American Fez

Only Happy When It's Seventy Degrees

In the bleak, dark depths of midwinter, I dream of high summer: lazy days beneath a tropical sun, lounging by the ocean, listening to the crash of the surf, slurping a Mai Tai in the shade of the palm trees. It's a paradise of the mind with poolside drinks. Fly me there, oh Helios, on the back of flamingo wings.

Of course, I've forgotten how uncomfortable summer can be. There is no heatstroke or sunburn in my reverie, for instance, no suffocating humidity, no sticky streams of sweat pouring down my spine and definitely no rough grains of beach residue sandpapering my private parts, and I'll suddenly remember that I start to feel sick from all the sugar of more than two Mai Tais.

Then there are all the ugly people: the crowds of camera-toting daytrippers, the hordes of heavyweight tourists, those barbarians at the gates of wherever it is you came to find peace and quiet ... and the sobering realization that I am someone else's barbarian (although I at least don't wear flip flops).

So come mid-August I'll be sick of summer's inconveniences and be dreaming about relaxing by a December fireside with mulled cider, having forgotten all about the intolerable winter weather with its wet snow and freezing winds, itchy woolens and coughs and colds. Fly me there, oh Jack Frost, on the back of robin redbreast wings. 

Which is why I'm only truly content during that short week of seventy-degree weather we used to call Spring, an ever decreasing, finger-countable number of blissfully temperate days sandwiched between Arctic Winter and Equatorial Summer. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what bird's wings would transport me there as Spring is more of a rabbit thing.

Survival of the Cutest

Wild rabbits, those proverbially indiscriminate progenitors, are appearing in ever increasing numbers in my neighborhood. They compete for backyard hideaways with the gymnastic squirrels, vicious turkeys, rodents of various sizes, and the smelled but rarely spotted skunks that already inhabit the area, much to the annoyance of my dog who is driven to distraction by all four-legged interlopers. Soon I'll be able to conduct safaris of the street in a Land Rover decorated with urban jungle camouflage.

It is Spring, of course, the season of bunnies and hares, long-eared hijinks and all things pastel. Nevertheless, it still seems as if I've been cast in a live-action version of Watership Down or become a character in a story by Beatrix Potter.

Born into a superstitious family, I was taught to recite the folk charm "rabbits rabbit rabbits" on the first day of every month to bring good luck into my life. This effortless magic spell has worked for the most part so I've continued reciting rabbits in triplicate to the present day, often afraid that I might forget and incur disaster. Fortunately, this current proliferation of rabbits provides an instant reminder of any such oversight as soon as I step outside.

I suppose I could say the same about the skunks should I neglect to apply deodorant to my underarms, but personal hygiene regimens are much easier to remember than the repetition of amateur enchantments in this modern world of ours. So the skunks can go extinct for all I care. Ditto the rats who recall nothing to mind. And as for the turkeys, well, I'm hardly likely to overlook ordering that club sandwich lunch, am I?

Mail Room Ghost Tour

Our company has no office dress code, so the contemporary grey flannel suit for junior employees is often just a sweatshirt, blue jeans, and sneakers. Tim from Shipping and Receiving, for example, wears a hoodie all the time with the hood obscuring his acne-riddled face.

He shuffles around the cubicles with his burden of packages like some gloomy hooded specter doomed to stalk the Earth until he rediscovers the reason he was ever alive in the first place. God knows I'd be more than willing to fetch my own mail if we could exorcize his lugubrious presence from the building forever. "The power of Christ compels you ... and no stopping by the water cooler complaining to your fellow malcontents on your way out."

Honestly, Tim being sent to his eternal rest would be the best thing for all concerned. He surely belongs in Happy Valley where he can play videogames and Facebook with other lethargic souls, instead of being chained to this physical world of responsibilities and endeavor and boring stuff like that.

Sacre Bleu

One of the recurring difficulties of learning to speak various romance languages is the complicated issue of gendered words. My new revolutionary language course solves this problem by introducing the concept of Transgendered Vocabulary For Tourists (TVFT). It is available as a conveniently pocket-sized and lightweight paperback you can bring on your vacations to foreign parts.

For example, when you are dining at a Parisian restaurant and the sanctimonious, reactionary French waiter smugly corrects your use of the masculine when the feminine was required, my handy woke phrasebook suggests many outraged en français insults you can hurl at the bigoted, right-wing garcon. 

Also, listed in most European languages in non-binary format is the protestation "Boycott This Anti-LGBT Restaurant," which you can copy out and post in the lobby of your hotel for other guests to read, regardless of their nationality (or gender). 

Obviously, I suppose you could just carefully employ the gender-neutral French or Italian words for 'they' or 'them'' instead of 'he' or 'she,' but where is the fun in that when you can be snarling reprovingly ad self-righteously with colorful epithets from my phrasebook? Besides, I wouldn't actually sell any books if my fellow travelers were so cautious and considerate with their language choices when abroad. And my sales are the important thing in all this, after all.