David Thayer

Being at the mercy of others this week, impaled, becalmed, stranded, weakened by crows, coexisting with nature I take consolation from the fact that I’m on the cover of Glamour…again! Rumours abound as to the next Wellington Leg Person of the Year award… tipping dangerously toward that pompous interloper Borchardt; one prefers to think that Coverboy confers as much authorial gravitas as the coveted statuette depicting Mercury Slowing designed by the Dowager Princess and her bookie.

These awards are terribly political. This year’s Snooker Award was a case in point. As a previous winner I was not eligible this time around, a rule rushed into fabrication by a faction of malcontents led by Mrs. Chalfont-Smythe. Knowing full well that the grand manor house was being fumigated, she insisted that the awards committee be invited over for drinks and eats. Needless to say, several of these VIPs were overcome by fumes, an incident that sank my candidacy in a malicious wave of overreaction.

Ah well. My work is my reward. The cover of Glamour will probably result in a deluge of calls from ueberagents but unless I locate an extension ladder in the very near future the opportunity will be lost; my one consolation is the small black and white TV the Duchess delivered….I can utliize the remote to ring in the New Year observing the happy crowds thronging the dual carriageway as the ball drops outside The Gutted Ponce…adieu, and Happy New Year. YHS, The Earl

I think I’m hallucinating. Thumbing through a copy of Are Men Necessary? I can only conclude that the answer is no. Sure, there’s the NBA and men’s college basketball, because no one wants to see the two hand set shot anymore, but, beyond that, changing tires, which is hardly necessary anymore what with the tire innovations lately, maybe by Goodrich or Goodyear, who are men or were before they died, maybe still are for all I know, walking around in lab coats studying polymers; other than that I can’t think of additional uses for men, utilities in modern speak, or modalities as Tom Clancy once said over four thousand times in the last desperate hours of civilization. If you use the word modality in a novel it should be during a sex scene because sex sells although without men I am not sure how true that will prove to be down the road because I can’t quite envision women at a car show wanting to buy an Aston-Martin with a supermodel in a bikini draped over the hood.

Maybe men are necessary if only to sell things to. I can certainly recall going to auto show and seeing an Aston Martin with a supermodel in a bikini draped over the hood and I remember thinking that I’d better buy this car right now before the entire illusion fades, but first, let’s imagine that the model is smiling because she is stunned by your ensemble of green curduroy pants and Yankees teeshirt and she wants to go home with you in your new car and since she’s wearing a bikini she probably wants to go swimming although the high heeled shoes she’s wearing are a contrary indicator because who goes swimming in high heeled shoes? Yeah, that’s right, supermodels do.

Let’s say you’ve got the Aston Martin and you’ve got the supermodel although it is weird driving a car with a woman on the hood but she waves to passersby, she has poise, the weather is cooperating if only in furtherance of the fantasy although a moment of truth you failed to recognize is fast approaching because your pool is an inflatable Fred Flinstone Pool, probably not the sort of pool for high heels and lo and behold someone’s reading a book poolside and all you can do is say, “Maureen Dowd? What are you doing here?”

Mrs. Leona Glasnost of Trenton New Jersey asks, “Is your blog a blantant attempt at promoting your stupid book?”

Dear Leona, Thank you so much for writing. As you know I’m trapped in my chimney so forgive me in advance if I seem curt. All correspondence must be dictated to Haskell who then must relay my words to Depew; the liberties taken by my dogsbody would shock you. Anyway, yes my blog is a blatant attempt to promote not only my book, Voltaire’s Miasma, but my Internet service the Earl’s Own Dial-up and Telephony Service which features ESS ( Earl’s Simple Syndication) which is manually installed in your basement or attic by a team of crack technicians. I’m not certain quite where Trenton is, although I believe Lord Cornwallis may have slept there. If that’s true, and Haskell is nodding in affirmation, or he’s falling asleep, it’s difficult to know…we can offer the Lord Cornwallis Simple Syndication or LCSS. Thus equipped, Leona, you are the analog equivalent of a bolt of lightning, always one step ahead of business rivals when attempting to go ‘online’ as we call it. YHS, The Earl.

I think Haskell is asleep. Perhaps my words are echoing beneath me so that Depew can eliminate the middle man. Are we blogging? Haskell? Depew? Being me requires endless patience.

Ursa Major? Ursa Minor? I don’t know. As dawn breaks…Day Three of my chimney ordeal begins. I’m dictating this post to Haskell, aka the sensible one. The Dowager Princess is covering my Tuesday agony column for the L&D whose circulation has dropped since my captivity began. DCI Borchardt removed the police personnel to investigate the Costco Incident. Haskell tells me that a copy of Joanna Scott’s Liberation is missing along with all those Pattersons. I gave a seminar on being James Patterson early last summer to a group of cenobitic monks who were bound by the Great Silence from offering feedback. I think they enjoyed themselves, especially the two hour video montage of the Hilton girls.

