American Fez

Missed Connections

Walking through the local university on my way to work this morning, my mind already wandering far from the demands of the day, I fell into step behind a hipster student sporting, amid 'sleeves' of variegated tattoos on both his arms, a tattoo of a human face upon his left elbow.

Only seconds after registering this portrait in flesh and ink, I spotted a campus cop walking towards us whose jowly features were a dead ringer for those of the elbow. Such was the likeness twixt cop's face and painted elbow that I wanted to stop both parties mid-stride and bring the resemblance to their attention.

"Hey, ha ha, that tattoo on your elbow. It's supposed to be a fire demon, some cyborg from Star Trek or the lead singer of Nirvana, right? But it actually looks exactly like this fat guy here wearing the ill-fitting uniform carrying a plaid thermos and mini-cooler! Ha ha. What do you think about that, Mr Skinnyjeans? Ha ha."

But I decided nobody wants to spend the rest of their life knowing they have an image of overweight, petty law enforcement indelibly adorning on their elbow. So I didn't say anything and we each went our separate way. Tattooed Fool, Elbow Face and the weary Worker Bee: three corners of an unlikely triangle. 

Crap Rotation

Visit a city Farmers' Markets and you might think that Old MacDonald is full-time into artisanal baking these days, rather than, you know, digging up those boring, unprofitably old-fashioned vegetable things that grow in the ground. Ee-Aye-Ee-Aye-Ho-Hum.

Gooseberry pies, gluten-free muffins, Jalapeno donuts and even soybean gelato: these are the staples of the urban Farmers' Market, where bare feet and clogs have replaced rubber boots. 

True, there is a nervous looking man at one of the stalls in the back who does a decent business selling apples with bits of twig and leaf still clinging to the core. Kale is currently enjoying a boom, brussel sprouts are having a small renaissance, and a stick-insect of woman in ballet slippers might occasionally buy a nobbly carrot. But that's about it for traditional arable crops. Nobody cares about turnips, potatoes or green beans.

I bought a Farmers Market souvenir t-shirt featuring a cartoon illustration of broccoli designed to look like a tree underneath which a family were sheltering. After all, I felt I had to buy something, even if it was false advertising.

Ideas for the Home

Despite masses of evidence presented by the American Fez Foundation, and expert testimony provided by the eminent Dr. Payoffalopolos, the British Museum still declines to return the Elgin Marbles to their rightful place in my hallway and on either side of my mantelpiece. 

Examine the literature for yourself: no serious scholar of antiquity disputes the unassailable fact, asserted by my uncle Earl, that our ancient Greco-Ruritanian ancestor, Dubios of Erewhon, allowed the city of Athens to borrow the marbles in order to spruce up their otherwise dreary hilltop temple complex for a Dionysian orgy. Alas, Dubios proceeded to forget all about them, as he became too preoccupied with storing our family gold reserves in what was then the empty tomb of Tutankhamen (legal ownership case currently pending).

True, scholars make no mention of Dubios's temporary gift of the marbles, either. But that's because they are obviously a bunch of bookworming bores, more interested in obscure points of Delphic etiquette rather than in the profound truth that the souvenir ashtray my aunt Ermentrude brought back from Crete last year would look very nice balanced on the head of the Selene horse. 

Gutenberg's Garbage Pail

Like spent NASA rocket junk drifting uselessly through unimaginable space and time, old blog posts of mine will forever litter the Internet; unimportant paragraphs, unread and unwanted, filed and forgotten in the electronic Archives of Idleness; an infinitesimal library of ephemera shelved in the dimmest corner of an ever expanding abyss. 

Apparently, in 2003, my blog declared the best film of the year to be David Cronenburg's Spider, starring Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson. Another entry wondered, since 2003 marked the centenary of the Wright Brothers' exploits at Kitty Hawk, how Orville and Wilbur would approach the frustrations of modern air travel. 

Alas, even the most bored of digital castaways would not consider these blog posts worth reading, so I'm damned if I'm going to provide a link. God knows why I felt compelled to write them in the first place and God knows why I'm writing about them now. "Of making many books there is no end," sayeth Ecclesiastes, and he didn't even know there would be an endless Internet to store everything.

Hitchcock and Tweed

Last night I dreamt I was reading Rebecca again. Slouching in an old armchair, I thumbed through the dog-eared pages, skipping certain passages that seemed over-written, either choked with adjectives or clinging desperately to semi-colons. These are same bad habits my prose exhibits, I thought.

A sentence reminded me of a line from T. S. Eliot; another of Virginia Woolf; yet another of Dante as translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I did not realise du Maurier had copied so many (did you see what I did there?)