Rum, Curmudgeonly and the Lash

I've never been to an island island before; well, at least not the excessively sandy, palm-tree'd kind where somnambulant locals slurp rum and listen to steel drums while filing great slabs of toenail with chunks of white coral. As a defiantly pale, vaguely Northern European person such environments make me feel rather like a frozen chicken trapped inside a red-hot rotisserie. I'm a winter person, infinitely preferring snow country to sun-soaked paradise, wearing duffle coats to swimming trunks and traveling via dog-sled rather than on a surf board. Nevertheless, we went to Bermuda for a week because my wife enjoys the beach and Jet Blue was offering deals. 
"The isle is full of noises" exclaims Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest, a play many scholars believe to be partly inspired by contemporary descriptions of Bermuda, and popular sections are still somewhat rackety at times; although the cries of shipwrecked sailors have been replaced by the tinny whine of tourist mopeds and the obnoxious bellowing of cruise ship klaxons. I was surprised by a sort of high-pitched hiccuping noise emanating from the abundant greenery each evening. At first I thought it might be a motorcade of malfunctioning car alarms, but it merely turned out to be the island's infamous whistling frogs. 
Fortunately, as with most prominent vacation destinations, traveling slightly off-season in early September will ensure that the clamoring crowds are sparse while the weather and the water are still warm. Indeed, it's quite possible that you can take possession of your own picturesque cove and wade into the breathtakingly turquoise sea, only to be suddenly submerged by a deceptively powerful wave like I was. That'll teach me to scorn the beauty of island islands.

St George and the Airport Shuttle

Despite the relentless sun with its blazing heat still beating down upon my head, I'm already in an autumnal frame of mind. There ought to be apple cider instead of lemonade, I feel, and brown leaves rather than green and thunder showers should be replaced by driving rain ... which is a bit of a problem since I'm leaving for the pink beaches of Bermuda on Thursday morning and probably won't enjoy myself now. I've briefly considered changing the booking to Malmo or Bucharest at the last minute, but alas my wife does not approve, so tropical island vacation here I come.
According to our hotel's website, they provide a complimentary shuttle from the airport that merely requires booking with the concierge a day before your arrival. But, as I discovered, information about this service should also be included in the phantom stagecoach section of "Myths and Legends of Old Bermuda."
The concierge was very vague when I spoke to him over the phone. Yes, he had once heard tell of such a thing when sitting around a camp fire late at night, but nobody had actually ever seen the shuttle service.
But it has its own pop-up window on your website's homepage, I explained.
Some guests have regaled TripAdvisor with weird tales of a minibus and strange comings and goings, he replied dismissively, but it's best to ignore the ravings of jet-lagged lunatics. These crazy tourists also claim to have witnessed instant room upgrades and free WiFi, he added, but no-one in their right mind believes such superstitious nonsense.
So apparently the Bermuda Triangle has moved inland and our hotel's complimentary shuttle service from the airport is lost within its misty, isoscelesian confines. I imagine that the concierge is just afraid to admit this disturbing fact to his guests, since such paranormal activity might scare the golfers and honeymooners off. But I don't mind. The mistier and creepier the better as far as I'm concerned. Bring on the fog. It will suit my browning mood much better than cyan skies, blue seas and and pink sand.

Scene Changes

Sometimes, in the early morning, I walk through the grubby backstreets around Central Square, observing the human debris sprawled across long-suffering benches and huddled in urine-dampened concrete alcoves: the indifferent rubble that remains after social conventions are abandoned; apathetic refugees living in the ruins of themselves, once more preparing to sacrifice their day to some sort of grimy Chthonic sewer deity. But I don't observe for very long. These demolished lives are a too visceral reminder of how fragile and precarious standards of living can be. And besides, the smell is appalling. This must be how fresh air feels when brushing against a sweating, fetid armpit: "Get me me out of here!" It's all rather depressing, to be honest. So quickening my pace, past the empty banks and crowded Starbucks, I walk onwards in the direction of leafy Cambridgeport.
Suddenly, a fellow pedestrian and myself are knocked sideways by a wild-eyed jogger wearing Vibram foot gloves and a CoolMax bodysuit. He leaps out from between two parked cars like Spiderman, slams into us, vaults a trashcan and sprints up the street without apologizing, propelled by the obliviously unstoppable force of his own insatiable arrogance. I silently hope that he might trip over the slumbering vagrants and break his neck when he reaches them, but he is unfortunately far too agile to be toppled by such insignificant obstructions. In fact, I suppose he will merely employ their prostate torsos as a series of springboards for extra velocity when running through the thick wall of atmospheric stink.Now I'm passing the neo-Byzantine stronghold that is the Church of Constantine and Helena, named after the Roman Emperor who relocated the center of civilisation from West to East - always a bad move - and his sainted mother. There is much inconvenient rubble here, too, mostly around the foundations and spilling out onto the sidewalk, although comprised of cascading masonry rather than flesh and blood, and contained by orange colored plastic netting. "Please pardon our appearance during renovations" an adjacent placard pleads. At least there are some indications of polite society this morning.

As you can see, I am making vain attempts to add illustrations to my blog. I would have taken pictures of the vagrants and the jogger, also, but I was afraid of the vagrants and the jogger was too fast. Consequently there is only this rather innocuous photograph of the Greek church. I'm not really sure what purpose it serves, but at least it's something.

