Cone Man's Company

Cone Man was halfway through his two week internship with the company of Wizards at the Tower of Power in the far north of the Land of the Huttites. They were a special order in the world of Wizardry, and thus were really Cloud Wizards.

The Cloud Wizards had a penchant for athletic pursuits, and Cone Man cone-sidered that he would have to demonstrate an athletic pursuit in order to enter into the ethos of the office. Reluctantly, grimly, he mounted his not particularly mighty steed and began training to prepare himself for the epic 24km trip from his man cave to the Tower of Power.

Come what may of that epic adventure, his contingency plan was complete. The BARAAHP (Between A Rock And A Hard Place) Hotel was at long last open for business. Cone-Man vaingloriously styled himself as the Managing Director of the BARAAHP Hotel, simultaneously laughing at the prospect of a man giving himself such a title when he was doing nothing more than taking in boarders, but there was a grain of truth in his claim.

Cone Man had clerked at the High Commission of the Wallabies Tribe thirty years earlier, and one day while he was there, an applicant for a visa had exclaimed "THIS IS NEEDED FOR A BUSINESS TRIP!". Well, yes, but what distinguishes "business" from that which is not business? Arguably, the elderly woman applying for a visa to visit her dying sister in the Land of the Wallabies was on a business trip, even if her business did not include negotiating the exchange of large sums of money.

On a larger scale, private business often had far reaching political and financial ramifications. Robert I, Duke of Normandy, failed to sire any sons by any woman he was legally married to, and in the absence of other offspring, his duchy was inherited by the illegitimate son of his mistress. This was, of course, an excellent start to a career in politics and his son was highly successful, being remembered after his death in 1187 as William the Conqueror, first Norman King of England.

Royal fornication, particularly after Columbus's sailors returned from the New World after 1492, did not always produce the same happy results. Henry VIII, Phillip of Hesse, and later Charles II all contracted syphilis, and found that regal status did not exclude them from suffering the symptoms common to commoners who contracted this Socially Transmissible Disease. Charles II acknowledged all 14 of the children born to his mistresses, but was nevertheless unable to sire an heir with Catherine of Braganza, his legal wife.

Even if the business in question was not personal business, many financial transactions were not described as "business" because of the nature and size of the transactions concerned. If you ran a hotel with a hundred rooms, you were running a "business". If you rented two rooms in your man cave, you were merely "renting rooms to boarders" and even the Tribute Takers did not want to know about your income unless you had more than two boarders or charged over a specified maximum level.

Cone Man had his own business and had avoided syphilis, but his real business lay at the Tower of Power, and he had not avoided sloth, of which his surplus girth was an unsightly symptom. He would need to train for another two weeks before he was fit enough to ride to the Tower of Power, and knew he would have to endure the snide mockery of his scales for another three months .

A warrior returns from Cone Man's past ...

The Cousin Gathering in the Land of the Cantabrians was a great success, albeit Cone Man did not succeed greatly in defeating the temptation to eat too much. The success of the occasion owed much to the tireless efforts of Cone Man's cousin, Deborah the Domestic Goddess. Cousin Jennifer, who had attained the tender age of sixty, had been suitably "sixtied", and they could all move on.

Cone Man had indeed moved on. His flight had left the Land of the Cantabrians at 3.35pm, two days and five hours earlier, and so in cosmic terms he had travelled at least 111.3 million kilometres since the afternoon of the last Day of the Sun. Seven to eight billion people had also made the same dizzying journey through the cosmos, so Cone Man had to admit that his achievement was not exceptional, but it was fun to reflect on.

Cone Man's pattern of movement around the Land of the Hurricanes was certainly unusual. Everybody else left the Land of the Huttites each day and rode the rail canoe south to Wellesley's Town to trade their time for money. Cone Man instead road the rail canoe to the far north of the Land of the Huttites to trade his time to learn from the company of Wizards in the Tower of Power. In a few weeks Cone Man hoped to master the spells and incantations by which he could draw money from the clouds. The prospect of this cloudy currency possessed his mind as surely as the prospect of gold.

Cone Man cared not that he could find himself a laughingstock in a few weeks. He had nothing to lose, and gold had made fools of many a man before him. 19th century writers and later historians remarked at the "Gold Rushes" that caused men to descend on parts of the Land of the All Black Tribe, dig for months, and then the leave the country, having spent all they had to obtain nothing but memories of the Long White Cloud over their heads as they laboured.

