I got mine (Simulacrum 16 -ed) the other day and, as usual, read it cover to cover within the first few hours. I am a little puzzled at the tone of the editorial, though. I’m not sure if John is complaining, whining, bragging, or just plain tired.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived a complaining, whining, bragging and yes, tiring Ogre whose name was John. Don Juan Aggrandizzo del Mońo y Grońo y Dozo. Big Bald for short. Now, Big Bald was an unhappy Ogre. In fact it would be safe to say that he was a terribly, terribly unhappy Ogre. Big Bald was so terribly unhappy because he was a misunderstood Ogre.

After all, when he ate Englishmen, he only ate the ones who irritated him, and he only ever boiled them, not like his friends Tyrone “Shoelaces” Bombast, Richard “Jesus H” Brag and Charles “Call Me” Crecy, who deep fried them in pork fat. Big Bald didn’t live happily ever after, but he didn’t expect to either, because he knew that not even the healthiest of Ogres was immortal. But Big Bald did live to an over-ripe and cantankerous old age, with lots of time to irritate Englishmen. Amen.

We moved on January 13th. It is now January 31st. The garage is, as of two hours ago, no longer full of empty boxes, packing paper and donations for the local Value Village. But the bedroom and the storage shed are. The boxes in the shed contain all those individual little parts that lie around a house in odd places, you know, the parts that you don’t really need right now but may need soon so you don’t put them someplace safe and hard to get at, the parts that are too important to throw away or too expensive to replace, the parts that are unobtainia. All boxed and in the shed. Seven high and five deep.

My chiropractor had to schedule a sudden trip to a conference in Las Vegas for extra deductions to burn off some of the taxable income he’s made from me over the past three weeks. The moral of the story is that you should never, ever, move to a smaller home. Like trying to give a cat medicine, if you manage to survive the ordeal, it will be despite, and not because of, your own stupidity. Listen to those nagging little doubts once in a while.