Of fairness to Tiger, and other Saturday concerns

        

    I keep meaning to remember

    not to get behind the wheel

    for a broadcast of All Things

    Considered, and I've become

    pretty good at it, if I may

    say. We're well trained, in

    our countryside, by the land-

    scape's interception of their

    local affiliate's already tep-

    id signal; but every now and

    again, an inadvertent tap on

    the wrong knob - in a sudden

    rainshower, say - will expose

    this resolution to serious ac-

    cident. So it was, yesterday,

    when an earnest commentator

    was urging fairness for Tiger.

    It went something like this:

Sure, the packaged god of our parasitic consumptions had fallen on ambiguous times, in the four tournaments of the year which rise to public awareness; but he remains, after all, still the unreasonably unapproachable leader by nature's neutral benchmark, the amassing of raw cash. Oughtn't indignation, then, with his treacherous fallibility be tempered by our universal instinct for gathering, per se? How soon we all seem to forget, this sermon ran, the underlying anxiety to exceed necessity in possession, upon which our nobler competitions are so pervasively structured.

 I admit, a Wüsthovian  tang so tapered to my  grasp, as if I'd for-  gotten the reward of a  well-tempered blade.

Anyone, I then reflected, could admire a pretty tree. Anyone could be grateful for a prettily chopped chive. But the malegloriously chopped chive must be reserved, we presume, for the vaingloriously knived; and who can enjoy his rapport with the tree, so well as by its engrossment? I hadn't meant to contemplate these exorbitant parameters, as I hopped into the car to join a few friends for a jereboam at a trusted cave. More impertinent nuisance of radio. And a good thing it is, these days, to have touchscreens we can swipe, to suit our exacting standards for existence as it ought to be.

i    Brenn Diephuis

iii  Damascene curiosity

iv   Urban villa