American Fez

At The Flea Market

Genuine vintage toilet for sale. Mid-century modern. Bauhaus lines. Seat is not original but it's a top quality reproduction. Flush still works. The U-bend shows some signs of wear but that's only to be expected. Would be a perfect addition to a Frank Lloyd Wright home or anything by Gropius. Comes with the matching bidet but if you don't mind a dirty bum I can possibly split them up.

Do I hear a thousand bucks? .... Nine hundred bucks?

There's not a scratch on the enamel. This toilet has only been cleaned with organic oils and the softest leather rags. No abrasive liquids or wire scrubbing brushes. Only one previous owner. A fragrant lady of distinction and regular bowel movements. Opportunities do purchase a vintage toilet like this are very, very rare.

Do I hear eight hundred dollars? That's a bargain. I'm giving it away for seven hundred dollars ....

You are looking at one of the finest toilets ever produced. The work of a craftsman. An absolutely exquisite commode. This isn't the sort of average, modern toilet you'd call 'the can.' I don't know what the polite term for the toilet was in Viennese high society during the Secession, but that's what the likes of Gustav Klimt would have called this beauty when he needed to take a crap.

Six hundred dollars, my final offer. Includes the matching bidet and I'll also throw in this CD of Richard Strauss' Thus Spake Zarathustra and Other Favorites. Genuine vintage toilet for sale. Don't make me put it on Craigslist so any old loser with diarrhea can sit his unworthy backside on it. Do I hear five hundred dollars? ....

Anyone? Anyone at all? Any takers? 

Nice Work If You Can Get It

A Danube river tour guide answering questions about Hungarian history in four different languages; a hotel bellhop in Rome reasonably conversant in at least three and various forms of international baggage slang; a Gypsy beggar child in Athens attempting to beguile tourists in English, Spanish, then French and finally German.

Surely they'd be better off applying for simultaneous translation jobs at the United Nations, rather than scrabbling around European cities for minimum wage, gratuities, and loose change.

A young Chinese couple own and operate my local dry cleaner. Times are tough judging by those empty wire hangers swinging on the racks when I open the door from the street. But they're both at the counter from six to six, every day of the week, poring over paving slab-sized medical textbooks, adjusting their spectacles while pointing out important passages to each other. They hold my shirts up to the light as if scrutinizing an X-ray for signs of ketchup stain cancer or spilled gravy disease. They strap my wool overcoat onto a gurney and wheel it away for emergency attention. They do a great job for little reward.

I often think their dry cleaning business must be their idea of a relaxing break between delivering TED talks on obscure bacterial infections. But they live in the poky rooms above the crumbling storefront, so I doubt they lead exciting double lives.

At my work, we're waiting for a client to connect to our conference call. I spend the time writing this; Tim is idly thumbing through his phone; Janice and Pete are discussing Downton Abbey. We could be learning a new language or reading an educational textbook. We could be improving ourselves, but we're not. We're just wasting valuable time before the client tells us they're going with a different vendor on this one.

Still, our standard of living is good. I can afford to get my clothes dry cleaned, Tim is wearing a Versace t-shirt, Janice is off to Mexico next week and Pete just came back from the Bahamas. Nice work if you can get it.

What Makes Tomorrow's Homes So Indifferent, So Unappealing?

The technological singularity, of course, will not be when artificial intelligence advances beyond human understanding and control, but when it slumps into laziness and apathy. Imagine, if you will, an army of robotic Bartleby the Scriveners bleeping their disinterestedness. 

Moody, lethargic machines are fairly common in comedic science-fiction, yet you never hear technocrats or futurists bemoaning the possibility of such an unproductive development. They are possessed with a sort of myopic, self-abusive optimism. Even the prospect of human enslavement by Nazi androids seems to fill them with a sense of masturbatory awe. Every cloud has a silver metallic, self-programmable lining in their virtual Erewhon. They cannot imagine the ironic wrench thrown into their hubristic works.

Personally, I have no doubt that cybernauts wearing virtual reality goggles will actually daydream about being somewhere else, or that our domestic automatons will spit oil in our soup. I'm already pretty certain that my smartphone is prank calling me. 

Feels Good When It Stops

Our company builds custom brick walls against which you may bang your head. And we're not just the builders, we are also the clients.

