American Fez

Gulliver In The Fitting Room

Fashionistas like myself need to be aware of sizing differences when clothes shopping in different parts of the world. For example, I wear a men's size medium (M) sweater here in the United States. However, in the United Kingdom I'm required to size down to small (S) when purchasing a sweater. And in the United Federation of Pygmylands, only a size XXXL sweater will fit me correctly.

Of course, it's boiling hot in the Pygmylands, so sweater size isn't really an issue. Nevertheless, should a freak cold front suddenly materialize, it's smart to know your correct sweater size so you can quickly grab something warm and wooly from the store shelf before you start shivering. 

In fact, the only part of the world where inconsistent sweater sizing does not reign supreme is the North Pole. I am reliably informed that climbing inside frozen a freshly killed and still warm caribou carcass works on a one-size-fits-all (OSFA) basis.

Meanwhile, I worry that Texas will eventually secede from the Union and sweater size confusion across borders will only get worse. Judging by the hefty proportions of many Texans I've met, I believe I'll probably be an extra small (XS) in the Lone Star state. Then again, I doubt I'd ever buy a sweater in Texas no matter how cold it grew as I don't like rhinestone bling and wavy patterns. 

But even you manage to correlate all these global sizing differences, there is still the parallel universe of Big 'n' Tall, slim fit, and comfort stretch. I often wonder how the world is supposed to live together in peace and harmony when we can't even agree what size a mock turtleneck with raglan sleeves truly is. 

The Aeneid In A Manila Folder

"Oh well," our project manager says as yet another new business initiative evaporates into blank faces and apathetic shrugs. "I guess Rome wasn't built in a day."

Ah, if only we could build Rome. Alas, such marbled magnificence is far beyond our capabilities. These days we can just about manage a rudimentary settlement in the Alban Hills; modest dwellings only; no forum and no temples; and certainly no triumphal arches. Even the most primitive of Etruscans would consider our efforts to be inadequate. To paraphrase Augustus, we found a city of brick and it is still brick, but with more profane graffiti than before. 

In fact, we are so far from building Rome that, forget the Alban Hills, we might as well be barbarian nomads camped out far north of Hadrian's wall. We paint our faces blue and clothe ourselves in animal skins, mostly rabbit because we are too scared to hunt larger creatures. Nevertheless, we huddle around the embers of our dying fires to recite the sagas of mythical project managers from legendary projects of yore. 

But our sagas are not like the great oral storytelling traditions of antiquity. After all, nobody who works here has the capacity to remember any tale longer than an excuse for being late. So our sagas need to be written down; well, to tell the truth, we mostly just cut and paste them from the sagas of other companies that we've seen on the Internet.

Rome wasn't built in a day. Don't make me laugh. Here's my idea: we'll put a full page advertisement in the classifieds for Romulus and Remus. "Must supply own she-wolf." Meanwhile, our project manager can email the Cumaean Sybil for the umpteenth time. But I'm sure it will just get lost in the prophetess's spam folder yet again like all the others surely have.

Opus Zero

Many years ago at junior school, being taught the rudiments of music in the last classroom at the end of a gloomy corridor, our teacher played Gustav Holst's The Planets on the refrigerator-sized phonograph he wheeled out when not distributing recorders and triangles into our grubby, ten-year-old hands. Specifically, he played the movement entitled Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity. "Close your eyes," he commanded. "And listen to the music. What images do the sounds conjure in your mind?"

I was quite suspicious of this exercise, even at such a young age, believing it to be merely an excuse for the teacher to suck down a surreptitious cigarette instead of inculcating EGBDF into our notationally resistant brains. So naturally I imagined the father of the gods seated on the back of a giant eagle, flying high above the school and dispatching his thunderbolts to blast all my despised fellow students to kingdom come. It was a  fantasy that had nothing to do with my actual response to Holst's allegro giouoso and everything to do with filling my entire being with malicious glee. Such was how my juvenile mind found inspiration in works of art.

