American Fez

Old Father Time's Chinese Restaurant

Old Father Time, that cranky old cook, stopped taking orders for 2014 several days ago. His wait staff are busy sweeping the year's floor and stacking December's chairs on its tables. The old man himself is already out in the back alley, tossing his greasy apron into the dumpster while lighting a well-earned cigarette. "Closed" announces a sign on Restaurant 2014's front door. 

I know this because I was forced to return to Restaurant 2014 to complain. Back in January I placed an order, take out, for a large cut of filet mignon with sweet potato fries and a side of garlicky spinach. But when Restaurant 2014's delivery man finally arrived he only brought a container of lukewarm fried rice and a single chicken dumpling. There wasn't even any oyster sauce or anything. You can imagine my disappointment. If you're expecting a tip, I told the delivery man, you can just slink right off back to whatever wretched section of the calendar you crawled out from.

It's not my fault, Old Father Time told me when I found him in the alley. You're ordering from an old menu. What was 1997's Filet Mignon Dinner Special is now 2014's Combination Plate Number Four. I only do Chinese these days, he explained while stubbing out his cigarette, otherwise I'd be out of business. Here, have a fortune cookie, it's on the house.

So I've just ordered the scallion pancakes for 2015, from the right menu this time. You can't go wrong with scallion pancakes. Old Father Time tried to persuade me to get his Pu Pu Platter, a little piece of everything, but I'm not greedy. I prefer quality over quantity. After all, as my fortune cookie said: "Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.” And so I look forward to the Year of the Goat with modest expectations.

A-Caroling Weirdos Will Go

As choirmaster of the East Smutney Dickensian Singers, one of my duties is to choose the Christmas carols our group will sing at Nativity Fest this year. Choirmaster is a new role for me, and a rapid promotion - last year I was merely the fellow at the back holding a cheap plastic lantern attached to the end of an old broom handle - so I'm rather nervous about my selection of seasonal cheer, especially since I've decided to write them myself as the traditional choices are growing old and tired. Anyway, here are my additions to the Christmas hymnal.

Towards Bethlehem An Ass Is Bidden

This Shed Doesn't Smell So Bad, Mary

Balthazar's Telescope Did Espy A Star 

Lord, I'm Up To My Waist In Excelsis

You Can Have My Figgy Pudding, Jesu, I Don't Like It

Personally, I can't wait to hear my fellow choristers wrap their lusty voices around these rollicking tunes. Others are not so sure, however. One weirdo has even suggested that we scrap my songs and perform something called 'Vespa Dollar Be-hatted Virginny,'  which is apparently some ridiculous, newfangled Euro twist on the holy family escaping King Herod's men by hightailing it to Egypt on the back of a motor scooter while disguised in cheap hats. It's all in Italian as well. I can't imagine any revelers enjoying that load of rubbish very much.

Christmas Enigmas #7: Parson Brown

The anthropomorphic, vaguely Frankensteinian figure of Parson Brown: an unChristian assemblage of sculpted snow, single carrot, two lumps of coal, wooden pipe, filthy scarf and possibly a battered top hat; brought to life by the lurid, egg-nog fuelled imaginations of two unwed delinquents, whose rowdy "Winter Wonderland" hi-jinks insult and shatter a formerly Silent Night.

At the behest of this pair of hooligans, the snowman known as Parson Brown later assumes the identity of a circus clown, presumably to disguise his sacrilegious self from mobs of angry, pitchfork wielding and lighted torch-carrying villagers out searching for the sleep-disturbing monster. Fortunately, he is found hiding in plain sight in a snowy meadow, where he is knocked down by a roving band of vigilante kiddies practicing for Wren Day.

Access Denied

Updating my passwords for the umpteenth time, I find that my collection of mother's maiden names, first pets, favorite colors and birthplaces is exhausted. Since I only have one birth year, the option of adding numbers to any of the aforementioned has long since expired also.

Consequently I have been forced to contrive my latest passwords from characters' names from Dickens combined with significant years in the history and cultivation of wines I like best. This blog's password of the moment, for example, is UriahHeep36

Easy enough to remember, of course: Uriah Heep is my favorite character from David Copperfield and 1936 is the year an Appellation Contrôlée was granted for Châteauneuf-du-Pape (not that I can actually afford to drink anything but supermarket swill these days, au naturel).

Unfortunately, at the rate websites currently require users to update their passwords, I estimate my supply of characters' names from Dickens will dry up by early summer of 2015. Apprehension of such a crisis means I'm already laboring with concoctions of Italian amari and the names of those damned to the fifth circle of Hell in Dante.

Collective Nouns

Collective nouns for things with wings: a kaleidoscope of butterflies; a flamboyance of flamingos; a murder of crows; an unkindness of ravens; an exaltation of larks; a siege of herons; and a parliament, predictably, of owls.

Collective nouns for things that think they have wings: a hubris of Icaruses; a superannuation of royalty; a meddle of do-gooders; a flatulence of TED Talk speakers; a gonorrhea of ladies men; and, predictably, a rectal examination of politicians.

Bakunin Associates

Litotes and bathos wrapped in a subjunctive mood hidden inside a false indicative: my regular manner of imparting information, either verbally or typed into an email's oblong box.

Delivered verbally, such convoluted sentences can always be chaperoned by a raised eyebrow or a significant glance, always necessary when dealing with the literal-minded, which always seems to be the case; a physical signal that I neither mean what I say nor say what I mean.

As written words, however, these sleight-of-context communications have no warning flags to wave. I suppose I could add one of those 'winking' keyboard emoticons. I am not twelve years old, though, and don't intend to adorn my computer with a plastic Garfield figurine. Consequently my emails are often misunderstood and my message misinterpreted 

I could simply type out exactly the meanings I wish to convey, of course, but that's no fun. And, besides, there is no greater professional pleasure than encountering a colleague who is fluent in ambiguity and equivocation; a fellow traveler who has studied obfuscation as a second language.

These are the people I can do business with. After all, the passion for counter-productivity is a productive passion. Per ardua ad astra, as they say.