Deadlines that looked small upon the horizon of my dayplanner now loom like giants casting frightening shadows over my shoulder. I can feel their breath in the form of emails enquiring about the progress of work not started. Yet, today I drifted between naps, checking email, making half-hearted attempts to be productive, and fixing cups of tea. The first half of this week, I was on holiday. Or more correctly I was on someone else’s holiday. Visitors from the New World came into town and I happily played tour guide to my city. I showed them all my favourite places. It was an enjoyable time, but now the normalcy of everyday has taken their place on the air mattress. A part of me has refused to believe that I must return to the dull responsibilities that didn’t seem to bother me so much before the arrival of our guests. The end of their visit reminded me that the only chance to see the friends we left behind will come in weeklong bursts. Luckily, I live somewhere that is holiday worthy to draw them over. So, I am resigned to inactivity today and hope tomorrow I can slip back into the normal routine.

Like Cassandra, I too have the burden of prophecy. Fortunately, my curse is not to forsee the fall of Troy and have no sympathetic ear to tell. My curse is the prophecy of the mundane. I constantly have visions of the future but rather than the useful ability to divine doom or winning lottery numbers I can only see the dull portents of upcoming banalities. I will have the clear vision of me brushing my teeth at an unfamiliar sink and a month later I will be in a hotel at that very sink that I foresaw. The worse calamity that I have foretold was a head cold as the premontion of my sneezing into a tissue came to pass. The biggest problem is I constantly confuse the memories of my
everyday life such as sitting at my desk typing with the predictions of my everyday life such as sitting at my desk typing in the near future. This morning while waking and listening to the news, I saw in my mind's eye the eating of a delicious soup. Spooky, huh?

"Have I missed the mark, or, like true archer, do I strike my quarry?
Or am I prophet of lies, a babbler from door to door?" -Cassandra

Made a little trip to paris and as you can see by the picture I had a lovely time.

Our humble narrator sometimes forgets that he lives in a foreign country. It is not unusual. Everyone speaks a dialect of English and I have been here long enough for the novelty of things like biscuits versus cookies to wear off. That is until the Welsh are in town. It’s not only because they speak another language and their English is affected with a singsong lilt usually heard in West African accents. This is secondary to the truly bizarre and alien behaviour of this race. Firstly, their god is a vegetable. Behold the Leek! They carry effigies. They dress in full body costumes of them. The less devout wear pins upon their lapels. Upon their heads, they wear hats shaped like the blessed scallion. I have seen one welsh penitent carrying an eight-foot Leek. They wear kilts as well, but it is merely a pretext for public exposure of their genitalia. I was walking behind a large group as they shouted randomly at passer-byes and buses¹; one Welshman paused to adjust his kilt. He carefully tucked the back hem of his kilt into the chain of his sporran and checked to ensure that both cheeks were fully exposed. He then hurried to catch up with the rest of the pack, chanting a song of incomprehensible words. God save us if they do not have a good result today².

---

1. The only natural predator of a Welshman is the red double-decker bus.


2. FUN FACT: In Britain, fans riot when their team loses whereas in America it's usually the town of the winning team which is burned down.

"For me the belief in necessary truths points to a severe lack of imagination rather than some glimpse of the absolute."

After reading this bit of comedy gold. (thank god. This guy is just an invention of some cartoonist at the BBC.) I am determined to use the phrase, "Is there no limit to their brazen cheek?" in a conversation. Wish me luck.

I had a plan. When my private army took over the country, I would burn down the bookstores, but as you will discover this plan had a fatal flaw. I borrowed a book from the library upon a recommendation received over pints. I was flipping through the pages and upon the overleaf of the last page a previous reader wrote, “Lucky Jim is Great.” Written in aquamarine ink and complete with the underline. It made me even more excited about starting this book. I also deface library books regularly, tough titties if this upsets you. I started the practice after reading a borrowed copy of ‘Portrait of Dorian Gray’. The owner of the book had clearly read this novel several times and would underline sentences or phrases that were perfect examples of Wilde’s famous wit. It was like looking at geological strata. Each pass she made through its pages added a different hue of underlining as well as marking the progression of her absorption of this favoured novel. This is why I like reading 2nd hand books. I not only get to experience the thoughts of the author as he attempts to communicate something to me in a couple hundred pages, but also I get to peek at another reader’s experience of those pages. This copy of ‘Lucky Jim’ also has a listing of about twenty page numbers on a blank page. What mysteries those numbers may hold!?!

