The List of Famous Hats by James Tate

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous
hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for
show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all hon-
esty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a
corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The
first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing
cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his
childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a
chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well,
he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pin-
head at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little
tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it
was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he
needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even
get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn
bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would
be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that be-
neath his public head there was another head and it was a pyra-
mid or something.

From Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco

"Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossible courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the numbers of unnnecessary subjects."
"And how many departments are there?"
"Four so far, but that may be enough for the whole syllabus. The Tetraphyloctomy department has a preparatory function; its purpose is to inculcate a sense of irrelevance. Another important department is Adynata, or Impossibilia. Like Urban Planning for Gypsies. The essence of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity. We have courses in Morse syntax, the history of antarctic agriculture, the history of Easter Island painting, contemporary Sumerian literature, Montessori grading, Assyrio-Babylonian philately, the technology of the wheel in pre-Colombian empires, and the phonetics of silent film."
"How about crowd psychology in the Sahara?"
"Wonderful," Belbo said.
Diotallevi nodded. "You should join us. The kid's got talent, eh, Jacopo?"
"Yes, I saw that right away. Last night he constructed some moronic arguments with great skill. But let's continue. What did we put in the Oxymoronics department? I can't find my notes."
Diotallevi took a slip of paper from his pocket and regarded me with friendly condescension. "In Oxymoronics, as the name implies, what matters is self-contradiction. That's why I think it's the place for Urban Planning for Gypsies."
"No," Belbo said. "Only if it were Nomadic Urban Planning. The Adynata concern empirical impossibilities; Oxymoronics deal with contradictions in terms."
"Maybe. But what courses did we put under Oxymoronics? Oh, yes, here we are: Tradition in Revolution, Democratic Oligarchy, Parmenidean Dynamics, Herclitean Statics, Spartan Sybaritics, Tautological Dialectics, Boolean Eristic."
I couldn't resist throwing in "How about a Grammar of Solecisms?"
"Excellent!" they both said, making a note.

Homunculi, and How to Obtain Them

For the past few months, I have been obscenely and absurdly busy—too busy to fulfill all of my obligations to family, to friends, to work, and to myself. Recently, however, I may have stumbled across the solution to my problems with time management. A homunculus, for those of you who do not know, is a golem-like little facsimile of a person about a foot tall that serves as a loyal minion and a devoted friend. That sounds like just the ticket.
The first place I looked for a homunculus was the local pet shop, but all I found were depressed parakeets and feral ferrets. The Internet, however, is home to a wide variety of people trying to sell illegal and exotic pets. While I could find no wholesale homunculus breeders, I did note a number of possible recipes for homunculi that all seem more or less within my grasp.
The first one I think I will try will be that of the alchemist Paracelsus. His not-so-secret recipe directs one to fill a small bag with bones, sperm, skin fragments and hair. I already have such a bag lying around— so far so good. After assembling these sundries in a Ziploc baggie, one ought to bury the bag in horse manure for forty days. Again, no problem; this is Central Illinois. It's a pretty straightforward recipe, which is why I tend to doubt its worth. It seems too easy; if making homunculi were so simple, why haven't I seen more running around? Besides, after burying this little bag in manure, Paracelsus's directions become just a little bit fuzzy. What do I do after forty days? What do I feed the homunculus? Can I get a microchip implanted in him in case he runs away?
Perhaps one of the alternative methods to obtaining a homunculus would be better. There's a very promising one that involves a mandrake plant, though it is quite a bit more difficult. Wikipedia reports that the Mandrake plant only grows where the semen ejaculated by hanged men falls to the ground. If this is true, the mandrake is probably pretty hard to come by, though I can imagine quite a few of them sprouting up near the rougher S&M clubs. Once one locates this elusive plant, however, there's a pretty complicated trick to harvesting it. To be effective, the mandrake root has to be plucked from the ground before dawn on a Friday morning by a black dog. Seriously. So, months before I even find this stupid plant, I have to find a black dog and train it as a careful and obedient gardener. This is beginning to seem like more trouble than it is worth. The last part, feeding the mandrake root with milk, honey, and/or blood is a snap, but, I do not have the time necessary to be hanging around autoerotic stranglers or even training a black dog. I'm a busy man, after all.
The third method outlined online was first recorded in the 18th century by Dr. David Christianus. He suggested taking an egg laid by a black hen, poking a tiny hole through the shell, and replacing a small portion of the egg white with human sperm before sealing the opening with virgin parchment. Then, because that whole procedure wasn't complicated enough, Dr. Christianus recommends burying the egg in dung on the first day of the March lunar cycle (in 2007, that will be March 19th) and waiting thirty days. On the plus side, Christianus' method is the only one I read that included Homunculus care directions. It would be an awful bother to have tracked down the egg of a black hen and personally inseminated it if my homunculus was just going to die. Christianus suggests a diet of lavender seeds and earthworms, a diet that seems as plausible as any other part of his instructions, but some questions still arise: How helpful can a homunculus be if it can't even gather its own lavender seeds and earthworms? Is it just going to be a stupid pet like a gerbil or a goldfish? Can he feed and clean up after my new black dog that I had to train or take care of my new black hen? Can he do laundry?
I don't want a homunculus that can't take care of itself. Naturally, I'll try to instill in my little friend good personal hygiene, respectable deportment, and the ability to communicate, but after that I expect a payoff for all of my effort. I don't think I'm wrong to have certain expectations of the little critter, especially, not after the trouble I've taken to bring the little guy into being.
In fact, the question of usefulness is of increasing concern. Can my homunculus act on my behalf in any scenario? He is my issue, created of my own DNA. Should I just have a child?
A child, actually would be even better. Never mind all of that crap about burying bags of fingernails and hair, I always see loads of children outside that school down the street. They seem to play all kinds of complicated games, why couldn’t I just pop over there and pick one out to come serve me? Naturally, I’d have to observe them for a while to figure out which are smart and which are stupid. I suppose that any child could be taught to vacuum the rug and match my socks, but I want one that knows how much starch to add to my shirts and can prepare my breakfast.
Most of all, it is important that my child be able to find his own lavender seeds and earthworms.
I’m a busy man, after all.

Movies I SHOULD have seen

A Scanner Darkly
The Science of Sleep
Caché
Wordplay
A Prairie Home Companion
Thank You for Smoking
The Libertine
The Illusionist
Brick

Also, my bladder is uncomfortably full, but I will not bow to the tyrannical hold it has over my life. I will not kowtow to its whimsical desires. I will clench my fist and urethra in defiance and I will cry, "We will never surrender! We will defend our isle, whatever the cost may be!"

Or something.

From the Nietzche Family Circus

Not necessity, not desire - no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything - health, food, a place to live, entertainment - they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.
For more, visit this cold link: http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/


Also, The Chicago Tribune is hilarious. They always either have an article about how the Mega Millions (a misnomer, I assure you) is increasing or how it has just been won.

But never by me.

I wrote a poem for those who do not like poetry.

Life is so very short
But at least this poem
Will not take much
Time to read

Life is long
but
this self-referencial poem
is not

Baby Pandas make me want to puke.

They're disgusting.

From A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut

While on the subject of burning books, I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength, their powerful political connections or great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and destroyed records rather than have to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles. So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the media. The America I loved still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

and also,

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are tranvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.