Wellington Leg: The Leg has been quiet lately for reasons no one can explain, least of all me. To blog is to heft a mighty weight and to link, Dear Cassius, that’s beyond the pale. But, in this edition of One More Bite of the Apple we’re going to link to interesting places or die trying. The new version of Word Press has a button on the task bar that says “link.” Opinion is divided as to whether this reporter should press that button first or find something linkable and then press the button. Two schools of thought, no real answers.
Here is what we do know: this week will go down in history, world history, as one of the most absurd since the Hundred Year War abruptly ended after ninety nine years. Yes, they rounded up to one hundred. Okay, let’s say that you’re an international banker and you’ve traveled to Hong Kong for a conference. Who is your keynote speaker?
E. Howard Hunt: I’m fairly sure that he’s dead.
Hugo Chavez: Busy in New York speaking to the UN General Assembly. Otherwise the guy’s a natural.
Michelle Malkin: She’s scary, but you’re an international banker.
Moamer Gaddafi: No one can spell his name, not even spellcheck. It’s hard to get a Bedouin tent permit in Hong Kong.
Sarah Palin: Dude, you’re totally correct. Now English is your second language so you’re going to have listen carefully to what Sarah is saying; there are many compound sentences or compound fractures and stylistic flourishes that seem inconsequential or puzzling but she is not addressing you in your native tongue and the translators are befuddled. She’s telling you how to lose eighty pounds in three weeks by sweating the prospect that she is a possible candidate of a major party for the presidency of the United States. I know you guys totally missed that.
Archive for the ‘Biting the Apple’ Category
How to Lose Eighty Pounds in Three Weeks
Friday, September 25th, 2009Placebo Shows Promise
Wednesday, June 10th, 2009Wellington Leg: Researchers at the Institute for Science believe they’ve developed a pill that has the look feel and texture of medicine with none of the side effects. Code named Capulet the exciting new placebo comes in three colors, yellow, blue or tawny brown; while flavorless the pill is easily digested by the test subjects Big Fat Guys GMBH is the holding company developing the Capulet. They hope to distribute the pill at the Literary Faire later this summer. “We hope to market a small launcher to go with the Capulet,” said one of the Big fat Guys. With the launcher a patient could stand several blocks from his medicine cabinet, and, with the press of a button, have the placebo soaring through the air in no time.
Plague Dogs: Tests of the launcher have been made difficult by local dogs, researchers admit. “Dogs enjoy chasing things, and they intercepted most of the Capulets in mid air.” One solution may be to develop fake placebos; while the dogs chase the imitators, the real placebos may be launched in a rapid fire sequence.
Eye of Newt: A volunteer, code named “Newt” admitted that the placebo launcher “works only too well.” Newt was tweeting on the campus of a major university when he accidentally triggered his launcher. Newt ran across the 520 floating bridge, past the Microsoft campus, through Marymoor Park and climbed Mount Si before snaring his Capulet with what he described as a “basket catch.” He admits trampling a salmon habitat and disturbing a family of black bears on the outskirts of Redmond. “I think the bears were going to eat the salmon anyway,” Newt said.
The mayor of Wellington Leg welcomes the economic stimulus associated with launching placebos, but warned, “You have to be in pretty good shape to do what Newt did. This project my not be for everyone.”
The Crying of Lot 49: Volunteer slots will be auctioned in Pynchon Hall during normal business hours.
T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.
Free Range Chicken Detained
Thursday, April 30th, 2009Wellington Leg: The Constabulary has detained “Blondell” a free range chicken whose interstate spree included crossing state lines for the purpose of crossing state lines and then crossing back over again. “Blondell” who used to be a limited range chicken became a licensed free range chicken and ran for Congress; interestingly enough he opposed the stimulus package despite a provision that would provide fifty square miles of tundra for every chicken in every pot.
Chicken’s Normal Range: “Blondell” is a pseudonym for a local chicken who mysteriously vanished from his range several weeks ago. We now know he spent days smoking cigarettes, hitching rides, and correcting midterm exams while posing as an adjunct professor at a major university. “Not only has he roamed entirely too far out of range,” a police spokesperson said. “He tried to vote for Norm Coleman.”
Had “Blondell” succeeded in voting, the state of Minnesota would have only one senator now instead of the usual two. The chicken was detained near Elko Nevada after rumors of extraterrestrial (loud banging noises) activity alerted local officials. “Blondell” was intercepted at the California border by an alert employee of Lens Crafters who realized that a chicken wearing contact lens didn’t need corrective glasses to peck for seeds.
