It has come to my otherwise divided attention that the individual who is constructing this website, and whose personal obsessions are now to be displayed far and wide across the world wide web, is not unknown to me. In fact, his past has been, to my considerable and eternal regret, the subject of my too-often diverted attentions. Now it would appear that once again he has resurfaced to inflict his vile, execrable torments upon my normally serene person. O villainous fiend! O darkest dread of my midnight terrors! O monstrous, freakish, unnatural devourer of my hearts' few joys!

But I digress.

My role in this purported and no doubt doomed (not to mention most likely illegal) endeavour, as I understand it from his at best inscrutable and otherwise usually barely intelligible ravings (heralded to me from the street below my window, where I normally sit—by the window, that is, not upon the street—to peruse the most ageless writings of the nobler literati, or scan the scientific papers for the newest discoveries and the occasional awe-shrouded mention of my name, not unknown in serious circles as the progenitor of much of modern scientific and philosophical thought), is to offer, through the forum of this his embarassingly weakminded and universally disappointing foray into the Current Information Age, my invaluable Insights and Observations on the issues that confront us today. This I shall, reluctantly, do. Whyso? Reluctantly, I say, for he wields over me certain, shall we say, "persuasive" powers of a not-at-all elegant nor admirable character involving (as I shall certainly not go into detail here) certain heretofore undisclosed personal weaknesses on my part which I have, in the past, exercised unwisely in the presence of both witnesses and photographical equipment. One does pay eventually for the indiscretions of one’s youth, it seems. Or of one’s middle age. Or later.

I am assisted in this endeavor by my ever-devoted confidant and secretary, Mister Pierce Flambois, OpCit, ID, who, always at my very elbow to transcribe for the ages my each muttering mumble about the state of the jellyjar being inexcusably meagre, or the evils inherent in the leaving of ancient toastcrumbs on the butterdish, nay, even my every digestive rumbling, as well as those profounder observations I am wont to vent upon the Nature of God and the Whole History of Panamerica (the which is, one will be interested in knowing, wholly capable of reduction to a matter of seventeen pages in Mister Flambois’ Journaliad Felspariat). Nonetheless.

Ponds, you say? What of them? Whyever my Tormentor decided to focus his energies on the digging of deep holes in his property (with a handshovel no less—whatever did he think God hath, in His Holy Wisdom, put swarthy gardeners on the earth to do? Recline upon their elbows in the heather and warble the works of Mssrs Rogers and Hammerstein in their squeaky foreign voices? I think not! To Garden, the answer would be, of course. Or diggers. Would he have swaggering, muscular, shirtless diggers perform in all their glistening, sunburnt splendour whatever functions it is that all the obtuse and self-serving verbiage strung together in his so-called vita allegedly suggest he himself has, with what meagre brainage the Good Lord has bestowed upon him, achieved? Again, I say No, and No Again! For we are as we are labelled; placed upon this earth with certain Jobs given down to us from above (in support of which eternal veritas I reference in their entirety the Arcan Coelestia of Emanuel Swedenborg), or if the human resources department happens to be downstairs, then below. The point being it is against the very laws of nature and of nature’s God for a person who is not a Digger Of Holes to dig holes! Make him stop, for heaven’s sake! No, Pierce you fool don’t write that last bit it makes me sound Deranged. I said, Pierce, not to—oh hell. As we can now all observe, the Price of wisdom is high, its burden heavy to bear by those so gifted. Did you get that? Good.

Ponds. So he digs a hole in the yard deep enough to bury himself in (and O if only he had done so, how peaceful would be my life today with him embraced within the dark, enfolding soil!) and lines it with a great piece of Rubber (and delighted was the plucky UPS delivery fellow, too, one may imagine, with the 150-pound folded rubber sheet in his truck) and fills it up with water! Then he puts in lillies and other plants, and fish to swim about, and the water pumps up through a hose and back down in what he optimistically refers to as a waterfall, and he proclaims his backyard not only a virtual Walden of wilderness delight, but worthy of exposure unto the entire world via this hideous technology. (Dr Feldspar observes, as an aside, that he has in fact enjoyed the rare gin-and-fizz in a gardenchair by the side of the aforementioned waterous body and found the experience not entirely unpleasant, particularly those times during which his host excused himself to venture back inside the house to attend to whatever matters required his then immediate attentions, however limited they may be. This observation is offered to both provide a little humorous and humanizing color to the Doctor’s sage observations, and to demonstrate that his contact with his Tormentor is not altogether ghastly in nature.)

What are you writing there, Flambois? What are you scribbling down while I’m being quiet? Have you taken to describing my physical attitudes now?
"Lo, the Doctor has assumed a posture not unlike that of Rodin’s Thinker, albeit one more mdestly arrayed, and is gazing out the glass upon the street and pleasant public garden below, lost in thought the nature of which such as we cannot venture to guess" sort of thing? Let me see that. Damn it, Flambois, I hate it when you get this way!

I shall speak no more for the moment. Later, perhaps, I shall continue my reflection.

--Tinley-on-Prugh, by way of Vfensterbergen, Kleimveldt, GV2; August 2000