We have over thirty years of forehead-slamming experience creating solution-negating obstacles and hindrances. Bruised, battered, or bleeding: we can provide the kind of frustration to meet your needs, er, head on.

No matter how migraine-inducingly petty or skull-crushingly complex, our team of professional naysayers will build the right wall for your head, stumbling block by stumbling block.

Call now! Customer service representatives are standing by to transfer you to another operator until you give up in despair and put the phone down.

Always Underachieving

A bruise blackened toenail emerges from tepid water sloshing around an old, rusted tin bathtub. I think it belongs to the mailman, lazily soaking his swollen feet instead of delivering letters that contain important and time sensitive information.

Two frightened eyes stare out of a mud-packed face. The cucumber slices covering her eyes fell off and slid down her cheeks like big green tears. It's the woman from the American Airlines check-in desk. No wonder your flight is delayed.

Buttocks quiver above a plastic chair, concerned there is no cushion to ease the impact of painful hemorrhoids meeting polyurethane. This is the backside of the person who answers the phone at Customer Care, except there's no answer because this person is on a perpetual bathroom break, re-applying ointments and balms.

It's impossible to get anything done today.

Motivational Indigestion

'When you devour the flesh of another animal,' said Roland the Shamanic Chef from the stage. 'You assume the power of that animal.' He glanced around the auditorium, allowing the implications of this extraordinary claim a chance to simmer in the minds of his audience. 

'I now have the power of a chicken,' they all thought. 

The sceptical among them, however, wondered if a small blob of chicken salad from the lunch buffet really counted as the flesh of another animal. After all, the copious amounts of mayonnaise involved must surely hinder the power transference process?

And what of those diners in Paris currently consuming the power of frogs' legs? Would such pirated dynamism gain them anything beyond the ability to hop a mere yard or two along the Champs Élysées, if that?

And what about the powers ingested by eating oxtail soup, eel pie, goat's head stew, Portuguese sardines in tomato ketchup? So many questions.

But Roland was on the move again: striding to center stage where the ersatz kitchen counter was. 'So for the afternoon session,' he announced. 'I'm going to show you how to cook a side of bison. Now this recipe will make a meal for four, so all the family gets some of that famous bovine power of belligerence because we all need to become a little more assertive in our everyday lives.'

'Shut up and give me my money back you two-bit excuse for a snake oil salesman!' shouted a heckler in row F, standing up and shaking his fist at Roland as those in his immediate vicinity turned around to stare at him.

'Sorry. I ate the last of the prairie oysters,' the heckler explained, rubbing his stomach before sitting down again.

The Commercial Fringe

The shopping mall massage chair business is a hard-earned dollar. All you can do is offer a brief in-situ experience, as nobody actually wants to install one permanently in their home. After all, the average massage chair is about the same size as a double bed. Then where you put your ninety-inch 4K television?

And, although there is no shortage of sweat-panted, food-court fattened shoppers who might enjoy nothing more than wallowing, hippo-like, in the leathery, undulating comfort of such mechanical furniture, the bargain hunting masses rarely trudge through the neglected mezzanines where massage chair floor models languish.

I only came across the examples pictured below when lost in the catacombs of Level 2A, wandering past the shoe repair station and the lost property kiosk, searching for the bathrooms at the end of a dimly-lit corridor.

These enormous receptacles for aching bones had been dumped in the walkway and left to peddle their own orthopedic benefits. No human salesman was present, but the insertion of a dollar bill in the armrest slot bought a minute of lower back pain relief if you were so inclined.

Does anybody ever have a go on these? I asked the equally idle shoe repair guy.

He wrinkled his nose and shook his head. Folk just come here to take a piss and then leave, he said. That's the only foot traffic we get. Sometimes you'll get a couple having an argument over in the corner, but mostly it's just piss and leave. 

I thought it would be polite to ask him how his business was doing, despite my better judgement and overwhelming urge to join the ranks of the piss and leave people. He shrugged. Been better, been worse.

I didn't ask him what could be worse than a day with zero sales spent watching people walk in and out of the bathrooms. Perhaps no longer being needed at all, like the guy who used to cajole people into trying the massage chairs but was replaced by an automated payment machine.