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

no more BofA

It is done, friends: this lowly whorphan closed his last account with Bank of America (BofA), telling them in the cancellation letter that my reasons for termination included their involvement in causing the ongoing world economic crisis known by some as the Great Recession. The air of freedom is sweet, I tell you, and tinged with victory's acerbic bite; oh how I fill my lungs with it, though, expressing my joy through the majesty of song. While I cannot remember where exactly I read it or from whom I poached the idea – whether it was a sign held by an Occupier or an article on truth-out.org – but somebody was calling upon members of the general public to close their accounts with BofA in order to punish that bank for its rapacious and greed-based policies. Having active accounts with BofA has bugged me day in and day out since seeing that sign; how good it is to have stopped funding one of the most despicable institutions that has ever dared claim to be Of this fine and shining land and Of this industrious and upstanding people. In short, Bank of America is not of us, for us, or by us, but of the shareholder, for the shareholder, by the shareholder; it behooves us to do our business with financial institutions other than one that operates for the benefit of wealthy people-in-the-know.

My decision to close these accounts was founded on more than just a whimsical moral fancy or the passing desire to distance myself from one of the foundational pillars of our equality-destroying, Nature-ravaging, un-American system of consumption-oriented capitalism: I was sick of paying seven dollars in maintenance fees – per month, per account – for the privilege of having a check-book, and I had paid enough overdraft fees and account penalties to finance a brief South Asian border war. Comparatively, my accounts at USAA incur few penalties, and I do not feel guilty for banking with that institution because it takes care of its own without getting too heavily involved in credit-default-swaps or high stakes stock-market gambling. On some level, of course, it is impossible to fully distance oneself from the banks that caused the Great Recession, unless one is dead or 100% self sufficient. Therefore, I am partly to blame for this whole Recession business, because I banked with BofA and because I cannot yet grow all of the food and harvest all of the electricity I need to live and work without undue stress or worry. Guilty with me in this is Congress, the Senate, and the White House, for not punishing the multi-millionaire executive officers of TARP-fund-receiving banks and for allowing the statute of limitations for punishing them to lapse, which means that these crooks stay free and rich while millions of honest and hard-working Americans sit around poor and in debt, their savings and hopes and dreams having vanished into the silken pockets of fat-cat, too-big-to-fail bankers.

Regardless, however, of my complicity in these matters, I feel a great relief that I never have to enter another BofA branch or use another BofA ATM ever again for the rest of my life; now that I am no longer part of the problem, I can become part of the solution. Huzzah for liberty, victory, and justice! Mahalo.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit

on the fade of the recession

A certain coiffure has been sweeping the modern American hair landscape, or hairscape – the Fade of the Recession. Similar to that style favored by persons alive during the Great Depression, our Great Recession's preferred mode is cut very close to skull until perhaps eye-level, at which point it fades quickly into a most unruly patch of long top-hair kept in place with an arresting, spiking, or otherwise binding hair product.

Persons sporting the fade of the recession are more than likely frugal, upright, and self-loathing individuals who have finally come around to notion that their best hope for making it through such global wars as nearly always follow in the wake of world-wide economic turmoil is to start relying on as few people other than themselves to complete simple tasks such as hair-cutting, lawn-mowing, cooking, cleaning, transportation, and self-defense. By affecting such severe cuts to the head-bound chitinous offshoots, these people demonstrate a propensity for self-mockery and lightheartedness that is useful when facing impending physical, emotional, or financial ruin.

The author adopted this particular pompadour after seeing a wild-eyed, chain-smoking gentleman of Chinese ancestry who had exited from the dirt-caked side door of an otherwise nondescript, rundown building in one of America's more bustling cities. The man, himself having surpassed at least the age of forty-five, was wearing an ill-fitting overcoat and staring menacingly at everyone passing him by. The nape of his neck was shaved to the bone, and a wild patch of hair sprouted from the top of his head, but his Recession's Fade stood out because of the violent, severe, and apparently hastily-made cuts that defined the area of the fade itself.

場黑麥 mentiri factorem fecit