Gold had even used to "back up" paper currency, until politicians realised that this policy was deflationary and reduced the amount of money in circulation. At the other extreme, many had believed that stockmarket shares were worth more than gold, and had mortgaged their man caves to purchase shares in the months leading up to the Great Crash of 1987. Cone Man may been crazy, but if judged by the low bar set by his contemporaries, he could be said to moderately sane.

Even if Cone Man could not conjure money from the clouds, others seemed to have faith in him. One true believer was his old friend, Kelvin the Hunter, who lived in the Land of the Cantabrians. When Kelvin was not slaughtering every edible creature that came within range of his mighty Fire Stick, he earned his living spraying the man caves of others with his mighty Paint Stick, and he wondered if Cone Man could assist him in finding customers for his colourful talent. "Alright" sighed Cone Man, "I'll inform the native tribesmen of the Land of the Cantabrians that you can be found at 0225864321 if they need a painter, but after that, be it on your head if you are besieged by desperate building contractors!"

Cone Man's epic journey through time and space ...

Cone Man was attending a Cousin Gathering of his tribe in the Land of the Cantabrians. Cone Man's ancestral links to the area stemmed from his maternal grandparents. Cone Man also had another connection to the Mighty South through his father, who had been born in the Land of the Cargillians, so far south that it even south of the fabled music capital of Gore, notable for being the All Black Tribe's answer to Nashville in the Land of the Stars and Stripes Tribe.

Cone Man had missed yet another land canoe, but keeping his manly calm, he was able to catch the next land canoe, the rail canoe after that, and another land canoe after that. He arrived at the sky port with five minutes to spare before boarding the sky canoe to the Land of the Cantabrians.

"Too close for comfort" Cone Man cone-sidered, but he was on his epic way, and settled back in his seat to endure the flight. The flight began at 10.05am and lasted one hour, and although he knew that the sky canoe was travelling at 300 kilometres an hour, the time seemed to drag.

Drugged by the devious Dragging Time Monster, Cone Man's mind duly drifted away to dwell in other dimensions as he cone-templated his pace through space. The land canoe in which he sat was travelling 300 kilometres per hour. According the crazed Astro-Wizards, the planet over which it flew travelled 106,000 kilometres per hour while orbiting the Sun. The solar system revolving round the Sun travelled at 882,000 kilometres per hour through the Milky Way Galaxy. Ultimately, the Milky Way Galaxy travelled through the Universe at 2.1 million kilometres per …

"Screech!" Cone Man's cosmic cone-templation was abruptly brought back to Earth by the contact of the land canoe's wheels with the tarmac on the landing strip at the sky port of the Land of the Cantabrians. Cone Man had traversed 2.1 million kilometres while travelling to the Land of the Cantabrians!

Walking into the terminal of the sky port, Cone Man reflected on the paradox of his situation - he simultaneously knew exactly where he was on the face of the Earth, and yet had scientific evidence confirming that he and over 7 billion human beings were incapable of comprehending from one hundredth of a millisecond the next one hundredth of a millisecond where they were. Divided into distinct and often warring tribes, humanity nevertheless careened through space on the same space ship, breathing air from the same life support system, while arguing over the transfer of individuals from compartment of the spaceship to another. Cone Man's mind reeled as he looked for a way out of the sky port ...

Cone Man cone-siders a weighty matter

Cone Man was not in denial about being overweight. The problem was that nobody else was in denial about him being overweight. Taciturn tactless types openly mocked Cone Man's middle aged midriff. The more inconsiderate, sadistic and masochistic went dieted and exercised themselves into revoltingly slim and athletic physiques. What had Cone Man ever done to deserve all this heartless betrayal?

Cone Man turned for reassurance to his bedroom scales. "You're 95.5 K today, fatso!" laughed his scales. "Glass scales should not live in cone men's homes, particularly if the cone men own sledgehammers" Cone Man snarled". "It will cost $59.90 to buy a set of replacement scales. If you believe that my replacement will tell you something different, smash me and get a good night's sleep. If you don't believe that, then objectively it is not my fault but yours" the scales answered back. Cone Man had to admit that under the circumstances the scales certainly had hutzpah!