I too leave my markings and scratches upon the books I read. I underline. I also leave little annotations like, “Hey! Pay attention. This will probably be the greatest and most important thing you read in your life.” or “You might want to go get something to drink before you read this paragraph as it may cause kidney failure. Yes. It’s that good!” At the end of such paragraphs I also usually write a quick, “Told you so.”

It is for this that I thought others would be better off if I just did away with the bookstores. The second hand shops would of course be spared. To be honest, I think it would be best to get rid of the high street bookstores. The books they hold are usually nothing more than covers to look at whilst you make your way to the coffee shop at its heart. Luckily, my forces have not seized the capital, and I could not rashly give the order to carry out this mistaken plan.

---

Today I taught my spellchecker, “titties”. Someday, my spellchecker dictionary will read like the stalls of a men’s public lavatory.

I found myself in a village outside of Edinburgh looking for a warehouse. While reconciling my hand drawn map with the unnamed streets, I noticed the buildings around me. There is a style of architecture in this country whose sole design purpose is to punish its inhabitants. They come in two shapes; rectangular and even more rectangular. They are two stories high and each residence gets four windows per side. The building is then rolled in what looks like breadcrumbs and then painted one of three shades of sputum. This kind of housing always seems to crowd the peripherals of the railroads. While you watch the countryside fly by, enjoying the beautiful landscapes and sea views, you get a sensory slap in the face as you must watch these sad little communities blur by. After traversing a few blocks of these buildings for which the exterior decorators chose ‘summer-time bile’. I found the warehouse. It was right beside a Gregg’s warehouse. For those who do not know, Gregg’s is a very cheap bakery where one can get anything they could dream of. As long as those dreams are limited to jelly donuts and sausage rolls. By order of the Queen, whenever any store closes whether it be a pub or dentist’s clinic, it is replaced by a Gregg’s. Each Gregg’s must also employ at least one teenage girl with gold hoop earrings and hickeys on her neck. The breeze told me that the warehouse was baking ‘yumyums’. My people would call these ‘bearclaws’. I played with the idea of going in and asking for a tour but I had less important but more pressing things to get done.

As I waited at the warehouse door, the sugar-sweetened breeze reminded me of a time when I lived in a similar area. For a time, my abode was a band’s practice studio located in the warehouse district of a different city in a different country. There was also an industrial bakery across the street. They made fortune cookies. Nothing but fortune cookies. Every day. At all hours. As a result, a patina of fortune cookie molecules covered everything in the immediate area. My truck’s interior carried the smell for months. Soon after, I made the decision to move to away from that city and start to live a different kind of life. Occasionally, as I fretted over the consequences of moving to a new city which held no friends or support, the waft of fortune cookie would remind me of what I was leaving behind. It reinforced that the complications and difficulties that I was facing were only niggling concerns as transitory as they were inconsequential.

I have never lived anywhere that snowfall was a real possibility. I was in my twenties before I ever saw a cellar or basement. Sure. I have seen snow on holiday or in James Stewart movies, but this is the first town where I have lived with snow. Well, I have to say. The charm is gone. I am not too keen on the stuff anymore. The first years here the snow would fall at night in huge fluffy clumps. Several times each season; we would get this kind of snow. (That reminds me. Seasons are a new thing to me as well, but I am still in favour of those). In the morning, the snow fairies would sweep the stuff up and that would be it until the next snowfall. Don’t get me wrong. Few things are more mesmerizing than watching the snow make its clumsy way to the ground illuminated by the light of a street lamp. The way everyone acts like children when the snow has gathered enough to warrant a snowball or tiny snowman with twigs for arms is a joy to watch.

