American Fez

My Reality

I have made it to the final four of American Idol, using the stage name Mister Meta 4, and shall be reading my epic poem "Augustus Hare Observed Reading Racist Graffiti on the Circle Line" in the semi-finals. It is composed in Spenserian stanzas to curry favor with Simon, who, I'm told, is a massive fan of Alfred Lord Tennyson's "The Lotos-Eaters and Choric Song."

I can also be seen still dancing among the finalists on Dancing With The Stars. For my last performance I have chosen the Mexican Four-Buttock Polka. The dance is a physically, emotionally and spiritually demanding combination of extreme foot and body work, based on ancient Mayan choreography and religious ritual, and so I shall be dressed in purple sequins and a cowboy hat. I'm hoping Len still thinks my footwork makes Nijinksy look like a "crippled Kulak from Smolensk."

Finally, I hope nobody saw me getting sent home on Project Runway: Special 'Survivor' Edition. I decided to make a very chic collection of shrouds for all the contestants that didn't survive, but judge Michael Kors said he wouldn't be seen dead in any of my designs. Perhaps I should have sent the corpses to the Garnier hair salon before I dragged them down the runway?

The Green Man Sleeps Tonight

We all know that the worm forgives the plough, but does the bed frame? Such an important question, and I've consulted everyone from Virgil to John Stewart Collis without enlightenment. I even inquired about the subject at my local Agricultural Center. Unfortunately its members were downright unhelpful.

Of course, the notion that such an item of furniture can possess feelings, that scrap-iron is capable of forgiveness, is a kind of animistic mania. Yet I can't help wondering if someone was once born in that bed frame, or maybe even died in it, and what disembodied energies or intelligence might still be resting in Nature's mattress of leaves and muck.

Fee-Fi-Fo-Frum, I Smell the Blood of an Ombudsman

Republicans, who seem to be in favor of government control of everything except heath care, keep foaming at the mouth about what the American people want. What they mean by "the American people" is roughly fifty percent of the population, give or take several million citizens depending on whom you talk to, so it isn't surprising that such a tedious collection of self-serving platitudinarians and miscalculators don't currently wield executive power. Lately, they have been borrowing various leaves from the so-called Tea Party movement to brew themselves a popular mandate from that steaming mash of ideology, and, rather like a desperate old woman pouring lukewarm water over the dregs of yesterday's discount generic blend, the result is tasteless and undrinkable. Surely it is only the terminal lethargy of both fifty-percents of the American people that allows such superannuated, lobbyist-pleasing weasels to remain a going concern in the twenty-first century. They should be quaking in their odor-eaters.

Wits On Toast

Lately, I have been living on my wits. They do, perhaps, lack the nutritional value of conventional food, but then everything tastes like petit nibbloise when slathered with oceans of squelchy sauce; and my wits recipe uses a lot of squelchy sauce. I found the recipe in an old book called Cooking With Erasmus, which was heavy on the jellied brains but otherwise quite useful for a culinary cretin such as I.

Bookcases In My Life

The dimensions of my "fiction" bookcase - a geometric arrangement of stag antlers and elephant tusks - are the entirety of Proust by a selection of Dickens, and it stands all of Graham Greene high. Those are first edition, hardcover measurements with the exception of a Hard Times paperback that I discovered on a train to Istanbul and kept for sentimental reasons. My "non-fiction" bookcase was purchased at IKEA and comprises several sections of white particle board that I hammered together myself, despite concluding that the assembly instructions should be shelved in "mysteries and thrillers." It is not worthy of additional comment. I also possess a small medicinal bookcase, essentially just a length of tumtum tree wood supported by two stone caryatids, that holds my personal health care library: self-help and first-aid volumes by Paracelsus, Giordano Bruno, Dr John Dee and the usual suspects.