The scales may have been somewhat sadistic, but the online body mass calculator was positively psychopathic, and said without a qualm: "Lose 20 k". Admittedly it was a machine designed by scientists, doctors, and physical education instructors which were professions known for attracting psychopaths, but that was beside the point.

Cone Man cone-sidered the prospect of losing 20 kilograms. He had more chance of riding around Lake Taupo in one day. He had even done so ten years before, and his weight had gone down to 82 kilograms. 20 kilograms? 44 pounds? Three stone? "Blazing cones, that's a lot of stones!" stormed Cone Man.

A stony silence settled upon Cone Man has he cone-sidered the privations of the terrible journey ahead of him if he had any hope of slaying the terrible Middle Aged Midriff Monster ...

Cone Man falls in with a company of wizards ...

Cone Man began his adventure to the terrible wilderness of the far north of the Land of the Huttites by rising early with the intention of his house at 6.50am. He intended to test the logistics of getting there by 8am each morning by land canoe and rail canoe.

Cone Man's plan was derailed when at 6.50am he discovered that the terrible Middle Aged Midlife Midriff Monster had savagely rent his pants asunder! Keeping his manly calm Cone Man changed into another pair of pants, but nevertheless found that he was too late for the 7.07am land canoe, which meant that he was too late for the 7.28am rail canoe and was thus reduced to waiting for the 7.48 am rail canoe.

Cone Man's interview was at 10am, so it was not the end of the world, but that was not the end of the saga. "Blazing cones!" blazed Cone Man. "I REALLY MUST STOP FEEDING THIS BEAST!"

Arriving at his destination, Cone Man found that the local Hall of Wisdom was closed until 9.30am. Few businesses on the main street were open at 8.30am when he wandered around. Cone Man had spent the last 25 years getting to work at 8am each morning, and was bemused by this local peculiarity, but it left him with time to while away and he bought a flat white at a gothic café, redolent heavy metal motifs, right down to the counter server wearing a shirt saying "See you in Hell".

Cone Man quaffed his flat white, marvelling at the strange conundrum whereby the government was so secular that it was proudly contemptuous of religion, conservatives were ashamed to admit to being religious, and only twenty year old Satanists were prepared to calmly look the Devil in the eye and affirm the God given right of the average citizen to openly profess their religious beliefs while telling those did not like it to go to Hell. The attendant, furthermore, was polite, charming and courteous, and Cone Man wished her well when he had finished his coffee, which admittedly tasted rather good.

Cone Man's interview was successful and he had got himself a two week internship with a company of wizards located in a tower in the marketplace of the far north of the Land of the Huttites. "We'll see where this epic quest leads" Cone Man smiled as he rode the rail canoe south …

The new quest begins ...

Cone Man was living in a new world. Actually, he was still living at the same house, street and town in the Land of the All Black Tribe, on the same planet, but let that go. Cone Man had succeeded in paying off the mortgage on his man cave, and while he had no job, he had no mortgage either. He was free of debt and income. He hoped to live long in a world free of debt. He hoped not to live to long in a world free of income.

The sense of relief was both surreal and superficial. After years of craven servitude to the Mortgage Monster, Cone Man was a free of its dour dominion, and from time to time he let out an audible sigh of relief at the surreal sense of liberation. On the other hand, the reality of this new freedom had only superficially impacted on his mind - the impact of reality would occur on the 24th of the month when money mysteriously remained in his bank account, no longer disappearing into the monstrous maw of the remorseless monster.

"What should I do with this freedom?" Cone Man cone-templated. Cone Man could live more easily, but could he live more effectively? He was already writing each day - could he not write more. Writers, pretentiously, liked to talk of "writer's retreats", or aspired to be "writer's in residence" or "being in exile" if living outside the country of their birth, even if no murderous regime had driven them over the border.

Cone Man could not see the point of such phrases. As the resident writer, living alone in a three bedroom man cave, in a quiet suburban valley, in the hills to the east of the Land of the Huttites, from which he had been driven by murderous real estate prices in 2004, he was already living in a "writer's retreat".