My extension ladder, the means of rescue, is thousands of miles away in Los Angeles. The Duchess stopped by with her cousin’s stoelen but Depew ate it all. I’m fasting in the hopes that my bulk will diminish enabling me to plummet earthward into the hearth. Like many long term plans this one overlooks the immediate issues one confronts when stuck inside a chimney…good taste prevents me from detailing them further. Needless to say the local media is in a frenzy; I’ve whiled away a few hours reading Noah Lukeman’s treatise on the semi-colon. Depew is sending him a query letter; fourteen hundred semi-colons used in three pages. That may be a world record. Oh no, here come the crows! YHS, The Earl.

Thanks to the Village Voice we now know Sartre invented existensionalism to impress girls. Sufficient time has passed, fifty years, allowing an adjustment for those attempting to live by his lights, that is to say yes, we’re here and this is reality. Fifty years from now future generations may adjust other fragments of wisdom currently in vogue and come to the conclusion that Andy Warhol, like Sartre, was pulling our leg.

This idea puts a different spin the non-fiction moment. Whatever gravitas may be accredited to Doctor Phil or Trent Lott over time we will discover the undercurrent of manipulation whose shadowy presence we sense yet fail to recognize. For example, weight loss philosophy as expressed by dozens of books overlooks the fact that weight loss programs are not rooted in philosophy. Like Sartre these authors have something else in mind. As the Holidays fade books will emerge with entirely new ways to lose weight, systems as they are called, and these systems create byproducts. A true philosopher, a Descartres or Socrates for example, might wonder if that can of Super Slimfast represents a kind of collective delusion, a January Effect. From the bulges of our Santa suit we emerge at month’s end retooled in the image of Bianca Jagger, slender, exotic, eternal, and desirable. As Caligula remarked when surrounded by Praetorians, paraphrasing now, “heaven can wait.” It turns out, of course, he was kidding.

Special to The Druidical & Literary Television Service: your reporter Olivia Earthwindandfire. A peaceful Christmas morning in Wellington Leg came acropper when Costco employee Jeremy Erskine staggered into police headquarters in nearby Goth to report the theft of one thousand James Patterson novels from the Costco ’superstore’ in the neighboring village of Hippo Regius. Mr. Erskine was treated for minor injuries by a jury of literary scholars stranded for the holiday by the closure of the dual carriageway. Once patched up Mr. Erskine was delivered by van to Prudentia Chalfont-Smythe’s pied a terre in Glastonberry Square. To no one’s surprise, DCI Borchardt grilled the young man for several hours before releasing an Official Press Release.

“It appears that elements of the X Augusta and Valeria Victrix legions launched a combined arms assault on Costco at dawn this morning. We’ve anticipated this for some time. There is no cause for general alarm. A great many James Patterson novels were stolen along with a large quantity of Peanut M&Ms. It is noteworthy that large bags of plain M&Ms survived the attack. Police units occupied with extracting The Earl from his chimney were slow to respond; we can only lay the blame squarely on the Earl’s doorstep as he has been warned previously about masquerading as Santa Claus.”

“The loss of the Patterson titles is inestimable,” said Professor Sedgwick Thyssen-Huette. “If the Roman legionaries manage to decipher Patterson’s prose, the space time continuum may be adversely impacted.”

Efforts to release the Earl are on hold according to City Manager Eugenia Bolton. “Wellington Leg deserves better,” she said. Ms. Bolton is bitter about the closure of the dual carriageway. “We all know who was racing shopping carts on the principal highway. Only the spirit of Christmas prevents me from naming names.”

Dogsbody Urquhart Depew is spearheading efforts to find an extension ladder. “Plan A was to go to Costco,” he said. “I’m lucky to be alive.”

Portions of this story were invented by reporter Roger Ramjet: Special to the Druidical & Literary, dateline the What a Situation Room high atop the Running Footman Hotel: “Waltraut Frothingmunster, aka the Flower of the West Country, has confessed to steaming open query letters, inserting her own commentary as well as unflattering author photos. As postmistress of Wellington Leg and Henley Hornbrook Mrs. Frothingmunster revealed her shocking behavior on the eve of the annual literary ball to be held in the historic gymnasium on the Earl’s Court Road. One victim of this outrage, the Dowager Princess, revealed her study of NFL tactics ( a proposal) was altered. ‘ My thesis regarding drop back quarterbacks is that they remain in the pocket at all times. I’ve never concealed my admiration for Dan Marino.’

