American Fez

Everything I Know About Egypt I Learned From ...

Everything I know about Egypt I learned from Death on the Nile, Flaubert's travel journals, and several sketches and paintings by Richard Dadd; I have no interest in Egyptian antiquities, unless they happen to be the cursed and mummified remains of high-priests of Anubis, stumbling around Cairo at all hours of the night, searching for a nubile English flapper whom they believe to be the reincarnation of their ancient lover, Queen Amuntopless; and I tend to think, in my more flippant moments, that the Six-Day War should have been limited to a typical five-day work week schedule: why ruin an otherwise perfectly good weekend?

Admittedly, such cultural tidbits and prejudices are probably not the best foundation for forming an opinion about the current Egyptian crisis, yet after listening to the waffle of so-called experts on the evening news I feel that my personal perspective is as valid as any other.

The people may congregate in the Valley of the Kings, topple camels and inscribe anti-government hieroglyphics on the sphinx's forehead; they may even throw burning box-sets of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet at the police; and a populist leader may climb atop the Pharos of Abusir to denounce Hosni Mubarak in terms that Hercule Poirot would save for only the most despicable of murderers. It is always the Phantoms of Freedom who rattle their chains the loudest, and when the mist clears settles it will just be another case of meet the new Pharaoh, same as the old Pharaoh.

Nobody Calls Their Computer "My Computer" Anymore

@Babbage1822 - I have a 64GB iPad 3G; you have a Mac Book Air with Snow Leopard; he has an HP Pavilion Desktop CPU running Windows 7 Home Basic.

Remarks that I recently tweeted about computer ownership, re-tweeted above, were for private circulation only. These foolish comments were never meant to appear on the Gawker RSS feed or on Shakira's Facebook page. I was trying to be funny and made an error of judgment. I still have a lot to learn about social media and apologise unreservedly to all concerned, especially to everyone who works at Yahoo. Unfortunately, my data accumulation module had accumulated a lot of data indicating that I have accumulated so much data that my data accumulation module required backing-up because some of the data that it had accumulated was corrupt. I have purchased an external data accumulation module because I need somewhere to store my incriminating JPEG evidence and MP3 recordings of secret talks. But the IT guy told me that my collection of classified documents will all fit on a flash drive that I can keep on my keychain.  Finally, I would like to thank Google for their patience and understanding and their kind offer allowing me to upload all this accumulated data to "the cloud." I hope this statement clears up any doubts about my Wi-Fi connection and that we can all reconcile our difference engines and delete those preferences once and for all.

Pantomime Thoughts

The mask of intelligence always replies "perhaps" to any assertion made by its interlocutors; always responds to a question with another question and never makes public its own point of view. The mask of intelligence hasn't changed much since Plato's day: smugly inscrutable and somewhat creepy, like one of those cheap, plastic face masks that bank robbers wear to hide their real identity. The mask of intelligence is fastened around the head with an elasticated citation or hooked over the ears with a pair of significant pauses.

I have two: one for when inform people that I'm listening to All Things Considered on NPR, and another, with a slightly more furrowed brow, for when I'm discussing the devotional works of Saint Colostophonicus. The latter is also a bit tight around my nose, so I'm indeed fortunate that I'm not required to wear it very often. The rest of the time I just play dumb.

A special mask of intelligence for this blog would be overkill, obviously, since I already sport the fez. No other statement is needed. A fez is the perfect symbol of brains in mufti, I like to think; the cerebellum sprawling on fragrant cushions like an Ottoman pasha, cloaked assassins with scimitars and exotic belly-dancers at its beck and call. How else can a human mind deal with the day-to-day, turgid realities of conference calls with corporate clients and reading Op-Ed columns in the New York Times at lunchtime?

Caxton's Shame

These days, I only read two magazines: Fortean Times and The Economist, both of which are about the paranormal and the unexplained. Other journals and periodicals are, apparently, exclusively concerned with the monstrous egos of those who contribute to their mind-numbing pages, and I am not interested in insulting my mind by forcing it to concentrate on such tedious subjects.

I once subscribed to at least seven or eight weeklies and monthlies, even when most of their content was already free on the Internet, but you can only read the same article rehashed over and over again so many times before you think to yourself: "UFOs are more interesting that whatever these columnists have to say, and more believable too."

The New Criterion used to be good before it turned into a pompous version of The National Review without any pictures; Harpers was thought provoking, but now it sort of reads like the paranoid ramblings of an atheist priest; and The National Interest simply isn't interesting. Quite frankly, I'd rather read a desperate blog written by some unhappy fat woman who can't stop eating cupcakes and chocolate fudge. Meanwhile, I am busy composing a letter to the editor of Angling Times demanding that he dramatically reduce the number of articles about carp fishing in Gloucestershire ponds, or else I will definitely not renew.

 

The Gift Shop Is All Around You

I have no objection to so-called street art - if only because most public buildings are unsightly amalgamations of concrete and misery anyway - but alas, most examples of the phenomenon I've encountered just seem to be tediously vivid variations of the old "Kilroy was here" grafito. Even the work of a giant like Shepard Fairey merely reminds me of the sort of wallpaper a Weimar secessionist might hang in their music room.

My own street art, of course, transcends such conventional approaches with its inherent vitality and aggressive commentary on modern life.  Described by Unreadable Magazine as equally confrontational and intimate, my work not only questions our very definition of art, but makes discreet enquiries about the street as well, namely: How do I get home from here? and Does anybody have change for the bus?

My most successful installation to date is probably Me, Outside The Museum of Fine Art. In this work I stand outside the Museum of Fine Arts, staring balefully at a jigsaw of me standing outside the Museum of Fine Arts, staring balefully at a jigsaw of me standing outside the Museum of Arts, and so on ad infinitum. The message expressed in the work is a simple one: If people get bored of looking at me they can go inside and look at some paintings instead. The experience is, I think, both profound and revelatory.

A René Nose

Whenever I am ambushed by an attack of the common cold my mind concentrates itself completely on the fact that my body is besieged by such an unvanquishable foe - witness this very post, for example. There is absolutely no room within my phlegm-heavy head for thoughts of any other kind, and I often wonder if René Descartes experienced a similar mental stalemate when he came down with a case of the flu: "I sneeze, therefore I am."

It is possible, I believe, that Descartes was suffering with a slight sniffle when he sat for his famous portrait by Franz Hals, now hanging in the Louvre. The artist's method of applying paint implies, if you ask me, an impending and unstoppable sense of gezundheit!

But then I have a cold myself at the moment, so I obviously would think that, because whenever I am ambushed by an attack of the common cold my mind concentrates itself completely on the fact that my body is besieged by such an unvanquishable foe - witness this very post for example. Does somebody have a tissue?

Identity Theft and Its Discontents

Since I am so concerned about identity theft, my credit cards are all issued in the name of "Igbert Bum," because Igbert Bum is an identity that nobody would want to steal. Not only is Igbert Bum an extremely embarrassing name, but you may also recall that Igbert Bum reached number 5 in the Billboard Hot 100 with his loser anthem I Got Nothing, a moody ballad that revealed the singer's profound lack of personal possessions and hair-raising financial instability. Even the money Igbert Bum made from this success was famously squandered on an uninsured McMansion that subsequently burned to the ground, leaving Igbert homeless and penniless once more. Igbert Bum is surely not a name, therefore, to make identity thief hearts beat faster in their unscrupulous chests. 

It is an amusing irony, then, that by protecting my own identity in such a manner I could be accused of stealing Igbert Bum's. So let me say here and now that I am innocent of this charge, since I purchased Igbert Bum's identity from the man himself at an International Identity Auction held on the banks of the Limpopo river in Botswana. Indeed, some might even claim that I paid over the odds for the identity of Igbert Bum, considering that equally unattractive names like Osmund Belch and Martin Bormann sold for much, much less. Yet I consider the price to be a fair one and all parties were satisfied with the exchange. The real Igbert now has a little money to help rebuild his life in the Kalahari, and I can enjoy shopping for big ticket items on the internet with my fake-Igbert credit cards. In fact, the only drawback so far is that I had to appear on an episode of MTV's golden oldies show, lip-syncing to I Got Nothing while dressed in period spandex. But that is a small price to pay, I'm sure you will agree, for my personal and financial well-being.

Remembrance of Things Passé

Living in this Babelly world, where people communicate in a breathless language of celebrity-punctuated pop culture reference, it becomes almost impossible to conduct meaningful conversations with members of a different generation than your own - or, alas, even your own contemporaries, if, as is often the case, their idea of historical study happens to be the plot and character evolution of particular television programs, rather than the social and political upheavals of previous centuries.

For instance, during a recent lunch hour, I joined an assembly of youthful diners arranged around a cafeteria table. They were discussing an altercation that had occurred outside our local Opera House - operatic in name only these days - the night before, involving an exchange of territorial insults and sporadic gunfire. Naturally, I regarded these events and their location as good reason to invoke the name of the former King Zog of Albania in semi-humorous terms, but unfortunately my witticism fell on deaf ears, creating a brief but noticeable and awkward silence. I had ruined the joke, obviously, by including a somewhat convoluted reference to Ruggero Leoncavello, composer of Pagliacci, the actual opera that King Zog had attended on the night that he fired his famous shots. At least that was what I decided at the time.

Only later, alone with my bookish preoccupations, did I realise that the biography and exploits of King Zog were a total mystery to my lunch companions. If only His Majesty had been a regular character on Star Trek series four, rather than a marginal figure from a vanished Balkan past, and if only Pagliacci provided a continuous source of songs for the hit show Glee, then people might better comprehend my quips and repartee, and perhaps even engage me in light banter around the staff coffee pot. Weary of being such a cultural outsider, I tried to explain this sad state of affairs to my colleague Zak, but he merely laughed and told me that I was like Frasier on Cheers, which was a comment I didn't understand at all.