Firing Line, with Aldous F Huxley

The Bores of Conception
Elizabeth Edwards says that her disreputable husband admits to making a mistake. Provocative poseur Rielle Hunter says that she and the former Presidential hopeful were in love. I say: who gives a damn about these wretched degenerates and their miserable spawn? Perhaps one day they will all commit murder instead of adultery. At least homicide qualifies as news.

Pointless, Counter Pointless
Meanwhile, that preposterous Palin woman continues to dominate political discussion; a worthless confabulation of dubious statistics and condescending platitudes, further infantilized by introduction of the phrase "Tea Party." Frankly, I would rather listen to a rabid pygmy screaming obscenities for nine hours than suffer through the windbag speakers at such a fatuous event, although I dare say that you could make a small fortune selling laxatives and odor-eaters there.

(H)Island
For all his many faults and misguided policies, President Obama seems like an intelligent man who genuinely wants to help people. So why on Earth did he stand for public office?

Homeless In Gaza
And finally, Israel. Why can't they just build more luxury condominiums in downtown areas like everybody else does?

Sodom and Gomorrah

Whenever I hear that economic recovery is right around the corner, I feel rather like Noah must have felt after his thirty-second day of Flood: the highest authority claims that only eight more days remain of downpour, but from where you're sitting it's still raining pretty hard. You're sick and tired of telling those idiot giraffes to duck their heads back inside, the entire ark reeks of stale rhinoceros feet, and if you dispatch a dove to seek dry land it will only return with sale coupons from Walmart or Kwik Save.
Of course, even if the waters finally do recede, Republican and Democratic senators and representatives will unfortunately still be ruling the cities of the plain. Apparently there is no fire, flood, plague or financial meltdown powerful enough to wipe those wretched, old whore-mongers off the face of the Earth.

Varieties of Religious Experience

I had been examining the life of Christ, attempting to separate fact from fiction and hoping that I could achieve a better understanding of who this guy Albert Jenkins really was. Then I realized that I'd actually been reading August Pascal's remarkable 1933 hagiography of Jenkins, The Last Turnip, by mistake, instead of studying the New Testament like most Christian scholars recommend. It was an easy error to make: both books are about the same size, have similar gilt-edged pages, and the covers are practically identical, although the Bible probably boasts fewer root vegetables on its dust jacket.
This confusion was the cause of Pastor Tom's bemusement at my line of questioning during last week's Hi Lord! group meeting. I hadn't been on the same page as the rest of the congregation, literally, which was very embarrassing for all concerned, especially when we were discussing that weird "Wedding at Canada" episode in the Messiah's life, since I knew from my reading that Mr Jenkins was not only a devout teetotaler but had never even visited North America.
Pastor Tom told me I shouldn't bother to come back if I was just going to continue interrupting him with irrelevant details about Albert Jenkins, but I could tell that everyone else was also more interested in the joys and sorrows of cultivating prize-winning turnips three years in a row, rather than in some sanctimonious nonsense about prodigal sons and other ancient ne'er-do-wells. Eventually Pastor Tom left in a huff, whining loudly that he washed his hands of us or something like that. I tried to explain that he should learn from the life of Albert, who simply sat patiently and listened when the Leguminster Agricultural Society issued a proclamation that spreading macrobiotic fertilizers caused dwarfism in potatoes, then later proved them all wrong by growing the largest King Edward ever seen in Spuddershire. But, alas, Tom had stormed out of the building and across the Garden of Peace before I could even start speaking.

Celluloid Shopper

I was recently filmed in slow-motion, swaggering stone-faced through an electrical storm of paparazzi flashbulbs and blue smoke, wearing my slim-fit Armani suit with gleaming loafers and dark glasses. Brushing contemptuously past the camera, I leaned into the lens and snarled, my upper lip curling viciously, like a blood-soaked scimitar flashing in the air. Then I karate kicked an invisible opponent before shooting my cuffs, and striding purposefully out of frame in silhouette. All I had really wanted to do was buy a new pair of trousers for the weekend, but that's what the menswear department at Macy's is like these days.