Chaos feared: Other chickens, some sporting sunglasses and Aloha shirts, are suspected of wanting to hit the road like Jack Kerouac. Throughout the Bailiwick of Leg officials are maintaining the highest state of alert which borders on lunacy after 48 hours when sleep deprivation sets in and all chickens begin to look suspicious. Our own Senator Foghorn was stopped at a checkpoint but was released after walking backwards through a cul de sac and correctly naming three of the faces on Mount Rushmore.
T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.
Texas May Join the Leg
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009Balderdash Palace: The Dowager Princess is pleased that her effort to overturn the Louisiana Purchase is finally bearing fruit. Texas Governor Rick Perry hinted last week that Texas may secede from the union. “We would welcome Texas to our dominion,” said Consort Royal Nicola of the D’Urbervilles. “Just think how good our football team would be,” she enthused. Due to its tiny size and irregular terrain Wellington Leg has never been a football power. Wellington Leg maintains that Thomas Jefferson sold Louisiana Territory to the Princess’ maternal grandfather Archduke Leg. Documents from Kinko’s clearly show that a “TJ” signed a sale agreement with “AD Leg” long before Napoleon Bonaparte claimed the port of New Orleans for France.
To accommodate Texas Wellington Leg will hire the Mothra Removal Service to create a new slogan and an ad campaign. The towne’s current motto In Vino Veritas suffers from demo fatigue and dead language confusion. “We’re thinking “Don’t Mess with the Leg” said a spokesperson for the Palace.
The capital city of the combined Wellington Texas Leg would be Henley Hornbrook where the Dowager Princess maintains a stable of thoroughbreds who enjoy munching credit default swaps. A large herd of longhorn cattle would move from Wichita Falls to Goth as part of the ceremony.
With her ten gallon crown and pearl handled six guns the Dowager Princess should be a natural and benign ruler for Texas. Governor Perry would become a vassal prince, and, as she has done here in the Leg, the speed limit would be raised to 155 miles per hour.
T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.
Inch Worms Resized
Thursday, April 16th, 2009Wellington Leg: in a blow to the inch worm industry federal regulators having released a shocking report detailing the varying lengths of inch worms produced in Wellington Leg. In one case an inch worm called “Roy” measured out at three feet six inches although industry sources say that “Roy” is not an inch worm but rather a collection of inch worms glued together to deceive federal officials. At stake is a vast pile of money part of the Troubled Inch Worm Recovery Fund or TIRF to be rolled out by Treasury as soon as metrics are agreed upon with a recalcitrant Republican minority. “I’m simply aghast,” said putative shadow commander Newt. “We’ve worked hard to standardize the statutory length of an inch worm. Why mess with success?”
One proposal would alter the name of the worm from inch worm to “A worm that varies in length but should be about an inch long.” Yet another idea be floated in the halls of Congress would be to pretend that the worms are an inch long and direct FASB to stop measuring them. “International bodies are more flexible then we are,” said Professor Moriarty. “They don’t expect Nine Inch Nails to have nine inch nails,” he added.
Surf and TIRF: The Palace is undecided about accepting TIRF funds since The Dowager Princess is eligible for a large bonus if inch worm production meets its lofty sales targets. “They’ll start complaining about Feudalism again,” said an unnamed Palace source.
Meanwhile “Roy” is preparing for the reality TV show World’s Longest Inchworm scheduled for prime time on the Wellington Leg Public Access Channel. “I think Roy is nervous,” said producer Kip Wells. “We have plenty of crazy glue handy, though. It should be a great show.”
T. Rex Love-Handles reporting.
Blog Orbits Jupiter
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009Wellington Leg: To the consternation of the nation this blog, this realm, this ethereal wisp was launched into outer space late last week and is currently orbiting the planet Jupiter. While that’s okay for the short term many worry about the future of this thing of ours. Will deep space influence the content? Will a parallax view of literature emerge? At the risk of degrading popular culture toward a tipping point I fear the answer is yes. The content of this blog will be worse than ever due to the effects of zero gravity’s rainbow and a foggy film on the windshield.