This season was different. This year saw the snow fairies on strike and the snow was left to accumulate over several days. At first it was the usual joy. I even took off work to make my first snowman taller than a poodle (a poodle is the official unit of measurement for snowmen. For those who are interested, the snowman just mentioned was seven poodles tall). After awhile, I started to notice something. It’s wet. It’s really cold. It gets everywhere. It’s slippery. You fall a lot. In short, it’s just a pain. literally and figuratively. By the end of the day, the streets were filled with ugly black slush. The cars sprayed this disgusting fluid at the feet of frowning pedestrians. It made the city miserable looking as well as its inhabitants. To add to it, this liquid misery hung about for days. Eventually, the snow melted. The nice thing about the snow is that it seemed to be the winter’s last gesture. A two fingered wave good-bye. The morning yawns and stretches of spring are now being felt. The days are getting longer and the morning sun is already becoming obnoxiously eager to peer into my windows. Soon, the drunks will have their path home lit by a dull midnight light. Ahh. Bless this city.

I have been infatuated with words for quite awhile, but it is painful how inadequate they are for expressing what is truly important. Upon hearing a friend's mother had lost her husband of forty years, the confused silence I mustered was the only appropriate condolence. The attempt to pen some approximation for the sympathy that one feels in the four-inch square space of a greeting card is dismal. The measure of inadequacy for describing the emotion I felt with such an inchoate concept as 'sympathy' is insignificant to the inaccuracy of describing as 'grief' the feeling of losing a spouse of four decades. After so long together, I could only imagine their souls had long grafted together and the loss of one half must surely be fatal to the other. For her to rise each morning is not only a testament to her own body's stubborn will to continue but also to the sublime strength of the children and family, which surround her.

This is not the only time that words, which usually come easily and often too plentiful to me, have been found too sparse to be useful. When confronted with the serious illnesses of others, I could easily present a number of well-worn platitudes that most people dust off for these occasions, but they seem false to me regardless of the sincerity with which I would offer them. I could even proffer empathy from having my own experiences with the fear of serious ill health or the sterile ugliness of hospital corridors as seen from a gurney. But, I have learned otherwise.

A nurse asked the patient in the bed next to me to speak with a newly arrived patient who had suffered a similar fate as him. Apparently, the new arrival had sunk very low and was not speaking. He politely told her that he thought it best that the new guy have time to sort it out for himself, but after a week, if nothing has changed, he would go speak with him. Immediately after her departure, He turned to me and said, “What the hell am I going to say, ‘I hear you found out life’s a bitch too. Sucks don’t it.’ Man. Fuck that.” I nodded in complete agreement.

Anything we could say will either not be enough or already known.

Being a foreigner has its advantages. One of these is regardless of how plain you are in your country of birth; abroad you have at least one interesting point. Namely, you come from somewhere else and the novelty of which can buy you a morsel of attention from the locals. It was because I was a foreigner in this land that I was interviewed for a documentary about Edinburgh. My uninteresting self was given five minutes of airtime solely on the grounds that I could point out things that are different from the USA. Not too difficult when I regularly see fifteen year olds in pubs with pints of cider. This is how I met a good friend, K_. A thousand years ago, K_ would have been an oracle, or a warrior queen. She is not much taller than most shrubbery but she is a force of nature. One side ways glance could wilt the toughest of men. I have long since given up arguing with her as regardless of how correct my position is the only result from the discussion is that she is correct. Out and about, we garner looks and disapproval as we shout and discuss bizarre topics such as how the world would be better off if we cull 90% of the male population. I agree with this as along as I am on the right side of the remaining 10%. Most of these looks are from withered old woman who have done nothing more for the world except create excrement and colour coordinate their living rooms. So, it is with a measure of approval that I notice these judgemental gazes. Last night was no different and after two bottles of wine for the better, I walked home with a thought towards how lucky I have been to make the acquaintances of several characters like K_.

You know how when a group of people go camping there is always someone in the group whom the biting insects tend to favour. That’s me. But not only for insects but eccentrics, drunks, and miscellaneous melange of non-standard issue personages. On the street, I avoid the staggering drunks who are talking to themselves, because I know if we make eye contact I’ll spend the next half hour getting hugged and sung to. I no longer sit at the tables outside pubs after one individual actually drooled into my Guinness as he apologised for some offence that he committed yet I did not notice. Same with crazies. At university, there was one character that used to preach to the students as they waited for the crosswalk light to change. He would passionately preach to the masses until some unseen being would interrupt him to which he would launch into an angry tirade and chase away the disruptive spectres. It seemed that my presence would always antagonise these spirits because as I would make my way past he would be torn between shouting at the invisible beings and asking me why I kept encouraging them and don’t I know he is trying to save these people’s souls! I soon found another route to class. Though mostly this attractive power is a curse. I must say that it has allowed me to meet some of the most interesting people. People who grew up with the same social conditioning as myself yet manage to retain a uniqueness that is becoming more and more rare. If you want to see just how rare. Go to friendster.com. It depresses me how alike all these ‘different’ people are. So, to those bizarre and beautiful spirits in my life. Thank you. To T_, Thank you for singing officer Krupke from west side story on the bar at full of rough necks. To C_ Thank you for instantaneously launching into German and marching out of the party in response to some jackass trying to ‘network’. To S_ remember when I had broke my ribs and I jokingly suggested you punch them and you did! What the fuck is wrong you! I still laughed as we drove back to the hospital. My life is immeasurably been more enjoyable for having known you all.