Cone Man could not help wondering at the wondrous practice of paying for writers to go to live in France for a year. "Why does the government go to all that trouble when they could simply send the same writer to live in Wainuiomartia for a year?" Cone Man wondered. "I am sure that they would feel just as retreated and exiled if forced to write while resident Outer Wainuiomartia" Cone Man shrugged. Alexander Solzhenitsyn had to endure eight years in the Siberian gulags before he was able to write the Gulag Archipelago, so a year in Wainuiomartia would hardly be the end of a promising literary career.

Contemplating the peculiarities of the literary world was not the same thing as contributing to the literary world, so Cone Man ceased from his peculiar contemplation and returned to his keyboard ...

Things seldom go according to plan ...

The Israeli Army apparently had a proverb: "Things do not always go according to plan, but without a plan, nothing happens". Things had not gone according to Cone Man's plan to do eight hours work a day on job hunting, writing, house maintenance, gardening, cycling and cone-gathering. Nevertheless his plan had lead to some progress rather than complete paralysis. He had finished putting the under coat of sealant in the spare room, mowed the lawns, weeded half the vegetable patch, and filed another two job applications.

Today had been reasonably productive, he reflected. He had cleaned the toilet, bath room wash basin and bath, and then spent three hours assembling a double-bed that his neighbour had given him.

Cone Man did not have a cone maiden to service, but he was hoping to gain revenue through applying the magic of Airbnb, and realised that he would have to cater to the flaming passions of lusty young newlyweds. He was not ready to use Airbnb yet, but the idea had been suggested to him during the day and he did not have the luxury of ignoring good advice.

Cone Man had also re-arranged the psychological furniture in his mind. Reflecting of the ancient proverb that "as a man thinks, so is he" he had changed his status on his webpage from Librarian at the Great Hall of Wisdom to Self-Employed, styling himself as "Managing Director of The Between a Rock and a Hard Place Hotel". He was taking in paying lodgers, in other words, but it sounded better than saying he was "unemployed".

Cone Man was not the only actor that day. An old friend contacted him with the suggestion that he could try his hand at working for a technical support company in the far north of the Land of the Huttites, and Cone Man gladly accepted his offer to set up a meeting with the partners of the company.

Cone Man knew that this was a risky course of action. If he served as an intern for two weeks and then was not taken on, he would have sacrificed two weeks for nothing but some job experience. A "course of action" was however, better than no course of action, and if he did not find another job in the said two weeks then there would be no opportunity cost anyway.

The truth, of course, was that Cone Man could easily be taking a much bigger risk by staying with his old profession. Being a "librarian" was all very well and good if someone was prepared to pay you to function in this role, but meant little if no one was prepared to pay you to do this. You might as well call yourself a Samurai - who found themselves either having to work as teachers or muggers or starve - after the Satsuma Rebellion in Japan in 1877. Twenty-six years earlier he had planned to be a qualified librarian on the permanent staff of an institution, and this had happened. But things had not gone according to plan, he had had enough of the tertiary sector, and was not interested in a career in  crime. The bridge to his old life was burning, and he must press on to see what new life awaited him in the distant far north of the Land of the Huttites ...

Real time, wasted time and old times ...

Nineteen days had passed since Cone Man had worked his last day at the Great Hall of Wisdom. Five days had passed since the expiry of his Long Service Leave, which meant that he had ceased being paid for his time at 5pm the previous Friday. Admittedly, he was receiving final payment next week including unused Annual Leave plus his Redundancy, so Cone Man had reason to view this state of affairs with equanimity, but his mind turned again to the question of time. "Fugit inreparabile tempus" (it escapes, irretrievable time) growled the sage Virgil, and sadly, that harsh fact of time had not be changed by the mere passage of two thousand years.

How does a warrior extract financial value from hours for which no employer or customer will pay him money for? Reflecting on this mundane question (most of the questions in Cone Man's life were rather mundane) he remembered that cash payment for hours worked was an invention of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to that time, the concept was ridiculous.

Virgil undoubtedly understood the value of money, but he lived in a world where 90 percent of the population lived in villages, grew their own food, and often bartered for other things. The word "salary" derived from the practice of the Roman paying soldiers with a ration of salt. Slavery and serfdom saw many work as long as was necessary without consideration of paying them anything. War, famine and the Black Death often rendered the value of money completely worthless, and your time on earth tended to be nasty, brutish and short anyway.

