Blame It On The Bar Snacks

Apparently, it has been five years to the day since I first cleared Immigration and made my way into these here United States. I was energetic, motivated, and charging around San Francisco gulping down multicolored beverages and ravishing the hippie women. They were, on the whole, more optimistic times. I recall with particular fondness being served sepia-colored strawberry wedges as a bar snack at some yuppie establishment in the Haight. They were sepia-colored in part because everything in my memories is sepia-colored, but also because they had been sitting in a vat of rum behind the bar for a period of some months.

After the sepia-colored fruit, things are a bit hazy for a while; when I came to I was shackled to this desk, in a city far from San Francisco, with a thousand-yard stare and a belly. I only remember the precise date of my admission because I've been having to write it on various forms ever since. My plan to chip a sufficiently large hole in the wall to admit both myself and my trusty desk is nearing completion, and passage is booked for Sydney in anticipation of this. Assuming I make it there in one piece, rest assured that I will consider nothing more adventurous than a salted peanut to accompany my subsequent multicolored beverages. (The hippie women are also out of the question. Does Australia even have hippies? The homegrown kind, I mean, not the accursed Anglo-American travelling variety.)

Unnecessarily Developing The Theme

That last post felt, even to me, like shooting low-hanging fruit in a barrel. But then I read this. He uses the word "Albion" with no apparent irony, deploys matador imagery to have a go at the Spanish, and asserts that Thatcher was voted out of office.

There is a sweet but rather unsettling kind of Anglophilia that comes over some young American conservatives. It makes them wear bow ties, and as such I think it should be opposed where possible.

As for the AmSpec: no wonder they're a .org, is all I'm saying.

American Spectator Now Officially Just Publishing Any Old Shit

Greatest opening sentence ever, here. You'd think it would be difficult to top this:

News was abuzz, as news ought to be, about how Pope Benedict, a.k.a. Cardinal Ratzinger, speciously abetted derisory comments toward one Potter, comma, Harry as a threat to Christianity as we know it.

but the author manages with aplomb.

While wasting time reading op-eds from around the world, I always make an effort to alternate between demented right-wingers and demented left-wingers. Then I go and sit in the corner and weep.

A Fly On The Wall At The Last Six Feet Under Writers' Meeting

"Is it an admission of defeat to wrap up the fifth and final season of this, our inexplicably well-received show, with essentially the same arc we were using to wrap up the second season? Do you think it'll look too much like a blatant admission that we've been treading water for the three years in between? But if so, does anyone have any better idea of how to wring dramatic tension out of these people's misery when they so clearly deserve to be miserable, and have even virtually exhausted their meagre capacity for self-awareness in managing to become horribly depressed?"

Here, There, and Portland

How many roads must a man walk down before his feet fall off? A couple of travel-related thoughts:

Any flight that departs on a Monday and arrives on a Wednesday had better have morphine drips throughout the cabin in addition to a complimentary beverage service.

Although you might think that your having to teach an airport bartender how to construct a Flatliner would constitute grounds for a discount, it will still end up costing you ten dollars, even if you supply your own Tabasco sauce.

If you find yourself in the city of Portland, Oregon, under no circumstances should you employ the services of the Green Cab taxi company. They don't mean the word "Green" to have any sort of friendly environmental connotation, as it would elsewhere in that state. No, they mean "Green" in the sense of "never having driven a taxi before".

Contrary to the impression created by the link above, if you order a pitcher of sloe gin fizz to go while you're there, you will be cruelly rebuffed.

Also Available For Bar Mitzvahs

So, immediately after writing that frankly inadequate two lines, some carousing ensued. Details of carousing are not that interesting, though. More interesting was the next day, when I was magically transported 140 miles or so up the relevant interstate to a wedding reception. The happy couple in question actually got hitched last December, and I served as their cripplingly nervous priest, so I always take professional as well as personal pleasure in seeing that they are well clear of the assault-with-kitchen-implement stage of marriage.

The best man surprised everyone simply by showing up, as it had been widely assumed that he was in Special Forces training in one of the Carolinas. Not to be outdone, the groom sprung speech-giving duties on him after we were already fairly well into the Tanqueray. As already noted by others who were at the scene, the resultant monologue on Bavarian terrorism - its characteristic features, its relative infrequency, and the phrase "oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah, kaboom!" - has to be in contention for Best Wedding Speech Ever. I, for one, was weeping into my gin.

The rest? Convalescence and paperwork. Am currently in transit once again, with New York as ultimate destination.