Hello. I'll be your Pariah for today.

Our intrepid narrator stepped outside into the pend shared by all the flats of our building. Already there were the two American mothers corralling their spawn as they wandered and staggered like the drunk monkeys that all children remind me of. They live above me; both the husbands are studying at the university. As they made a lunge for a limb or shifted a baby's weight to another hip, they chatted. We made our friendly salutations and one of the women asked me if I was counting the days. The question took me by surprise, but before I could process it the other parent answered for me, "No. He likes it here." The tone of her voice would have been more appropriate for outted me as a bukkake enthusiast, not that acknowledging that I like living outside the US. As a footnote, the questioner comes from El Paso. For you language buffs El Paso is Spanish for "The latrine".

---

Words I taught my spellchecker, "bukkake, outted, and pend."

I have Zelig-like tendencies. I have found this is a trait more common among Americans than others. We seem to prefer to be liked and to fit in rather than be correct. I personally thought it was because, for the majority of conversation topics, I couldn’t give a shit. But, recent observations have shown this is much more common amongst compatriots.

On the return from my last trip, I chatted with a guy who could be described as all American except he was from Manchester. He was square-jawed and wore a marine-style haircut that kept his blond hair tight against his head. He was still wearing dusty tan boots. The dust a day ago had been drifting across an Iraqi desert. He was hired by an engineering firm to protect the Texan petroleum engineers as they do the work of freedom. He sat a stool away from me. He was talking to his mobile phone to a woman back in England. Being the nosey shit that I am, I eavesdropped between sips and pretended to watch the soundless Arsenal game playing above the shoulder of the barkeep. It was a mix of tough guy military talk (“My mates dropping right beside me.”), and gentle queries about the health of elderly members of the family (“How’s mum doing?”).

Afterwards hearing my accent when I ordered another pint he asked, “You a yank?” I love that! Straight out of world war II. We chatted amiably, but I put on a much more macho front than should be possible from a guy with a tattoo of a cartoon chicken. I somehow even worked in the story about how I punctured my lung when I broke my ribs. I was graphic in description and dismissive about the pain (The pain made me pass out, but I left that out). This machismo banter wasn’t me at all. This discrepancy must have been noticeable, but he was friendly enough and chatted about what he was doing in Iraq. His view was the ‘Yanks’ don’t listen enough to the locals and are bound to have it all go ‘tits up’ on account of that. My chest-puffing chatter changed when I spoke with the guy in the seat next to me as we flew towards our home. He was a sharply dressed middle-aged man whose family fled Lebanon because of similar nonsense plaguing Iraq currently. “We lost everything. Our home. Our country. For what?” He shook his head and was silent for a moment. Then, he told me that he had a friend who was also American, a marine, who had married a British woman and because of that had a choice in being called up and shipped over. “I told him to forget it. He has a wife and child now. What would happen if he got shot out there? No. I told him, his responsibility was to his family not his country.”

I collect images like a magpie gathers shiny baubles. Sometimes, I use them to inspire my little art project of which I have sadly been neglecting for the past six months. Mostly, They just amuse me or spark my interest. I shove them in a folder on my computer and there they sit gathering electric dust. So, I wrote a little script that gathers them up and makes them into a nice gallery page. Have a look. Ignore the fact that I am dorky enough to have written a program to do such a thing and just enjoy my random picture collection.

