American Fez

Penny For Your Thoughts

Value is a very subjective term when applied to goods and services. Who knows what an article for sale is truly worth? I have no idea why a banana costs much less than a Mumford and Sons CD. Surely a banana is more useful and even more entertaining? It can be eaten in a suggestive manner and afterwards its skin can be cast upon the sidewalk to provide hours of pratfall fun. A Mumford and Sons CD, however, can only be played, much to the annoyance, I might add, of anyone in earshot. There is always the drink coaster option, I suppose, but then what would you do with those old Elvis Costello CDs already protecting your furniture from unsightly stains? But anyway, my point is that you can buy roughly fifty really useful bananas for the price of a single, not very good Mumford and Sons CD. This is madness in the marketplace, if you ask me. No wonder our economy is in such poor shape.
Of course, it is a truism that something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Personally, I would gladly pay five dollars for a banana if I didn't know grocers selling them for twenty-five cents each. Perhaps I might even fight a gorilla for one. Would a teenage girl do battle with a gorilla for a Mumford and Sons CD? I think not. But then I doubt the gorilla would want the bloody CD in the first place, unless, perhaps, the gorilla were King Kong requiring soundtrack music for his clumsy and ultimately unsuccessful seduction of Fay Wray.
Alas, I have seen my own worth decline over the past few years. The esoteric knowledge and arcane skills I once employed to do my work have been replaced by downloadable software. I am getting old, too. Given the choice between my daily presence and a Mumford and Sons CD my boss could play in the lobby, he might choose the CD. So would I, in all probability. At least this blog is still free for people to read. I trust that it remains, like bananas, good value.

View From The Patio

This blog often reminds me of a neglected garden hidden behind old, high walls. Curious readers clamber over that crumbling brickwork barrier then drop down into a bed of words overgrown with nettles and weeds. Regaining their balance and bearings, the readers immediately spy a statue of Atticus Nethergood carved in the style of Rodin but with the skill of Deidre Bumm, aged five and half. The interlopers don't know this ill-proportioned monstrosity is Atticus Nethergood, of course, and assume it's supposed to be Socrates. Everyone makes that mistake. 

Nearby is an ornamental pond whose stagnant waters conceal the sunken wrecks of many ill-navigated paragraphs. A plastic model of the Flying Dutchman sails endlessly around the pond perimeter. Local legend claims that anyone who sees the phantom ship - which is everyone in the garden because you can't miss the bloody thing - shall get brain tetanus from accidentally stubbing their toe on a rusting heap of misused adjectives. 

There is a gazebo, too, naturally, and a greenhouse. The latter is full of withered triffid plants still tethered to little wooden question marks. The former overflows with withered Bright Young Things who are obviously neither bright nor young these days, but very definitely can be defined as "things." They curl up like faded commas and uncertain apostrophes, perhaps only sleeping until called upon for droll commentary or to spit out some stinging epithet.