Chronicles of 43: From its humble roots as the diary of the 43rd earl this blog has evolved over time to offer the history of Wellington Leg, a towne populated by exiled writers, wannabees, shouldabeens, and hasbeens. Ruled with an iron fist by the Dowager Princess this tiny feudal state is ground zero for the credit crisis thanks to Ms. Fran Wycomb of Clutchingstraws Close. Fran borrowed one thousand dollars for beauty supplies in 2007; her loan, sliced and diced into tranches, brought down the financial system. This enabled a ten year old local student to build her show and tell project My Hedge Fund into the fourth largest financial institution in the world.
Our Pledge to You: Despite the vagaries of space travel the entire staff of One More Bite of the Apple pledges to expose corruption whenever we see it; to be relentless in our search for the eye of Newt that has eluded the mainstream media. But first we must get the defroster working or we won’t be able to see anything. We’re flying blind.
YHS, The staff.
The Lure of Alpha
Friday, February 20th, 2009Wellington Leg: Google has a financial website called Seeking Alpha, a site that aggregates news and opinion about all things financial. You may wonder what Alpha represents and why so many seek it: Alpha is that sliver of outperformance measured against an index everyone accepts as a baseline. One example is the stock market. In literature, before we desperately sought Susan, Dante searched high and low for Beatrice. It’s a quest: seeking alpha in that sense is what we all do when we want to succeed at something or excel at our chosen endeavor.
Institutional Memory: Before we can seek our personal alpha there must be an accepted criteria to test and measure our progress. Your reporter once managed to draw a picture of a tree while staying within the confines of a sheet of paper earning a brief moment of accolades before attempting finger painting. The tree had branches and leaves monkeys and squirrels, the trunk was as lovely as a Snickers Bar in the morning dew. The leaves were yellow and the bark was purple; a troll lived in the root system. He wore a bowler hat and collected taxes.
The big takeaway? I stayed within the lines! This never happened again in my recollection of early schooling.
In the current crisis we suspect that our baseline is dissolving. Our unease is manifest. We don’t know if Alex Rodriguez homers should count or if Bank of America is too big to fail or already gone. The basis of employment ie value for value is now linked to a fate beyond the control of either party in the bilateral agreement between company and worker. We don’t know if the mountain we have to climb is 12,000 feet or just the average Beehive; come to think of it, what is the height of an average Beehive?
Beethoven was a hell of a piano player: some of the kids drop down bunts and run toward third base on the theory that it’s closer and saves a trip to first and second. We all agree that’s cheating. As investment bankers are led away in handcuffs we can only assume they cheated too; their quest for alpha led them directly to third base. Once we all agree what the rules are the crisis will abate. The lure of alpha will stimulate our hearts and brains; we will wear bowler hats and collect taxes ‘neath the lovely purple trees.
Praise the Work Ignore the Author
Monday, January 26th, 2009Wellington Leg: Big time publishing entered the celebrity sweepstakes years ago slipping through a side door of the entertainment industry by fawning, flattering, and finally begging the doorman to let them in. Perhaps uneasy in silk shirts and gold chains publishing execs kept an emergency supply of tattered cardigans on hand in case a blogger sank its teeth into the bling and began to chew. You know how that hurts.
It’s More Fun to be a Rapper: The seminal error of the publishers was to focus on the author rather than the work. Like many mistakes this seems harmless enough in isolation but we’ve moved beyond marketing and promotion into a mad search for It Girls and Boys who have star quality. They look good. They sound good. Non Fiction publishers have the added twist that their authors squandered fortunes, ruined lives, eroded property values but they’re all better now and they look good. We can learn from this lesson from their tales: before you destroy your life and the lives of those around you, build a platform. Nothing’s more tawdry than the decline and fall of the weatherman.
Et tu, Fiction? Writers of fiction are notoriously unkempt. We mumble and blink a lot. Few of us are telegenic. Faced with this dilemma the industry created the fake memoir, a hybrid in the commercial tradition of cable television. This is based on a true story. Really, honest, I swear. One shot at Oprah, that’s all I ask. I inhaled exhaust fumes from a Buick Six writing this damned thing.
Promoting the author is the core of the Industry Belief System. The flaws in this approach are many and may prove ultimately fatal to the big guys in New York. Why? Even if the title breaks out follow up is tough. After all how many trips to rehab involve book length drama, crazed and vengeful relatives, long walks off short piers? The answer is one. One and you’re done. Your second book a novelized version of your memoir and your third book will never be written.