Things That Go Beep in the Night

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) is the name given to recordings of anomalous sounds that credulous ghost-hunters often interpret as paranormal speech; the vocal imprints of departed souls whose otherworldly communications require a little more nuance than just clanking chains and moaning in drafty corridors. Exactly how the disembodied spirit of a seventeenth century monk could manipulate magnetic tape or digital files is unknown, yet belief in EVP has been prevalent for many years. Even I, when an impressionable teenager, convinced that the family home was haunted by the restless spirit of a domestic maid, once attempted to capture an EVP with my tape recorder. 
Relaxing in my bedroom, perusing a dog-eared copy of Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener, I would often hear the wretched woman's shade floating through the walls from room to room, wailing that her chores were never done. I tried to catch a glimpse of her on several occasions, but she had already vanished by the time I got to whichever room her voice seemed to emanate from, and only my mother would be standing there.
"Did you see the ghost?" I would demand breathlessly, but mother would simply reply with a pained expression. Apparently only I was the only family member gifted with the aural equivalent of second sight. Consequently I decided to try the EVP approach to prove that I wasn't crazy. 
In the event, my EVP session turned out to be an disappointing experiment, only producing a sort of muffled drone bearing an uncanny resemblance to the sound of my father suggesting that I should mow the lawn. Very eerie and disturbing, but since it was obviously nothing I just ignored it. 
Most examples of purported EVP are, of course, merely errant radio transmissions or tricks of the ear, so-called "auditory pareidolia," a fancy term for hearing something that isn't really there; and all those futile paranormal-investigator TV shows have finally established beyond all doubt that ghosts absolutely do not exist, never mind borrow someone's microphone when in the mood talk. Yet recently my teenage interest in EVP has came back to, well, it has come back to haunt me.
Settling in my office each workday morning, I began discovering that my telephone was recording messages left late the previous evening, even over the weekend and on public holidays. These were inappropriate calling times when any normal person would not be at work to pick up the phone. At first, having dismissed the appealing notion that they might actually be warnings from the spirit world, urging me to quit my obsolete and unprofitable occupation and turn my undervalued talents to the more lucrative and sustainable enterprise of chimney-sweeping instead, I naturally concluded that the messages must be from either robot-spammers or wrong-numbers (they couldn't possibly come from clients or vendors, so what else could they be?). And so I simply deleted them immediately without listening to the contents. After all, nobody wants to start their day listening to a tedious string of hang-ups, dial-tones and synthetic "Hellos!" But several consecutive mornings of being greeted by a persistently blinking phone eventually peaked my curiosity and on Thursday I decided to let the recordings play.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I heard the voice of a real, live person; albeit the voice of a real, live person who sounded either half asleep or drugged: "Er, yeah, do you have any jobs available there?" this drowsy voice enquired. "And who do I send my resume to?" 
In fact, I was so surprised at hearing a real, live voice (even one that was so obviously exhibiting signs of diminished responsibility) that it took me ten or fifteen minutes to remember to press delete and move on. But the next message was only the same voice sullenly demanding the same information; and so was the next one; and the one after that; until by the fourth message the voice had woken up slightly and seemed quite resentful, accusing me of being unprofessional for not returning its calls. 
Although this voice wasn't ghostly per se, I decided it was a bona-fide example of Electronic Voice Phenomena since it and I obviously existed in separate realms of reality. I inhabit a reasonable approximation of the normal everyday world, whereas the source of the EVP apparently dwells in the twilight lands of the Forever Smoking Purple Bong. Yet some sort of cosmic crosstalk had enabled the voice to depart its own half-baked dimension and manifest itself in mine. 
Of course, the advantage of only experiencing audible phenomena is being spared any accompanying ocular terror. A fully visible, slouching, sullen materialization of the voice's spine-chilling owner in his grease-stained hoodie, skinny jeans and grubby flip-flops would probably send any witness into fits of uncontrollable shaking and frothing at the mouth. And so my hope is that, having expended whatever feeble reserves of energy it possesses on leaving telephonic EVPs, the voice can never now summon the strength to appear in person. I hate dealing with the general public, especially the general public who harbor the weird delusion that jobs exist for the asking.

My Bucket List

Compiling a bucket list, that morbid agenda of stuff to do before you die, is, like death itself, a rather self-defeating experience. Whatever the desired activity listed, whether it be a travel destination or an extreme sporting pursuit, chances are that you will modify its details over time as new horizons and the desirable objects they reveal are encountered. For instance, when I was in my profoundly pretentious twenties, at the very top of my bucket list was the cherished dream of making a pilgrimage to the annual Noizestadt Festival, to hear cult composer Ludwig Maniak's Schitzmuzik performed in its natural habitat, an über-intellectual event I'd read much about in various artsy magazines. Then I actually heard several minutes of Schitzmuzik and traveling to Noizestadt was suddenly toppled from its lofty perch by a profound wish to avoid Noizenstadt and its atonal festival at all costs (an ambition so far fulfilled, except for a brief scare when I got lost in the Austrian Alps six years ago).


Since those days of misguided youth, I have attempted to keep the contents of my bucket list less defined and more symbolic; so symbolic, in fact, that my bucket list these days is actually just a list of different buckets with symbolic value; buckets that I consider to be somewhat emblematic of the riches life has to offer. There is the champagne bucket, naturally, because we should always be celebrating something. The small domestic tub for turning upside-down and wearing on our heads for playing Game of Thrones with a toilet brush as a sword when we should really be doing the household chores. The red fire bucket for running around with while screaming "Fire!" just because we're bored at work. The elegant clay urn that adds a romantic, classical Italianate touch to otherwise neglected gardens. The antique silver pail for attending Halloween parties or Zodiac theme evenings dressed as Aquarius the water-bearer. The mysterious copper cauldron that we only use to brew outlandish and experimental soups and broths from weird, witchy recipes. And finally the seaside-souvenir sandcastle bucket, obviously, for erecting a temporary perimeter of coastal defenses around the area of the beach we're sitting on.


Although the order of precedence might change from season to season, this bucket list of must-have buckets can surely be carved in stone. So far I have succeeded in only obtaining six of them. One still eludes me. Can you guess which one it is? ... Yes, that's right. It's the small domestic tub. I'm damned if I'm going spend $4.98 retail on something that costs less than fifty cents to manufacture, even if it is made of stain-resistant durable rubber and features an easy-grip molded handle. But anyway, I don't believe I will yearn for any other types of buckets until the day I finally kick the big metaphorical bucket: a day I hope is far off in the very distant future.

Huis Clos

I'm in the IKEA mega store, pushing a laden shopping cart through a maze of shelving stacked high with must-have-but-don't-really-need products, desperately seeking the checkout area. It's such a labyrinth in here. Any minute now an assistant Minotaur in a yellow staff shirt might emerge from behind a rack of modular bookcases to demand if he can help me find anything.
"I've been lost for hours." I'd say. "Please can you point me towards the exit?"
The Minotaur would throw his bull's head back and roar with laughter. "There is no exit," he'd reply. "That's just some ancient myth. Nobody believes in the exits anymore." Then he'd direct me to a display of Scandinavian couches with washable cushions.
Perhaps I should have left a trail of little wooden pegs behind me, so I could have retraced my steps back to the entrance. I'm sure I've already been past these Vuillard Parisian theme toilet seat covers at least three times in the last hour. They're unsurprisingly on sale. Maybe someone in the Food Court might know where the checkout is? I can ask at the meatball counter ...

"Next ... sauce or no sauce?"
"I don't want anything. I'm just looking for the checkout?"
"Cashiers are where the soda cooler is at."
"But I'm not buying any food. I just want to pay for this stuff I got from the actual store. Can you tell me where the regular checkout is?"
"It's downstairs somewhere, near the parking lot where you came in."
"Yeah I know, but I can't actually seem to find my way back there."
"Well you can go to the elevators by the bathrooms which are where the closet organizing section is and you can ask somebody there which floor the checkout is at. Okay... Next ... sauce or no sauce?"

I trudge off in search of the elevators, slaloming my way through a thicket of shoe racks and hanging sweater boxes, eventually finding them at the end of a corridor where exhausted families slump against the wall like refugees from Plywoodland. These are my people. Soon transportation will arrive and we can begin the next stage of our migration to the Exits.