She had a thick bumpy white line of scar tissue closer to the palm side starting at the middle knuckle running down to the hand and then back up to the middle knuckle of the next finger. Between each finger a similar scar ran. Noticing my gaze as I held her hand lying next to one another, she said, “It’s where they removed the webbing?”
Not really processing what she said, I repeated, “webbing?”
“I had webbed feet too. Like a duck.” She said matter-of-factly without shyness or embarrassment.
“I didn’t know that happened. Why did they remove… cut it?”
“Purely to look normal.” She gave a quick shake of her head like when you see someone doing something stupid. “I was very little. And at the time I was quite happy to have it done. And agreed when my parents suggested it. Now. It makes me a little sad. So few of us have anything truly unique about us. Even a genetic anomaly is a welcome difference.”
“I’ll tell you what. I don’t mean to boast. But, I have a bit of uniqueness about me. I know something that very few people know. It is a fact so rare that even if I were to tell you. It would not lessen the uniqueness of it for either of us. Not many people get two chances at being unique. What’d you say?”
“Okay.” Her eyes widened and a smile splashed against her cheeks with a child’s enthusiasm. “What do you know?”
“I know an English word that rhymes with orange.” I quickly added. “I know. It’s not the secret of enlightenment or the answer to why men have nipples. But, it truly is a tidbit of knowledge that only a select few know. Are you still game?”
“Sure. Forget about why men have nipples. Why do you have such small nipples? They’re like cat nipples.”
“Hey! You’re not making a very good case for me to share this with you.”
“I’m sorry.” She said between giggles.
“Alright.” I leaned over and whispered my morsel of the arcane.
“Oh. Yeah. It does.” she said with surprise.

I worked with I__ for several months. He had read the manual on the New York Italian-American stereotype and lived it to the letter. He was short but thick from constant weight lifting with his brothers. He had long hair held in a ponytail and the quintessential Roman nose. The brothers still lived with the parents along with a grandmother with whom we would share shots of sambuca. I’m not joking when I say he was the living and breathing generalisation of the New York Italian. Right down to the accent and frequent adjusting of his manhood in public. He’d tell me about the anti-immigrant bigotry he faced after his family moved to the south. That’s right even in the last two decades of the twentieth century there was still a demographic of southerners for whom the jury was still out on Catholics and southern Europeans. Yet even after being confronted with the blunt end of bigotry, an exceptional number of conversations began along the lines of ‘you know what’s wrong with those fawking niggers’. Yet, he was not a man beyond redemption, but nonetheless was a bizarre human being. I have several stories about him but as I recount them none of them would do much to improve the ball grabbing racist portrait that I have painted of him thus far. Please believe me when I say he was a great guy. With that I will tell you a few of my favourite I__ stories. We were waiters at a retirement centre. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but old people are like teenagers. Or wolves. If you get them in large packs, they become savage. They eyeing you for weaknesses waiting for the opportunity to lunge for any unprotected flesh. Old women are the worst. Besides a fatted lamb, a young waiter is the preferred prey of the old lady. Put a lone waiter at a 6 top of old biddies and the permed blue rinses will bob as they sniff the scent of fear in the air licking the salivation from their sharpened dentures. First they play with their victim batting back and forth between each other with inane questions like “What’s in the Spinach salad?’ The drink orders are then taken with exact numbers ice cubes and exact ratios of seltzer to blush wine are given which require a pipette to measure. This comes with feigned hearing loss that is maintained through out the hunt. Trust me. These devils with bad circulation are just fine. They gossip about other residents at the other tables in whispered tones that are heard without the need for clarification or repetition. Yet, when the poor young man who stands before them in an itchy tie and cumber bund, they have things like this to say.
‘What?’ ‘Speak up!’ or they say to one another, ‘I can’t understand him.’ ‘Yes. I know. I think he is Mexican. Look how dark he is.’ ‘Are you a Mexican?’ ‘No. My last name is Irish.’ ‘You sure? You look like a Mexican.’ then turning to one of their conspirators and say, ‘He’s a Mexican’ which is received with a confirming nod. Half way through the meal the poor waiter’s mind is addled. This sort of conversation continues during order taking. So, between making sure that granny Satan wants the chicken soup with the chicken strained out and replaced chopped up cube steak. No. She does not want the beef broth, as she does not like beef soups. but cube steak is beef. Yes. she says but its beef in chicken soup. okay. but during this conversation grandma Beelzebub is telling you her wine spritzer is too watery. It’s because you wanted ice in your wine and ice melts into water thus making your wine watery. This is when nanny evil incarnate shouts her order as she gets up to go use the toilet. The order incidentally is for a dish that is not on the menu. Another keeps asking if you have her extra portion of tartar sauce. Yes. I have that written down. Good. well. I changed my mind she says. I want cocktail sauce instead. Okay cocktail sauce. I don’t want cocktail sauce another will shout. Yes. I know she is having cocktail sauce. You are having the lamb. Am I? I don’t want that. Give me the menu. It is because of this that on occasion like the lamb that gives on last dying kick to the jowl of the wolf that is about to devour it that a waiter occasionally has a bit of sport with those spawns of hell with the senior discount.