Value, nevertheless, could be extracted from unpaid time. Many a warrior survived a battle because of the time he spent in sword practice, and it was not for nothing that the French had a proverb: "The graveyards are full of middling swordsmen".

Less dramatically, Cone Man could clear, dig over and prepare his vegetable patch for the August planting. He could for that matter, finish painting another room in his house. Or take in a lodger (if the lodger could tolerate an old codger). Writing one page a day could conceivably produce a return one day (or so Cone Man fantasised). With this happy thought, he headed down to the local library to file another job application ...

Reality impact

Cone Man had often noticed that he did not really notice things until the reality of the situation impacted. Was he employed at the Great Hall of Wisdom on the 17th of June? Well, he would be there on the 18th of June and thus it was merely another day at work. Was his last day of work there on the 21st of June? Well, he would not really notice unemployment until he woke up at 5am on Monday morning and found that he had no reason to get out of bed, because he had no reason to catch the bus to Queensgate, so that he could catch the bus to Petone, so that he could catch the bus to the Great Hall of Wisdom. Even then, the reality of unemployment did not impact. After all, he had back pay owing and he was taking two weeks of unused Long Service Leave.

Cone Man was not complacently idle in this period, however. If nothing else, he received rejection emails for jobs that he had applied for, and the mounting number of these gradually began to impact on his thoughts. "What if I am not as employable as I thought I was?" he grimly pondered.

Cone Man's trust in the god of Cone Man was implicit, but it almost bordered on Eastern fatalism. If the god of Cone Man had decided that Cone Man could do with a spell of unemployment to re-orient his life, who was Cone Man to argue? And were there not other ways to pay the bills? He would soon find out.

Cone Man's days were unremunerative, but his time had been freed up. The question was how to transform his newfound freedom into an investment, rather than a waste, of his time. Cone Man new that part of the answer lay in willing himself to write. Writing one page a day, particularly if you had a lot of days, could add up to a book in the course of time.

Writing a page a day, however, was not "writing" if he did not have an over-arching theme to tie the pages together to produce a towering narrative. On the other hand, would his readers not enjoy the experience of reading a "book" while it was being written, knowing that the author knew no better than they did where the story would lead or what manner of climax lay in store. Cone Man decided to put the theory to the test and see where it would lead. An so the great journey into the unknown began ...

Cone Man's Transition

Cone Man had been put against a wall and reviewed. Consequently, he had ceased travelling to and from the Great Hall of Wisdom. In a way, this was not an untimely development, because his chariot had died, and refused resurrection without unreasonable recompense, and Cone Man was in the happy position of being able to answer this epic sulk with one of his own: "Sit there and rot in the driveway you ungrateful pile of steel and rubber" Cone Man shrugged as he quaffed a beer on the sofa in his man cave.

Savouring his beer, he also savoured the strange sensation of his newfound freedom. The prophetess Joplin had opined that "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose" but Cone Man cone-sidered that view futile and nihilistic. A fugitive from the law was free of the normal constraints and frustrations of the moral and law abiding, yet enslaved to the constant tyranny of having to choose between concealment of their true identity or having to flee from whatever locality they lived in. Freedom, then, was far more than "nothing left to lose".

Others viewed freedom as freedom from degrading work. But if the work had to be done, the worker had to be remunerated to the extent that they could live to work another day. And if they lived enough days they could train at night school and find a better job. So, even if you accepted the bleak view propounded by the prophet Say, that the workforce only received the bare minimum necessary for them to survive, they were still free, arguably, in that they could improve their lot in the course of time.

Others viewed freedom as exercising the choice to train for and pursue a "professional qualification", leading in due course to a "salaried position". For many this was the path to slavery in the form of a "student loan", followed in due course by slavery to a "mortgage". After that, you lived your man cave to be near your work and you worked to pay for your man cave. This was often referred to as a "career".

Writers were often envied by others who believed they spent their days quaffing flat whites in cafes in between travelling the world and being interviewed on National Radio. In Cone Man's experience so far, writers wrote much, were paid little, and lived unremarkable lives. "The other warrior's grass always seems greener" Cone Man cone-sidered. "Freedom" in this life then, could not be divorced from work, responsibility and suffering.

