Still Trying

Still trying to have a vacation. Do check back next week. The foul-tasting water here makes the coffee taste like the foul-tasting water here. Still, it's coffee, and that's more than the locals have to drink, isn't it? I think it's acting on my brain, this water; after drinking a tumbler full of the stuff, I found I could communicate with the frightful stuffed rhino in the rumpus room. He was interested in my shoes. Were they Marc Jacobs, he wondered, and I said no, no, no, I wouldn't be caught dead in Marc Jacobs, hideous idea, banish the thought, etc. etc.

I think I need to have a lie down.

5 Minutes

Quick, I have only 5 minutes to post something fantastic. Did you know that Princess Diana was holding a styrofoam cooler full of frozen panda embryos when she died? It's true. She held it on her lap next to a packet of coffee grounds. "You can't get decent coffee in Paris anymore," she used to say. "You have to bring your own."

I could tell you more, but my 5 minutes are up.

And What We Can Lift, We Throw

Looking for new members for the Wellington Throwing Club. Right now it’s just me, Rafe, Tom, Pale Tom, and some scrappy fellow named Basil who likes to be called Man Manistan. Flavian participates when he’s in town, but you can’t count on that, can you, and John Boy John Ricket hasn’t shown up since he gained weight. (He is rather enormous.) Well, do you know anybody? Wellington Throwing Club is not like other throwing clubs – we throw a wide range of objects at a wide variety of other objects. Wellington Throwing Club does not limit itself to throwing boomerangs into the wind or boulders off cliffs or old shoes at sweatshop protesters. "We throw what we can lift, and what we can lift, we throw." That is our unofficial motto. Our official motto is "Qui tacet consentit," or "Silence implies consent."

We meet near Crosser’s Cliff every Saturday at 10 a.m. Semiformal attire required.

UPDATE: Copy of the minutes from our last meeting (by Tom)

There is No Do, Only Try

Sorry - I would have blogged sooner, but I was in France. They haven't any internets in France - I had to skim a paper newspaper just to figure out who "hid the magic in the flapjacks," so to speak. My French is poor, so ne'er did I stoop to discover why Etienne Rogers held up Le Eleven-Seven with le fly swatter, and I couldn't follow the story about the barren holstein with the revolver in the garden of Mlle de Pgogné.

When I wasn't busy studying the newspaper, I was following the Tour de France on my 1988 Trek. My bike has no wheels, so I had to drag it behind me with a rope as I raced after the peloton on foot; when I forded a river I held my bike above my head - the seat had fallen off at that point, so I had no choice. Later I spotted a truck full of hay and I hurled my bike into the truck bed, but then the truck sped off and I was left in a cloud of dust with no bicycle to drag behind me. I am sorry to say that I gave up entirely after one day. Couldn't keep up on foot, and the locals pelted me with rotten fruit and at every opportunity.

There are Starving Kids in Africa Who Would Die for a Chance to Eat Your Extra Guitar

"I could live here [San Francisco]. Either here or Paris. But the exchange rate here is so good, I can get two guitars for the price of one. One to smash and one to keep." - Sergio Pizzorno, Kasabian

Prodigal. Who initiated the venerable rock-show guitar-smashing tradition? Was it that tiresome souse from The Who? Perhaps it was Stone Phillips, or Father Time. I don’t care. Don’t even know why I brought it up.

P.S. Kindly refrain from mentioning The Who in the comments. My loathing of The Who knows no limits. My loathing is so intense that it could burn a man of science – even if he stood behind another scientist and wore standard safety equipment, e.g., goggles and a lead apron.

Never Again will I Host an Enormous Wedding on My Estate

This afternoon while watching a fat spaniel cross the lawn outside the nursery window, I discerned some odd movement under the turf itself. "A HA!" I proclaimed - quietly, of course, to keep from waking the remaining babies with my fanatic cry. Perhaps now I will get to the bottom of this mystery, I thought. All day long someone had been stealing slumbering babies from the nursery while their poor parents celebrated a wedding on the south lawn. I for one was tired of the drama - nine babies to start with and just four remaining. And now this! I rushed outdoors and ripped up the roiling sod with my bare hands. As I suspected, it was a chap tunneling in from the asylum down the road. I held the flap of turf and briefly scanned the tunnel for evidence of the missing babies. The shabby tunneller soon recovered from the shock of seeing me emerge from above, and our interaction unravelled as follows:

"Making a clean getaway, I see," I said with open suspicion, hand to my chin.
"Yes, couldn't stand the place any longer," he replied.
"Seen any babies, have you?"
"No."
"In that case, would you care to climb out of there and have at the refreshments in the south lawn?" I asked, and gestured towards the noise. "Or shall I just replace this sod over your tunnel?"
"That'll do, now - replace the sod," he nodded and touched his cap. "Many thanks."

I replaced the sod and repaired indoors, and here I remain. It is imperative that I find some replacement babies - or better yet, the originals - and quickly. I can't have sentimental, post-fête parents collapsing in shock or spraying panicked oaths in my face. Sigh. I am in a scrape, I do think.

UPDATE: Found the babies. They were sound asleep and securely camouflaged in SpongeBob SquarePants bedsheets. It seems I tend to lose track of (or interest in) babies when they stop wailing or demanding juice. Character flaw on my part, I suppose.

Old Lady Stanton: Ruining Everyone's Fun 2005

From now on this blog is strictly about select historical figures playing that game where you build a structure out of blocks and then you remove the blocks one by one and if you remove the block that causes the structure to tumble, you lose. I forget what it's called. Terrific fun.

10:02 Alexander the Great just lost.

10:35 Elizabeth Cady Stanton just lost.

10:48 Shaka Zulu just lost.

Snack break - lemon bars and macaroons

11:14 Field Marshall Rommel just lost.

11:30 Samuel de Champlain just lost.

11:51 John Dee just lost.

12:08 Tony Randall just lost.

12:22 Elizabeth Cady Stanton lost (again).

12:55 Elizabeth Cady Stanton lost (again).

Ok, great. Elizabeth Cady Stanton just threw several blocks into the toilet and waddled out of the house in a huff. What a poor sport! I expected this sort of behavior from de Champlain, but Stanton? Christ.

Poor Sport: E.C. Stanton

Rock! Make Me a Latte!

It turns out that God was angry at Moses because Moses was supposed to speak to the rock, not hit the rock with his staff. The lesson to be learned here is: ALWAYS speak to rocks - even the decorative fiberglass ones - and if they do not respond, strike them with your staff until they do your bidding. Also, if you leave the office early on Friday in order to seize land and raise a militia over the weekend, do not announce your success to the entire office on Monday. Nobody likes a show-off.

The head has spoken.