Bing! "Register number 338 is now available. Please proceed to register number 338. This register is located on Level 9 and can be accessed via the Red Zone walkway followed by the Green Zone escalators. A customer care professional will greet you on Level 9 and escort you through the checkout tunnel to register number 338. All coupons and rebates must be handed in to the appropriate service concierge at this time. If you have coupons and rebates please proceed to the service concierge desk at the Red Zone walkway embarkation point before proceeding to register number 338. Register number 338 is now available. Please proceed to ...." Bing! "Register number 476 is now available. Please proceed to register number 476. This register is located on Level 12b via the shuttle buses leaving from the Blue Zone mezzanine. A customer care professional will greet you at the transfer portal and conduct you to the Orange Zone zip-line. You're on your own after that I'm afraid. Register number 476 is now available. Please proceed to register number 476. All other registers are currently occupied serving other customers. Please stand by for the next available register."

And that's just the 10 items or less line. When I make it to the front I'm assigned Register number 893, housed in the Purple Annex, apparently just a short monorail trip from the main building. This is it, I tell myself as the train pulls out, the final chapter of my IKEA odyssey. At last the long search for a checkout counter is over and I should be home with just enough time to self-assemble my stuff before bed.

"Did you find everything you were looking for today?" cashier number 893 asks when I arrive.
"Well, the stuff I wanted was no problem," I reply with as much arch-eyebrow as I can muster. "But I had a little trouble finding you."
He looks at me blankly, his barcode scanner bleeping expectantly. "And what is the stuff you want to buy today?"
At which point I realize that I've left my shopping basket at the meatball counter when I asked for directions.

In Dreams Begin Irresponsibilities

Perhaps it's the lack of rich food eaten before retiring to bed, but I no longer appear in my own dreams. Apparently I have been left on sleep's cutting-room floor, so to speak. Consequently there are no sudden materializations of my dream self at high school in the middle of a trigonometry exam that I know nothing about; no nudist wanderings in and out of the office cubicles of contemporary colleagues; no recurring sensations of endlessly falling into a bottomless black void; not even the next morning's vague recollections of my teeth dropping out one by one while misspelling the word "Kafkaesque" at a subterranean, Grand Guignol spelling bee.
Alas, my dreams are mostly confined to weary appraisals of curious images by a sort of disassociated, long-suffering universal eye. It's certainly not my eye. It doesn't get distracted enough to be my eye. Subjects under scrutiny can include anything from an overstuffed armchair to an erupting volcano, and are usually influenced by minutiae encountered during the day. One wonders why my mind requires subconscious REM processing of such dull vignettes? Obviously it views me as an observer of inessential details rather than the romantic protagonist of an action-packed nightmare. Which is fine by me since I have no desire to wake up in a cold sweat each morning, gripping the sides of the mattress and fighting my bedsheets with my feet.
In fact, I fail to see how any sane person can be interested in these disjointed, nonsensical narratives dredged up from the deepest recesses of dormant minds. The ridiculous "work" of Sigmund Freud and his rabid acolytes proves my point beyond dispute. Freud believed that dreams are a form of wish fulfillment. This theory is clearly absurd, since I never dream that all his tedious books are mercifully transformed back into the trees from which their pages were wrought; a transformation I devoutly wish to be fulfilled. So, auf wiedersehen Sigmund. Don't let the symbolic door hit your Id, Ego and Super-ego on the way out.
According to the dream dictionary I consulted, to dream of saltpeter indicates sorrow and heartache. But how many meaning-seeking dreamers can distinguish saltpeter from regular salt? It's an important distinction because, according to the same book, to dream of regular salt suggests abundance and excitability, which is a rather different takeaway in the morning if you'd been actively amorous before falling asleep.
If you ask me, dreams mean nothing beyond the crude interpretations that curious and often prurient imaginations can associate with whatever objects feature prominently in them. So it seems fair to say that, in common with all forms of critique, dreams reveal more about the interpreter than the actual dreamer. I dream about static images of overstuffed armchairs and erupting volcanoes ... the ball is in your court.

The Unacceptable Face of Summer

Despite erring, hopefully, on the side of quality fabrics and a decent fit, I'm not particularly partial to either trendy or traditional clothes. Both schools of tailoring are capable of producing stylish and functional results, if you ask me. Except, that is, when it comes to men's swimming trunks and other seaside fashions designed for turning lethargy into an extreme sport. In other words: resort wear. the unacceptable face of summer.
"I am a human; nothing human is alien to me" wrote the affable Roman playwright Terence, who obviously never set foot in a store selling resort wear. Such an experience would surely shake his faith in benign homogeneity. Voluminous board shorts, plastic flip flops, marijuana themed t-shirts, over-sized sunglasses, neon thongs, colored beads, novelty Rasta wigs and unidentifiable objects woven from hemp. Need I go on? These are clothes for bovine oafs who consider being hungover, high and comatose to be a reasonable way of life. I'm not saying vacationers should sunbathe on the beach in evening gowns, or wade in the breakers wearing tuxedos with the pant legs rolled-up, but surely there is a certain level of decorum to expected. Whatever happened to the good old days of light-colored linen jackets, Panama hats, rope-soled shoes and elegant Bermuda shorts? You can call me uptight, an old fuddy-duddy, even possibly embarrassed about revealing my surgical scars to the arch eyes of all and sundry on the sands of Bournemouth, San Tropez and the New Jersey shore, but I think I have the cultural prestige of classical antiquity on my side.
Terence most likely dressed in a uniform of simple leather sandals and a pale tunic tied at the waist. Highly appropriate for a Roman summer spent wandering around the Forum. There were no Keith Haring flamingos decorating the material he wore; no stoner slogans printed across the chest. Nor were the soles of his sandals bolstered by three inches of lizard green, inflatable rubber tread. Finding himself in a modern resort-wear store, he'd probably assume he'd stumbled into the lair of interplanetary surfer bums; or, considering the XXXL sizes on display, he might even think he'd happened upon an ogre's monstrous wardrobe. Either way, he would certainly never associate the merchandise with anything of civilized origin. "Cheap barbarian garbage" is undoubtedly the phrase that sprung to our playwright's mind when confronted with these vulgar and outlandish goods.
Yet any alternative beach attire is almost impossible find these days. If you're not comfortable with baggy, waterproof knickerbockers hanging halfway off your backside then you might as well just not bother heading to the boardwalk at all. Consequently I have to wear my wet-suit, snorkel and flippers whenever I go to the beach. People often look twice at my harpoon but I've grown used to their stares by now. Sometimes my wet-suit isn't dry after the previous days swim, so I'm forced to climb into my deep sea diving outfit with the lead boots and brass helmet. I don't mind telling you that it can get a little hot in there, even under the shade of a beach umbrella. But still, at least I don't look like a lazy slob in ill-fitting and idiotic resort wear.

