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A close relative of mine applied to join a government employment project. The New Enterprise Incentive Scheme, NEIS. All she had to do was suggest a good business idea and they would teach her small business skills.

Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

But no, conditions apply. The government has firm ideas on what is a good business idea. Here’s a shortlist of what it doesn’t like.

This is where I believe the government has got it wrong.

Pole dancing? A healthy way to spend the night and you get money thrown at you or tucked into any clothing you have forgotten to remove. All of us could do this, and it would create less need for so many hospital beds later in life.

Couriers with g-strings? Well hell, that’s one way of making people stay at home to receive parcels. Wait until Amazon hears about this. No more front-door thefts.

A nudist BnB? I’m pretty broad-minded about this kind of stuff. After all, most of my nude experiences have been quite exciting. But someone needs to think ahead. Who’s going to do the fry-up in the morning, eh? A non-nudist, that’s who.

A religious itinerant? Traveling preacher? That’s a job? I thought it was a calling. If it isn’t, then they need all the business experience they can get.

Helping people to vilify others? Isn’t this a function we’re all born with. Who needs lessons? I stand with the government on this. At last, they got something right.

Anatomical chocolate moulds? And I thought Belgian chocolate seashells were pretty daring. But listen, a democracy has to be fair to all the people, not just us quiet ones. If they want cake? let them eat cake. If they prefer other items, well, why not? What happens at home, stays at home.

An immigration agent who switches roles as a marriage celebrant to help immigrants get a better class of visa? Who could complain about such efficiency? You walk in desperate to get a visa extension, and you walk out happily married. What’s not to like about this?

Overall, I’m going to grade the government a three out of seven for this effort. They’re trying, but not enough to get re-elected.

Sometimes a guy gets tired of being asked his occupation. I mean when you’re buying a phone, why do they need that information? Don’t tell me, I know. So they can bombard you with irritating advertising they think fits your profile. 

I hate this.

So when I last upgraded to a new phone,  the salesman asked me what my occupation was, I said I was retired.

“What did you do before that?” he asked, his pen poised over the form where it asked OCCUPATION.

Well shit, I did a lot of things before I retired. Which occupation should I choose that defeated the waiting advertisers?

 “I was a playboy,” I replied. Truth be told, I never was a playboy ‘cos I could never figure out where to start. But this guy couldn’t know that. It’s okay to lie to salespeople ‘cos they always lie to you.

 He waited. So I had to embellish.

“I know I don’t look like an ex-playboy,” I said, ” but there are many levels of playboy. I was in one of the lesser ones.”

Still, his pen didn’t move.

“It was a little awkward at first, I have to admit,” I said. “I’d get invited to parties in St Tropez and Monte Carlo. When I got there, they’d all be complaining about jet lag because they’d arrived in their private planes. I’d come by public transport, so I could only complain about the bus lag.”

The guy wasn’t buying it. He was holding out until I said ‘librarian’, or ‘shark-repellent tester’, or something advertisers love.

“Also,” I added, “they’d all be bitching about their Lambos and Ferraris. I told them to get a Camry. I had a ten-year-old that ran ever so sweetly. Started every time. No electrical issues, unlike their fancy Italian speedsters. But they didn’t seem interested in my opinion, although I reckon I knew more about cars than them. I’d owned a lot of real bangers.”

The guy’s eyes narrowed. I went on. “Eventually, somebody explained I didn’t quite fit in, that I was a nice guy and all, but maybe this wasn’t the right circle for me. So, I said goodbye to the yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl.”

The salesman gave up. His pen moved, and, under OCCUPATION, he ticked OTHER.

I’d made it. No occupation meant no money, I was invisible to advertisers.

At last. Great God a-mighty, free at last.

The best things in life are free. Especially words. They’re free, they’re pleasurable. A win-win. One of my favorites is callipygian. It’s the perfectly concise description of a perfectly formed butt. It’s of Greek origin, first used to describe the famous statue of Venus. Another useful phrase for the lady de Milo would be ‘No arms’. Neither of these terms has taken hold.

Unctuous is also useful. It means to be oily or ingratiating. Sadly, most people prefer smarmy jerk.

Ammon Shea knows a lot of great words. Check out his Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages. He’s a guy who sat down and read the Oxford English Dictionary from A to Z. All 21,730 pages of them. Holy God. He said, “I had been meaning to read the OED for years, but I always found some way to put it off… because if I read it I wouldn’t have it to look forward to.”  That’s the best reason I’ve ever heard for not doing something pleasurable.

Here are a few of his findings you might think are useful:

Airling (n.) A person who is both young and thoughtless.

Interesting but pointless. Pesky kid is more popular, I would think.

Assy (adj.) Asinine.

I can see this catching on again. Four-letter words are always welcome.

Backfriend (n.) A fake friend; a secret enemy.

Definitely not a person who’s got your back; more like one who’s about to plunge a knife in there.

Gymnologize (v.) To dispute naked, like an Indian philosopher.

I can’t recall any disputes I’ve had when naked, but I’m pretty sure they didn’t last very long.

Mediocrist (n.) A person of mediocre talents.

Well, shit. Ain’t that practically everybody you know?

Miskissing (n.) Kissing that is wrong.

This is so useful. “Sorry, I just miskissed. I’ll have to do it again.”