When the music ended, our teacher lifted the needle from the vinyl record with all the finesse of nightclub DJ practicing vigorous scratching techniques. Looking back, I think he would have preferred playing us the complete works of Alban Berg and quitting his thankless job altogether. As it was, the teacher wearily enquired of a particularly blank looking boy what visions, if any, Jupiter Bringer of Jollity had aroused in him. 

"I thought of the planet Jupiter in space," the boy said as blankly as he looked; a comically obtuse response that certainly brought me a great deal of joy. But it also brought me an important epiphany at an early age: Most people are literal-minded automatons possessing absolutely no imagination whatsoever. Is it any wonder the Gods decided it's no longer worth their while bringing us anything at all? We've been left to our own devices and we're not very good at that if the current state of the world is anything to go by.

Alas, the "Music of the Spheres" is now a staccato freestyle rap performed at ear-splitting volume, incomprehensible, tuneless, and impossible to dance to. Close your eyes and think of that, but I wouldn't recommend it. 

The Pied Town Crier

Ah the halcyon days of yore: rising with the yellow tinged mists of dawn; buxom servant girls scurrying around igniting logs in the fireplace and pouring your daily bath; cracking open lead-lined windows to empty a chamber pot into the street below; listening for the clang clang of the Town Crier's bell as he bellows breaking news into the brisk morning air. And hear ye, hear ye, what was the Town Crier's news in such bygone times? The result of a skirmish between hussars and dragoons in some previously unknown village in a far off country. A new tariff charged on the importation of Chinese silk. Silver buckles on shoes for men are out of fashion this season. Old Mother Whartie found guilty of witchcraft at the Impville assizes. Egbert Stringwiddler has composed a new minuet that is all the rage at court. All the news that's fit to cry, followed by a rapid regurgitation of sponsored classified ads for the local weaver, costermonger, butcher, baker, and candlestick maker.

I often wonder if there was a special Sunday morning Town Crier, more of a murmurer than a crier, operating on a much lazier schedule and delivering his news with a laconic, low-key drawl befitting the day of rest. Perhaps, after quietly relaying his weekend updates, such a Sunday Town Murmurer even linger around the nearest well telling a few comic stories before he left. But there were certainly Pied Town Criers, used and abused by the town's elders, who took their revenge by leading citizens astray with hypnotic chants of divisive fake news and mindless celebrity gossip. In fact, they are still with us today, although they wear suits and ties instead of a mottled tunic and matching leggings.

Youth's Magical Economy

I worked minimum-wage summer jobs every summer during my high school and college years in the nineteen-eighties. If only I had invested a portion of those paltry paycheck in a retirement account I could probably retire now. As it is, I wasted all my money on adolescent ephemera and now must work until I die.

But at least I have the memories. My favorite summer job was at Quick Lobster, a fast food seafood emporium long since vanished from the boardwalk. There is absolutely nothing "quick" about lobster, of course. But logic did not deter the owners from establishing franchises in several New England coastal towns. Employees wore badges demanding that confused customers Ask Me About Our Thermidor! Nobody ever did, obviously. The average Quick Lobster customer just wanted lobster meat mashed up with mayonnaise and celery on a roll. They didn't even care about lettuce leaf garnish, never mind a concoction of brandy and gruyere cheese.

Counter jobs at Quick Lobster required wearing a white shirt. I usually sported a short-sleeved cotton polo; occasionally a crumpled button-down dress shirt when all my polos were dirty. Once, when all my white shirts were in the laundry after a particularly messy double shift, I even wore my old prom shirt with ruffles down the front and cufflinks. One of the cufflinks got lost while I was rushing around organizing a Big Lobster Casserole. For weeks afterwards, I hoped the customer would come back to complain about a broken tooth and I'd get my cufflink back. Alas, I hoped in vain.

My strangest memory, however, is how my nineteen-eighties minimum wage job easily afforded me the ability to pay rent, feed and clothe myself, go galavanting at night with friends, buy books and records, and even purchase a new white shirt when necessary. I feel I can barely cover similar expenses today after thirty years of earning a professional salary. Such is the suspended reality of youth, I suppose.