American Fez

The Lazy Lamborghini

I want to be a man of accomplishments. I believe I possess the potential but for some reason I can't get started. If I was a sports car, I'd do zero to sixty in about, oh I don't know, probably in about an hour or two, give or take.

You see, my engine requires at least twenty minutes of idling time while I'm checking the mirrors, adjusting the seat belts, and fiddling with the GPS before finally deciding that it's been revved enough and I can grasp the steering wheel with both hands and reluctantly toe the accelerator. 

Even then I'm backing out of the driveway in reverse rather than just shooting off straight down the highway. And once in the flow of traffic, my impatient aspirations and enthusiasms are riding my tail, bumper to bumper, horns blaring, but I'm one of life's Sunday drivers hogging the fast lane, going nowhere in particular at no great speed. 

Horsepower? I prefer to measure my energy output in terms of tortoise-ambles. Suffice it say, the number of tortoise-ambles I expend in a day is not high. But 'slow and steady wins the race' as the fable says. That's what I tell myself at any rate.

Although it often seems like the races I enter these days are the ones nobody else is bothered to run. I wear the laurels of the Obsolete 500, the Head-On Imbroglio, the Impostor's Rally, the Superannuated Grand Prix, and, of course, the Demolition Derby.

Perhaps with a little more ignition I could have been a contender, the pride of the gleaming Lamborghini showroom. Instead I've allowed myself to be shunted out to the back lot, propped up on blocks and soon to be stripped for parts. 

Still, you never know. Even after all this time, with a fancy fresh paint job, new high-performance tires, an oil change, and the installation of satellite radio and Wi-Fi, maybe my engine can make a go of it again. A second chance to rip up the road and tear down the tarmac. A New Years beckons, after all, and I still have a chassis to build a dream on.

Once. Twice. Three Times In Royal David's City

Considering the Nativity of Jesus surely symbolizes new beginnings, it's remarkable that our celebrations of Christmas are so heavily swaddled in an almost neurotic nostalgia for the past.

A snowbound Victorian village, wooden Edwardian toys, mid-century decorations and trimmings, fireside songs and medieval carols, roast beasts and mince pie puddings, the 'White Christmas' just like the ones we used to know.

Frankly, I can't think of a single contemporary representation of Christmas that anyone cares about. 

Except ... I just glanced out of my window and noticed the enormous inflatable Santa Claus my neighbor has erected in his front yard. I suppose such ostentatious seasonal spirit is fairly modern. 

Anyway, however you celebrate the holidays, I wish anyone who has kindly stuck with this blog over the years a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Downloadable Library

These days, when "left to our own devices" we are literally being left to our own devices: the iPhones, laptops, and tablets connecting us to a world where interpersonal human communication is not required.

Unless there's no wi-fi, of course. In which case we are abandoned to the entertainment provided by twiddling our thumbs and staring at the wall. 

This is why I download many of the books I would not normally read to the Kindle application on my phone. Now, when "left to my own devices," I can read these books I would not normally read to relieve the tedium. The complete works of Sabine Baring Gould, for instance, which can be obtained for a single dollar in digital form.

I often wonder why we don't refer to e-books as "digitalback" as we do with books in hard or soft covers. Or "deviceback," for that matter.

In fact, I must admit, unless I consider a book can hold its own with Shakespeare and the Bible I will not buy a physical copy anymore. E-books are easier on my aging eyes; they do not need to be spine-crackingly wedged into already overcrowded bookshelves; and their pages don't get smudged by fingers that are idly conveying chocolate truffles to the reader's mouth during the reading process – fingers, you could argue, that have been "left to their own devices" in the original, non-digital meaning of the phrase.

There is a major drawback to e-books, of course, and that is the tedious non-occasion inherent when e-books are given as a gift. Your loved ones can't "open" a gift that is delivered wirelessly via the Internet. You can't tie a big, red bow around digital text or wrap it up in fancy paper.

Consequently, anyone who who requested for e-books from Santa Claus will find their Christmas morning is not particularly special. In fact, while other family members are ripping apart presents beneath the tree, they will be "left to their own devices," both literally and figuratively.

The One That Got Away

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

Except, of course, the man will be assigned the most polluted stretch of river, where there are zero fish to be caught. This is modern capitalism's confidence trick; a bait and switch scam, literally.

Not that I advocate socialist fishing, by any means. Thousands of listless anglers sharing the same rusty hook and half-dead worm while sitting on the bank of a stagnant pond is no answer, either. 

Fortunately, the future beckons with its promise of cloned meats. Hooray for science featuring James Watson and Francis Crick in chef's hats.

The man shall no longer need to learn how to fish to supply his dinner table with salmon filets. He is merely required to maintain and operate a salmon cloning laboratory in his kitchen. The man pours the contents of his salmon DNA sachet into the pull-out tray provided, adds water, sets the cloning switch to "grilled" or "smoked" and, hey presto, the man's gourmet salmon entree is served.

But can it really be that simple? God knows we still haven't discovered how to make a normal paper printer that doesn't constantly jam and break. You have to think that a meat cloning device in the home is going to be even more temperamental and unreliable. So much for technology.

I can make a carrot and stick argument for vegetarianism here, albeit rather elitist and convoluted: Give a man a truffle and you feed him for half an hour. Give a man truffle-hunting pigs and he can create a blog about his agricultural exploits and rural lifestyle, becoming an Online influencer selling advertising on his lucrative web site and able to afford whatever he wants to buy at Whole Foods Market. 

Alas, I obviously have no solutions for economic inequality and the food crisis. But clearly neither does anyone else. Just give us the bloody fish already and get it over with. I guess we'll just have to make do with the frozen tilapia from Mexico.