Early Spring Metaphors

According to TV meteorologists, Boston's recent run of much needed warm, sunny weather will be interrupted by more wintry rain this weekend. I guess that's the way the cuckoo crumbles.

Living in the City

Paul was sitting cross-legged on the stoop, listening to his iPod, eyes closed and smiling, looking like some smug temple Buddha waiting for a floral tribute; and the offerings had arrived, except that they were domestic recyclables in a blue container rather than garlands and incense. "Are these yours?" I asked him, indicating the pile of plastic and paper. "Because they don't pick up until Wednesday and this stuff will blow all over the street, and besides making a huge mess we'll also probably get a trash violation ticket." He shook his head without looking, still smiling, apparently unconcerned. These mundane matters were obviously beneath the consideration of such an enlightened being as he. "Whoever it is did the same thing last week and the week before that," I said. "I don't understand why they can't just follow the directions and put their stuff out on the designated day." The Buddha shrugged, registering only a slight blip on his beatific countenance. "I bet if we made everyone in the building take an IQ test, then the person with the lowest score would be our culprit, because that's how cretinously stupid the guilty party must be." I continued, receiving a small grin and a nod in response .... "Or perhaps we'd have a choice of two candidates: the idiot and somebody else. You know, the sort of person who doesn't give a damn, for instance."

Defrost

Two lugubrious goldfish are butting heads at the edge of Edmund's pond; that alabaster fountain cherub urinating over a long-suffering lily pad; this crooked, crazy-eyed garden gnome with his baitless, impotent fishing pole; some Japonaise stone turtle thing, slightly chipped at the rear; the spectre of winter is skating across the water on a wind ripple and returning to his tomb. Spring, meanwhile, is still hiding behind that muddy bag of potting soil, but slowly changing into its Liberty of London bikini. Perhaps it will go for a swim this weekend?

Futures Quotations

"In the future, everyone will be unemployed for fifteen months."

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what your country can do for third world migrants."

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to vote for the opposition party during a general election."

"No we can't."

The Pagan Fetish

Nobody knows how the pagan fetish came to be in my family's possession. My father claims that Great Uncle Zebedee, a legendary prankster and part-time anthropologist, brought it back from the South Sea Islands in order to frighten his delicate wife, Great Aunt Elspeth. There is another story, of unknown provenance, that Zebedee's brother, Great Uncle Aloysius, discovered the pagan fetish during a walking tour of neolithic sites in northern Spain, slyly secreting the trophy in his trousers - a deception causing much commotion amongst female members of the tour - instead of bringing its existence to the attention of proper archeological authorities. Personally, I think both theories are equally plausible, but tend to agree with my grandmother that the fetish was actually purchased from an antiquities dealer in Cairo by Great Aunt Ethel, Aloysius' second wife, who mistakenly believed it to be a decorative Egyptian cucumber.
In fact, you may already be familiar with the pagan fetish since it has appeared on television many times, as an item of curiosity on both The Antiques Roadshow and Bravo's Disturbing Household Objects, and as a significant prop in several episodes of Playboy Channel's late-night drama Jungle Vixen. During one one of these broadcasts an appraiser from Sotheby's examined our heirloom, telling us that the pagan fetish might fetch somewhere in the region of three hundred dollars at auction, although a slight but visible area of chafing damage might knock a little of the price. For the sake of the cameras, we pretended to be surprised and pleased with this valuation, but were actually extremely disappointed, my cousin Hubert falling into a terrible rage and swearing to "snap the beastly thing in half." Fortunately we were able to restrain him. After all, God knows what awful and ancient curses might fall upon the heads of any who defile a pagan fetish, even if it isn't worth very much money.
The pagan fetish is standing upright on my mantelpiece as I write these words, casting an ominous shadow over a porcelain shepherdess. It is my turn to be custodian for the duration, since the pagan fetish is passed around from hand to hand every year, rather like an embarrassingly lewd baton in a never ending relay race. Such is the nature of kinship and inheritance.