Petecure (n.) Modest cooking; cooking on a small scale.

At last, a withering comeback to someone who boasts about being epicurean.

Trumpery (n.) Something of less value than it seems.

Well, well. Who would have thunk it? So perfect.

Set (n. v. adj. adv. conj.) Probably the most used word in the English language. As a verb, it has 155 different senses; as a noun, 48.  It’s been in use for over a thousand years. Talk about useful.

So now you know. Find the word and it will set you free. Like money, spend it wisely.

 

Here is a true story once told to me.

When we were married, this woman told me, I had this cat that my husband couldn’t stand. He especially hated the cat jumping on the kitchen table, and he would always sweep her off. Not gently either. It made me think just what kind of person I had married.

One weekend we planned to spend the time at our beach shack.

“I have to work late,” my husband said, “I’ll join you in the Friday evening.”

I arrived during the day and began tidying the shack for the weekend. My cell phone rang. It was my husband.

“I’ve had to work later than expected,” he said. “I won’t be able to make it tonight. I’ll be there in the morning.”

“Fine, I’ll see you then.”

A minute later the phone rang again and my husband’s ID came up on the screen.

“What’s up?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. As I waited for his reply I could hear his voice in the background and I realized he was talking on the house phone to somebody. I could also hear something else – my cat purring loudly into the cell phone mouthpiece.

Obviously, my husband had put his phone down on the kitchen table after the call to me, and my cat had jumped up on the table and pressed the redial button.

“Your phone is still on,” I shouted, but he couldn’t hear me.

Boys are about to give up when I realize that my husband was talking to another woman. Not just any woman but his ex-wife. And he was organizing that evening with her. I killed the connection, my mind whirled, my heart became stone. I hadn’t suspected a thing until my cat had ratted him out.

Somehow I managed to keep my mouth shut for the whole weekend; what was there to say?

After my husband left for work on Monday, I saw my lawyer and filed for divorce.

“Why are you doing this?” my husband cried, when I showed him the paperwork, but I never told him why. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway.

That a cat he’d ill-treated had ratted him out was a step too far, too deliciously apt to be believable.

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes a man gets bored with his name. Especially in coffee shops and fast food outlets when he’s constantly asked for it. How hard is it to recall one order from hundreds a day? So I decided to make life easier for everybody.

“What’s the name?” the young girl asked me at a Mexican food joint in Brooklyn.

“Kanye West.”

She stared back at me in nervous confusion. “I can’t write that.”

“Why not?”

She said nothing.

“Look,” I said. “This is how it’s going to go down. You call out ‘Kanye West, your fish taco is ready’.  Everyone here will stop eating and look around. I stand up and walk over to you and collect my order. The people resume their meal and later they’ll go home and tell everybody they saw Kanye West today and he sure looked different.”

She pursed her lips. “I’ll just call out ‘fish taco’.”

My friends, I tried. In fact I tried again later that day. In a Manhattan coffee shop near 5th Avenue. Different borough, different reaction.

“What’s the name?” the counter girl asked.

“Kanye West.”

She nearly split her face smiling. “Hey everybody,” she yelled out to the four staff and 10 customers. “Kanye West is here, and he wants a flat white!”

“Woohoo!” the baristas and sandwich makers cried. Two of them danced, two of them cast snaky moves around the floor.

I glanced over to the customers. Suits and business attire. None of them looking up from their cellphones. I had won over only a third of my audience. The staff tried their best. When my coffee was ready, the barista yelled, “Kanye West, your flat white is ready!”

I took it and checked the suits – nobody looking up. Jeez, some people.

Later that day I tried one more time.

“I can’t write down Kanye West,” the counter girl confessed.

“Why not?”

“Because the barista hates him and he won’t make your coffee.”

She had me there. A man will ditch his principles when faced with no coffee.

“Put down George Harrison,” I said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the Instagram archives.

From the Instagram archives

From the Instagram archives.

From the Instagram archives.

The Oglala Sioux Reservation in South Dakota is windswept and beautiful. I had arrived at the homeland of Crazy Horse, Red Cloud and Black Elk to research background for The Backward Time Traveler. A car park overlooked the fields at Wounded Knee where, in 1890, the US Army slaughtered up to 300 Lakota men, women and children with cannon and rifle fire.

The government awarded twenty soldiers the Medal of Honor. The dead and wounded Indians were left lying in the snow. In 1990, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a resolution formally expressing “deep regret” for the massacre.

Well, that balances things up. No matter that the Rez now sits in the second poorest county in the USA. A place where three in ten adults have a job. Homes where over a dozen people will share three bedrooms. The future looks dark, and the good old days aren’t coming back; they weren’t that cushy anyway.

An Oglala girl, about 20 years old, approached me hesitantly and held up a dream catcher to sell. It was simple: beads in Lakota colors of red, white black and yellow encased in a hoop of wood.

‘It’s real,’ she said. ‘Not made in China. The wood comes from the cherry trees along the creek over there. $20?’ Her partner, holding a three-month-old baby, sat in a car watching.

I automatically haggled, beat her down to $15. I was a hundred miles away when I realized she needed every buck she could get. That extra $5 would have helped her little family a lot. I’ve cursed that unthinking piece of insensitivity ever since. My head was stuck in the past when it should have been rooted in the present.