiped away frosty condensation from the window pane, and peered out into the Boston night, he had observed to his horror that the snow that lay round-about was neither "deep," "crisp," nor "even." Alas, it had been unceremoniously bulldozed and gritted into haphazard, soiled heaps of brown and yellow muck, which he obviously considered to be a personal insult. Consequently, Wenceslas had turned sharply away from the window screaming "What the fuck is this shit?" at the children assembled around him, most of whom immediately started to cry. "I didn't come all the way from the Czech Republic to stare at frozen dog piss and fucking sludge," he roared as shocked parents began to gather their children and usher them out of the door.
"Wenceslas is not normally like this," I tried explained, "He's normally a Good King." But my words had no effect on my furious neighbors and I don't suppose many of them will be returning for this year's Feast of Stephen.
Later, in the calm light of morning, Wenceslas had blamed the City of Boston's inability to deal with a winter weather emergency, and, as he put it, "Beacon Hill bastards and their stupid little dogs," and perhaps there is some grain of truth in those excuses. Frankly I think he had enjoyed a little too much egg-nog schnapps. But still, there's no excuse for using that kind of foul language during the season of peace and goodwill.

A Neo-Conservative Noel

I had just fallen sleep, dreaming of drilling for oil in Whoville, when I was suddenly awoken by a blast of heavenly trumpets and the Angel of the Lord appeared before me.
"Hosanna! Peace be upon all people!" he exclaimed, which I took to be an indication that the Angel of the Lord was still soft on national security and intended to maintain his disastrous policy of appeasement in the New Year. No wonder that the anti-democratic King Herod and his heathen clerics were able to slaughter so many innocents without reprisal.
And what is the Pentagon going to do about these CIA reports of an alien and covert reindeer sleigh invading our air space on the evening of December 24th? Let's hope they act swiftly and shoot it down, because the Ghosts of Christmases Past, Present and Yet-to-Come should never be released from Guantanamo Bay until they tell us where Santa and his insurgent elves hide their toy-making equipment.

Christmas Eve in Stalingrad, December 1942

The city is a frozen hell and we are surrounded. I am afraid that even Santa won't be able to break through the enemy lines tonight. I had thought I heard the sound of sleigh bells but Major Stumpfegger said it was just shards of Corporal Heinrich's shattered skull bouncing off the hot metal of his burning Panzer. I guess that means there's one less for Christmas dinner. Not that we have anything to eat, of course.
But still, I have left Santa half a dead rat and the last dregs of our potato wine beside my stocking. Major Stumpfegger said I should put the stocking back on otherwise I'll get frostbite in my feet, but what else is Santa going to put my presents in? If he can get through, of course.
My list wasn't very demanding this year. All I've asked Santa for is a Junkers transport plane to get me out of here and a posting to Paris. I should get these things, no problem. When Santa checks his list he'll see I've been pretty good this year Except for that day in June when I incinerated all those peasants with my flamethrower.

All Wells That Ends Wells

Come back H. G. Wells, all is forgiven!
"Archeologists in China are baffled after finding a tiny Swiss watch in a 400-year-old tomb," the Ananova news-wire reports: "Local experts say they are confused as they believe the tomb had been undisturbed since it was created during the Ming dynasty 400 years ago."
And I'll bet my last plastic bowl of microwavable frozen noodles that the Manchus had those enormous gray-faced, plastic digital watches with musical alarms and novelty mini-calculators.

A Cautionary Christmas Tale

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle .... all the way?
No, unfortunately not this Christmas. This yuletide I am forbidden to venture o'er the snowy fields in my open sleigh, and so there shall be no more laughing or singing and my spirits are dark. The only bells I hear jingling are the echoing bells on the blood-stained bob tails that haunt my mind. Oh God how can I make them stop?
As you may recall, last December I mysteriously upgraded my one-horse open sleigh to the two-horse model which was more fitting to my requirements. I don't know what seasonal Devil took hold of me, but I felt that I needed a much faster, leaner, meaner sleighing machine than that quaint, rather womanly one-horse contraption that I went dashing through the snow with before.
If only I hadn't asked Miss Fanny Bright to take a ride with me that fateful night she might still be alive. I can still hear her anguished screams as we careened around another hairpin bend at breakneck speed, my open sleigh flying through the snow as if pursued by the hounds of Hell. Faster and faster we went as I shrieked my maniacal sleighing song into the evening air, cracking the whip across the backs of those two poor horses like a man possessed. Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle bells. Ha ha! Ha ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!
But then the jingling bells suddenly fell silent, everything went white and I can remember no more except waking up in a heap of deep red snow, splintered wood and mangled horse carcass. All that remained of Miss Fanny Bright was her bonnet, boots and mittens. I know I jingled all the way, of that there can be no doubt, but just how far did I go? How far was all the way? .... Oh God, poor Fanny!

