American Fez

DST

At this butt end of the calendar, should not the hands of our clocks have fallen back to registering autumnal time by now? Next weekend, November the third, I am told. But, considering the skies are still 'starlit and Bible-black' at six in the morning, I can't help thinking those horologists responsible for adjusting the hour are running a little bit late this year. It seems the intricate system of cogs and gears in their decision making process might require winding-up.

Nobody, besides Dracula and rock musicians, likes rising from their bed into a day that's as dark as the night before. For that is how, stumbling around in the gloom, you walk headlong into the door jamb and stub your toe on a table leg; how you pour heavy cream into your coffee mug by mistake; and how you kick your legs through wrong-way-around underpants that are also inside-out. The day is already ruined and the sun has yet to rise. So wake-up you American horologists, I think it's time we fast forwarded the 'fall back' date for Daylight Savings Time.

Rich Man Poor Man

A posh critic on public radio recently denounced some obviously underwhelming playwright as "A poor man's Samuel Beckett." This rather brutal judgment made me wonder what dramatist could be considered a rich man's Samuel Beckett. Eugene Ionesco? Tom Stoppard? Probably not. Those two are more likely on the level of a comfortably well-off man's Samuel Beckett. And as for Harold Pinter, well, take a look for yourself: he's a piggy-bank saver's Samuel Beckett.

I guess that leaves us with Pirandello. Surely any discerning rich man would employ Pirandello over Beckett to write his plays? If only there was a system similar to Renaissance-era patronage today, then we would know for certain. But I don't think the Medici would enjoy either Waiting For Godot or Six Character In Search of an Author. You would have to think that David Mamet is more their idea of entertainment. I doubt Cosimo would approve of Absurdist plots; money men never do, it seems, unless it's Ponzi schemes and retirement plans we're talking about.

Positions Vacant

Hobson-Jobson: a Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases defines Shekarries as "Hindoos of low caste who gain their livelihood entirely by catching birds and hares." Another day at the office, another of God's creatures strung up by its hindquarters and dispatched to the Brahmin's cooking pot.