"Life" was widely known pack up and leave after three score years and ten, or by reason of strength four-score - and many found that "life" had a bad habit of leaving far sooner, suddenly and unexpectedly than that. Four of the boys that attended school with Cone Man had died in various accidents before any of them could turn 21. Seven or eight others had not lived long after turning 50. "Perhaps the question of life is not how to seek freedom from work tomorrow, but how to best use the freedom you have to work today" Cone Man mused.

The Twilight of the Gods

Cone Man had heard dark legends that Chrestos the Young and Hip, Mighty Overlord of the Great Halls of Wisdom in the Land of Panpolya, had pondered the parlous state of their frail finances and had duly resolved upon a savage and terrible course of action to remedy matters. The legends, as it happened, were both true and false.

The legend bearers said Chrestos would subordinate the 16 Great Halls of Wisdom to 4 regional Chieftains who would co-ordinate their efforts while perpetrating a few minor atrocities - such as putting a thousand Panpolyans against a wall and reviewing them. The legend bearers, however, had underestimated the epic scale of the catastrophe about to fall upon the Land of Panpolya.

Chrestos, it transpired, had far more exciting ideas for the Land of Panpolya. All 16 of the Great Halls of Wisdom were to be subordinated to a single chieftain, and their existing customs and culture subsumed into one Super Hall of Wisdom, stretching the length and breadth of the Land of the All Blacks. Cone Man knew not who this chieftain or chieftainess would be, but as a hardened veteran of many restructurings he knew that the new chieftain would rule them all, ring-fence them with memorandums and mission statements, and keep them bound in the dark.

Like fortress garrisons facing besieging armies without the prospect of relieving armies, the Panpolyans knew they were masters of their own houses until the passage of time dictated that they would be servants in someone else's house. They were simultaneously free and facing slavery. The period of remaining freedom was about one year - in effect the Twilight of the "gods" who had ruled Panpolya from their desks.

The Germans had a word for this phrase "twilight of the gods", Cone Man mused - gotterdammerung. "Blazing cones!" groaned Cone Man, "This is not the quiet life I expected when I set out to become a librarian 25 years ago!"

Travails, time and choices

Cone Man's trusty chariot had developed a bad case of 'chariot flu' (brought on he guiltily suspected by three month's of hard driving to the Great Hall of Wisdom) and refused to get out of the driveway for all but the most urgent of business. Cone Man's trusty heat recovery system had died several months before, and could not be raised from the dead for less than 1700$. Cone Man's trusty hot water cylinder, observing the moment of opportunity, decided to join the wild cat strike and thus Cone Man's mighty endurance was further taxed by cold showers. Cone Man got little sympathy from the sages of the ages: "Do not mortals have hard service upon earth?" the prophet Job dourly shrugged. (Job 7:1).

Cone Man sipped white wine and reflected that he was not without allies at this juncture. Chariot pooling had stood him in good stead with his co-workers at the Great Hall of Wisdom, and he was able to arrange rides for himself for a few days. He was also able to arrange for his chariot to be repaired at a discount rate available to the warriors of the Great Hall of Wisdom. Finally, another friend at the Great Hall of Prophecy advised him of a reliable member of the Lightning Guild who could repair his hot water cylinder for a reasonable price.

Surveying the disparity between his resources and the time and cost required to run his chariot and maintain his man cave, Cone Man wondered how he could close the gap threatening to leave him without a living and a place to live. Costly, time consuming tasks were inevitable, unless he was prepared to tolerate unemployment, homelessness and starvation. The harsh questions had to be faced: How could he find more time and more money?

Pondering these questions, he reflected that all suffered the same inexorable loss of time. "The sands of time wait for no man" Cone Man groaned. Furthermore, minutes wasted today could lead to days wasted next week. Disciplined use of time was the difference between sufficiency or dearth of time.

Cone Man was in truth, a pathological time waster. Passivity, inoffensiveness and misplaced patience had hampered him in wooing cone maidens, and consequently he had merely become an old bachelor with the passage of time. Cone Man, belatedly facing the evil consequences of his relentless navel-gazing, constantly willed himself to be more proactive and confrontational in his dealings, but it did not come easily. He resolved to fight his unwelcome personal proclivities by changing them incrementally, one small habit at a time.

