Artiodactyl carpenter
Feb. 4th, 2006 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusOnce upon a time I wrote a song called "Hippopotamomus" in which the narrator, a hippo who happens also to be a Momus, is also an artiodactyl; a member of the order of animals (pigs, dromedaries, mountain goats, gnus and so on) with two toes. Well, I must admit that when I uttered the gruff (and rather saucy) lyrics to that song I wasn't actually two-toed. But since visiting a shop called Marumi Working and Casual Wear here in Osaka, I've been walking around in two-toed socks and shoes. I have become artiodactyl.
Osaka may be the world's fourth most expensive city, but if you know where to shop (hint: Shinsekai, home of the 2000 yen flophouse) you can buy, for the equivalent of £30 sterling, the following outfit, not un-related to construction worker chic:
1 pair cloven toe carpenter's shoes
6 pairs cloven toe socks, cream and grey
1 pair wrist bands with traditional Japanese wave pattern
1 dark blue hooded sailor top
1 pair plastic elastic-top trousers with inner padding
Not only will this qualify you (to the untrained eye, anyway) as an artiodactyl (to the trained eye you'll resemble a Japanese carpenter, for whom the shoes are made), it'll allow you to pose on an equal footing, so to speak, with a Japanese Colonel Saunders and a Japanese Charlie Chaplin. Well, okay, Chappurin has bigger shoes.
(If you're in Osaka, a reminder that this Sunday I play my only Japanese concert this year in the city. Details here.)
Osaka may be the world's fourth most expensive city, but if you know where to shop (hint: Shinsekai, home of the 2000 yen flophouse) you can buy, for the equivalent of £30 sterling, the following outfit, not un-related to construction worker chic:
1 pair cloven toe carpenter's shoes
6 pairs cloven toe socks, cream and grey
1 pair wrist bands with traditional Japanese wave pattern
1 dark blue hooded sailor top
1 pair plastic elastic-top trousers with inner padding
Not only will this qualify you (to the untrained eye, anyway) as an artiodactyl (to the trained eye you'll resemble a Japanese carpenter, for whom the shoes are made), it'll allow you to pose on an equal footing, so to speak, with a Japanese Colonel Saunders and a Japanese Charlie Chaplin. Well, okay, Chappurin has bigger shoes.
(If you're in Osaka, a reminder that this Sunday I play my only Japanese concert this year in the city. Details here.)
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Date: 2006-02-03 02:38 pm (UTC)Donnie.
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Date: 2006-02-03 02:40 pm (UTC)D.
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Date: 2006-02-03 02:52 pm (UTC)I was brought up in Britain, and there are puritans in my extended family, members of the Plymouth Brethren. So I went the other way, like D.H. Lawrence did. (He preserved his puritanism even while condemning it, by the simple inversion of saying, in his hilarious essay on masturbation (http://www.gtexts.com/college/papers/f5.html), that puritans want us to masturbate, and that therefore masturbation is evil.) So I knew I'd have problems, but I persisted. "He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases," as Lewis Carroll put it. That was part of it. And the reviews went from raves to stuff like "There is now little doubt that Momus is a perve, if not in deed then in thought." Did it damage my chances of success? I think so, but it also gave me a niche, and in the long run a niche is nicer. And it got me endlessly laid, which helped.
The hat, by the way, is from Marimekko (http://www.marimekko.co.uk/).