American Fez

Weather Patterns

Icarus famously flew too close to the Grecian sun; his homemade, waxen wings melted and he plunged to his death in what W. H. Auden, describing Bruegel the Elder's painting of the event, called the "green water."

Had Icarus lived in contemporary Boston rather than ancient Crete, then the heat of the sun would not have proved so deadly. There is no sun here at the moment, only white skies, voluminous clouds and persistent hints of impending snowfall. Nor is there green water for our intrepid if somewhat hubristic flier to fall into, since Boston Harbor is more a sort of mucky brown color. Daedalus, in duck boots and Bruins cap, need not have cautioned his son to avoid achieving any great altitude. 

A New England Icarus, however, would freeze to death in mid-air; his body hit the sea with a dull plop instead of a poetic splash. It's difficult to imagine any old master finding inspiration in such a bleak, earth-toned scene; Auden, neither; although William Carlos Williams still might give it a shot.

Rules for Gentlemen

I'm always bemused by supercilious, somewhat superannuated Rules for Gentlemen that frequently appear in the more bumptiously masculine corners of the Internet. What bona-fide gentleman, after all, actually advertises his own behavioral prejudices in such a public manner? If you ask me, doing so automatically and irrevocably invalidates the pompous fool's commandments. 

My favorite of these boorish rules is also the most slavishly followed: a gentleman should always hold a door open for a lady. You can even imagine the smug, affected, rule-making brute ostentatiously doffing his fedora and bowing as the lady passes by. Oh how one hopes the lady might reveal herself to be a militant feminist who punches our gentleman in his conceited face. Personally, I hold doors open for everyone, regardless of their sex, age or physical ability. But I merely aspire to be a well-mannered fellow; not some ersatz gentleman whose artificial personality was cribbed from a "how-to" website

Damned With Faint Praise

"It shouldn't work but it does" is a fatuous remark regularly aimed at work of mine by unimaginative dullards of conventional outlook. "It shouldn't work but it does, you say?" I dream of responding. "It's the opposite of your brain, then, which should work but obviously does not."

I say nothing, however. After all, you cannot argue with a mental wall made of concrete mediocrity. There are billboards on that wall featuring stick figures with sad faces; grafitti of cliched slogans in brown spray paint; lots of dank, rotting moss. 

My work isn't particularly unorthodox or original, its inspirational thought barely even dribbling over the outside edge of the proverbial box, but I suppose it appears disarmingly novel when compared to the bland, broad-brush whitewashing some of my peers produce. Mindless, habitual, generic ouput. Now that's something that truly should not work but always does. 

Text

Once upon a time, the only form of writing I considered more boring and unpleasant than scripture was anything described as a 'screed.' Soon after my arival at college, however, I soon realised that the drearily named 'text' was, in fact, the most tedious reading matter known to mankind; and there was even so-called sub-text, a sort of trans-fat of the written word. Text was the scripture of the academic world, and students were required to compose screeds about the text. Extra points were awarded for questioning the sub-text, reading between the lines or participating in other forms of intellectual tomfoolery. I spent most of my college years staring off into space, leaning nothing at all, except how to spot a Chaucerian buffoon chasing tenure. Consequently, I'm not surprised that the current mobile phone bastardization of the English language is called "texting."