CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

If it's Saturday, it's Tesco. If it's Sunday, it's Amazon delivering my ink cartridges. But what's this? Returning majorly enervated from the Big T, I find an email has arrived from Messrs Amazon. 'We're delivering your ink cartridge today! Hip, hip, hooray!'

Phew, I thought, I nearly missed him. That would have been a major disaster. When's he coming? 'Click this link.' The driver's van's dot is hovering over my house. Damn, just missed him. As it is, I'd have liked a bit of recovery time.

But what's this? He's got seven stops to make between me and me. Look at it this way, I've got twenty minutes at least. Don't fall asleep, son. Why not keep yourself busy posting it up on the AEL? Jesus Christ, and they call it a day of rest.

Roll on Sunday. Free and clear. Might be able to get some work done.

[Mick Harper]

I was too clever by half. I figured, since I had to get up the stairs to start ferrying my shopping down, I'd wait till I was 'next stop' and kill two birds with one stone. He was too clever by three-quarters. When it declared I was next stop I started up the stairs. I sat on the steps for ten minutes. (I'd forgotten to bring my vape so it was a long ten minutes, I can tell you).

I reluctantly abandoned Plan B and bump-bumped my shopping trolley down the stairs. I checked the map. Sure enough he was still there hovering over my house but I had disappeared from his itinerary. I settled back for a protracted argument with the couriers in quest of my ink cartridges. They should call themselves Jarndyce Deliveries. Ten minutes later, the phone goes.

"I've got your package, Mr Harper."
"Shall I come up?"
"No, I'll put it through the letter box."
"OK." That at least can be put off till tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow, the state I'm in. But he had one last card to play.

[Pete Jones]

Nothing could be worth all this. Throw your printer into the Thames. Make sure everybody is watching.

[Mick Harper]

Worth all what? I'm not complaining, this is the nearest I get to excitement in my life. You should never confuse reportage with complainage. And anyway schlepping all the way to the Thames, then having to start chucking small consumer durables about really would finish me off.

But your idea of sending stuff to a bespoke human printer is an interesting one. It could be the birth of an entire industry.

[Mick Harper]

Like all AE-ists, I am completely uninterested in sex. However news that the Singapore government is offering $55,000 to have a child (they're worried about the falling birth rate) has got me thinking.

I may go to Singapore to offer my services. Like all AE-ists I am personally somewhat repellent, so I would not dream of inflicting myself on the mother while we raised the child. The money will be quite sufficient recompense.

[Wile E. Coyote]

Anybody got any cures for a persistent rash?

Just asking for a friend.

[Mick Harper]

The Ups & Downs of Literary Life

1 Sept: 20 Views 0 Reads
2 Sept: 19 Views 0 Reads
3 Sept: 17 Views 2 Reads
4 Sept: 256 Views 1 Read
5 Sept: 12 Views 2 Reads

[Mick Harper]

I always jot down stray thoughts for writing up the next day. Since I am lying on my back watching telly or reading a book at the time, what I write down can be illegible. (Can someone send me a Pentel for Christmas?) But I can usually make sense of it eventually. This morning I find it's all perfectly legible, only I haven't a clue what it refers to.

I wrote down 'Invited to take part' and underneath that 'conversation turns'. That may be one thing or two things. Whichever it was, I added 'SAM' in capital letters last night, above the first, in case my words were too cryptic. I'm anticipatorily clever like that. Though not sufficiently so on this occasion. Missiles...? Ukraine...? FOK.

But while writing this I have realised what it was. By writing this. Sam is a character in a novel I am critiquing and it is a technical suggestion for the author. Should I be burdening you with this? Normally I wouldn't, but WTF.

[Mick Harper]

I thought I had coined FOK (to stand for Fuck Only Knows) but it will have to fight for space in the acronym jungle:

[Pete Jones]

"Is it possible to get both vanilla and chocolate in one cone?" she asked, ordering for her children.
"Sure!" the clerk replied.

The cone comes out with two scoops, one vanilla and one chocolate. It is massively huge, a Texas-sized ice cream cone for the woman's 6 year old daughter.

There are at least three levels of critical-thinking failure involved here.

The failure of the clerk to realize that if the mother had wanted two scoops, she would have asked for two scoops. This is a basic failure.

The failure of the mother to realize that if you ask a non critical thinker for two flavors in one cone, you will get two scoops. This is a failure of critical thinking about others' critical thinking.

The success of the husband in explaining what just happened. This is a failure of thinking clearly about everyone except oneself.

[Mick Harper]

I disagree. The construction 'Is it possible to get...' demonstrates both an understanding of the basic system and membership of a social class that understands the importance of precision (and perhaps a relative insouciance to cost implications, looked at from the POV of the ice-cream man).

To trigger the exchange, the mother should have said, ambiguously, "Can we have both vanilla and chocolate in one cone?" It was a failure on the part of the author.

PS Notice also the use of clerk in this context. Impossible outside America.

[Pete Jones]

You've mistaken reportage for authorship.

[Mick Harper]

Someone I know entered this sentence into a well known intellectuals' forum recently: