My Theory Is Simple-Minded to Be Sure: That Beneath His Public Head There Was Another Head and It Was a Pyramid or Something

Over Thanksgiving dinner dessert I listened to my two brothers and a favorite aunt, all employed by Corporate (and the seedier if not nastier side of Corporate), bitch about intrigue and backstabbing and cutthroat Corporate infighting, reminding me, Corporate are Triskelions, there's only one game in town and it's competing against one another; managing the Thralls is just a necessary cost of doing business.

Mind, I work at (and have degrees from) the above high-priced and highly-prestigious credentialing factory, one that bases it's prestige (and high tuition) by specializing in just those academic disciplines - Economics (Chicago School), MBA (Chicago School), Government (neo-con), International Affairs (neo-con) - that prepares Corporate's next generations for empire's projection and protection.
   

My aunt is... I'm not going to tell you who my aunt is other to say that where she started from to where she's at now is as good an iteration of the American success story of the rewards of hard work and self-reliance as can be ghosted by any sales-writer. She thinks I'm a motherfucking idiot who turned down opportunities of a lifetime thirty years ago - Who's to argue? At the time I was a motherfucking idiot (who to this day regrets nothing) - though I've done OK since (and fathering Planet has bought me some absolution).

She's executive level Corporate, I'm executive-assistant level Corporate. I used to think this some moral distinction that honored me. My aunt saw Corporate as inevitable and engaged it and played to win, I saw Corporate as inevitable and engaged and played to tie, my feeble fuck-you to Corporate's invincibility, my half-assed fully-invested complicitous self-congratulatory and comfortable pose.

• Every year.
• Team spirit. 
• At another Thanksgiving dinner.
• Spirit of the season. 
• The fire next time.
• Grifter-smart.
• These rich fucks.
• How did Pastor Sanctimonious not make the Hack List?
• Buttercup is a total feldspar.
• Winnie the Pooh mental disorder gifs.
• Gentleman's C.
• The Present.
• Lit links.
• Brit authors name their books of the year.
• Kakutani's ten best of 2010, so you know what not to read. (I tried the Mitchell, and no.)
• David Bowie, cracked actor. 
• In the morning. 
• UPDATE! Ferocious.

THE LIST OF FAMOUS HATS

James Tate

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.