American Fez

Night Scented Overstock

Savvy shoppers know that Fizique, my men's deodorant specialty shop, is the first name in stylish, roll-on upper-torso hygiene, and so they will be intrigued to learn that I'm now opening a factory outlet bargain version: it will be called Armpit.
Armpit will stock the same superb variety of grooming supplies available at Bod, except this cheaper range of antiperspirants will be manufactured in Turkmenistan instead of Paris, and the brand will be named Turkman instead of Musketeer: "Ladies, is your man a Turkman?"
Meanwhile, keep an eye out for my limited edition Armpit promotional t-shirts. These will be white and feature the Armpit logo - Armpit! - printed under each armpit in large yellow letters.

Main Street vs Nasal Passage

"They have a Yankee Candle here!" gasped the wide-eyed mall shopper, as if she had just chanced upon some magical grotto, gleaming with mesmerizing wonders. Since Yankee Candle stores in malls are as ubiquitous as fake beauty spots on the withered face of a Restoration whore, I could only conclude that she was visiting this mall from a particularly deprived corner of Malodorousland; a distant, undeveloped primeval swamp where industrial-strength jasmine is unknown and wax is only used to fashion rude effigies of tribal enemies.
Of course, this shopper never actually entered the store. She was merely relieved to be appraised of its providential existence, should she suddenly find herself required to buy a last-minute gift for an unvalued acquaintance, or deem it necessary to overpower the strong smells emanating from an ill-used bathroom fixture. I did observe her again, however, later on. She was browsing a selection of specialty salads in the Food Court, clutching a large bag emblazoned with the unlikely phrase 'Juicy Couture.'

More of the Devil's Work

Idleness draws me into the darkest dominions of the internet, where I am compelled to complete an online quiz called "Which Twilight Character Are You?" Apparently, I am a traveling garlic salesman who only appears in one scene and declaims just a single line of dialogue: 'Am I on the right road for the garlic market?' Seems about right.

Wisdom of the Islander

The Chinese, as you may be aware, employ a rather repetitive menagerie of animal names to distinguish one year from another. Eschewing such an unimaginatively bestial calendar, the Pithee peoples of the Riperian Islands rely on a fruit-based system. It is currently the Year of the Banana.

Rite of the Alarm Clock

There can be few sounds more beautiful than the peel of church bells on Sunday mornings. How I love lending weekend's languorous ear to their beseeching chimes, luxuriating in the knowledge that I need not leave the house until my sousaphone class begins at noon. Similarly, I remember waking to the insistent song of the muezzin one morning in Marrakesh. I punched his forehead many times but never found the "snooze" button. And when I stayed at a Tibetan monastery some years ago, a monk who looked as though he was made of old shoe leather tried to rouse me with an enigmatic whisper: "Buddha brushes the teeth of the caterpillar with the wings of the of the butterfly." Not a particularly enlightened way to wake up, if you ask me, and the lazy swine hadn't even shined the shoes I'd left outside the door overnight. Frankly, if I was in charge of fabricating religious timetables, I would devise a call to worship more likely to tease disciples from their scripture-haunted slumbers: "Coffee's up!" or "Brethren, there are donuts" are two phrases that spring immediately to mind.

Secrets of South American Cuisine with Quetzalcoatl

Okay. So today we are going to make a traditional peasant dish from southern Peru called el chupacabra conquistadoros de atahualpa, which is the chicken spit-roasted in a clay chumbo with the rice, the onions, the tomatoes verde and just a pinch of charroyoiaiaiaeee, and which my grandmother first served to me at the state beheading of General Xuacha when I was very, very young. My grandmother also liked to add a little curdled quapo y crappo and a sprinkling of the tequila beans, and she always said her restless shade would pursue me all the way to el Latrino if I did not do the same. Of course, you can buy all this ingredients at any Shaquito Mart or roadside bimbodella, and el chupacabra conquistadoros de atahualpa is perfect for serving anywhere from fifty thousand to sixty thousand guests at your backyard World Cup fiesta, and it's great for soaking up all that montezuma juice and maximilian brandy so you won't be visiting the pizarro every fifteen minutes. Happy El Topo Day!

Mise-en-scène of a Misanthrope

I no longer lunch at the company cafeteria, and skirt the staff water-cooler as if it were a poisoned well. Such self-imposed exile from my fellow men is not due to any disdain or aversion to their dining and drinking choices; it is simply that I cannot understand the languages they speak anymore: I am not fluent in Television, can boast only a smattering of Sports, and my conversational Pop Idol is non-existent.
Alas, I only know the dead languages of Books and Painting, varieties of entertainment so ancient that most other people apparently require the Rosetta Stone of a movie adaptation to even consider decyphering their contents. Quite often this cultural disconnect makes me think I'm Bibliophilius of Alexandria confronted by grunting Gothic hordes. But most of the time I just feel like the odd man out.