Sunday, 28 July 2019

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 .

Tuesday, 23 July 2019

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!"

Friday, 19 July 2019

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 ...

Thursday, 18 July 2019

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 ...

Wednesday, 17 July 2019

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 …

Tuesday, 16 July 2019

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 ...



Monday, 15 July 2019

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 ...

Wednesday, 10 July 2019

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 ...

Tuesday, 9 July 2019

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 ...