The Dining Experience

Hello and welcome to Steak Schtick where meat is fun. My name is Atahualpa and I'll be your server this evening. Have either of you been to a Steak Schtick before? Obviously not because today is our Grand Opening isn't it, ha ha, and so I hope you brought your ninety-percent off coupon with you. I will be getting you started with a drink order in just a few moments but first let me tell you a little about our menu. The menu is divided into three sections: the Tonto section, the Lone Ranger section, and the Heigh-Ho Silver section. I think you'll agree that it's so much more fun than just calling the sections Appetizer, Entree and Dessert like other boring restaurants do. And we want your meal at at Steak Schtick to be fun from beginning to end, and there's no more fun way to begin a meal than with a refreshing cocktail.
But before you decide on drinks let me just tell you about those mouthwatering individual menu sections in case that impacts your drink order. But before I do that I just want to thank you on behalf of everyone at Steak Schtick for coming in tonight by giving you another ninety-percent off coupon, good for dinner at any Steak Schtick or participating Chicken Chuckle.
Now let's hear about those menu sections which will only take a few seconds and then I'll get your cocktail order.
The Tonto section contains all of our small steak plate offerings, ideal for sharing as long as you order a lot of them. Unfortunately we are already out of the steak tips, the steak ends and the steak middles, but please feel free to order from the remaining Tonto dishes such as the steak flanks. I love the left flank of the steak and the right flank is also a favorite of mine. We recommend a minimum of two steak flanks per person if you're going to be ordering them.
Now the Lone Ranger section. These are our biggest, juiciest steaks and you won't want to share with anyone. I do have to tell you that we are out of the ribeye, the sirloin, the filet mignon, the strip, the porterhouse and the tenderloin. But we do have the Chinese Kobe beef burger and our delicious rump cut of finest steak ass. You will need to order the Chinese Kobe beef burger ASAP if you want that.
And finally the Heigh-Ho Silver section. Here you will find a selection of gourmet desserts for when you're preparing to ride off into the sunset. I definitely recommend the lemon custard pie since it's the only thing we've got left.
As always we have no specials at Steak Schtick because everything we make is special every day. Do you need a minute to decide? Probably not since you can only have the flank and the rump steak and the custard pie. Now I don't want to rush you but as I mentioned earlier this is our Grand Opening and we do have people already waiting for your table. Oh, did you want a drink? You should have said. Unfortunately we don't have a liquor license just yet but someone will be over with complimentary tap water very shortly.

Per Ardua Ad Astra

Per ardua ad astra - "through adversity to the stars" - is the motto of the Royal Air Force; and since many of us struggle with ever skyrocketing medical costs, it is undoubtedly within such heavenly spheres that the resolution to our healthcare conflicts can also be found. I'm talking about the advanced biological research of scientists from other planets. In other words: little green doctors with antennae sticking out of their heads.
Almost all alien abduction stories contain an description, however hazily recalled, of some sort of mysterious medical examination being conducted on the human captive. Such extraterrestrial operations usually occur without the victim's consent: the humanoid is abruptly beamed aboard ship and poked and prodded like a prize-winning pig, just for the entertainment of snooty Martian medicos. Abductee accounts make the experience sound like a Grey's Anatomy and Battlestar Galactica TV crossover event. But perhaps it doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps it could be an entirely new show called Spock MD.
It seems to me that developing a meaningful dialogue with these scalpel-toting E.T.s might very well supply a workable solution to our healthcare problems. A mutually beneficial bargain could be struck that caters to both the alien's interests and our desperate needs. Uninsured Earthling patients would volunteer to enter an alien ship to have their genitals evaluated for twenty minutes, possibly even get an alien implant or two inserted into their rectums, and in return the alien surgeons would perform a free gastric bypass or any other procedure the patient required. More critical patients could perhaps be transported by saucer-shaped space ambulance to the alien's home planets for advanced treatment, provided that they submit to even more invasive alien probing, naturally. I'm sure it would be relatively easy to get the Hippocratic Oath translated into Grokkian or Chthulu or whatever bizarre telepathic language the alien's speak, so it's a win-win situation all around as far as I can see.
Clearly this approach to our country's healthcare's problems is far superior to Obama's everyone must kiss-it-better plan, or whatever hopeless plan the Republicans are thinking of reanimating with huge shots of privately donated cortizone. Obviously it's completely dependent on the existence of UFOs, but I believe that this is a minor detail in an otherwise extremely practical and affordable solution; a solution that neither of our major political parties has the courage or imagination to embrace.

Dairy, Dairy Quite Contrary

My intention was to write a post detailing the numerous pros and cons of consuming unusual dairy products: obscure international cheeses; pints of udder stout; creamed streptococcus thermophilus; oxen nadger curd; and so on. But what can be said about oxen nadger curd that has not already be said?
A cynical attempt to attract more female readers was to be made by highlighting the keywords "lactose" and "intolerance," although, tantalizingly, never in the same sentence.
For amateur scientists, a graphic and disturbing account of the time I unwisely examined a milk droplet under a microscope was to be included (my dreams were filled with images of churning, buttery, black worms for weeks afterwards).
I also planned to debate the controversial issues of full-fat versus non-fat yogurt; plain versus flavored; fruit on the bottom versus fruit already mixed in; and Greek yogurt versus yogurt from economically stable countries.
Then there was the whole flan equation that I wanted to discuss. A freshly served flan, as the physicists Gustavo Taht and Ernst Karamull both noted, vibrates at a rate of eighty million kilopuddings per microsecond. An eminently disputable statistic such as this obviously raises many questions, even if none of them are actually worth answering.
So why is no post about dairy products appearing this week? Well, much like Salem witches cast evil spells to make their neighbors milk go sour, an evil hex as fallen upon my dairy ruminations: the ancient and powerful curse of boredom. In short, I am sick and weary of the subject before I've even considered writing the first word of the first sentence. This is a great shame since I have already expended a great deal of mental effort thinking about the subject, as you can see from the brief paragraph outlines above.
If only it were possible to take all those uncoordinated, unorganized thoughts and magically transform them into publishable blog form without actually sitting down at my computer and completing all that tedious typing. If only I had a secretary to act as a 200WPM milkmaid for the rich cream of my creativity, then I could pace around and pontificate to my heart's content while she tapped away.
Alas, I am but a humble scribe with no means to support such luxuries. The only office aides I have at my disposal are grim determination and black coffee.