Obsessive gazing at the Palantir of the Silicon Wizard was a wasteful habit to say the least. Simple tasks remained undone, complex tasks were put off, and deadlines became ever deadlier while Cone Man voraciously absorbed the legends emanating from the Palantir. Legends unfortunately, are often myths by another name, so in addition to losing time, Palantirophiles ran the risk of losing their minds as well.

Grudgingly, Cone Man accepted that he must reduce his Palantir viewing to no more than one hour a day. Grimly, Cone Man accepted that he had not yet discovered how to make more money ...

The Son of Peter, the prophet from the far side of the Jordan

The Son of Peter, the prophet from the far side of the Jordan, in the Land of the Maple Leaf Tribe, was in town, and Cone Man paid $147 to attend his lecture, hoping for pearls of wisdom from this supremely sagacious of sages (or at least that was how he appeared to frustrated middle-aged males like Cone Man). The Son of Peter discoursed for an hour and a half in a rambling, narrative, peripatetic fashion, and rehearsed many of the themes Cone Man had already heard, but there were a few nuggets to justify Cone Man's thirst for wisdom.

The Son of Peter propounded the premise that an essay should begin with a problem that the essay writer is genuinely concerned about. All else flowed from that - if it was not a problem of personal importance to the writer, their essay would bore them, their readers, and particularly the luckless sages who reviewed their essays in the countless great halls of wisdom dotting the world. The Son of Peter said many other wise things, but this piece literary methodological advice lodged in Cone Man's mighty cerebrum.

The simplicity of it was awe-inspiring. Cone Man merely had to consider one vexatious problem a day, ponder it, and then write a one page essay about it. Cone Man did not have to know the answer, he merely had to identify and articulate the problem, and if no solution presented itself, he could end with a question and move on.

Happily, sadly, problems abounded. The question was which problems to write about. There already many pretentious prophets writing about world peace and global warming. Narcissistic prophets on the other hand, laboured under the different delusion that others wanted some kind of public confessional about their trivial personal neuroses. Cone Man resolved that he would restrict his prophecies to problems generic to the common warrior, which he had personally experienced.

Cone Man's current generic problem was Paralysis by Analysis. Toxic circularity was the crux of the problem: Cone Man pondered the Sea of Troubles confronting him, then pathetically sat in his man cave, drinking coffee and watching You Tube videos while passively suffering the slings and arrows of misfortune. Unsurprisingly, the Sea of Troubles, being unopposed, merely lapped ever more menacingly around Cone Man's heels, whereupon Cone Man continued to ponder the impossibility of taking up arms against the Sea of Troubles.

The solution, of course, was to substitute continuous action for interminable angst. "Where should I start?" Cone Man wondered. "Clean up your room" growled the Son of Peter. (SEE Peterson, 2018)

Peterson, J.B. (2018). Rule 6: Set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world. In 12 rules for life: An antidote to chaos (pp. 147-159). United Kingdom: Allen Lane.

Cone Man's Day of Blessings

Cone Man drove his chariot to the Great Hall of Wisdom, having no expectation that this Freya's Day would be any different from any other Freya's Day. He was excited nevertheless. "Thank the god of Cone Man that it is Freya's Day!" Cone Man muttered as he motored.

Happily the day proceeded to provide more than a mere interval between Thor's Day and the Day of Saturn. The Cone Force was strong in Cone Man and it was beginning to physically draw cones to his presence from many miles distant - a member of staff said the cones had fallen from the pine tree in her family section, and asked if he would like them collected and delivered to him at the Great Hall of Wisdom. Cone Man's modesty fought furiously with his vanity, but prevailed, and he cone-trolled himself and graciously thanked the staff member for her offer.

Hot on the heels of that surprise, another staff member at the Great Hall of Wisdom was distributing surplus vegetables from her garden and gave him a free courgette! He was grateful for these gifts, but began to notice a pattern of gifts. Two hours after receiving the courgette, another staff member at the Great Hall of Wisdom presented him with a free copy of The daily stoic: 366 meditations on wisdom, perseverance, and the art of living by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman.

During the course of the day, another staff member (one that he chariot pooled with) presented him with $15 to help him fight the terrible Commuting Petrol Cost Monster. That night his mother cooked dinner for him, and his sister gave him yet more vegetables from her garden.