Cube steak was a regular item on the menu, but I__ convinced them this was also a regular typo. It was meant to read tube steak. So, it happened that you regularly got little old ladies innocently saying they wanted a smaller tube steak, as the normal portion could not possibly fit in their mouths.

My favourite resident was miss Hyde. Aptly named as it happened. She could no longer walk. She got around on a scooter driven at top speed. This in itself was not so dangerous. What made this situation precarious was that it was well known that Miss Hyde bribed her nurse to smuggle in fifths of Vodka that Miss Hyde drank with youthful enthusiasm. Advanced dementia, severe drunkenness and only two teeth (one up. one down) in her head made Miss Hyde somewhat of a sight to behold. You would take her order or give her a polite greeting to which she would reply with yelled incoherent babble punctuated by obscenity. “BLARGGG GLARG France. GO TO HELL!” This did not impede I__ in the least where the rest of us would make such interactions with her as minimal as possible. He would hold whole imaginary conversations with her.

“Good day Miss Hyde. How are you today?”
“Grarg. NAAAAAAARG. Fuck!”
“Oh. Today certainly is lovely. Don’t you just love the spring?”
“Bring me a TRAAAAA. Now! Bastard.”
“Certainly. Would you like some fresh baked rolls while you look at our menu? I know you just adore the brioche.”
“Fuck off!”
“Excellent. I’ll bring you some immediately.”

And so on through out the meal.

On another occasion after a certain table of four old ladies had worked him over through out the appetizers and main course, I__ took the desert orders. One lady ordered a mint chocolate chip ice cream. As he left the table to fill the order, she called after him, “And don’t be so cheap. I want a good-sized portion.” She got her good-sized portion. We served ice cream in a glass bowl with a stem. It normally held about 2 to 3 scoops of ice cream. This time I__ put nearly a half-gallon of ice cream into the little cup. Like a circus bear on a tiny cycle, the ice cream remained precariously balanced. When he delivered this enormous, dripping, neon green dessert. The little old lady’s eyes popped out of her head. “Ohhh. My goodness!” Surprisingly she didn’t complain. She picked up a spoon and started to excavate away from the great mass before her.

The other day, I got a fantastic package from Japan (Cheers Karla! Send more Miso! just kidding). It was filled with goodies like royal milk tea of which I had drank in a matter of days. It also had a bunch of Japanese candies as well. All the candies have such enthusiasm for itself. It always has a cartoon picture of the sweet inside smiling and waving. Hurray! You are going to eat me! Even the turd candy was thrilled I was going to eat it. My impression of Japan closely mirrors this. It’s a country full of enthusiasm. Maybe it’s just their television, but every time I see a Japanese advertisement or television show there is always someone forcing a huge smile, shouting and wagging the peace sign at the camera. After five seconds, I am exhausted. I have far too much Anglo in my Saxon to be anything more than suspicious at such behaviour. Enthusiasm is not to be trusted. Although I have to say I prefer this loud direct approach to the more insidious and manipulating approach that is common parlance here and in the States. As a child raised by bob barker and the golden girls, it has taken a long time to recognise how little the crap they are hawking is necessary. I have become slightly neurotic in this now. I hesitate to purchase things that prove to be indeed useful. Yet, I still find myself with crap I purchased for no good reason. The balance is difficult to maintain. A perfect example is my bread machine. In the centre of the honkey flag there is a bread machine driving an SUV, but I was given one of these for Christmas. Let me explain. I do quite a lot of baking. That is because deep down I am a 70-year-old grandma with bad hips and blue rinse just screaming to get out. I make bread quite often but it is a laborious task. It takes all day to do it right. A bread machine sounded great but the tension between my honkey upbringing and my fight against such tendencies prevented me from buying one. The truth is I love that damn thing. I haven’t bought bread from the store since. I can’t win. I must accept my destiny. My parents were honkies and so too must I be. It’s only a matter of time before I’m complaining about poor people and voting Tory. Now, if you’ll excuse me I have a rye which is almost finished.