DCI Borchardt had this to say: “these allegations, if true, will be investigated vigorously.” Borchardt went on to say that the shortage of yellow tape that has plagued his department has forced him to utilize pink tissue in delineating crime scenes around town. “We found The Earl’s Saab Viggen fighter illegally parked at Safeway last evening. Some of his hogs had been playing with the shopping carts, we believe they were racing, and thus we were forced to seal off the lot with pink tissue.”

Heather Frothingmunster, a teenager in Goth, reported, “The cops totally overreacted. The pink tissue is kind of cool though.”

Prosecutrix Mrs. Anderson-Cooper released her annual Holiday Assessment remarking, “Wellington Leg is on the radar…The earl, his hogs, his blatant disregard for literary good taste…these elements combine to create an atmosphere not conducive for serious writers.”

Should the earl be summoned to the Tower, many believe his beheading will spur book sales. This is Roger Ramjet reporting.

Those of you kind enough to leave comments here may notice they have yet to emerge from the virtual corral. This is due to the fact that the Earl broke the blog and does not how to fix it. As dogsbody and figure of resentment it is left to me to attend to these unanticipated technical difficulties while, of course, carrying on with regard to the hogs. They require dry straw and enjoy daytime television. When hungry they rustle together leaving my woolen trousers stained with mud.

While I have control of the blog I would like to say that Voltaire’s Miasma is a dreadful potboiler although I did enjoy the scenes set in the Vatican. One cannot help but wonder why Pope Clement would be depicted as driving a vintage Hispano-Suiza…magical realism? I wonder.

Finally, the Earl remains unaware that agents of the Prosecutrix have ‘bugged’ his estate, an estate rightfully mine by the way. Thus he was recorded this morning exhorting the hogs before unleashing them upon the land. He’s quite mad, you see. It is irresponsible to leave the Viggen fighter-interceptor parked in the driveway. I do expect that justice will be served in the matter of my disinheritance…must dash…the Earl can’t find the Armorall. If anyone has tips on cleaning the Viggen’s dashboard, drop me a note at The Earl Is a Fool dot nyet. Warmest etcetera, U. U. Depew

Mr. Gareth Andrews of Mount Lake Terrace asks: Did Jane Austen ever date the Earl? Was he the inspiration for much of her fiction?

Dear Gareth, Good to hear from you. I’m just catching up on my mail after resetting the parking brake on my Viggen ( the key to commuting is air superiority.) Many things have gone to seed in my absence…and I have strange cravings for onion rings, but no matter! ‘Tis the Season! I think my romantic entanglements are hardly suitable fare for this web log although one can certainly read between the lines in re the enigmatic Chalfont-Smythe. Widowed at a young age, heiress to the Crumbly Cakes fortune, one can imagine the parade of unsuitable scoundrels, rakes and Lotharios presenting their burnished credentials. I think Prudentia, if I may use the familiar, is drawn to my capacious knowledge of all things literary, a knowledge, Gareth, hard earned indeed. No less a figure than Natasha Last Name Deleted has written several passionate essays on the topic of my fabulous collection of author photographs taken against the day my literary ship comes in.

As to Jane Austen I recall escorting a young woman of that name to the Fusilier’s Ball. The evening ended abruptly after I was shot out of a cannon ( a dreadful misunderstanding). I penned a note of apology but I fear the transgression has yet to be forgiven. YHS, The Earl.

Dateline Wellington Leg: Olivia Earthwindandfire reporting: “The frost has barely melted here at Wellington Leg International Airport. The famed north south runway is festooned with banners; it appears the entire First Cohort of the Valeria Victrix is on hand to welcome the Earl as his Saab Viggen fighter rolls to a halt. Airport manager Italo Calvino is with me…Mr. Calvino is this the most exciting day of your life?”

“That would be my first sexual encounter, Olivia, strange as it might seem. I remember stealing away with Annunciata De Medici to the ramparts of her father’s castle…”

“You became lovers?”

“We kissed. Her lush lips brushed mine in hasty ecstasy…”

“Hasty?”

“We were pursued by palace agents. I hurried away while Annunciata reapplied her makeup. Such a moment…when the heart swells…the air is sweetened with a heavenly perfume, the soul is bared, Olivia.”

“Do you think that Mrs. Anderson-Cooper will proceed to behead the Earl?”

“Who can say? If he is to be torn from our bosom…”

“Maureen Dowd inspired the Earl to face execution. Is she in the crowd today?”

“Her publicist is here. He awaits a sound bite…”

“The cohort’s heralds are blowing their trumpets . This is quite a sight, six hundred men marching in formation, their voices raised in song…the Earl has lifted the canopy and his scrambling out of the fighter, no, wait, he’s fallen under the wing…oh God, no, he’s all right, he’s waving! An Imperial Legate is approaching on a motorized golf cart. He’s offering the Earl the keys to the city! This Olivia Earthwindandfire reporting.”