A Tale of Social Marketing

The CEO of Yellowcakes, a provider of artificial coloring solutions for the gelatin-based desserts industry, recently attended a strategies, growth and innovation conference in Las Vegas. Profits were plummeting and he was anxious about the long-term stability of jelly. He needed food for thought; even if most of it would be an indigestible melange of trans-fats, sugar-coating and MSG.
Predictably, ninety-percent of the conference seminars were ebullient round-tables about harnessing the power of social media to increase business; each speaker more manically fervent than the last. The other ten percent, run by bi-polar project managers, broached the idea of staging next year's conference - if there was still a gelatin-based food industry to confer about by then - as an interactive webinar. Everyone was captivated by the notion that the Internet could not only make them money, but it could also save them money. All you needed was a Twitter feed and a Facebook page to be Liked and somehow the money would start flowing in. It was like listening to a cloudy-eyed herbalist extolling the virtues of honeysuckle marshmallow as a cure for terminal cancer.
So, lacking any truly innovative, imaginative or even pragmatic inspiration to help his failing business, the CEO of Yellowcakes returned to his office, determined to ponder whom he should Friend and Follow. He started with his own loyal and prospective customers, then expanded his social networking net further afield to companies similar to Yellowcakes and even some fictional commercial characters such as Mr Peanut and the Rice Krispies' elves. It wasn't long before he found himself re-tweeting the profound philosophy of the Pillsbury Doughboy and linking to YouTube videos of chocolate egg eating contests. By the end of the first quarter, over two thousand hipsters had "liked" Yellowcake Artificial Food Colorings on Facebook, mostly for ironic purposes, but the CEO didn't know that. He decided to print a run of vintage Yellowcakes' logo t-shirts to be sold on Cafe Press.
He also contacted Zac Dweebe of Content-Puke about writing the Yellowcakes' daily Twitter feed and maintaining the various gelatin blog forums that he sponsored. Updating the company's various online profiles was consuming too much of the CEO's valuable time, as you might expect. Zac explained that he was both slow and expensive, but this didn't seem to bother the CEO. Who isn't? the CEO replied with a shrug. They discussed the ratio of actual product marketing to banal links and pop culture babble; if it was a good idea to follow Martha Stewart or not; and whether it was worth having a booth at Comic-Con called Gelatination.
And so, in the guise of his gelatinous avatar, Monsieur Aspic, Zac tweeted daily about which celebrities prefer gummy worms to jelly babies; about his fantasy Jell-O wrestling matches with the real housewives of various cities; about how regular gelatin consumption promotes bone health; and occasionally something very brief about bovine spongiform encephalopathy risk or the new FDA guidelines for infusing animal by-products with chemical color dye. Yet for some inexplicable reason Yellowcakes' sales still keep falling.
At a loss and feeling sorry for the CEO, Zac advised him to hire a conventional traveling salesman to visit customers in the flesh, since internet social networking services didn't seem to be connecting with his traditional client base. The CEO replied that such a drastic solution was too old-fashioned for a forward-thinking company like Yellowcakes. It's not old-fashioned, Zac told him, it's just "old skool." The CEO brightened at this notion, mostly because he liked the spelling. What if we post some click-through banner ads on Foursquare, the CEO suggested, advertising Yellowcakes Old Skool Gelatin Food Coloring? There was such a faraway look in his eye that he didn't notice Zac's raised eyebrow.
Financial circumstances forced the CEO to lay off six staff members this morning. Zac hasn't tweeted about that yet, but the ex-employees have already de-friended him on Facebook.

Polyphemus in Polyester

You will pleased to hear that the spirit of adventure is alive and well within my hardy, optimistic soul. At least it is now that warmer temperatures have finally arrived and the Calypso of Spring is singing her alluring song. Last weekend, for instance, armed only with a GPS equipped smartphone, protein bars and refillable water bottle, I cycled down an unfamiliar path towards an unknown destination. Who knew to what obscure Jurassic wildernesses such previously unexplored trails may lead? I could have pitched up, Lord preserve me, marooned at some godforsaken Java Shack table, rather than discovering the promised land of that independently-owned, fair trade cafe I had heard so much about. Nevertheless, I embarked upon my expedition with all the optimism of an Argonaut of old, assuming they also rolled up their pant legs to prevent oil stains from getting on them.
As I rode pluckily along the dusty, unmapped road, flanked by alien chain-link fences, unkempt hedges, padlocked warehouses and all sorts of strange urban detritus, I was inspired to recall the epic quest of Odysseus in Homer's poem, eventually concluding that there were absolutely no similarities between his heroic seafaring exploits and my leisurely afternoon jaunt. Except that I also found my progress blocked by a man-eating cyclops. Alas, nice weather apparently brings out these classical horrors from their wintry lairs as well.
This cyclops was really just a novice rollerblader, dangerously flailing around in a ludicrous outfit of over-sized protective pads and lurid spandex. I'm only assuming he was also the one-eyed monster of myth because his peripheral vision was obviously severely limited. In fact, the ungainly beast seemed completely ignorant of any other objects in his immediate vicinity, be they animal, vegetable or plastic bag full of illegally dumped household trash.
I was filled with dread and apprehension as I approached, lest I be knocked down by a savage whack from his windmilling arms or one of his wildly dangling, wheeled feet. Fortunately, right before I entered striking distance, his knees buckled, his legs locked, the rollerblades skidded and screeched, and the cyclops uttered a blood-curdling yelp before veering off into a ditch at terminal velocity. Thus are the imitation terrors of antiquity hoist by their own petard.
Since this particular nemesis destroyed himself, I can't claim any great feats of strength during the course of my adventure. I'm more Argonought than Argonaut. It is unlikely that tribes would huddle spellbound around their campfires to hear sonorous bards sing tales of my uninteresting deeds; nor would any lyric poets be moved to compose lengthy verses about my relatively uneventful journey, except maybe Philip Larkin. So perhaps it wasn't worth writing a blog about my travels, either? Oh well. Too late now.

Desert Island Discs

I've always considered the concept of "Desert Island Discs" to be profoundly flawed. Castaways usually base their musical choices on soundtracks for specific occasions or moods, rather than the harsh realities of being stuck on a desolate beach for decades, looking like a cross between Moses and the Last of the Mohicans. How can anyone possibly guess which songs or tunes they might draw comfort from when abandoned to such a barbarous fate?
Sitting safe at home, surrounded by all the conveniences of the developed world, you might idly decide that both Dubussy's La Mer and Bobby Darin singing Beyond the Sea would be ideal discs to bring to your desert island. Later, however, when you're actually squatting by the remorseless shore with only a single palm tree leaf to protect your head from the unbearable heat, with nothing to drink but briny water and stale coconut milk, when only endless wave after endless wave of an indifferent ocean can be seen upon the watery horizon, then you might find yourself growing a trifle weary of listening to La Mer and Beyond the Sea and wish you'd brought Johann Strauss' Tales From The Vienna Woods instead.
Most people's musical preferences can change with the weather too, quite literally. Eight tunes chosen on a rainy day might suddenly seem inadequate when sun finally breaks through the clouds, and vice versa. But anyone marooned on a desert island will probably experience a preponderance of sunny days, so logic might compel him to err on the side of cheerful songs (with one moody chanson set aside for the - hopefully brief - monsoon season).
Then there is the question of Man Friday's feelings: should we take his musical taste into account or just please ourselves? A knotty problem made even more Gordian by the fact that we would be obviously unaware of what type of music Man Friday liked when departing from the initial shipwreck. There are so many convoluted administrative issues requiring resolution before any actual disc choice is made that the sane castaway is tempted to choose no discs at all, and listen solely, as Robinson Crusoe must have done, to the songs of local seabirds while the wind strums across the sand.
Personal maturity also plays an important role in desert island disc selection. That pop song once thought so profound in teenage years, for example, gradually loses its appeal as the former fan drifts ever nearer to the coast of fifty; its place in the list of essential discs is usurped by the symphonies of composers who've been dead for centuries, live tapes of obscure jazz groups playing in long demolished basements, or possibly even ancient recordings of some grimy hobo playing the banjo in a cow field. Such highbrow discs as those are a guarantee of tropical sophistication, so I suppose we can excuse an item of pop juvenilia also, if you really want one, just for nostalgia's sake (even though pop music is clearly the bane of any cultured eardrum).
Of course, the most depressing aspect of making any musical selection is discovering how mundane and conventional your final choices actually are. You may regard yourself as an exceptionally progressive intellectual who enjoys the works of Stockhausen and Anton Webern, but when the last lifeboat is leaving and decisions need to be made, well, few sane listeners would wish to be stuck with that challenging pair on a desert island for eternity. So at the eleventh hour, like every other castaway, you will surely seize upon run-of-the-mill classics such as Jupiter, Bringer of Joy and The Lark Ascending instead.
The best desert island discs, then, would appear to be a broad selection of refined yet still humdrum genre melodies that lack any semblance of an aquatic theme. The aim should be to conjure inspirational memories of a previous, more congenial and civilized lifestyle, and also attempts to relieve the endless tedium while not provoking hostilities with Man Friday or whatever ravenous wildlife might be sniffing around your makeshift camp. I would offer some suggestions here, but I don't wish to boast of my own exquisite taste and culturally advanced sensibility. Suffice it say, many of my favorites require an ancient 78 RPM phonograph with a cranking handle; Edwardian technology that I'm certain Man Friday would love to learn how to operate for me.