The holiday season is particularly busy in this town. Added to that are the last minute tidying required at work. Luckily, one of those last minute untidiness required me to make a quick jump to Barcelona. A near perfect town. I was only there for three days but it was still enough to eat a drink myself towards bliss. I am a fat man in a skinny body. I love to eat. I wish I had less socialization that would allow me to reach over a stranger’s table and shove a handful from their plate into my mouth, as I remain leaning over their table humming in bliss of the flavour of the pilfered nourishment. “Mmmmmmmm”.

Until then, I am content to eat from my own plate with appropriate silverware I am at those Basque tapas bars where the bill is tallied by the toothpicks left on your plate. These places are easy to fin just look for the ‘x’s in their names. Besides endless fantastic food and drink, the city itself has a great texture. The museums only contain a fraction of the town’s art. The streets themselves contain the vast majority. You can wander through the old town, look at the tiny gallery or artisan shops, never see the awe inspiring sites such as La Sagrada Familie, or Parc Guelle, and still feel you made a great visit.

Christmas time is also a great time for Barcelona. They have unusual Christmas traditions in Barcelona, and the Christmas market near the cathedral is the place to become acquainted. First is the caganer which I believe simply translates as the ‘shitter’. It is a Catalan tradition to have in every manger scene a guy behind the bushes taking a shit. That’s right. Baby Jesus. Mary. Joseph. The three magi and some guy smoking a pipe wearing a beret laying ass cable. Nowadays, you can get caganers in the form of a businessman, politicians, and even a bishop. The nativity scene is a pretty serious business. Some of the kits cost several hundred Euros and with these high-end manger scenes come a very well crafted caganer. The turd still dangling from his ass cheeks looks very realistic. I opted for the cheap plastic one. I queued up behind a young and sharply dress couple buying their first nativity scene for their new house. When they had finished their transaction. I stepped up to the elderly Catalonian woman. I gave her a smile and said in the best Spanish I could muster, ‘One shitter, please.’ The other tradition that I had explained to me at dinner later after seeing several stalls selling nothing but logs with two legs and painted on eyes. His name is uncle Pepe. Catalan children at Christmas find the uncle Pepe filled with candies. The children then take a stick and beat the uncle Pepe log. Eventually the candies begin to fall from (guess where? that’s right!) its ass. They also sing a song as the literally beat the ‘shit’ out of this log. This is a culture I can do business with.



Ahh. But now. The holiday season is over. I’m back in the office and back to the usual grind of procrastination and mouse clicking my way through the Internet.

P.S. Today I taught my spell checker the words; turd, shitter, and Pepe.

freedom

My two dogs
tied to a tree
by a ten-foot leash
kept whining and howling for an hour
till I let them off.

Now they are lying quietly on the grass
a few feet further from the tree
and they haven't moved since I let them go.

Freedom may be
only an idea
but it's a matter of principle
even to a dog.

-- Louis Dudek


found via this guy's website

The office I work is quite nice in the sense that not one of the five people who occupy the desks where born in the same country. The office across the hall has a few other nations represented. Between the sporadic bursts of productivity (It amazes me how little of the day is spent with my chair swivelled towards the computer), we chat about our different upbringings. I love listening to these stories. Did you know that in France red-headed people are thought to be stinky? I try to contribute when I can but I have found that there is nothing I can say about the American experience that hasn’t been broadcast into every corner of the world in one medium or the other. What the hell is the point of moving across the ocean if you can’t earn the extra ‘exotic’ bonus points? My accent isn’t even exotic. My pronunciation is the ‘sitcom’ brogue from the telly. So, I have resorted to making up lore of modern Americana. Did you know in Louisiana they still practice cannibalism? Everyone is familiar with Americans’ penchant for circumcision, but did you know the leftovers are used to top the tree for the child’s first Christmas as an offering to the baby Jesus’ own covenant. I bet that was never part of an episode of Friends!