Code Name: CHAOS
I am in the midst of formulating & codifying a new endeavour to add to the roster of the existential reclamation, renewal, & reconstruction initiative known simply as CADMUS. With the possible exception of Project OSPREY, my revived fandom of college basketball, all of the code names programs are part of CADMUS, including, but not limited to, Project PANDORA, Operation ÖSTERREICH, Project MERCATOR, Operation AXIOM, Project RADIANT, Objective ZED ALPHA, Project EPIMETHEUS, Operation VAUXHALL, & even such collaborative B.T.W. schemes as Projects TROIKA, TRITON, PALINDROME, & the forthcoming TRIANGLE. (Subdivisions of Operation ÖSTERREICH include the completed Objective FINNLAND & the aspirational Objective SCHWEDEN.) I am perhaps 75-80% decided to code name the new endeavour Operation AMPHION, though there is still a smaller but persistent lobby for the code name Project GLOWWORM. Your thoughts, gentle readers, would be greatly appreciated: Project GLOWWORM or Operation AMPHION?

The crux of the endeavour (code name pending) is clothes. In the oft-quoted words of Samuel Clemens*, "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society." The idea started with Mrs. Skeeter, Esq.'s critique that a man should never wear short pants (a.k.a. shorts); that's old-fashioned malarkey that completely discounts the vagaries of weather & our great republic's prized values of egalitarianism & informality, but it did get me thinking. I've habitually mowed the lawn in gym shorts & a T-shirt, but to trim the bushes I've always donned jeans & a long-sleeved T-shirt (trimming the bushes involves inserting myself into the bushes, & even though there aren't thorns those branches can be sharp & scratchy). Pairing the jeans & long sleeves with gloves for handling the electric hedge clippers has always felt intuitively "right." In a murky alleyway of my brain, this bit of intuition was introduced to my disdain for the Accursed Sun & a notion soon took shape: if I was going to make war on the Sun, it was time to stop pussyfooting around. The Accursed Sun burned my arms; I'd fight back with long sleeves. The Accursed Sun burned my face, forehead, & ears, & got in my eyes; I'd fight back with a hat, my pith helmet, specifically. And while I was at it, I hated the way in which the grass clippings stained my hands green; I'd fight back with gloves. Instead of gym shorts, short sleeves, & a headband, since June or July I've been mowing the lawn in blue jeans, long sleeves, gloves, & my pith helmet. The results have been better than I'd dared imagine. My arms were less sunburned this summer than in any other comparable period, & the pith helmet has fended off the fatigue that is the most deleterious effect of the Accursed Sun's atomic-fueled onslaught.

Never would I trade away short sleeves entirely, for I am never at my ease unless my forearms are exposed (Why did I get my skull & crossbones tattoo on my sinister forearm? Specifically so that I could so often gaze upon the inked splendor!), but the success of the pith helmet drove me to carry further that part of the experiment. I acquired a hat for everyday use, a straw trilby spied on a grocery run to Meijer; the critical question would be whether the shielding against the Accursed Sun would to worth the additional body heat trapped by the headgear. The answer was a resounding yes. On those few occasions when I eschewed my straw hat for social or other considerations, I knew all too soon that I had erred. High on this success, a thought came unbidden from the murky boondocks of my mind: a man should wear a hat. Not a baseball cap, but a proper hat. The straw trilby had been justified by the benefits of thwarting the Accursed Sun, but under the gloriously overcast skies of the fall & winter should I bear the additional heating costs for the sake of a dictum emanating from some unknown, very possibly cobweb-ridden corner of my psyche? The answer, methinks, is yes. The Devil take John F. Kennedy, a man should wear a hat! For the purpose, I acquired an autumn hat during an expedition to J. C. Penney timed to take advantage of a big & tall sale. The hat has a curiously low crown, very shallow indents, & a brim that is sharply upturned at the rear, almost after the fashion of a Tyrolean hat; 'tis neither a fedora not a trilby, nor a Tyrolean, & I know not what specific noun to ascribe. It is gray in color, with lighter gray pinstripes. (Fear not, I have no truck with the appalling patterned trilbys that are so in vogue with the younglings; heathen savages, the lot.)

Thanks to this verdammt Indian summer, today was the first day cool & cloudy enough for the new hat. I left the house this morning having donned my straw trilby, but it took a battering from the afternoon rains. When I returned to campus this evening for debate practice, the fall hat kept my head dry. The rain provided a most excellent raison d'être for the hat, very much as the summer's sunshine had for its straw predecessor, but the newcomer has yet to be put through its proper paces. This weekend's sally to the Great White North should provide a suitable proving ground. (I do not wear my prized black Blues Bros. trilby because of what happened to the straw trilby when caught in today's rainfall. These daily hats are meant to take a beating, to sacrifice themselves to protect me from the elements; the Blues Bros. hat is, by contrast, a costume piece, meant to be preserved & cherished. On that note, though, I should visit either or both Sam's Store in Ann Arbor & The Mad Hatter in Flint to peruse their inventories of hats aimed at old fogies such as yours truly.)

Now that you know a little more about this new CADMUS endeavour, which code name seems the more apropos, Operation AMPHION or Project GLOWWORM?

Operation ÖSTERREICH
Progress is once again being made as, ever so slowly, I am deflating after the summer's immense ballooning. I don't trust my eyeballed appraisals, I trust only the holes in my belts.

*Why do I refer to Clemens by his real name rather than his nom de plume, Mark Twain, even though I am perfectly willing to address other authors by their pen names, e.g., George Orwell (Eric Blair) & Saki (H. H. Munro)? Contrariness. I've no defense for the inconsistency, I'm just contrary whenever the topic of Clemens arises.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Lenka, "Dangerous and Sweet" from Lenka (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "I know that you are just like me: oversensitive."