Cone Man was grateful to the god of Cone Man for all this relentless largess from other people, but he wondered if the god of Cone Man was trying to get his attention, and if so, to what end? After all, one blessing was merely a blessing, two blessings in a day was a coincidence, three blessings in a day was unusual, four blessings were almost unheard of, and five blessings in one day was a miracle. The spiritual antennae of Cone Man's deeply superstitious mind were on high alert ...

Cone Man cone-siders the contradiction of "comfort"

Having re-constructed his cone box on the Day of Weeping Water, Cone Man continued working on the more difficult and important project of reconstructing himself. Sadly, there was no "silver bullet" - exercise without dieting required massive exertion, while dieting without exercise left a man unfit and pathetic.

Life and history were full of strange contradictions, Cone Man mused. Robespierre reflected  in May 1794 that "Terror without virtue is murderous, virtue without terror is powerless." Balancing contradictory extremes is, sadly, no game for fools and fanatics. Robespierre unbalanced the relationship between virtue and terror in June 1794 by passing a law authorising the execution of anybody by virtue of nothing more than a majority vote in the French National Assembly. As Robespierre had already engineered the mass execution of Girondist and Hebertist deputies in March and April of that year, the surviving members of the French National Assembly understandably lived in terror of who would be next.

Bravery, ironically, is not the absence of fear, but the ability to function when you are terrified, and the deputies found they had the virtues of courage and decisiveness. At least, they had these virtues for as long as it took to use the same law to dispose of Robespierre and over 90 of his followers, after which they repealed the law a few days later.

Health, unfortunately, is not the absence of discomfort, but the ability to keep exercising and dieting even when you would rather rest and eat more. Reluctantly Cone Man mounted the saddle of his iron horse for yet another training ride up to the top of the Hill of the Gods (the gods were never actually named, listed or described, but some marketing officer must have thought the name sounded kind of cool).

The word "comfort" originally meant to "strengthen" (com - with; fort - strength) and not leisure and luxury as it does in modern parlance. Cone Man sadly reflected that if he was to succeed in strengthening his legs and torso, he would have to hold his personal "comfort" in contempt.

Cone Man's Day of Weeping Water

The Day of Weeping Water was a public holiday for the men and women of Cone Man's All Black Tribe. The All Black Tribe was a strange entity, he cone-sidered. The white section of the tribe originated on a group of islands located somewhere above the Equator, and for a thousand years before the Great Oathtaking of Weeping Water, had been composed of warring tribes that happily massacred each other at places with strange names like Hastings, Bosworth Field, Marston Moor and Drogheda. The brown section of the tribe also originated from islands far away, and had likewise been composed of warring tribes that continued to fight each other for over 30 years after the Great Oathtaking of Weeping Water. The chieftain Hobson had boldly declared "We are all one people" but the "one people" had boldly and frequently ignored this declaration.

Remarkably enough, despite their disparate nature and divisive proclivities, the many tribes occasionally managed to act as one people - defending the land of the All Black Tribe from foreign invaders, and even more so in supporting the All Blacks in their perennial battles with the warriors of tribes who did not recognise the All Black god, the worst of these being the Wallaby Tribe and the Springbok Tribe.

Cone Man thanked the god of Cone Man for this respite from his normal Wodin's Day work, but he was not idle, and indeed focussed on the performance of a noble and sacred project. He had filled every available space in his existing cone box and set about doubling the size of his cone box - so that he could continue to collect cones. His humble mortgage holding covered 501 square metres and he could store up to a hundred metric tonnes of cones on this area if he could gather that many. "Is there a problem here?" he mused.

Cone Man's argument with his ancestor continues ...

Watching from his man cave in the sun soaked Land of the Hurricanes, Cone Man was disturbed by legends of death and destruction wreaked upon the Stars and Stripes Tribe by the Mother of All Wintry Polar Blast Monsters, the terrible Polar Vortex Monster! Cone Man coldly cone-sidered that although Antipodean winters were short, they could be sharp, and he set about gathering more cones. "Ye would na listen" sniggered the self-satisfied ghost of Cone Man's long dead lowland Presbyterian Scottish ancestor. "One more bit of spectral spite out of you and I'll send for an exorcist" snarled Cone Man, chagrined at being corrected by an ethereal busy body ...