Seasonal Storage

Decorating a small apartment at Christmas causes all sorts of spangly-spatial headaches, usually solved by wrapping my Christmas tree in dry-cleaners' plastic and cramming it into the closet, and then sitting on my bed with a red-bowed wreath hung around my neck humming Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht.
I used to have a wooden nativity scene that I would arrange in the oven, but I accidently incinerated the entire cattle shed and everybody inside when I forgot about it while baking brandy-infused mince pies.
Fortunately all my precious hand-me-down ornaments are kept in storage throughout the year, so these days I just drag my tree and wreath out there and decorate the storage cube. It's a merry Christmas but a cramped one at the Industrial Park.

See also: The Gift That Also Receives

The Christmas Slum Lord

My mother has been establishing numerous illuminated model Dickens' Christmas Village settlements along the mantelpiece, window ledges and table tops. And so there are now several invasive colonies of plastic carol singers and ice skaters staking their claims to vast areas of space throughout my parents' house. 
Inspecting this ceramic sprawl with morbid curiousity, the idea suddenly struck me that if I set fire to a few of the little houses then I could instantly transform them into a model and very topical Christmas Athens. Or, perhaps, if I spray-painted seasonal graffiti over a select row of exteriors, then I might de-gentrify that particular section of mom's festive diorama into Stephenesque's Model Christmas Ghetto.
Or maybe it would be truer to the Dickens' spirit to simply turn the lights off, erect a sub-prime mortgage repossession sign, and then wait for Christmas 2012?

Xmas Tips for Commercial Travelers

Any fake-beard salesman worth a roll of double-sided sticky tape should make an absolute killing at Christmas. There will obviously be a huge demand for long, fluffy white fake beards, suitable for department store Santas, and the competent fake beard salesman should clear at least sixty grand on sales of these popular seasonal appendages alone, but there is ample commercial opportunity in selling "packs-of-three" long, gray fake beards to little kids who have been cast as one of the Three Wise Men or Three Shepherds; perhaps you could even package up a Nativity Play Special selection of assorted fake beards to cover all the characters (I'm guessing this will be a bumper pack of twelve to fourteen fake beards). And finally, whatever fake Devil goatees you have left over from Halloween make great fake beards for King Herod. Personally, with my large stock of competitively priced natural and synthetic fiber fake beards I'm projecting that I should be able to gross well over half a million bucks this December!Credit crunch? Talk to the stick on red Rudolph nose!

Ghosts of Christmas Past

In the spirit of "Desert Island Discs", I present a list of my Lowly Cattle Shed Discs for the holiday season. In other words, if I were stuck in some miserable, dung-filled shack on Christmas Eve with a pregnant woman, these are the tunes I'd be listening to.

Traditional: I Saw Three Ships
I've always wondered about this song because, I mean, so you saw three ships come sailing by on Christmas day in the morning. Big deal. Who the hell cares. I saw a bowl of figs and a moldy tangerine on Christmas day in the morning but I don't go writing high-pitched songs about it, do I?

Mykola Dmytrovich Leontovych: The Carol of the Bells
Quasimodo's least famous Christmas carol. Interesting tune, but for some reason it sounds to me like the background music for someone going insane.

Traditional: The Holly and Ivy
A great carol because despite the title and chorus the verses don't mention ivy at all. Not one word about the ivy! The actual lyrics are all about holly! Should have just been called "The Holly" if you ask me.

Peter Warlock: Bethlehem Down
Rather depressing tune to traditional words written by a suicide whose real name was Philip Heseltine. He was caricatured by Aldous Huxley in 'Antic Hay' and described in Anthony Powell's memoirs as "mephistolean". Bethlehem Down? Well, the song certainly doesn't bring you "up" that's for sure.

The Fall: No Xmas For John Quays
Over a cacaphonic background of poorly played instruments, Mark E. Smith delivers his seasonal harangue about a man in room with needle in his arm not receiving any Yuletide comfort or joy. Available on the CD called "Totale's Turns." There's another song called "Choc Stock" on the album, which, although it's not about Christmas, is about chocolate.

John Mason Neale: Good King Wenceslas
Mentions the "Feast of Stephen" which is obviously the best kind of feast you can celebrate. But otherwise has little to recommend it.

William Dix: What Child Is This?
It's Jesus, you fool. What child did you think it was for Christsakes!?!

In the spirit of "Desert Island Discs", I present a list of my Lowly Cattle Shed Discs for the holiday season. In other words, if I were stuck in some miserable, dung-filled shack on Christmas Eve with a pregnant woman, these are the tunes I'd be listening to.

Traditional: I Saw Three Ships
I've always wondered about this song because, I mean, so you saw three ships come sailing by on Christmas day in the morning. Big deal. Who the hell cares. I saw a bowl of figs and a moldy tangerine on Christmas day in the morning but I don't go writing high-pitched songs about it, do I?

Mykola Dmytrovich Leontovych: The Carol of the Bells
Quasimodo's least famous Christmas carol. Interesting tune, but for some reason it sounds to me like the background music for someone going insane.

Traditional: The Holly and Ivy
A great carol because despite the title and chorus the verses don't mention ivy at all. Not one word about the ivy! The actual lyrics are all about holly! Should have just been called "The Holly" if you ask me.

Peter Warlock: Bethlehem Down
Rather depressing tune to traditional words written by a suicide whose real name was Philip Heseltine. He was caricatured by Aldous Huxley in 'Antic Hay' and described in Anthony Powell's memoirs as "mephistolean". Bethlehem Down? Well, the song certainly doesn't bring you "up" that's for sure.