The Zeitgeist and Me

For quite some time I believed that the surgical scar running vertically down my chest was just an unsightly blemish on an otherwise pristine torso; a post-operative skid mark between two nipples, rather like a smudge of screeching tires bisecting a pair of traffic cones in a failed driving test. As spring approaches, however, I realize that scar tissue can be quite the social boon; a conversation piece for the gruesomely inclined; a fibrous bond between disfigured individuals who share a common medical experience. Almost everybody loves exhibiting their scars for the morbid scrutiny of others, and any gathering can become an arena for such normally private exposures.
In fact, encouraged by the success of this blog with the teenage ghoul demographic, I was actively seeking an interactive, web-based forum for iPhone pictures of my more graphic welts and bruises. I researched all of the popular image hosting sites, eventually settling on Pinterest: a sort of online cork board where members pin items that they consider to be inspiring.
My first Pinterest board is called "The Emperor Adds A Red Sash To His New Clothes," and contains various photographs of my chest incision scar taken over a six month period. I can already boast of accumulating seven followers since my board went live. For some reason they are mostly goth rockers from Berlin who call me the George Grosz of post-expressionist cardio-representational art (PECRA).

Of course, the key to producing quality visual art, besides the infamous rule of thirds, is proportion. For example, the artist only needs to sit at an alfresco cafe in the Piazza San Marco to observe how the ridiculous verticality of the Campanile ruins the harmony of the otherwise short and squat buildings in the square, making it impossible for tourists to capture good, all-encompassing shot of everything suitable for their "Travel" board on Pinterest.
Consequently, when framing photographs, I ensure that the angry red streak of my scar is proportionally balanced by any other vertical elements in the composition. These are usually limited to extremely coarse chest hairs and whatever type of drink I may have accidentally dribbled over myself while fiddling with the camera. The results don't really bear comparison with the mastery of Grosz's colorful paintings, obviously, but I certainly wouldn't feel ashamed to stand shoulder to shoulder with, say, the works of Alberto Giacometti or blue period Picasso.
I guess I consider myself to be an "outsider artist," a figurehead of the pinning zeitgeist, whose confrontational images permeate their way into public consciousness via Pinterest, rather than by means of a conventional gallery showroom. If you are interested, my scar photography can also be liked on Facebook, followed on your Twitter feed, located on Foursquare (I'm already mayor of my incision), and are available for purchase on Cafe Press as anatomically correct t-shirts (as long as you are roughly the same size and build as I am). Enjoy!

Buffoon In Leather Trousers

Jean Paul Sartre was quite wrong. Hell is not just other people, as he famously claimed, but other people's rock bands performing in public. Unfortunately, there are enough of them that one or two are probably even good friends of yours. Bipolar singers; waxen bassists; aimless drummers; balding guitarists wearing funky hats; amateur, aging musicians who lacked the confidence or talent to quit their day jobs in their twenties. If only they didn't demand your presence when their wretched ensembles go through the motions in dingy bars or out-of-the-way lofts every third weekend.
This was a tolerable Hell, of course, when you were young and bored of sitting at home; a reasonably comfortable Inferno into which Dante might cast those who are merely mean to small animals or use their fingers at salad bars. But as you get older you sink further and further into the fiery pit of unacceptable inconvenience. The music grows ever more cacophonous and unbearable until eventually you're rubbing shoulders with murderers, rapists and heavy-metal guitarists in the lowest circle of Hell, and the torments of the damned don't stop until the amplifiers are packed away. Wouldn't you much rather be at home, curled up with a mug of cocoa and a decent book?
Consequently, one of the great consolations of having bypass surgery has been the instant excuse it provides to avoid seeing a friend of mine's talentless band. I thank heaven for the unassailable alibi afforded by my residual aches and pains, even if they are somewhat fabricated rather than real in this case. "I'm sorry but I'm feeling particularly weak this evening and can't be there," the malingerer croaks in his best sick-note voice. "But definitely let me know next time you guys have a gig. I'm sure I'll be feeling better then."
No doubt such subterfuge practiced upon a friend seems both rude and deceitful, even a little white lie like that. However, the ends unequivocally justify the means when you're standing in a pool of spilled beer all night, watching sweaty middle-aged men play unsuitable teenage songs to an audience of their equally geriatric acquaintances.
In my more eldritch moments, I often wonder if I subconsciously made a Faustian pact with the Devil regarding attendance at my friend's wretched concerts: a high-stakes, diabolical deal to undergo heart surgery and receive a free pass to never go again in exchange. If so, it was an unbeatable bargain and I encourage everyone to contact the Devil immediately about their own friends' bands. You know it makes sense.
These days you will only find me at the bandstand in my local park, well wrapped up in an Astrakhan coat and homburg hat, slouching in my rolling chaise, listening to an afternoon concert of light orchestral music and beating time with my blackthorn stick. I happen to know Norman, the third trombonist. We met in hospital while waiting for our stress tests. Soon I hope to say truthfully to him: "Sorry, Norman, but I won't be at the bandstand today because I'm feeling so much better, so I'm taking endurance cycling classes instead. I've just bought a new bike with a zillion gears and a lycra tank top." And then I'll pedal off into the sunset with the wind in my armpit hair.

