Bagatelles & Verse: Commerce Stuff

Jeans West

I bought a pair of cargo pants on sale from Jeans West.

The second time I wore them they split up the back

into a twenty-centimetre tear over my left bumcheek,

not even along the seam,

when I bent over to feed the dog.

When I took them back the young woman in the store

was enthusiastically apologetic and fetched me another pair

that I discovered were nineteen centimetres too small when I got home.

The odd number being because

Jeans West is an outpost of American cultural imperialism

and insists on using that benighted country’s anachronistic inches,

and she’d mistaken ‘30’ inches for ‘38’.

Being a 95 in world measurements makes me a 37 over there.

When I returned those she was even more

enthusiastically, energetically apologetic, self-critical, and mortified,

and let me buy a cheaper pair of trousers,

refunding me the difference.

Those trousers lasted about a month

before splitting in a similar fashion

whilst I was sitting in a chair pulling on my shoes.

I bought my next pair elsewhere.

Siggi Networking

She walked up to me

in that faceless suburban pub

as if we were old friends –

instead of people who’d met each other once

at some Green Party hoo-raw –

and asked me what I was doing there.

Looking at her as if she were from another planet,

I gestured toward my glass and the big screen,

and replied sequentially,

‘Drinkin’ beer. Watchin’ footie.’

With her German accent

and her husband at their table, she pressed her case,

which eventually turned out to be Amway.

Drinking beer and watching footie

– or ethical environmental politics, for that matter –

weren’t on her agenda,

in regard to me that week, at least.

More Than Two Sides

Debates that I’ve read

about various matters involving health

tend to be between people

who desperately, aggressively

want their fantasies to be true,

no matter how fallacious,

and those who insist on carefully acquired evidence

and rigorous reasoning,

when it comes to matters of biology and medicine.

Those who disparage science and scientists,

do so almost always without sane, rational cause,

and conjure up imaginary conspiracies

between those engaged in medical science

and large multinational corporations

that care about nothing but maximising profits –

which is indeed an accurate assessment of those institutions.

Those on the side of science-based

medicine and health care

relentlessly refute and debunk

the pseudoscientific claims of the conspiracy theorists,

but also often seem to tend to dismiss the potential

for serious damage

in the ways that the corporations exploit

science and scientists

with no regard for ethics, basic human decency,

humanity’s overall well-being,

or environmental consequences.

I hope I’m not the only person

who respects science

but also has a deep distrust of,

and antipathy toward,

predatory multinational corporations.

Socks

After a year or so,

some of the sturdy

Australian-made socks

that I’d bought from a kiosk in Centreplace

started to develop holes.

I’d noticed that the kiosk

had disappeared the previous December

and it was still gone

when I went to buy more in March,

so I went and bought

some Chinese-made ones

from the Warehouse.

The first holes started to appear

within a few weeks.

On Daddy’s Money

A little extravagance is good, she thought,

like her white soft-leather couch

and the art deco table lamp,

but she’d never blow a wad on designer clothes,

for instance,

and she felt scorn toward her friend Annie’s

designer fingernails.

Still, she thought nothing at all

of flying to Honolulu on Daddy’s money

for a long weekend with her new crush.

At least it wasn’t someplace vulgar,

like the Gold Coast –

which was Annie’s pet short-term destination –

swarming with the lesser sons

of Chinese sweatshop operators.

It was hardly even Daddy’s money, anyhow,

as he kept his family comfortably secure

by manipulating other people’s money –

well, assets –

some of which he undoubtedly invested

in Chinese sweatshop operations

all over Southeast Asia.

Boy Scout Knives & iPhones

When I was eleven I got a Boy Scout Swiss Army knife

with umpteen gazillion (well, ten) different blades

and tools and other implements,

some of which I had no idea what they were for

and most of which I never used.

As of my seventy-first birthday

I’ve never had an iPhone

or any other brand of pocket computer

with attached phone and camera

and umpteen gazillion different

programmes and apps and other functions,

most of which I’d probably never use.

Weapon of Choice

Nobody with a snarl on his face

and a gun or knife or club in his hand

has ever robbed me.

Smiling people

manipulating documents or digital signals

have done so often.

They Are What They Wear

Don liked being known, being defined,

by his preference for footwear,

and never left home without

Doc Martens on his feet.

He was just that kinda guy.