American Fez

Vanitas

Many, many years ago, an attractive woman at work, slightly senior to me, just happened to mention that I looked good in warm tones: an offhand remark that I took to heart and have lived by ever since.

Of course, she had no qualifications for making such a statement other than being an attractive woman slightly senior to me, but as far as I was concerned it was Claudia Cardinale channeling the wisdom of Solomon. In fact, I immediately embarked upon a warm tone shopping spree at the nearest Mall the very next day. The result was a wardrobe crammed with shirts and sweaters in shades of red and gold and laundry loads of unseparated colors that assumed a distinct roseate hue during the washing cycle.

Despite this domestic setback, I persevered with my warm tone sartorial color scheme and opening my closet door was like walking into a cotton sunset. Even my dress shirts were described as "cream" rather than pure white.

However, I recently had cause to wear a neutral grey golf shirt for a professional event demanding such attire. I spent the entire day avoiding the pools of light in our exhibit booth, concerned that my complexion looked too pink or too pale or whatever hideously fleshy truths were betrayed by a lack of warm-toned fabric on my body. But as the event was drawing to a close, a gay male colleague suggested I should dress in cool grey more often as it really suited me. No doubt I blushed and dark green suddenly became an appropriate shade for me also.

Of course, I don't really care about such nonsense. Vanity ceased being an issue for me when the first visible nose hairs claimed the previously vacant lot in my left nostril, swiftly followed their cousins in the nostril next door and their extended family camped out in my ears.

In fact, these days I go for multi-colored patterns to hide the food stains and drool. Hospital gown chic is another of my go-to outfits. I like to think the clinician blue sets off my eyes nicely. 

New Tempo

Seasonal and professional logistics mean adjustments to my body and time management clocks are required. This is not simply a matter of winding my watch's hour hand forward by one hour, for my internal pendulum does not run on digital information or even cogs and gears.

No, powerful sunbeams are needed because my biological chronology is apparently controlled by an old-fashioned sundial planted in the center of my head. 

My doctor talks about some sort of trendy ailment he calls "seasonal affective disorder." And perhaps I should immerse my face in a radiating pool of brilliant white light before leaving the house. But this will only improve my body clock; it won't help much with my time management problems at work.

God knows I can't keep waiting for my unreliable gnomon to cast its ponderous shadow before addressing other business. At least I still hear the trusty chimes of employment each day, despite my heliocentric, haphazard schedule.

Alas, I can only wish my body and time management clocks were as grand as a hallway of grandfather clocks, as impressive as a Rolex strapped to a muscular arm, or as quirky as a wall of cuckoo clocks. Instead, I am burdened with this stationary plinth of antique timekeeping. Maybe I should invest in a pair of working gong-shaped earrings? Perhaps later, in an hour or two.

Death (of a Thousand Cuts) And Taxes

Preparing my tax return each year, I feel like a half-drowned conquistador, kneedeep in the Amazon, fruitlessly searching for El Dorado, which in my case is the mythical "refund" I can claim from the IRS.

Alas, I am forced to abandon my expedition: bedeviled by the darts of invisible foes, afflicted with malignant diseases, lost and bewildered in a dense, inhospitable and impenetrable jungle of American tax law. Eventually, I succumb to despair.

My wife's tax return, on the hand, reminds me of the work of Herodotus: a detailed exposition of the government's war against small business. Thermopylae has become the home office deduction, the last, ever-shrinking, and ultimately doomed bastion of defense against the income pillaging oppressor. 

"The business of America is business," Calvin Coolidge famously belched prior to the Great Depression. But in modern times, the business of America has become taxing business into unrecognizable rubble, observe the long lines of self-employed refugees trudging from the smoking ruins of once profitable ventures towards the wage slavery of the so-called Gig Economy.This process is euphemistically known as entrepreneurship.

But I should quit complaining. Our health insurance premium increased by thirty percent again this year and will do so again for 2018. Soon we'll make so little money I hope to qualify for no tax status and you won't have to read my ranting on the subject anymore.

High Deductible

These days, my doctor's office, hereafter known as "the point of sale," reminds me of an upscale boutique stocked with luxurious merchandise betraying no visible price tag. If you need to ask what it costs then you can't afford it, as they say: a dictum we can now apply to bloodwork, CAT scans, and cholesterol testing.

Like children outside a candy store, our noses are pressed against the clinic window as we gaze longingly at the mouthwatering medical procedures available inside. Then we get a crick in our necks from gazing, which is ironic because our new health plan doesn't cover chiropractors anymore.

But even if we were so callow as to ask what treatments cost at "the point of sale," the white-coated sales clerks wouldn't know. They'd twiddle their stethoscopes while mumbling something about it not being possible to put a price on health and wellbeing.

We live in an age of super fast networked computers. I can't see why insurance information can't be entered into a database and a reasonable estimation of charges can't be made while you wait. But no. Instead, we must wait for an indecipherable bill to arrive three months later for outrageous sums of money for tests we've forgotten we had done.

Honestly, I've experienced more transparent transactions at the black market bazaar in Cairo than at my doctor's office.