a parting delight

The author has been experimenting with how he dresses his hair. Whereas he used to comb it over without part, he now parts it on the left-hand side. His favorite hairstyle – which he calls the fade of the recession, or the recession's fade – consists of a malleable tuft at the top and front of the head that fades quickly down the sides and back, where it is closely cropped. (For examples, see here for two men from the 1930s and here for Tom Hardy in the movie Lawless.) Since he has been cutting his own hair this way for nearly fifteen years, the author has decided to name his hairstyle the recession's fade, mostly because it resembles hairstyles sported by individuals who lived through the Great Depression. As a person living through the Great Recession, he can only hope to chase away our enduring economic blues by affecting a bold and brash hairstyle, just as his predecessors conquered their troubles by heaving into the shifting winds of Fortune with wide smiles, strong backs, and daring coiffures.

The looks he gets from people fuel his mirth and keep a smile in his mouth. His meek and unadventurous fellow Americans cannot get enough of his audacity – they stare and point, laugh and mock, looking at him and his slicked-down locks as if he were a sulfur-breathing alien from distant Blaxon-7. Add to this an Abraham Lincoln style chin-beard and neatly cropped mouth-whiskers, and people all but lose their minds. They can't figure out if he is a hipster, a lunatic, a Civil War reenactor, or merely a tragically-lost Amish bloke. On some level, he does not mind being the brunt of their jokes, or the focus of their attentions, but he wonders sometimes why they spend time thinking and talking about him instead of opening their own minds, strengthening their own bodies, and cultivating their own unique sense of style and dress. Another of his unusual habits is to ride bicycle properly, with his shoulders pulled away from the ears, his head erect and scanning, his back straight, and his buttocks planted firmly on the seat. He rides this way so as to isolate the workout to the lower extremities, to keep his head on a swivel, and because riding in any other way is plain foolishness.

An avid cyclist and amateur barber since his early teens, the author's knowledge of the power of hairstyling grew during a recent airing of Radio Lab. The hosts of the show discussed with compelling brilliance the symmetry in our cells, in our thoughts, and in the rest of the universe, but the author nearly fell off his chain when they began speaking about the effect that parting one's hair can have on how one is viewed by other people. Things suddenly made sense – the looks and gazes, the random smiles from passing women, kindness and warmth being thrust upon him because of a simple change in how he combed his hair. If parting is the sweetest sorrow, he shall stick with his current hairstyle until the Recession fades, bearing the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for as long as circumstance demands.

mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥

on frequent simplification

During the course of my writing, I often work myself into a lather while exploring the apparent evils of this particular group or while expounding upon the virtues of one idea or the other. This, dear reader, is a dangerous trend. This, my friend, is something I shall endeavor to do less of, in future. The writer who over-simplifies issues of any type nearly always proves to be a holier-than-thou, fly-in-my-soup cocksucker with no more of an idea how to solve the situations he sees as problems than the smart and talented motherfuckers who – due to position, wealth, or access – actually can; my ideas and notions are, to judge by my readership statistics, old, tired, worn, full of redundant or faulty reasoning, and flat out lame; my frequent use of personal opinions violates the fundamental rules contained in The Elements of Style, Strunk and White's ultimate and indispensable writer's handbook. (I am tempted, at times, as I sit here struggling for syntax in this cold but sunny room, to increase the level of fire and brimstone and really start head-hunting for easy pickings, unless I am doing that already, in which case I am not surprised that few people spend time to read the fruits of my labor, which are as close to beating dead horses as one can get without showering afterward.)

Perhaps it is out of laziness, perhaps it is due to my inability to see the Big Picture, but, mostly, I find that when I write on these sites I stick to simplification; they make for quick and juicy arguments, for high-fructose vituperations that so closely resemble candy-floss as to make a body's sweet tooth twinge. It is likely that I need to step away from these blogs for a spell, to take a week off in honor of the first fall frost in order to give my brains' writing centers a break after working them continuously since last December. (Upon review, it appears as if I have been posting six days a week for the past ten months, now, a streak I dare not break for fear of shaking the foundations of my fledgling sanity.)

I don't think I nor any other simpleton writing today could avoid using simplification for too long, since writing in specifics would be akin to trying to condense all of mankind's knowledge and knowing into a Complete Theory of the Entire Universe, a task for which only a few living people are equipped with the necessary patience, genius, and understanding. (I am not one of these people.) To cut down on frequent simplification seems a good place to start if I hope to improve the quality of my writing's content, however, let alone if I want to inject a shred of rational analysis or positive thinking into my daily word-smithing. And so, I say, begone, ye foul generalization! Out with you, simplified thinking! Welcome in, old man Compassion; make yourself at home on the couch next to lady Moderation; stay a while, oh humble hubris, in this whorphan's cluttered and sad excuse for a functional mind. Oh, what great fun it is to be alive. Mahalo.

© mentiri factorem fecit (場黑麥)