The Fall: No Xmas For John Quays
Over a cacaphonic background of poorly played instruments, Mark E. Smith delivers his seasonal harangue about a man in room with needle in his arm not receiving any Yuletide comfort or joy. Available on the CD called "Totale's Turns." There's another song called "Choc Stock" on the album, which, although it's not about Christmas, is about chocolate.

John Mason Neale: Good King Wenceslas
Mentions the "Feast of Stephen" which is obviously the best kind of feast you can celebrate. But otherwise has little to recommend it.

William Dix: What Child Is This?
It's Jesus, you fool. What child did you think it was for Christsakes!?!

In the spirit of "Desert Island Discs", I present a list of my Lowly Cattle Shed Discs for the holiday season. In other words, if I were stuck in some miserable, dung-filled shack on Christmas Eve with a pregnant woman, these are the tunes I'd be listening to.

Traditional: I Saw Three Ships
I've always wondered about this song because, I mean, so you saw three ships come sailing by on Christmas day in the morning. Big deal. Who the hell cares. I saw a bowl of figs and a moldy tangerine on Christmas day in the morning but I don't go writing high-pitched songs about it, do I?

Mykola Dmytrovich Leontovych: The Carol of the Bells
Quasimodo's least famous Christmas carol. Interesting tune, but for some reason it sounds to me like the background music for someone going insane.

Traditional: The Holly and Ivy
A great carol because despite the title and chorus the verses don't mention ivy at all. Not one word about the ivy! The actual lyrics are all about holly! Should have just been called "The Holly" if you ask me.

Peter Warlock: Bethlehem Down
Rather depressing tune to traditional words written by a suicide whose real name was Philip Heseltine. He was caricatured by Aldous Huxley in 'Antic Hay' and described in Anthony Powell's memoirs as "mephistolean". Bethlehem Down? Well, the song certainly doesn't bring you "up" that's for sure.

The Fall: No Xmas For John Quays
Over a cacaphonic background of poorly played instruments, Mark E. Smith delivers his seasonal harangue about a man in room with needle in his arm not receiving any Yuletide comfort or joy. Available on the CD called "Totale's Turns." There's another song called "Choc Stock" on the album, which, although it's not about Christmas, is about chocolate.

John Mason Neale: Good King Wenceslas
Mentions the "Feast of Stephen" which is obviously the best kind of feast you can celebrate. But otherwise has little to recommend it.

William Dix: What Child Is This?
It's Jesus, you fool. What child did you think it was for Christsakes!?!

Lost and Forgotten

He was either asleep or passed-out on the church steps, crumpled-up into a ball like one of God's old, dirty socks that had fallen out the human laundry basket while the Almighty was doing his washing.
"I think this belongs to you." I said to the Heavens, indicating the threadbare lump on the floor. "You seem to have left it behind."
There was no answer, of course. After all, we are made in God's image, and so he also obviously prefers to buy new rather than mend what he already has.

See also: The Acceptable Face of Vagrancy

The Chow Hounder

Despite being constantly lectured by sententious know-it-alls that we can "never go home again," I can't help noticing that the greasier elements of the human race apparently encounter very little difficulty entering and exiting those wretched spaces beneath the shameful rocks from underneath which they originally crawled out, and for some reason these slime-balls often manifest themselves in office cafeterias, where, with bulging eyes and smacking lips, they unfailingly take an unhealthily covetous interest in the contents of other people's lunch time repasts. Like so:

"What you got there? Looks good."

"It's just some pasta thing."

"Nice. What kind of sauce you get?"

"Er, I believe it's pesto."

"How much was it?"

"About six bucks or so."

"Mmm. Not bad. Where'd you order from?"

"Bottega Fiorentina."

"Yeah, that's an awesome place. You get the ziti or ..."

"Will you just shut your food-pervert face up and leave me alone. I'm trying to eat my lunch here!"

The Names of My Fingers

Since each finger on my hand possesses its own distinct personality, I have provided all these four digits with unique names, as if this brood of knuckles, phalanges and nails had been baptized in a finger-bowl font.

My little finger, for instance, I call "Pinkie," named after the roguish character of the small boy anti-hero in Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock. The tedious fact that many normal people generally call this finger their "pinkie" anyway is a complete coincidence. 

My ring finger is known as "Herr Schmidt" in honor of Hans Schmidt, the late and lamented Dresden contortionist and escapologist who passed away earlier this year. 

My middle finger is completely anonymous, crooking itself into a question mark, a mystery finger masquerading under many aliases: Butch, Roderigo, Karla, El Wispp, Le Fantomas, and most ominously of all - The Wyrd Sister.

My index finger is referred to simply as Gerald Higgins, part-time librarian. When he is not working among the book-stacks and microfiche files, Gerald enjoys a spot of gardening (whatever that means).

Finally, being the runt of the litter - and not a real finger anyway - my thumb is known only as "him down there." I certainly don't call him "Tom," that's a pretty stupid name for a thumb if you ask me.