I would be more optimistic about the traditional publishing business if I am wrong about this and refocus on the work being presented. Can they? Sure they can, they still do on the margins of the business. Will they redeploy their resources, that’s the real question.
Ancient Memory
Saturday, October 11th, 2008Wellington Leg: Here in this particular October we are shrouded in pre-Halloween terror brought about by men and women dressed as a certified public accountants. When the dust settles and the electoral college has commencement day we can then return to the present tense for a short visit before the ensuing crisis. Meanwhile, though, charts depicting 1929 and its eerie resemblance to now will have to be endured; we have forgotten the lessons of the Great Crash because our institutional memory dies with those who actually lived through those times. Newsreels of Herbert Hoover are unintentionally funny because Mr. Hoover is very overdressed and moves in short choppy strokes at unpredictable speeds.
The current crisis might offer such low brow entertainment if Secretary Paulson and Chairman Bernanke wore top hats and rushed up the capitol steps at twenty or thirty miles per hour. The debates would be more interesting if McCain and Obama sped around walking like penguins and smoking cigars. McCain has the right idea with his motorized bursts of hand chopping staccato burp gun thoughts. Obama is not holding his end up by trying to think about his answers. Advantage: McCain.
So far no one in the center of the maelstrom has thought to quote lengthy passages from Shakespeare or delved into the possibilities of Thoreau, Voltaire, or Casey Stengel. Casey might well wonder if anyone here can play this game as he mused on the dugout steps with regard to the newly formed expansion team, the New York Mets. This particular rescue of our economy, once known as the Goldilocks Economy, has ripped a page from the story of Rapunzel. Rapunzel is stuck in the tower because she cut off all her hair, perhaps in a fit of pique, and now all her rescuers are down on the ground discussing the situation. Perhaps we could build a device made of slatted wood, lean that device against the tower and climb up. Or we could make rope out of everyday household items and sling the rope to her; we could do both, or neither, but let’s make one thing perfectly clear: it’s Rapunzel’s fault for cutting off her hair. Maybe she likes being in the tower. Forget it, let’s watch newsreels of Herbert Hoover. Man, he’s fast.
Mount BS to Erupt
Saturday, September 13th, 2008Wellington Flyover: Scientists with binoculars are gathered in Middle Wallop fearful that the dormant volcano Mount BS may erupt at any moment. “The increasing pressure from the volume of BS threatens to create seismic events,” Doctor Welby said from a nearby ridgeline. “Lava will flow,” he added. He recorded the activities of a singular moose and a flying squirrel to conclude the animal kingdom is already heading for the exits.
Political Reaction: The Bull Moose Party is quick to point out that the rising level of BS inside the mountain is normal. Armed with a twelve ich ruler and a Dick Cheney thermos Bull Moose spokesperson Randy Right leapt from a helicopter for a first hand look at the caldera. “You can see where the BS level rose to during the last election cycle,” Randy said. He then measured the superheated gases emanating from fissures in the logic stream. “See? We’re okay.”
Locals Uncertain: Fact checker Mildred Pierce is holed up at Eddie’s Book Nook not far from the Trinidad drilling rig in Personal Growth. With nearly forty thousand assertions to examine Mildred is skipping lunch these days. Here’s one: while browsing through Ross Dress for Less Mildred was approached by a salesperson from the Security Exchange Commission. “He told me that Lehman Brothers was for sale in Aisle Five. I hurried over but it turned out that only Asset Management had been marked down. I wanted the entire investment banking operation. And, I wanted a cardigan sweater.”
Bargain Basement: With Mount BS rumbling anew shoppers rushed to the basement where Fannie and Freddie offered “fresh government bonds.” The bonds were at least day old Mildred said. Feisty Arizona Senator John McCain promised to “sock this frail economy in the kisser,” Mildred reported. Meanwhile Barack Obama unveiled a thirty two point program to jumpstart job growth. Local tow truck operator Bertrand Guy Viscount Lamore has the jumper cables ready. “Obama understands tow truck operators,” he said.
Her Cardigan is Frayed: “If I have to flee Wellington Leg I certainly need a new sweater,” Mildred added. Retail sales figures for August were the lowest in three decades. No one is blaming Mildred for the shortfall but her thrift is ill-timed. “Buy the sweater,” pleaded Treasury Secretary Paulson. “If Mildred buys a sweater, we’ll buy GM and Ford.”
T. Rex Love-Handles reporting for Science on Saturday.