American Fez

Sermon on the Pavement

This morning, near my bus stop, a Hellfire preacher was gesticulating wildly with his thick, black Bible; until, lost in rapturous indignation, with one damnation themed sweep of an arm, he accidentally tossed his scriptural authority into the street: an impassioned Elmer Fudd proselytizing to an apathetic, unrepentant congregation of commuting Bugs Bunnies with a very ineffectual stick and no carrot but his own buffoonery. Nevertheless, as if Bible tossing was a normal feature of that particular order of service, he continued to harangue everyone in earshot while retrieving the good book from where it lay, gripping its covers firmly with both hands despite his obvious urge to shake a fist at some passing sinner.

Are You Sitting Comfortably?

Who invented the first chair? Experts suggest the Egyptians as experts always do when they don't know the answer. But surely the almost congenital concept of a chair must predate even Pharaohs who wished to take the weight off their feet. Knowing humans as I do, it seems more likely to me that man would create a chair before conceiving the idea of a wheel. After all, you need to sit down from time to time if you're contemplating revolutionary and busy-body ideas such as making wheels or fires, leading me to suspect that prototype chairs were built at least as early as the Stone Age.

Personally, I require a good sit down before doing almost anything. I might claim to be meditating on the task at hand while seated, but the truth is more a sort of stubborn Bartleby the Scrivenerish will towards inaction (although I can't plead clinical depression like Bartleby could have done). In fact, aside from morning ablutions and paying of household bills, none of my daily chores are absolutely necessary or bring much grist to my mill or any one's (Domine, Tu scisti).

So I am grateful to the inventor of the chair; if not for him or her I'd spend most of my time perched on the edge of an uncomfortable rock like Rodin's lugubrious 'Thinker.' If the model for this famous sculpture was indeed thinking (which is obviously open to conjectures of one's own) I'll wager he was thinking about how much he'd prefer to be happily ensconsed in a nice chair, possibly a well-upholstered Chesterfield, or maybe one of those buttock-hammocky, Saxon-era throne type constructions. I know I would.

Beast Feasts

You will never witness a facial expression more intense than a dog's when it's staring at food, especially human food. If you're carrying a plate of sausages from kitchen to dinner table the dog's solemn, unblinking eyes will follow you around the room, just like a creepy portrait painting in Scooby Doo. They are always entranced by the food-illuminating light in the refrigerator when you open the door; not by the miracle of electricity itself, of course, but by the wealth of edible objects it reveals. They gaze at the shelves of gleaming groceries with spellbound eyes and quivering noses. You can almost hear the tsunami of drool gushing through their gluttonous jaws. Observing dogs in this fridge-hypnotized state, I'm often reminded of archaeologist Howard Carter peering into the golden tomb of Tutankhamun: 'Can you see anything?' Carter was asked. 'Yes, wonderful things,' he replied.

To be fair, the canine food pyramid is particularly dull and unappetizing. Compared to our multi-colored cornucopia it's a shapeless lump of crumbly brown things with a thin stratum of rawhide. No wonder dogs obsess over our dinners when presented with such dreary rations in their own bowls. For them, a fridge full of people food must indeed be a vision of mesmerizing treasures, especially the back of the fridge where lurks a lifetime's supply of crumbs and blobs of lickable goo. Alas, just as tomb-plundering Howard Carter was punished by an ancient Pharaoh's curse, so dogs are also struck down after stealing treasure from its rightful home, even if that treasure is only the remains of last night's shepherd's pie. And just as there is no facial expression more intense than a dog's when it's staring at food, there is none more pathetic than theirs when they are puking up that same food all over the floor.