Breakfast of Runners-Up

As everybody knows, any reasonable expectation of a breakfast should include at least two fried eggs draped over buttered toast, three plump sausages, several strands of streaky bacon, some sort of tomato presentation and a puddle of baked beans. Adventurous gourmands often substitute a pair of kippered herrings for the sausages, possibly adding the odd hexagon of pineapple if morning finds them in a tropical mood. Blood pudding, greasy mushrooms, hash brown rubble and a demolished onion are also viable supplements and alternatives in any acceptable breakfast: a cavalcade of proteins and vitamins to begin our long day's journey into dinner.
Both Napoleon and Alexander regularly awoke to the mouthwatering aromas of such hearty feasts cooking upon their encampment stoves at reveille. In antiquity, the mathematician Archimedes discovered his famous principle, that a floating object displaces its own weight of fluid, only after preparing an enormous breakfast of seven feta cheese omelets, twenty-four slices of Phoenician bacon and nine pancakes soaked with his own homemade maple syrup (which is the reason why he was taking a bath in the first place). Time after time, from Paleolithic griddlers daubed on Lascaux cave walls to footage of Neil Armstrong slathering cream cheese on his bagel in zero gravity, the frying pan of history provides sizzling proof that breakfast is without doubt the most important meal of the day, just as Franz Kafka claims in his novel Metamorphosis.
Consequently, the heart sinks and the stomach groans upon learning that cardiological orders have limited my breakfast to a mere dollop of non-fat yogurt strewn with a few anemic berries. There is little hope of me conquering my bowel movements, never mind the world, after starting the day with a mouthful of such pitiful gruel. Little Miss Muffet enjoyed heartier breakfasts than mine. Even her intrusive spider wouldn't bother to sit down beside me if I were sat on a tuffet, wearily dragging my spoon around a small bowl of boiled oatmeal in search of that last shriveled raisin. There is absolutely zero incentive to arise from one's slumbers when only tasteless brown sludge and senile prunes await, cowering in a gloomy breakfast nook, ashamed to show themselves to the sun. The early bird is completely humiliated by the worm's swift turn of pace in such conditions.
My breakfast is not the fabled, yawn-conquering Breakfast of Champions; mine is the Breakfast of Runners Up; the uninspiring and unappetizing Breakfast of Bad Luck But Thanks For Playing. My breakfast does not snap, crackle and pop while bathed in morning's golden light. It coughs, splutters and then scratches its pale, mushy backside and staggers off to the bathroom, wherein it squats on a cold lavatory seat to dwell upon its weaknesses and inadequacies. Perhaps we'd all be better off if my breakfast just flushed itself down the toilet?
Thank God, then, for the coffee bean; that brown diamond of the dawn. Roasted, ground and then percolated, coffee provides the necessary energy that breakfast foods fail to supply. Were it not for this munificent bean's rich nectar I doubt I could gird my brain to write these words. Blogs do not write themselves, you know, even though, admittedly, that may sometimes seem to be the case.

The Tyranny of Aches and Pains

In late March 1757, in Paris, the failed regicide Robert-François Damiens was executed by the bloodthirsty method of drawing and quartering. His grisly death is recounted in the memoirs of Casanova: "I was several times obliged to turn away my face and to stop my ears as I heard his piercing shrieks, half of his body having been torn from him."
Poor old Damiens and his sufferings always leap to mind whenever I am lectured about stretching every morning. After all, is straining to touch your toes any less painful than having your arms and legs ripped off by four shire horses harnessed to each limb, meanwhile, with surgical precision, your torso is being tweaked with red hot pincers and razor sharp daggers? Beneficial exercise is often described with the torturous euphemism "feeling the burn" for good reason, let's not forget. Indeed, I think Casanova would be equally appalled by my grimaces and screams of agonies in the gym as he was by witnessing Damiens' ordeal. At least Damiens wasn't forced to wear polyester gym shorts and a sweaty tank top, a small mercy for which he should have been most grateful.
Supposedly, as we get older, daily stretching regimens improve the flexibility in our bones and joints, thereby reducing the risk of incurring activity-based injuries: a cracked tibia, perchance, from tripping over a partner's foot while waltzing to the golden sounds of yesteryear; or maybe just a pulled muscle from trying to reach that bottle of aspirin which some shopkeeping idiot stores on the top shelf in his pharmacy aisle. I myself often fall victim to a pinched nerve in my neck: the unhappy consequence of not sitting up properly while typing blog posts in bed. Ouch. There it goes again.
Yet even the sorts of amateur athletes who relentlessly stretch their spandex and fleece clad bodies throughout the day, those lunch break joggers and their kind, reek of powerful analgesic ointments and Cortizone cream. You have to wonder why they bother with the cult of stretching since it obviously doesn't diminish their discomfort. If you ask me, ill-considered stretching beforehand probably contributes a not inconsiderable amount of wince-worthy extra ache to their exercise-propagated pains. Stretching is another modern myth, in other words, no less preposterous than the old wives' tale that you should starve a fever and feed a cold. Following that wretched advice only results in hungry people drenched with sweat and fat folk who sneeze and cough a great deal.
The torn rotator cuff, the inflamed knee, the outraged elbow and the dislocated hip are simply afflictions we must bear with as much fortitude and dignity as we can muster, which unfortunately turns out to be very little in my case.
I wouldn't denounce myself as a baby, exactly, but my response to joint and muscle pain certainly doesn't wear long trousers or wipe its own chin and nose; it is, perhaps, best described as the tantrum of a spoiled brat: spoiled because I've rarely experienced much corporal distress until my recent heart problems; I had no permanent bruises, disfigurements or scars before. These days I often feel like a Vitruvian man who's been scrunched up into a ball of waste paper. It's a short road from muscle ache to bellyache, which is probably why I go on about my bypass so incessantly.
Meanwhile, the only statement Damiens made on the morning of his execution was a taciturn verdict that "The day will be tough." Very stoic of him, I'm sure, but he wouldn't have been an especially good blogger with grandiose reticence like that, however impressive it may appear in history books.

Adam 2

Despite the best efforts of certain scientists and philosophers over the years to develop a breed of superior humanoids, the most common human hybrid at large in the world today is the human-baboon. There seem to be more and more of them every year, loping around the city streets in their basketball shorts and misshapen sneakers. This is why, together with the parlour game Exquisite Corpse, certain exotic aspects of pre-modern era West Indian cuisine, and playing with my extensive collection of Mr Potato Head dolls, the controversial field of Bioethics as always held a great deal of fascination for me. In fact, I think I would have done quite well if I'd chosen the Transhumanist career path in college; hanging around in the lab in my white coat, rolling DNA around in my palm like a ball of Silly Putty; throwing it up to the ceiling to see how long it would stick there. That's a job for life.
But Bioethics isn't always as simple as meeting with your colleagues over coffee to discuss growing a row of human fingers next to the toe patch. As the name implies, practicing this branch of biology inevitably engenders many ethical if impertinent questions from unscientific sections of the community; from those pious souls who still believe in God's creation, for example, and from concerned parents who don't want their steam-punk child getting silicon Devil horns implanted in his skull when he joins an alternative rock band.
But most of us are moral relativists, content to merely cross the street whenever we see some misbegotten lovechild of freakdom and cosmetic surgery walking towards us, secure in the knowledge that there is either a comic book convention around the corner or a rock concert up the road, rather than the profanity made flesh that the appearance of such a creature might have suggested in previous centuries.
In my most idle moments, which occur about eight or nine times a day, I often wonder whether my cardiac bypass counts as Transhuman engineering. It was a rather dramatic restructuring of the natural order, after all. Not that I expect to find myself pursued by angry villagers waving flaming torches anytime soon, of course. My operation was certainly no feat of Promethean medical genius to rival Frankenstein's, just a low-level starter kit operation suitable for Igor or the Baron's nephew. But still, my internal organs were altered by radical scientific intervention, however mundane that intervention may seem when compared to splitting a transgressive artist's tongue into a forked and serpentine fashion accessory.

Just Desserts

According to gastronomic legend, Winston Churchill once rejected a proffered dessert with the stern rebuke "Take it away. This pudding has no theme." An unnecessarily irascible judgment, perhaps, on what was probably an inoffensive blancmange or sherry trifle. The great man's moods, after all, were famously unpredictable. Yet I can readily sympathize with Churchill's gruff response because I also fall into a slough of despond when confronted by themeless puddings.
Indeed, my prejudice against such culinary crimes perhaps runs even deeper, since I will reject any pudding that does not exhibit a single, unified theme based on a series of leitmotifs evident in the preceding soup, salad and fish. In other words, my pudding must bind all courses of the entire meal together as a fully realized concept, rather like Wagner's Götterdämmerung concludes and completes his epic Ring of the Nibelung cycle, or else I will fling my spoon to the furthest recesses of the dining hall and storm away from the table, flapping my napkin violently in the astonished faces of any nearby waiters.
Wagner's ultimate theme, of course, was the death of the ancient heroes and Gods of the Northern people. A noble if frequently misunderstood subject, I'm sure you will agree. But the unifying theme I look for in my puddings, in fact the only theme that I consider acceptable, is even more momentous and Nietzchean than the destruction of Valhalla: it is the Elimination of Trans and Saturated Fats.
Admittedly, this is an almost impossible undertaking, at least in the realm of conventional puddings; a Herculean feat of sweetmeat preparation, if I may borrow allusions from southern European mythology, that makes Theseus' battle with the Minotaur seem nothing but an exchange of playful slaps. Any pudding, for example, whose ingredients include milk, eggs or butter is absolutely verboten; a dietary untouchable; an Ishmael made out of cholesterol and calories. Restaurant cake trays have become my equivalent of leper colonies in Calcutta, and there is no Mother Theresa in the kitchen.
So, on the whole, this leaves me with an unappetizing choice between the plate of sliced, seasonal fruit or a handful of walnuts. At least both selections have a strong and easily recognizable theme.
Alas, history does not record the exact nature of the themelessness that Churchill found objectionable in his pudding. Perhaps its components did not conform to his strict idea of puddings historically consumed by the English speaking peoples? More likely, as I suggested earlier, it was a simple blancmange that some whimsical chef had unwisely augmented with elements of crème brûlée; or maybe an experimental form of trifle, foolishly flavored with cointreau instead of sherry. But we shall never know, and nobody with an ounce of common sense and a healthy constitution should ever really care.

Into the Mystic

My arthritic aunt Herbertha always gives me a gift certificate for clairvoyant services at Christmas: a Romanian gypsy storefront operation, usually, but sometimes a Priestess of Isis in a proper temple if she's feeling especially benevolent. This year, the economy being what it is, the gift certificate was from Studio Madame Ceaucescu, the place with a neon moon sign in the window above the closed Chinese restaurant in Gormenghast Street.
"Clairvoyant gift certificates are much more fun than one of those boring Amazon things," my aunt said, as I opened the envelope and forced another smile of gratitude. Perhaps, although they are also far less useful, if you ask me. My confidence in gypsy fortune tellers was completely eviscerated by Madame Svevo's miserable failure to predict my hospitalization for bypass surgery the previous February: "You may experience some slight browning of your soul in early June" being the only vaguely pertinent remark that the old Carpathian fraud made concerning my health in 2011. She did also receive a psychic communication from a long deceased relative of mine, apparently a nineteenth-century surgeon called Aloysius Baldwin, but his channeled voice merely announced that he was with Great Aunt Ermentrude and that everyone was very happy on the other side; conversational subjects of negligible interest to me.
So it was with a weary step, guided by the neon moon with gift certificate in hand, that I climbed the stairs to Studio Madame Ceaucescu one morning last week. Her rooms smelled strongly of joss sticks, musty fabrics, body odor and ineffective blasts of lemon-scented Lysol that hung around to revel in their own failure. There was a rickety table upon which a crystal ball balanced precariously; two chairs fitted with threadbare cushions; a doorless portal to a back room that was strung with colorful beads; and a small cabinet in the corner supporting the bust of a mouse-headed deity of indeterminate gender. The only pictures were a dog-eared tourist map of Cairo haphazardly pinned to the wall, and an elaborately framed aquatint of a tiny shepherd standing amid oblong rocks, unconvincingly titled Stonehenge in the Olden Time.
To be honest, I wasn't expecting much: some mumbled nonsense about ill-omens for my non-existent business interests; a suggestion of back pain at some unspecified point in the future; a possible trip across water in the summer; you know, the usual, obvious drivel.
The appearance of Madame Ceaucescu herself only reinforced this poor impression. She was dressed like a Pre-Raphaelite vision of one of the Three Kings of Orient, most probably the king bringing the gift of myrrh, if I was forced to specify.
"You come seeking knowledge," she stated flatly in an ersatz Bela Lugosi accent, as if the upstairs of a Chinese restaurant was a perfectly normal place to find the secrets of the universe revealed.
"Yes. I come seeking knowledge," I explained. "And I can cross your palm with a gift certificate for forty dollars."
"Ah. You must be nephew of woman called Herbertha. The messengers of the stars said you would come soon. Please, take seat."
And so I sat down at the rickety table, resigned to hearing Madame Ceaucescu pretend that everything my aunt had told her about me was actually clairvoyant wisdom from the astral plane.
"The five of lozenges reversed," she exclaimed, turning over the first Tarot card. "It signifies health problems in the past. Maybe an operation on heart. Health is better now but care must still be taken."
"I had a double bypass," I confirmed wearily.
"Yes. The ten of hoops says this. And the ace of hoops next to the ten means less of the fats must be consumed in your foods every day."
It was nearly noon, and the pungent stench of Kung Pao Chicken lunch specials began seeping through the floorboards of Studio Madame Ceaucescu as she continued interpreting the cards.
"Do they say anything about who will read about this experience on my blog?" I inquired, trying hard to prevent any note of derision from creeping into my voice.
She exhaled noisily and gave me a significant glance, holding my gaze for what seemed like an eternity before flipping over the last card: The Fool, reversed.
"I knew that was going to happen." I said. "It always does."
Madame Ceaucescu nodded. "Yes. It means you should tell your aunt to just give you the cash next Christmas like everybody else does."